Sunday Morning Sermon Series with Pastor Jeff Shipley (Date: 03/14/2021)

Assurance of Salvation in John 10

But sometimes I look at God and I see my heart and I see my failures and I think to myself, how could God ever love someone like me? Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to be in John 10 this morning.

And I tell you, I'm a little excited about this message. I always love the messages that I know God has given me for me and then I can share with you what God has given me. And the reason I know this is from God is because of this.

It is contrary. It is almost a juxtaposition of my insecurities and doubts. I'm going to be honest with you for a second. I struggle sometimes with my salvation. Now I know probably none of you people do, but sometimes I look at God and I see my heart and I see my failures and I think to myself, how could God ever love someone like me?

My inconsistencies, my weaknesses, my failures, my constant vacillations, my apathy. And yet, the Word of God rings true and it rings true regardless of my thoughts and my feelings. It stands forever as tried and true even against the failures and the lacking of faith that my soul sometimes has.

The Sheep of God Hear, Follow, and Belong to Christ

And I've chosen our text today in John chapter 10, verses 27 through 30. Jesus is speaking and He says this, my sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish ever.

Let me read that again. They will never perish ever. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given to me is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand and listen, the Father and I are one.

I pray today this, that if you are in this room and you don't know whether you're a Christian or not, quit waiting for a feeling, quit waiting for a moment or an opportune time, quit trying to clean yourself up before you commit to Christ.

But I got to tell you, without the power of Christ, you will never clean up. If you're not a Christian in this room, I don't care about you joining a church. I don't care about you walking down the aisle and saying, Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior.

I don't care about your money. I don't care about anything other than this. I want you to know the peace of God that is in my heart right now, that even in the face of my doubts and failures, God still calls me His own.

I want you to know the peace that is the sweetest and softest pillow to ever sleep on. I want you to know the power of discipleship and serving a God that even when you are faithless, God is still faithful.

That's what I want for you today. And for the Christian in the room today, that your fire may have dwindled a bit. Your bonfire of faith has now looked like a burnt match. Today, I want you to be encouraged.

Today, I want you to know that God is not done with you yet. Philippians 1 ,6 says, he that began a good work in you will complete it until the day of his coming. You have a hope that the world never will.

All the money in the world, the power of nations and civilizations fall flat to the glory of God in the hope that you have that is eternal. So two points today and two points only. Number one, the first point is this.

To whom is God speaking? Who are the people of God? What are their characteristics found in this small text? The first one it says is this. My sheep. Oh man, that's a sweet two words. You say to yourself, oh, but pastor, it's a common analogy in God's Word that his people are called sheep.

It's not that he's calling them sheep. Listen to it again. Listen to it with the Spirit of God. He says, my sheep. There is a personal possession that occurs here. Oh, I hear so many people who are church people yet still gonna split the gates of hell wide open because they claim membership in a church rather than claiming God's ownership of their souls.

I tell you this, a religion, a philosophy, or a church creed will never bring you the peace that you're looking for. It's not an indictment. I'm not land blasting you. I am telling you the hope that is found in belonging to Jesus Christ.

Remember, we are all God's creation, but we are not all God's people. In this room today is evidence of a sovereign God who spoke into existence matter. I always love talking to atheists and bring them back to a point where they try to explain the Genesis, that prime mover that science itself claims there must be, and they reach far into the vastness of time, and when it doesn't work out, they keep going back another billion years and another billion years.

That idiot Richard Dawkins must have come to a point where he said, right, science can't explain our origins. Maybe we were seeded from an alien race. And the three-year-old Christian with a knowledge that of only what red and yellow crayons look like can still look at that PhD candidate and say, well, where did they come from?

You reach far back, and the only place you're gonna find is God Almighty, but you don't have to reach back. See, that's what it means to be my sheep. It's not just simply reaching back in faith. It's the living faith right now that I live every day.

As we were praising his name, there was something happening more than an emotion to the beat of a drum, more than just simply piano playing. There was a soul in mine, melded together with my sinful heart that still wanted to praise God for the grace that he has given me.

Yes, we're all God's creation, but I tell you this, only my sheep, only the children of God can know the power and the peace of praise. Notice this, my sheep. Notice that it is not a managerial statement.

Jesus Christ is not a mere custodian. He is not here just to forgive you of your sins. Oh, dear Christian, please grow up past the infantile understanding of your salvation is just simply the forgiveness of your sins.

It's not just simply fire insurance. Broaden that mind to an intellectual spiritual understanding that there is so much more than just forgiveness. If God had nothing to do with me until the end of my days physically here on earth, my life here would be a travesty.

It would be bought and sold into the hopelessness that this world offers. I tell you this today, there is a peace of God knowing that today I am not just sitting in the custody of a manager, I am in the ownership of a possessor.

Jesus Christ owns my soul. I am his sheep and I belong to him. But notice this also, it says, my sheep listen. Not only is there a personal possession here, there's a characteristic of God's people in which they hear God's word.

Now you say to me, oh, then I must not be a sheep of God for I have heard God's word yet I have spurned it. Listen to me, listen to me. It says nothing about what you do with that word. It simply says this, God's sheep hears his voice.

Let me tell you something. Have you ever been convicted of your sin? Instead of wallowing in the self-defeat of knowing conviction, celebrate the conviction of knowing that that by itself is a claim of being a possession of God Almighty.

God does not chase in the whole world. The indictment to the whole world already came down. The world is screwed without Christ. But yet God's condemnation to the world is not God's condemnation to his people.

You see, the word of God tells us God chastens those whom he loves. Man, the voice of God, I promise you, can be very, very broken. It can break you, it can render you. Man, you know how many times I've been preaching to you and I've heard the word of God come in my own mouth and realize that that word that was coming out of my mouth was not for you but for me?

You know how hard it is to keep preaching under the conviction of God Almighty knowing that I need to be the first one? But I tell you, a true child of God will always recognize that. It'll always come to a place where the voice of God, the sheep hear his voice and there is immediate understanding.

Here's another thing. This is the most beautiful thing. I remember when my boys were about that old and they started playing football. I wouldn't let them play football until they were 10 years old. They fought, they did martial arts, but I waited until they were 10 years old to play.

It was hilarious. All the 10-year-olds, here's the 10-year-old section right here. Here's the 10-year-old section. Oh, and here's Josiah right here. It's hilarious, absolutely hilarious. He was the shortest kid out there.

I remember when Jeremiah started playing football, we took him over here in the rec league over here. And no, it was the competition league over here in Germantown. And once again, here are all the 10-year-olds and here's Jeremiah.

And it was the competition league, which was a little bit higher than just the rec league. And we put him in there and coach came up to me and he saw Jeremiah. And some of these guys, even at 10 years old had hair on their chest.

I mean, they were like, ah, you know? And he said, he'd come out to me and said, hey, you know, that young fellow right there, he'd do great in the rec league down there. He'd do great down there. I said, I tell you what, let's let him try out today.

And after today, we might need to move him down probably. Coach, we'll see after today. I remember the first time they lined the kids up. That whistle tweeted, tweet. That didn't sound like a whistle, did it?

And it was like, wham. And when the dust cleared, here's a little midget Maya sitting here right here going, who next, coach, who next? And there was this big 180 pound kid sitting on the ground and said, who that, who that?

And I remember coach going, dang, white boy can hit. Sign him up, right? I remember that. And it was funny. And all those boys and all those things, they would get together and the coaches would yell at them.

The coaches were screaming in the games. The fans were yelling. There was clashes going on. And I can remember sitting there and I remember Josiah, Jeremiah, all of them were out there. And I would be sitting on the sideline.

I'd go, hey, he's coming right. And I remember, and my boys would look up and go like this. You know why? Because it didn't matter if a thousand people were yelling and screaming. It didn't matter what was going on in the field.

They knew their daddy's voice. Out of all of that cacophony, out of all of that stuff going on, they could hear and recognize their daddy's voice. Some of you in this room, you struggle with knowing what life has for you.

Please stop chasing that. Start listening to God's voice. Well, brother Jeff, I'm not sure I understand the difference between God's voice and my thoughts. Oh, I tell you what, with maturity and growth, you will.

And I promise you this, you know how you get to know God's voice? By knowing God's word. You are never gonna know the more power of God's will than when you know the power of God's word. My sheep hear my voice.

And then it says this. Look, it says, they follow me. Sheep know this. They don't just claim Christ is their leader. They don't just claim Christ as their Lord. They truly follow. Now you say, oh, well that can't be me then because I have failed Christ so many times.

The fact that you understand failure is by default you understand following. You see, you have an understanding between what is godly and what is not. The world does not get that. Some of you sitting in this room, you don't understand the words that are coming out of my mouth.

Sorry, I just channeled, what's that movie? Mr. Handicapped Man? If you don't, I don't remember, but that's just what went through my head. You sit there and you don't understand what I'm talking about.

And I'm gonna tell you why. You're not a Christian. You might be a moral person. You might even be a religious person. But hell is gonna be filled with people who are religious and moral. Listen to me.

The greatest path to hell is not alcohol, drugs, gangs, or anything else. The greatest, most paved road to hell is the religion and the falseness that is in the world today. Guys, listen to me. You have to understand this.

The definitive mark of knowing you're a Christian or not is this. You hear the voice of God and there is a yearning in your heart to obey. Some people sit there and wanna say, oh, well, I do this and this and this and this and this.

Are you convicted to do those things or have your culture trained you to do those things? Understand this. I did not grow up in a Christian household. The things that when I first met Gwen and when I first met other people that were Christians seemed foreign to me.

Y 'all wanna go to church on Sunday twice? What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? Y 'all wanna go to church on Sunday twice and then on Wednesday, y 'all wanna go back? The food ain't that good, you know?

What are you doing? You wanna go? Now, here, Whitten, Kayla does it up right, okay? I mean, that's fat guy approved right there. But listen to me. Things seem foreign and weird, but I tell you, it wasn't the culture that I married into.

It wasn't a religion that called me. I began to hear through my own arrogance and self-righteous a small voice that said, come unto me, son. Do not be like the world. Do not hesitate to meet and encourage each other together.

These are the descriptions of God's people, but I gotta hurry on. I wanna get to the most important part. It's not just a description of God's people. Listen to me. It is a provision of what God's people has.

Now, this is especially for you Christians today. You non-Christians, y 'all take a break. I'm gonna be talking to Christians here for a second because I'm sorry, you non-Christians do not share in this.

I'm not trying to make fun of you. I'm just telling you, you're on the outside looking in. You're out there trying to figure out what's right and wrong and I'm telling you, you keep relying on your intellectual pursuits, you're gonna miss the bus.

At some point, you've gotta come to a place in your life, go, like I did, I just quit and I give up. God, if you're there, take my life. Take my life. And I've never been the same since. But to you, I say, hold on.

To the believer, I say, it's good news. Listen to the words of Jesus Christ. It says this, I give them eternal life. Now, just two things about those words, just real quick. Number one, notice it does not say, I gave them eternal life.

Notice the context of what it is. It says, I give them right now. Oh, but pastor, I failed last week. Well, God's word says, I give you eternal life right now. And the two comparison in the time complex.

In other words, give is present tense, eternal is future and present tense. Understand, people think eternity is out there. Eternity is right now. I have eternal life. Not by works of righteousness, not by being a pastor, not by walking down some stupid aisle or getting baptized, but by the declaration of God almighty in his grace, he now gives me eternal life.

Here Romans 8, one to the Christian, it says this, there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. The grace and the eternal life that God gives you is happening right now. Yeah, this mortal body is gonna fail.

This perfection of the human male species is going to die. There's no laughing at this point. I'm insecure, okay, hang with me. Sorry, knee counseling. Guys, it's going to fail, it's going to die. But Jeff Shipley, this is a vehicle.

Double wide as it is, this is a vehicle. This is not Jeff Shipley. You cut my arm off, I'm not prorated by percentage that much less of Jeff Shipley. This is just a vehicle carrying the soul. As this vehicle dies, I still know I have eternal life.

Why? Based on my pastorate, based on my good works? No, I base it solely on the scripture, God's word that says, I give them eternal life. If that's not enough, understand this, look what it says. And they shall never perish except if you smoke another blunt.

Oh, you'll never perish except if you get drunk again, if you yell at your wife, if you don't read your Bible every day. Christians, do me a favor. Listen, I know some of you were brought up being told that if you don't read the Psalms and the Proverbs every day, you're a bad wittle Christian.

If you don't tithe and go to Sunday school, you're a bad wittle Christian. The problem with that is this, you're following man's laws instead of God's grace. You're trying to find approval in obeying a religion rather than finding the freedom and power to mature discipleship and grow in the grace and love of Almighty God.

Listen to what it says, I give eternal life. And in case you missed that, let me clear it for you. They will never perish hyphen ever. How can it be eternal life if it stops? John 3, 16, the only verse some of you dorks know.

It doesn't say they'll be born again and again and again and again. It says they will know the salvation of God. They will know what it is to believe and they will have eternal life. My salvation is not in jeopardy for this one reason.

It is not in my hands. And I praise God today. If I die before I finish this sermon, I know for a shadow of a doubt, I will wake up in glory, not based upon what I have done, but based upon the love and grace of my Almighty God.

Do you know that power? Do you know that comfort? You know the peace that that gives you if you stand in jeopardy of your salvation based on your works, you do not understand the grace of Almighty God.

And I don't fuss at you. I pity you. God, what a reckless way to walk through life. What a scary and insecure existence you must have. What daddy issues or mommy issues you must have to think God looks at you with a scolding look in his hands on his hips going, how many times do I gotta tell you?

Guys, that's not how it works. That ain't how it works. God's grace is eternal. And again, if you come to a place where you doubt it, hear God's words again, I give them, they don't earn it. I give them eternal life and they shall never perish ever.

The Security of the Father's Hand

Oh man, we don't have enough time to go on through this, but I'll stop with this last point, cause it's important. Notice our scripture again. They will never perish ever and watch this. No one will snatch them out of my hand.

My father who has given them to me is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand and the father and I are one. I got scratches all over me today. I didn't get in a fight with a cat.

I got in a fight with a bunch of thorn bushes clearing shooting lanes at a deer stand. They won cause I promise you, man, I'm bad to the bone, but I got stuck in them briars. And I was like, I mean, I sound like a little girl, man.

I ain't gonna be, I'm gonna be honest. It's not just the green ones that get you. It's those brown ones when they're dead and they're about now this thick around. They're like concrete, you know, man, crying like a little girl.

Think for a second. Think for a second. There were people who saw Jesus Christ raise Jairus's daughter from the grave. There were people who saw Jesus Christ rise again and believed. But I want you to think about one man this morning.

There was a man on either side of Christ. Now, once again, religion and church things have made him the good thief on the cross and the bad thief. Bad thief was making fun of Jesus. The good thief was, that's, if you read Scripture carefully, when all three of them were hanging up there, both of them were making fun of Jesus.

Both of them were sitting there mocking Christ. Well, if you're really Jesus, get us on down from here because I'm tired of hanging out. That was a good one. I mean, y 'all just totally lost it. Forget it.

No, it's too late now. But somewhere in that several hours that Jesus was hanging on the cross, this guy's attitude changed. Why? Why? He didn't come to a place where music was softly playing in the background and mommy and daddy was encouraging him and he was a little Sunday dress or his little tie.

He gets to walk down an aisle and join the church and be a big girl. This guy had faith in Jesus Christ as Jesus Christ physically died. He didn't see the resurrection. He didn't see the miracles, but he heard the word of God.

The sheep heard the word of God. He was first mocking Christ and mocking the idea of faith. But at some point, the Holy Spirit of God opened up his ears and that thief saw a nail scarred hand. That thief saw a pierced hand and he put his faith in that broken, busted up old hand.

Now here we are sitting 2 ,000 years later. Those nail scarred hands have been resurrected in glory. Those nail scarred hands are preparing the sword of justice. Those nail scarred hands are getting ready to judge the living and the dead.

Those nail scarred hands are coming like the lion of the tribe of Judah on the white horde of righteousness coming back to claim that which is his own. That nail scarred hand is now pointing at the archangel saying, sound the trumpet and bring my sheep home.

That nail scarred hand, that faith and that power of that hand is this. No one will be able to snatch my sheep from my hands. Now, some of you would say, oh yes, I believe that because scripture says it.

But I'll tell you this, some people may be able to wiggle their way out of Jesus' hand. Oh, is the sovereignty of God now so weak that your determination and your will somehow usurps the power and the sovereignty of Almighty God?

Oh, child of arrogance, listen to me. No one, including you, can remove yourself from the hand of Jesus Christ. There is hope in that. There is peace in that. To know that the boundaries, he may let me waddle to learn how to walk and I'm gonna fall 1 ,000 times, but I will never be dismissed from the family for my fallings because the hand of Almighty God is right there with me.

And if that is not enough for you, listen to this. It says, no one will snatch them from my Father's hands and I and the Father are one. You may be trembling under the hand or on the hand of Jesus Christ, but God and the Holy Spirit seal the deal.

As they said in Ephesians 1, as I've saved you, I now seal you with the Holy Spirit, a promise. Your word may be broken, God's word never will. You may tremble on the foundation of Christ, but the foundation of Christ will never tremble under you.

Christian, wake up this morning. Stop looking for the enticements of the world or the affirmation of this world. Quit looking to this world to accept you. You are a foreigner. You are a sheep of Almighty God.

With gold, with absolute power, stand up and say, I choose now to follow Jesus, not my fears and insecurities, not the affirmation of boyfriends, husbands, girlfriends or wives, not my job or the money of this world.

I choose now to rest in the hand of Almighty God and I choose to speak so that others may join me as well. I'm gonna ask the music people to come up here and I ask you this this morning. If you are not a Christian, look right here, forget the whole church crap, look right here.

If you are not a Christian or you are not sure, I am not asking for your money, your stupid membership or anything else. I am offering you nothing that I can give. I am offering you to show you what Christ can give.

If you're tired of looking, if you have searched and tried everything else, if you have lived that codependent lifestyle on your own vain philosophies in the minute insecurities of your little intellect and you still are empty in your heart, does that not prove to you that that hole can't be filled with anything of this world other than the power of Jesus Christ?

Listen to me today. If you are not a Christian, coming to me will not fix that. I'm a sinner just like you. I ain't nothing special, but I can show you where God's word has changed the lives of people for 6 ,000 years.

If you're not a Christian, you wanna know how? Come down here and I'll get people up here to tell you.