We're still working on the subject of assurance, and we'll be today and for probably at least two more messages after this. I want to take from my text today in the book of Joel, chapter 2. We'll be reading this prophecy that is quoted in Peter's Pentecostal sermon. And this is the prophecy of the outpouring of the Spirit beginning in verse 28. But our text will be in verse 32, and you'll see why, and we'll develop it throughout the sermon. The book of Joel, one of the minor prophets, just three chapters, and in chapter 2 and verse 28. And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my Spirit. And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and terrible day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call. This, of course, was quoted at length by Peter in his Pentecostal sermon. And the phrase that we're going to be looking at today and considering is there at the beginning of verse 32. Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered. And that's where Peter ended his quotation. It's quoted also, I believe, in Romans chapter 10. This is one of the great promises upon which we stake our hopes for eternity. This promise of God that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. This is an expansive promise. It's as wide as the very scheme of salvation itself. Every person that calls upon the name of the Lord and in true faith will be saved. Again, we are relying upon the fact here that our Lord is a God who cannot lie. That was the text that we took from Titus 1 and verse 2 for our first message on the subject of assurance and sought to show from the Word of God that the only reason we can have hope that our souls will be saved in the end is because God's promises of salvation will infallibly be kept. If God was a liar and not trustworthy, then we would not have any reason to believe His promises any more than some other man. But because God cannot lie, when we have such a passage as this, it says, Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered, then we can appropriate that word whosoever for ourselves. It's a word that we find often in the Gospel, in the evangelical passages, where men are encouraged to come to Christ. Very often we see it said that whosoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, shall be saved. And that's what Joel is prophesying out here. This promise of the prophet came to full fruition when the gospel began to be preached in all nations, and it's still going on today. Still, even at this very hour, whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Now, when it says whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be delivered, somebody might ask, well, what are they delivered from? Well, it's the same as the text we took in our most recent message on this subject from Matthew 1 and verse 21. In that passage, it said, He shall save His people from their sins. And so this is what we are delivered from, from our sins. And again, it's not just the penalty of sin, that is a great part of it, but also the power and the presence, and some would add, the pleasure of sin. A true believer can no longer take pleasure in sin if the Spirit of God is dwelling in him. The great object of salvation was not the deliverance of the Jewish nation from their political enemies. That's what many in Israel thought when Christ came. And sad to say, it seems like many people in these dispensational churches seem to think that's the great object of God's plan is the deliverance of the Jewish nation. But the object of salvation is to save God's people from their sins. The penalty, the power, and the presence of sin. The kingdom of God is a spiritual thing. It's not something that you see with observation, but as Christ said, the kingdom of God is within you. Now, although Joel had special respect unto that particular day, the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit descended in great power upon the church, and the gospel subsequently went forth to all nations, this principle is not only still true today, it's actually been true throughout all the ages of redemptive history. When Abel called upon the name of the Lord and offered an acceptable sacrifice, he was saved. When David pleaded with the Lord to forgive his sins, he pleaded with God to forgive his sins for Thy name's sake. And God did deliver David, just as He delivered anybody in that time, just as He does now. God delivered people in the past, even before Christ came, who called upon His name, and He does so now. He has not changed His character. in this New Testament age. Now, the Gospel has gone forth in a much broader scope than it did in the Old Testament. Primarily, the grace of God was restrained within the nations of Israel, with some few exceptions, during the Old Testament era. But now this promise of God goes forth to all men, and whosoever both Jew or Gentile calls upon the name of the Lord will be delivered. God has always stood ready to forgive the repenting sinner because He is a God who is abundant in mercy and ready to pardon repentant sinners. He was ready to pardon even Gentiles under the Old Testament. Men like Naaman who repented of their sins and pursued their idols. God has always been ready to deliver those who call in faith upon His name. But now in the New Testament era, where we are privileged to live, God's abounding grace is published not just within the border of Israel by a handful of prophets and by the Mosaic law, but it's published all over the globe by thousands of ministers that God has called out for that very purpose. And wherever the gospel is being preached, the message is going forth, that if you call upon the name of the Lord in faith, you will be delivered from your sins. The message of the man of God, which we bring to lost sinners, is the same here in the heartland of America as it will be in South America there in Guyana or as it is in the jungles of Africa or wherever one of Christ's true ministers is sent. We don't preach a different gospel in another country, but we preach the same message. Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be delivered. This promise is a sure rock upon which to build our faith. The promise of deliverance for those who call in faith upon the name of our omnipotent God. So if God grants us grace to have full confidence in the validity of His Word, then we can know that when we too call upon His name, then we have this salvation that He promises. And so, taking God at His Word and believing this promise, we may have assurance of salvation through calling upon the name of the Lord. The Apostle Paul had respect to this same principle in Romans chapter 10, and I want you to turn over to Romans 10 and look at a couple of verses with me. He actually quotes from Joel a little further down, but we're not going to be looking past verses 8 and 9. But I want you to look at Romans chapter 10, verses 8 and 9. It's breaking into the context a little bit, but this will stand alone. He's speaking of the scripture. He says, What sayeth it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart. This is a quote from Deuteronomy chapter 30. That is the word of faith which we preach. That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. This is the same gospel principle that Joel prophesied of there in our text, in Joel chapter 2 and verse 32. This is the word of faith that we preach to all nations, the message that those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ shall most certainly be saved. Now although the gospel is in some sense as broad and as deep as the very mind of God himself, and there are certain doctrines in the gospel record that are more complex than the most brilliant mind can plumb the depths of them, yet in another sense it can be simplified to this one thing that we have here in our text, and that is open confession of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Savior of sinners. And I believe it must be both of those things. You must believe that Christ is the Son of God and that He is God manifest in the flesh. But you must also believe that Christ is the Savior of sinners and that it was His atonement that enables us to be received by God. These things at least must be believed. And we must believe also in our hearts that God has raised Him from the dead. Now, if you look one verse further, in verse 10, Paul adds, For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. I love this statement here how he says, with the heart man believeth unto righteousness. And this can only be understood in the context of the preceding chapters of Romans going all the way back into chapter 1 and starting about verse 16 when he launches in to his great doctrinal dissertation that continues all the way through the end of chapter 11. With the heart man believeth unto righteousness. Without going into an exposition of the Book of Romans, we'll simply say that in this Book of Romans we see how God provides for sinful and ungodly men a saving righteousness, the righteousness of His own beloved Son. There's many verses that I could quote to you, but in chapter 5 and verse 19, the apostle wrote, "...by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." So what he's saying there is by the obedience of Jesus Christ, His perfect obedience to the law of God, that obedience is reckoned to the account of His people. And that's the message that the apostle is driving at in the first several chapters of the book of Romans, is how righteousness can be imputed to an ungodly sinner, and though he is ungodly, wicked and hell-deserving in himself, yet through the grace of Christ he can have a righteous standing before God. And that's the righteousness Paul is speaking of when he says, with the heart man believeth unto righteousness. When we're given grace to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have this gift of righteousness, and righteousness is reckoned or counted to us. By believing unto righteousness, Paul designs us to understand that when we believe this gospel, God bestows upon us this justifying righteousness which He has been explaining since chapter 1 and verse 16. Now surely if such an astounding bounty is lavished upon those who believe the message of the Gospel, then we who have believed have strong ground for assurance. Because when we believed on Christ, God reckoned His righteousness unto us. By the obedience of one, by Christ's obedience, we are made righteous. Christ's obedience replaces our disobedience. Our disobedience was reckoned upon Him, and that's why He suffered the horrible things that He did in making atonement for our sins. Now, if by simply believing the terms of the gospel, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of sinners, and that His death and resurrection are of sufficient virtue to save such sinners as we are, if by believing such a simple and yet such a glorious message, a man can be counted righteous in the sight of a holy God, then the true believer, the man whose heart really has been transformed by the grace of God, he may have, he may attain unto, great confidence in the happy state of his soul. He doesn't need to wait upon the approbation of a priest or some papal message declaring that he's a saint or anything like that, and he doesn't have to have any special ritual done on his behalf, and he doesn't have to perform any amount of good works. He doesn't have to count his rosary beads and say his Hail Marys. He is believed, and when he did believe upon Christ, righteousness was reckoned to him. And if you have righteousness, then God has no more objections against your person, and He receives you gladly and willingly. So the promise of God is that when we believe on His Son, we are believing unto righteousness. And this is the great deliverance that Joel prophesied of in our text. But it ought to be added that this belief that Paul speaks of is accompanied by open confession of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's not any such thing as a believer who he believes in his heart and yet he keeps a secret within himself and never tells anybody, never makes any outward or verbal confession of the Lord Jesus Christ. Belief on Christ is never just a private matter. People like to say, especially when they're talking about politics, that, oh, your religion ought to be just a private matter. Well, for the true Christian, it cannot be a private matter. It affects everything about him. Saving faith is not what some would have it to be, just a mere one-time exercise of the sinner's will, with nothing else necessarily happening in all his religious experience for the rest of his life. There is a false faith and false faith must be scrupulously guarded against. Genuine faith, genuine saving faith will never say, well I believed and that's it and I don't need to have any more religious worries. I don't need the company of God's people. I don't need God's Word. I believed on Jesus and now I'm saved for eternity and I don't need to worry about anything anymore. Now that is a false faith. That is a faith that will not save. Saving faith is inextricably entwined with a public confession of Jesus Christ. And this public confession entails a requirement that we live as servants to Christ. When we confess Christ, what we're saying is that I have a different master than I had before. I was formerly in bondage to the lusts of my flesh. I was in bondage to the devil. But now I'm in subjection to my master Jesus Christ. For the Lord Jesus Christ, like any other master, has laws and rules and regulations by which we ought to live. And they're there for us in the gospel and in the epistles that he had his apostles write down for us. And we must as believers live according to the laws that our Master has for us. There is no such thing as a real believer who continues in sin that grace may abound. That is the attitude and the spirit of an ungodly Adenomian and the fiercest denunciations in all of the New Testament are made against those who turn the grace of God into lasciviousness. Now one excellent illustration to verify what I'm telling you is in the Ordinance of Baptism. The Ordinance of Baptism is the new believer's public confession that he is united to Jesus Christ by saving faith, that he has died to his own self and he has been resurrected in the likeness of his Savior. And he's no longer a citizen of the unbelieving world, but he is a member of the Kingdom of God. Your baptism is also a time when you make a public confession of your faith, even with your mouth. And you know how at the baptisms that we have here that this church has done, that the person who is being baptized, he will read or speak his testimony. And the reason we do that is through scriptural warning. You remember when John the Baptist was baptizing people, the people went down into Jordan and they confessed their sins and then they were baptized. They were confessing that they were sinners, that God was righteous, and yet they had hope. in the mercy of God, and they were baptized upon that confession. And that's the same thing that we do in the baptisms that this church has performed. We are confessing that our former self is gone and we have been raised to newness of life, that we are new creatures in Christ Jesus. Paul drives that point home in Romans 6 and verse 4. Some of the arguments here are somewhat complex and difficult, and we're not going to get into any of them. But in verse 4 of chapter 6, He says, therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. So what Paul is saying is that our baptism is a gospel example. The Lord Jesus Christ was died and he was buried to where no man could see him. And likewise in our baptism, the picture is we are buried under the waters to where our physical form is no longer seen, but that Christ himself was raised up from the dead by the power of God the Father. And so we, when we are raised up out of the water, that symbolizes that we are raised up to a new life. We are under a new master. We are living according to different principles. So if you're walking in newness of life, you're no longer motivated by the same things that used to drive you. You're no longer in subjection to the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, but you're walking in newness of life in service to Jesus Christ. This walking in newness of life is, in fact, an essential ingredient of saving faith. True saving faith necessitates that a man walk in newness of life. We ought always to recall, when we read passages such as we saw in our text, that great deliverance that is granted to everyone who calls on the name of the Lord, whether it's spoken of by an Old Testament prophet or by a New Testament apostle, the authors of the Scripture are speaking not just of a deliverance from the penalty of sin, whereby we can say, well, now, as some people put it, I have my fire insurance, I have a ticket to heaven that's non-smoking, as people flippantly put it sometimes, That's not all that it is, but it is also a deliverance from the dominion that sin had over us in the days of our unbelief. If you're still in subjection to the same passions and the same motivations that used to drive you when you were an unbeliever, then you don't have a ticket to heaven as people like to say. You're still in slavery to Satan if you're still living according to the lust of your flesh. This concept is true whether we're speaking of the Old Testament or the New Testament. God's people have always been characterized by the righteousness of their conduct. The nature of God's saving work has never been a weak, pitiful, ineffective thing so that it can do no more than get the object of grace to call on God one time and then do no more. And whenever I'm speaking of saving faith, I always think of Hebrews 11. If you will read in Hebrews 11, None of the great examples of the heroes of faith were, oh, this man believed on God and he got his ticket to heaven through believing on God. No, saving faith was illustrated by the fact that they did great and mighty deeds in obedience to God. They were willing to lay down their very lives and suffer incredible tortures rather than reject their God and the commands of God. The saving faith has everything to do with how we live and how we live in respect to God and to His Word. There are many who hold the notion that faith is nothing more than that one-time exercise of your will. And I heard an individual say one time, he said it to me in a theological discussion, well, I believe that anybody who ever prays the sinner's prayer will be saved. He no doubt heard that from some preacher or some other person who was as religiously ignorant as he was, because that concept never comes out of the Word of God except by twisting the passages that, like our text where it says, whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be delivered, and forcing that to mean that it's just the one time calling upon God to save our souls. But there is much more involved in it than just that one time act of faith. It is actually a lifelong thing. I believe that the prophet Joel and the apostle Peter there in Acts 2 when he quoted him, that they had something more in mind than merely encouraging those who hear the gospel message just to invite Jesus into their hearts and never doubt again. And it's because people have portrayed the gospel in that way that they've completely thrown repentance out the door. The fact that repentance is an essential part of the gospel, verifies that what I'm teaching to you today is true. Because if it was just the one-time act of our will and nothing else really mattered, then there wouldn't be anything about repentance. But actually, the whole Gospel, I think, in one point is called the Gospel of Repentance. And sometimes repentance is used as a summary term for the entire Gospel. But this idea that all we have to do is pray the sinner's prayer and then everything is taken care of, the fact is that that is just a mere caricature of the true gospel. It has enough of a likeness to some things that are said about the gospel that it can deceive people. But when you look at people who believe that, the fact of the matter is that embracing that kind of doctrine turns out mere caricatures of true Christians. They may be able to imitate real Christians in one way or another, but if you pay close attention to what they are practicing, you'll find out that there's nothing of the Spirit of God in them. There's nothing in repentance about them. And that's why the churches are so ungodly and so powerless in this day and age is because the idea of just invite Jesus into your heart and everything is okay, because that has been embraced, we see ungodliness permeating the churches. We don't want that kind of assurance. That is an ungodly and an unholy assurance to say that, well, I exercised my will one time and now everything is good with me for all eternity. That is a false and an ungodly assurance and we want to avoid that with all of our heart. That kind of teaching utterly ignores the teaching of Paul in Ephesians chapter 1 where he says in his opening address that we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, and of course most churches don't believe that part anyway, but he goes on to say that we were chosen that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. God's election is not just an election to the salvation of our souls, but it is an election unto holiness in heart and conduct. It also ignores the doctrine of Ephesians 2 in verse 10. Now just about every Christian knows Ephesians 2.8 and can tell you how, oh, we're saved by grace through faith, but very many of them don't have any idea that he goes on to say after that that we are also God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works. If you are God's workmanship, then you must be performing good works. Otherwise, your religious structure was not built by God. It was just an exercise of your own mind and your own will, and that's not good enough to save you. You must be God's workmanship if you're going to be made fit for heaven. The uniform testimony of Scripture is that the salvation of God makes us new creatures. We no longer love and are no longer motivated by the sin and carnal pleasures that once were our masters, but now we live to the praise of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. Therefore, this calling upon the name of the Lord is not just a one-time thing, but it is, in fact, a matter of habit for the genuine believer. Now it is true, and I certainly do not want to deny this, it is true that there is a point in our life when we do call out to God for mercy and plead with Him to save our souls, and God regenerates us and gives us that new heart. There is a time when that occurs, when we are brought from death unto life. But the fact is that hardly anybody, if there actually is anybody, can tell you exactly when that occurred. Just the day that you actually openly confess that Christ is Savior is not necessarily the time when the Holy Spirit of God regenerated you. That is a mysterious work done by the Spirit of God, and we don't know precisely when He may have brought us from death unto life. But there is a time when we do call upon God, and when the Holy Spirit does give us life. But after the Holy Spirit has given us life, and we are given a saving faith in Christ, and we call upon the name of the Lord, and our souls are brought from death unto life, we don't cease to call upon God after that. It is in fact a daily thing. It's something that we have to do each and every day. We have to call upon God in all of our spiritual warfare. We have to call upon God in our trials and temptations, the lures and the traps and the snares of the world that would try to entice us back into ungodliness. We have to call upon God when we're confronted by these things. In the small as well as in the great things of life, we constantly are calling upon God for help and for deliverance. We need deliverance not just from that unregenerate heart and the condemnation that we were under as unbelievers, but throughout all of our pilgrimage as believers. We need deliverance from temptations. We need deliverance from the power of indwelling sin. We need deliverance from the assaults of enemies within and without. Rather than just being a mere one-time act of our will which forces God to save us regardless of what else we might do afterwards, the truly saved man is in the mold of David there in Psalm 116 verses 1 and 2. I'll turn and read that to you because it might slip out of my mind if I'm not actually looking at it. I want you to see particularly what he says there in verse 2 of Psalm 116. I love the Lord because He hath heard my voice and my supplications. David had called upon God many times and had always found God faithful to answer. And then he says, Because He hath inclined His ear unto me, therefore will I call upon Him as long as I live. This is the true believer. This is how the true believer thinks and operates. We called upon God, and when we were brought to a recognition of our sinfulness, and brought into a recognition that we were faithful in the sight of God, and that we deserved hell, and that we were going to hell, we were on the road to hell, and then we called upon God, and He granted us saving faith, and brought us out of darkness and into His light, and translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son. Well, because God has done this for us, therefore we call upon God as long as we live. Saving faith is indeed a wonderful thing, but for faith to be proven genuine, it must have supporting evidence. I can't tell that you're a believer, and you can't tell that I'm a believer, except by the proofs that you see in us. Now, as far as looking at other people, we certainly cannot tell infallibly about another person, because we actually cannot see what's in their hearts. The person who seems to be living the cleanest and most upright and most vocally religious life, could possibly turn out to be a hypocrite. We can't know that about another person. We've seen people who we have confidence in as being strong believers turn away from the gospel in days gone by. But I believe we can gain an assurance about ourselves. We can know about ourselves whether we are hypocrites, whether we're just trying to impress other people, or whether we are truly living to the service of God. Now the title of my message is Assurance Gained by Faith. But when I say assurance gained by faith, I mean something more than just those first spiritual motions whereby we laid hold of the promises of God and looked to Christ crucified as our hope of salvation. You don't just look to Christ as your hope of salvation that first time. You look to Christ every day and indeed every hour. Because every time you sin, that's a reminder that you have no strength to save yourself. You have no strength to bring yourself in favor with God. The only reason you have any favor with God is because Christ died and was resurrected on your behalf. Those first spiritual motions, that first calling upon God, is a precious thing and not to be despised. But at the same time, we have to take sober warning from the fact that there are many who have claimed to believe the promises of God, who have gone on to prove themselves counterfeits, either by apostatizing from the faith and denying the gospel altogether, or perhaps by engaging in scandalous conduct and refusing to repent upon the rebuke of the church. It is pure defiance of the testimony of Scripture to say that such persons are saved just because they professed faith one time in Christ. There was a story that Rolf Barnard told one time about a Sunday school teacher that was teaching the idea of invite Jesus into your heart and that everything is alright after that. There was a little boy in the class who asked him if Hitler was saved. And the Sunday school teacher told him, well, we can only hope that when he was a little boy that he asked Jesus into his heart. And, well, if he did that, he was saved no matter what he did after that. No matter how many people he killed, no matter how many ungodly things he did, their idea was, well, if he asked Jesus into his heart one time, no matter how vocally he rejected Christianity and how wicked he was, he's still going to heaven. There's nothing like that in the Word of God, and nobody gets anything like that out of the Scriptures. Now with our hearts we do believe unto righteousness, and when we do truly trust in Christ, we are justified from all things from which we could not be justified by the Law of Moses. That is absolutely true. When you are regenerated and given saving faith, your soul is secure, and you are and will be preserved by God for all eternity. But the act of vocal confession of Christ will mean nothing if there are no fruits made for repentance. And therefore, I want to drive this point home that we should not gain any assurance through faith except that your faith be accompanied by a hunger and thirst after righteousness. If your faith is a faith that has no hungerings and thirstings after righteousness, if you are not bringing forth any fruits of meat for repentance, then you have no title to assurance. If you have any assurance, it's an assurance that was granted to you by the devil. The devil loves for people to be confident in the state of their souls when they're still living ungodly lives. Those people are probably more certain for hell than a person who's just ungodly and irreligious altogether, because they can hardly be talked out of their vain confidence. Now, I alluded earlier to Ephesians chapter 2 verses 8 through 10, where Paul declared that we are saved by grace through faith. But then he proceeded to remind us that the very faith that we have is a gift from God. We wouldn't have saving faith at all, except that God had given it to us. And this, in fact, is what separates genuine faith from the counterfeit article. Faith that is given by God is going to manifest itself in good works. That's why he goes on in verse 10 to say that we're created in Christ Jesus unto good works. That is the identification of the faith that is a gift of God. There is a type of faith that might be an intellectual ascent to the gospel, the idea that, well, the things that are written in the Bible are true, and yet it has no power in the life of a person. Faith that comes from heaven will prove itself by producing in the man in whom it is active, it will produce in him good works. God has ordained from all eternity that his people will walk in good works. Therefore, the person who has no interest in holy living and has no interest in personal sanctification, refuses to take up his cross and follow after Christ, that person has no genuine title to assurance of salvation. If he tells you he has assurance, then you can be sure that he did not get it from God. He might have a kernel confidence, but if you talk to him, you'll probably find out that his confidence is in the power of his own will and what he did to earn salvation from God. There is no such thing as a heaven-born assurance for the man who lives to nothing higher than the lusts of his flesh. Heaven-born assurance is for those who are taking up the cross and following after the Lord Jesus Christ and crucifying the flesh and putting the lusts of the flesh to death. Now, to verify this, we can look in the book of James. And this, of course, always raises the theological questions that have come about over the centuries, and some have tried to make the Apostle Paul and James to be enemies and advocates of different Gospels. But, in fact, Paul, there in Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 10, is arguing for nothing different than what James stresses so boldly in chapter 2 of his epistle. All Paul is saying is that if you have genuine faith, it is going to reveal itself in good words because that is what God creates His people for. And James is actually teaching the same thing if we study closely and compare scripture with scripture. In chapter 2 of James, he is teaching the exact same thing that Paul teaches in Ephesians 2 and in fact in just about every one of his epistles. And in James chapter 2 and verse 14, James asks the question, What does it profit my brethren though a man say he hath faith and hath not works? Can faith save him? So what James is portraying here is a man who has a profession of faith in Christ, and yet no accompanying works. And he asks the question, can faith save that person? And it's very easy, if you put just a little bit of thought into it, to decipher that the correct interpretation of this question, can faith save him, that what James is saying is, can this kind of stand-alone faith save that man? And the obvious answer is no. A man who has a type of faith that does not reveal itself in good works is not a saved individual. It is important for us to make the crucial distinction that although it is by faith alone that we take hold of Christ's justifying righteousness, that is certainly true. And yet the faith that lays hold upon Christ is a faith that is not alone. That faith will necessarily generate good works. It is as much a part of God's grand scheme of redemption to make His chosen people holy in heart and conduct as it is to justify their persons in the court of heaven. It's actually said that way in several of Paul's letters that God chose us to salvation, but He chose us to be holy. He chose us to be righteous. He foreordained us to good works. If you're not living righteously and if you're not doing any good works whatsoever, then what reason do you have to think that you've been predestinated by God to salvation? There are not two different schemes of salvation and there is just one God and one saving purpose. It is one and the same purpose being wrought by the one God. God justifies our persons and declares us to be righteous in His sight, but then He also sends the Holy Spirit to work in us a righteousness that reveals itself in our conduct. It is reprehensible for any person to claim that Christ has saved him so that he can lead a carefree life and not have to trouble about sin and righteousness anymore. Did not Paul say that we were, after declaring we were saved by grace through faith, that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works? I keep hammering that because I'm trying to identify what true faith is. And in identifying true faith, I'm trying to to give us confidence if we have a faith that has revealed itself in good works and in righteousness and in a transformation of our whole heart and our whole way of acting and thinking and behaving. If we have that kind of faith, then we may have every confidence that we are true believers in Christ. But if we don't have that kind of faith, then any confidence you have is more than likely a carnal confidence. It is no great leap of logic to conclude that the person whose life is devoid of good works is also devoid of saving faith. And in fact, that is what the Scriptures would have us to believe. Paul teaches it and James teaches it here in chapter 2. This type of believer whose life is devoid of good works and whose whole way of thinking, his way of looking at life, his way of behaving has undergone no transformation, that person has no title at all to the full assurance of faith described in Hebrews 10 and verse 22. And in fact, there in Hebrews 10.22, the apostle speaks of us having our bodies washed with pure water, which I believe is a direct indication of the sanctification that will follow a person placing his faith in that one sacrifice made for sins forever. Now, I think the key verse in James's argument in chapter 2 of his epistle is in verse 17, where he says, Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. And this is all that I've been trying to say to you over these last several minutes, is that if you have a type of faith that does not generate good works and produces no holiness of heart or conduct in you, then your faith is a dead faith and it's not a saving faith at all. Of course, this would absolutely demolish the idea that I mentioned earlier that a person once said to me that all a person has to do is pray the sinner's prayer and they're going to be saved. James didn't teach that kind of gospel and he wouldn't have anything to do with a person who advocated such a thing. There are millions who believe that every single person who ever offers a prayer for salvation, or as some put it, invites Jesus into their heart, that they must of necessity go to heaven. But neither James nor Paul will have anything to do with such nonsense. Such a faith which exercises no gracious influence in the heart was never a gift of God, but at best it was a product of a momentary emotion. People can get worked up in their emotions to get them to make some sort of religious commitment. But the question is, does their religious commitment end at the time when they invited Jesus into their heart, as they say, or is it something that lives in them and stays in them and transforms their very lives and their very hearts? The truth is that a dead faith is worse than no faith at all. For the presence of the corpse may give a person hope that there is some substance in his profession. There might be some person who was mentally unbalanced. Say the husband lost a wife who was very dear to him, but he put his wife in a casket and then just kept her in his home and said, I've still got my wife here with me. I still love my wife. She's still here with me. She's still my dear and darling wife. And yes, she's dead. She's in the casket and she can do nothing. She can show him no affection, can't cook his dinner, can't do anything for him. Well, that husband is in exactly the same state as a man who has a dead faith. A man with a dead faith can say, well, I have this religious profession, so I must be right with God. And yet, he's still in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity. James teaches us that a faith which does not bear itself out in good works is profitless. Whereas, a faith that does transform your heart and your life and your conduct, that faith is a true, living, saving faith. James offers the example of Abraham here in chapter 2, and he says that Abraham's faith would never have been imputed to him for righteousness if it had not been the kind of faith in God that made him willing to sacrifice his only son rather than to disobey the Lord. That was what verified the faith of Abraham as being a true saving faith. Now let me make the distinction here that it was certainly not that act of offering up Isaac which resulted in Abraham's salvation. Because if you go and read in Genesis, chronologically, you will find that when God imputed Abraham's faith for righteousness, that that was a long time before he ever offered Isaac up on the altar. So Abraham was already declared righteous by God before he ever offered up Isaac. God had saved him by His mighty grace. not according to Abraham's words, because Abraham was a sinner even as we are. But the line of logic there in James chapter 2 is that if Abraham had thought that his profession of faith in God had been enough, and that he had the right to defy any unreasonable command that God might give him, as his good sense might dictate, and it was up to him whether I'm going to obey God or not, If Abraham had had that kind of attitude, which is the attitude of so many professing Christians, then Abraham would have been no friend of God. Abraham would not have been a friend of God if he thought he only had to obey God when it suited his will. Saving faith is willing to obey our Heavenly Father even when such obedience costs us our dearest treasures. That's why Christ says that when you believe His Gospel, it may cost you your husband or your wife or your children or people who are very dear and precious to you. Abraham's faith, that saving faith that Abraham possessed, made him willing to go up on the mountain and offer his son a bloody sacrifice to God for no other reason than that God told him to do it. That is true saving faith. That is the revelation of saving faith. And that's what James is saying is that Abraham's obedience to God revealed that he did not have a dead faith. He had a living, vibrant faith that was so great that he could even be called the friend of God. Likewise with Rahab, the other example there in James 2, she had rather turn against her people and nation than to defy the God of Israel. And this is how it must be with us. If our faith is not a type of faith like that which Abraham and which Rahab possessed, if our faith is not of that same type, which is willing to take up the cross and follow after Christ, and to forsake the things which were once dear to us, and willing to lose friends and family over the Gospel if need be, if we don't have that kind of faith, then we have a dead faith. If you're willing to compromise the Gospel or to throw it away to suit your children or to suit your husband or your wife, then all you have is a dead corpse. You may have a religious profession, but it is not a true saving faith. So we see here the two aspects of faith. We have in one aspect of faith, when we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, that righteousness spoken of in Romans 10.10 is reckoned in our accounts and we are justified in the court of heaven. The ground of our acceptance with God is Christ and His work. The only reason we're justified before God is because of what Jesus Christ did on our behalf. We believe upon Him unto righteousness which is imputed to us when we are given the gift of saving faith. But then there is that other aspect of faith and that is the justification of our faith. You see, James is talking about the justification of our faith. Paul in the book of Romans is talking about the justification of our persons before God. But James is talking about how our faith is justified and declared to be true faith. Christ's work declares us to be righteous before God, but our good works declare that our faith is a true saving faith. And we may only know that we have saving faith if we have a heart to obey God in all circumstances. Now we're not going to be perfect and we're not going to get to the point where we never do fail and disobey God. But that is the desire of our hearts. That's what we wish, that's what we will for, is that we can obey God in every circumstances, even at the cost of our own lives. We would rather have our bodies burned at the stake than lose our relation with Christ. True faith in a crucified and resurrected Christ, a faith which will end in salvation, that kind of faith will do what it was created to do. And as the scripture said, as I've shown to you in many passages, it will do good works. It will cause you to be holy in your family. It will cause you to be holy in the workplace. And it will cause you to love the people of God and to desire their company and to forsake ungodly and worldly pleasures. If there are no works, meet for repentance, then we have no title to assurance. You may have carnal confidence, but you do not have true God-given assurance if you're still living for nothing higher than the lusts of your flesh. But if you do have works meet for repentance, if you have confessed your sins to God and are seeking to forsake them and are seeking to mortify the lusts of the flesh because of your great love for the Lord Jesus Christ who laid down his life for you, if that is what is driving you, if that's what's motivating you, if that's what's coming out in your conduct, then you have every reason to believe that you are a true child of God, that you do have the true saving faith which the Scripture describes. If we may honestly though humbly say, my heart is set upon God and I am determined to obey Him regardless of the cost and there is such a fruit in our lives, then we do have every right to have full assurance of faith. I pray God that He will give us that kind of faith and that we will be willing to mortify the deeds of the flesh and that we will live in true saving faith that reveals itself in good works. Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, please grant that this full assurance of faith be granted to your true people. Lord, if there are any here who have nothing better than a carnal confidence and are just relying upon the fact that they once professed faith in Christ, I pray that You would disabuse them of such a false assurance and that they would have a true saving faith that reveals itself in genuine holiness and real sanctification. Please work these things in us, Lord, for Your own glory and help us to be better servants to You in the future than we have been in times past. In Jesus' name, Amen.