Bible Lesson 78

ASSURANCE OF SALVATION

HEBREWS 10:19-25

#1 In A Series

Let’s ask God to lead us to His truths concerning assurance in this lesson! First, let’s ask God if there is any warrant for us to be assured and what we need to be assured of. I think that we can be certain that what we should be concerned about most is having absolute assurance in our salvation. When we say that we know Christ in the forgiveness of our sin, do we have the assurance that if we were to die in that same hour, would we go to heaven’ That is first and foremost in our minds because unless we have been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, we will spend our eternity in a literal hell, with literal flames. Other things blend into our assurance of salvation and they are the assurance of understanding, assurance of faith, and assurance of hope. We know that we are saved by grace, through faith in the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, and His person and work on Calvary on our behalf, Ephesians 2:8-9 and we also know that ‘Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, Romans 10:17. So let’s work on that in our understanding before we move on. Many people know that verse of scripture; there in Ephesians chapter two and verses eight and nine, but how many know with certainty what that means and what it is that we are to understand from those two verses’

Os Guinness has said that faith does not feed on thin air but facts, and that means that faith is not some mystical objectivity that cannot be seen or handled or even understood. Faith must be real, in fact so real that we are convinced that what God has said in His Word the Bible is true and that we believe it to the degree that we are willing to risk our eternal lives upon it.

We have been guilty of short-cutting the truths of God to accomplish what our congregations envision about religion that we have lost the concept that when a person believes savingly in the Christ that is presented to us in the Bible, that person becomes a new creature, who has been to the cross with Christ, and died to the old way of life and was resurrected with Christ to a newness of life, that is forever different.

There is entirely too much uncertainty, too much timidity, too much cowardly expression of that new life, in the congregations that I have observed. Shy would that be the experience of so many in our congregations today’

It is because we have chosen to serve God short of His way. Anyone who reads the Bible has to know that God lays out a specific way that his children live. Not only that, but God also guarantees that those who are saved by faith in His Son Jesus Christ, will have all that is required to live that way. We are called to be Saints (Romans 1:7).

We are given the power of God to enable us to live like saints (Ephesians 1:13), and that is sufficient (Ephesians 2:10; 2nd Corinthians 5:17); because God is not only leading and guiding us by His Holy Spirit, God is impressing us to want to do His Will and to do His Will (Philippians 2:13).

Perhaps we are where we are as the visible church because instead of believing, receiving, and cooperating with God in our lives we have chosen to revise the Word of God to make it agree with what we think we can or cannot do.

Let me be very clear if we don’t believe in God as sovereign, omnipotent, omniscience, and omnipresent’..almighty and unchanging, we will never be able to live the way God intends for His children to live, and as a consequence, we can know that we are not saved. If that offends you, God may mean to offend you and to cause you to go back and make certain of your salvation.

God does not save us and leave us beside the road to sink or swim on our own, in our power. God is there from the instant that any person believes to the degree that they are willing to die to self and receive Christ into their life to cleanse it, organize it, and empower it from that moment on. What do you think God meant when He inspired the Apostle Paul to write in Galatians 2:20.’.’ I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me, and the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of Him who loved me and gave Himself for me’.

If you are saved, it is not because of anything that you have done or will ever do, it was because God chose to give you the gift of grace and faith. None of us has anything that we can give to God, it is all of God and not because we were going to one day believe, or be a great person, or even trust God for our salvation. We were born ‘dead’ in trespass and sin, and as you well know, a dead man can not think anything or do anything.

In this state of deadness and uncaring, God reaches down to this one who is at war with him, does not want anything to do with him and first ‘quickens’ or brings them back to Spiritual life and allows them to see their terrible condition and separation from God. God then plants faith in them and allows them to repent and be saved. All too often, preachers tend to want to see their congregations grow and want to see people be saved and they forget that the preacher or the congregation or the bishop or the pope cannot save anyone.

Only God can save a soul from hell. Now, preachers and popes, etc. can invite people to join their church but that does not save anyone, and probably confuses most who join some congregation because they are skirted around true salvation and the need for it. Joining a church makes you a church-member, dying to self and casting your soul and your life on Christ as you repent and turn away from all sin, turning to God and His power and His plan for your life makes you a Christian.

Most people, who join some church group, are never seriously mentored, instructed, and held accountable for learning and growing in their beliefs, to the point of having a real rock-solid assurance of their faith. That picture is not the picture of the true Christian, and if that is your state, please consider opening your Bible and reading until God enlightens your mind and heart and then do not let any well-meaning friend, preacher, or witness stop you from fleeing to the Cross and throwing yourself, with reservation, on the finished work of Jesus Christ for your salvation.

God won’t hold it against you if you come away from tradition to the truth of His Word, and truly become a disciple of Christ. You have all you need to build the foundation that your faith and assurance and hope is built upon, it is the Word of God, the Bible.

I have read of a nuclear power plant that was going to be built at a certain place and the people spend millions of dollars on the foundation that was to support the great structure that was to be the power plant. Sadly, when the foundation was inspected before building the plant, it was found to be defective and so the entire project had to be abandoned. God instructs us on how to build a foundation on which faith can safely be installed.

In Matthew chapter 7 and verses 24-27, Jesus Christ was preaching His Sermon on the mount and in closing, He says to the people who surrounded Him then and to us today, ‘Therefore, whoever hears these saying of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded upon the rock.

But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell. And great was its fall.’

Jesus was here giving us instructions on where to and how to build the foundation for our Christianity, our salvation. If we think about foundations, we can think about our temporal or temporary homes on the earth and when we are advised to build upon a rock it refers to a solid foundation that will stand; however Jesus was speaking about the foundation of our faith and He speaks of building on ‘the rock’, not on a rock but The Rock.

What is He referring to there’ If we look back to the Old Testament, it would be hard for us not to see that Jesus was speaking of Himself. He is the Rock, and His work is perfect (Deuteronomy 32:4). The Psalms are replete with references to God as our rock. How about you today’ Is your foundation build upon the solid rock of the Biblical Jesus, or are you simply a member of the visible church’

If you are a born again Christian, you are in Christ, you have received the gift of Faith from God, you are obedient to God and you love God and other Christians, and your fellow man. Your foundation is not built on wood, hay, or straw, but on gold, silver, and precious stone.

In other words, your foundation is built on the key elements of God’s word and is likened to materials that will last. So much of the teaching in our day is shallow, marginal, and false that people do not know that there is a way for the Christian to walk. Mind you now, the true Christian walks in obedience to the will and Word of God, not to be saved but because he has been saved. The foundational stone in the Christian’s foundation is the Bible.

It is the inerrant Word of God and it is read, studied, and believed without hesitation or equivocation, by those with true faith. It is not open to criticism, or debate, because without the Bible we have no revelation of God.

Now, did God mean for us to have assurance’ There can be no doubt that God meant for those who were His children to know for sure that they were members of His family. The apostle John tells us under the direct inspiration of God the Father, that ‘These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that may ‘know’ that you have eternal life, 1st John 5:13.

That does not say, that you may hope that your eternal life or that you think that you may have it ‘. But that you may know that you have eternal life. Now, be sure that there is no such thing as ‘working up’ assurance, or convincing yourself that your feelings are indicative of being assured. The only way to have assurance is to be born again, born from above, dead to self, alive to God through Christ, and obedient to the will of God.

That’s the only way that your foundation can be built on the Rock. Jesus Christ preached in Luke 14:26-35 and revealed to us some critical things about Himself and ourselves and what comes about in our salvation. First Christ made it clear that our love for Him must exceed our love of family, friends, or acquaintances. Then our love for things, the stuff of the world, like money, property, power, politics, and pleasure must be set aside for our love of Christ.

Then in Luke 14:28-32, Christ makes it clear that salvation requires awareness and a ‘counting of the cost’ of being a disciple of Christ when it reminds us of the builder who lays a foundation and then finds that he did not have enough to finish, which speaks to our miserable accounting of ourselves in the visible church. We have perverted the gospel of Grace and now we see shipwreck after shipwreck of lives that were pronounced saved and yet they had never counted the cost of being a disciple of Christ.

That simply points us back to what we should have known from the beginning and that is, man has no part in his salvation. Salvation is of God, (Psalms 3:8; Psalms 68:20; Ephesians 2:1-6). God chose us in eternity past (Ephesians 1:1-4), He calls us in time (Romans 8:29), He quickens us and gives godly sorrow for repentance (2nd Corinthians 7:10), God regenerates us and grants us that ‘New Birth, that birth from above’ (Ephesians 2:10), and indwells us with His Holy Spirit which empowers us to live the Christian life (John 14:25-31; Romans 8:14,8-11,13). There is none of the above mentioned that man can reproduce in any way!

When God does the work of salvation, it always brings with it the assurance of salvation. God inspires the writer of Romans to write and tell us about that assurance, in chapter 8 and verses 31-39, where God says to us, ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ’ Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecutions, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or sword’ Then God reminds us in those last three verses of chapter eight of Romans that the truly saved person is in, all things more than conquerors through Him that loved us.

We can be persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now, if that doesn’t speak of assurance and confidence in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, there is something wrong with us and it is probably that we have not been saved.

Not only is the truly saved person sure of his/her salvation, but they also come forth as that new creature, created in Christ, and determined to follow in His footsteps. That is called having the mind of Christ, (Romans 12:2; Philippians 2:1-8). None of this has anything to do with gaining salvation, that is a gift from God, instigated, applied, and controlled by God; however true salvation has fruit that always comes to fruition and that is that this new creature, acts like Christ.

He/she is not Christ but we are his brothers and we look and act like he looked and acted when He walked this earth. False prophets have seen, in many instances, the opportunity to gain some power with simple congregations and they spew out what they call a gospel message but it is no gospel at all.

The Gospel is what God has said in His Word, the Bible, and the doctrines that drive in the context of the entire Bible, both Old, and New Testaments. There are no new revelations of God’s will; there is no editing and revising of the word allowed by God. God says that the man who adds or takes away from the Word of God invites upon himself the wrath of God, (Psalms 119:89; Psalms 19:7-11; Deuteronomy 4:2; Deuteronomy 12:32).

If you think there are not a lot of false prophets out there, just look around and please be very careful about watching television evangelist, they seem to be many of the false prophets on television. The God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament.

He is intolerant of sin and evil and He cannot be manipulated by hucksters in 400 dollar suits and a television program. The Word/Faith preachers all seem to want to diminish God and glorify man. They preach in many cases that God is subservient to a man who is the creator of God.

Never be drawn into a group that wants to give a man any power with God outside what God has specifically revealed to man in His Word the Bible. God spoke to us in the letters that John wrote and warns us that if we keep His commandments and never listen to those who pervert the doctrine of Christ, (2nd John 4-11).

Men of God who are called to preach the gospel to others are men who love the word of God and study it in its context and apply it to those who hear him preach. That means that preaching demands deep study and research and prayer and meditation because when you preach you should preach as a dying man to dying souls.

All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. Always make certain that when you preach, teach or witness, that you do not ‘lift scriptures that may sound good to sinners’.

Always study the scripture in the context of the entire Bible and then preach what God has revealed to you. You may ask, ‘Why can we be so sure of our salvation” The answer is that you have obeyed what God said it took to be saved’. That is if you are truly saved. God said that those who believed to the degree that they live and obey what they know God would have them to do (all that the Bible says), have eternal life. That is a Biblical fact, and the Bible is true, without any error, so if you have obeyed what God said it took to be saved, then you are saved, so begin to live your eternal life.

What did God say it took to be saved’ God said in Romans 3:21 that we all are guilty of sin because of Adam’s sin; and God goes on in Romans 6:23 to tell us that our sins have brought on us the sentence of death (physical death and spiritual death or eternal separation from God), God tells us in John 3:16 that he has made provision for some (those who believe in Jesus Christ as the final and full redemption from our sin).

God says in Ephesians 2:1-10, that we exist as spiritually dead men and women until God quickens us or brings us back to spiritual life, in God’s calling us to salvation. That brings us out from under the wrath of God against our sin, and we are saved by grace through faith in the person and work of His Son Jesus Christ on the cross. God allows us to repent, which is absolutely necessary, and forgives us and then ‘rebirths us’ as His children.

This Work of Almighty God creates a new creature, a creature in Christ, that has the old nature destroyed and a new nature’ a nature that can and will obey God out of love for God. We have to agree that nothing that we will ever do or be is responsible for our salvation; because salvation is all of Grace by Faith and both of those are gifts from God.

We must understand that this new creature that is indwelled by The Holy Spirit (God), always manifest that newness of life that comes with salvation (2nd Corinthians 5:17). One of the problems with the visible church of our day is that we have tended to preach all of the things that God tells us comes in our salvation as options, that we can either choose to obey or not obey.

Hear me well; what God has said is never an option! When God inspired the Apostle Paul to write to us that the new birth makes us new creatures that have the old things passed away and all things new, God meant that we would come forth obedient to all that we know He would have us to do.

The problem began with our misunderstanding of the Word of God when men began to preach things that were not true according to the Word of God so that the many sinners in their congregations could feel good about their sin.

They began to preach that God loves everybody, and that Christ loves everybody and that Christ died for everybody. According to the Word of God, that is not true; because God is sovereign and He gave His Son Jesus Christ (God in the flesh) to die so that His people would be saved from sin. Christ died for those who obey Him! The Father and the Son, Jesus Christ, loves those who know Their will, from the Bible and obey it, (Hebrews 5:8-9; John 14:15, 21-24; John 15:9-14).

God does not begin something and then turn away and allow it to be uncompleted, (Philippians 1:6; 2nd Timothy1:12). We will be back in about two weeks to continue our teaching on the Christian’s assurance,

Until next time,

may God bless and keep you

This is Bro. Bob