Sunday Night, May 27, 2018

The Unpardonable Sin and Assurance in Christ

Christians can flounder and have really, really tough times and difficult times and cry out. Look at Peter, look at Job, right? And there's, I mentioned about suicide not being the unpardonable sin. William Cooper, who wrote a lot of our hymns, who loved Christ and won many, many battles overcoming suicide until he lost one.

Okay, but so Christians can flounder, but we're never gonna be lost out of the hold of Christ out of the hold of God. So, but this other side of it is we're trying to make sense of on one, these Pharisees blaspheme the Holy Spirit and reject his work manifest in the life of Christ.

Here in Hebrews, those who have tasted the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of Christ in the body of the church, and they reject it. How do we make sense of that? Well, we understand that as a blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

I don't think this is something you trip into.

Right, but some people wonder if they committed it or not.

Right, to remember who it was. Oh, I think Spurgeon said nobody trips into heaven, but many, many people trip into hell, but nobody trips into the unpardonable sin. Okay, the unpardonable sin, this is something that is just an absolute fixed rejection that is manifest.

That's right, yeah. See, when the Holy Spirit does his work, he transforms the heart and makes us alive in Christ. And Jesus promises that all who come to him, he's never gonna cast out, he's not gonna lose one.

He's a good shepherd, which means he loses no sheep. Right, he loses zero sheep. That's how good of a shepherd he is. That's good to know.

Discernment, Self-Examination, and the Fruits of Salvation

Yes, Brother Ken. Yeah.

You know, talk shows, isn't that he was,.

He wasn't in Camps for Sacrifice?

Yeah.

He said they were Christians claiming. The evidence, I think, that they never really were.

Exactly, and this is not a new problem, right? John says in 1 John 2, beloved, it is the last hour. And you have heard the Antichrist is coming. Even now, Antichrist, many Antichrists have come. They went out from us, but they were not really of us.

For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they all went out, so it would be shown that they all were not of us. You know, so it's, those kinds of questions about that. And I've counseled with more than one person who is burdened and confused by the assertions that earlier in their life, because they prayed the prayer or repeated the magical incantation, they were saved.

And then their life was a wreck full of sin. And when they finally come to Christ, they don't know what happened. And trying to counsel them through that, but all this time, they had gone through a superstitious ritual, but they didn't know Christ, and they weren't alive in the spirit, and they thought they were going to heaven.

That's absolutely true. Yeah, we're not saying question Christ's ability to save you, we're saying, are you really alive in Christ? Or is this something that you've put together by your own efforts? As far as our responsibility, Jesus said, you should know them by their fruits.

Bad tree produces bad fruits. Good tree produces good fruit. And if there's just death, death, death, sin, sin, sin, continually from this person's life, we have enough discernment and enough authority from Christ to say, don't you think something's wrong?

And if we care about people, shouldn't we say, aren't you concerned that something might be wrong? Right, and we're not to be judgmental, and we're not to lower the boom and say, well, you're done for, and we're never going to cast hope your way ever again.

But we are called to judge with a righteous judgment and make right decisions and discernments about these things. And examining ourselves is the primary responsibility, and Jesus would not have us get the speck out of our brother's eye when the beam's in our own.

So self-examination is primary. But then if we care about the souls of others, like the preacher of the Hebrews did, we're going to look after their souls as well and challenge them, make sure that they're following Christ, right?

They know they're condemned.

By the Spirit, they're free. Those that I've been around that I've seen in the Holy Spirit, there is nothing by the Spirit.

Well, it's a gift from God that we have a conscience, that it remains unseared by the effects of sin, that we would know that things are right and wrong, and it's a gift from God, a grace from God, that we would turn from that sin and turn to Christ.

So, good question, Joel.

Another question?

Yes, Jeff.

The Danger of Sinner’s-Prayer Superstition

No, and of course, we're not saying that, I'm not at all saying that if somebody prays a sinner's prayer that they're not saved. It's just that we have to be very, very careful. Superstition and sacerdotalism, and looking at functions and doing things to be saved, crept into the church at the earliest juncture, okay?

And it happens today, too, okay? So we have to be very, very careful. I personally am very, very concerned that on the rare occasions that I am at other places where there's other churches, and the gospel is presented to some degree, it comes out like this.

Don't you want Jesus to live in your heart?

Period.

Pray this prayer, and Jesus will live in your heart. There's nothing about sin, there's nothing about the holiness of God, there's nothing about repentance, there's nothing that Jesus preached, repent and believe the gospel.

There's nothing like that, and I'm very concerned that we don't move away from the clear scriptural testimony of what it means. We have to be very clear about the gospel. And so, you know, Laurie, your father, right?

How will they hear unless there's a preacher? You heard it over the radio, right? There's the preaching of the gospel, and we have to hear the gospel, hear the good news. And repentance and faith repeatedly enacts when the church hears that people are repenting and believing, they look up and say, thank you, God.

They don't thank the people for having good sense. They rejoice that repentance was granted to the Gentiles, that repentance, Peter says that repentance was granted to the Jews because of what Christ did.

It's constantly giving credit to God's work. And so we have to be careful that no man-made formula or pattern presumptuously takes the place of the Holy Spirit. And, you know, as we think about being involved with the Gospel Project this summer and opportunities for evangelism, and we're gonna be having an evangelism class, Way of the Master, it's good to remember that we're not the Holy Spirit.

I said that this morning, we're getting out of something. But the truth is that we cannot create the environment and we cannot take somebody by the scruff of the neck or gently by the hand and make them do something to be saved.

We just can't. Now, we can make them do something. We can make them do something for sure, especially if they're in a bad situation, having a difficult time, or if they're a child, okay, we can get it done.

There was a church down in Alabama who put a fire engine baptistry into the children's church area and they had record baptisms that year. Charles Finney would be proud. But we have to, with all the care that is taken about the true spiritual condition in the scriptures, even in the Old Testament, back in Deuteronomy, with Moses saying, it's your hearts that need to be circumcised.

There needs to be a change on the inside, okay? We need to be concerned about that as well and the Spirit's work. So when we evangelize, we have the opportunity, what are we about? Well, you can go away to the Master Sunday School class and discover a helpful way to talk about the way Jesus witnessed to people, how he presented the law, that they would understand their need for a Savior, and that he would communicate to them what does repentance look like, what does faith mean, and call them to that, okay?

But we certainly don't want to, we certainly don't want to stand in the way and create for somebody a false sense of security. I don't know if it's in, it's probably in the training material, so I won't tell the story, you'll see it if you go to the class.

Genesis 17 and Talking to Neighbors About the Gospel

All right, well, I'm enjoying studying Genesis 17. It's good stuff.

And I think you're enjoying answering the questions too.

Yeah, you know, these are things we have to talk about, right? We need to talk about this together, because this is kind of where we live. How do we talk to our neighbors? How do we talk to our relatives?

How do we talk to the people we love? How do we talk to the people we're gonna meet that are new this summer, right? So we have to think about it together, don't we? Let's go ahead and close by singing the doxology.