49 - Blessing of Salvation

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We are glad to have you with us for the tens and tens, okay both of you that are watching.

We're glad to have you with us, glad that you would tune in, especially to those who are tuning in live.

I'm glad to have you guys out here and watching live. We try to interact with those in the chat room where we can, so it is encouraging, that's an encouragement to you to watch

Monday nights at 8 o 'clock on UStream Live. If not, you can always watch it on YouTube anytime you like, but we encourage you to grab your syllabus if you are an enrolled student.

This may be the last time you see that syllabus because you might be getting a new one soon.

Once we're done with this lesson, we're going to actually take a little bit of a break as we usually try to do something different in the summers, and we're going to go to that book for a little while, teach you how to use that book, which is the

Grown and Grace book. If you haven't received that book, it means you did not enroll for the year, or something got lost in the mail.

So, if you don't have that book and you think you're enrolled, I would suggest you go to the website down there and enroll.

We're going to teach you starting next, whenever we start that book, we're going to teach you how to disciple, why it's important, and how to use this tool that we have provided for discipleship called

Grown and Grace. We're going to go through the book, fill in all the blanks, explain how to basically lead someone who may be a new believer or an immature believer through that, because that's what we're all about here, trying to get you to disciple people that you know, whether in your church, in your family, at your work, wherever it may be, we want to equip you to be discipling others.

That is the Great Commission. So, that's what these classes are for, to give you a more in -depth level of things to dig into and see what the

Scriptures say on a breadth of topics. So, we are going through a systematic theology.

We are right now in book number two, and really this should be, we should go through and explain what we've gone through already, but this is book number two.

We are in the doctrine of salvation called Soteriology, is the big word.

We're specifically now in the last lesson of this section of this book, which is lesson number ten, lesson number ten, and we're going to deal with the blessings of salvation, the blessings of salvation.

Now, we've actually kind of bundled everything into one school, which probably we shouldn't have.

We're actually, this is the school of systematic theology. We're going to do some things different in the future, we think, and this really should have been broken down into several classes in one school.

In other words, if you've been following with us, you've already got a doctrine, one class which would have been your theology proper, which is the study of God, including the names of God, the attributes of God, the

Trinity. Those are in those early lessons. Then we did Christology, the study of Christ.

Then from there we went to the study of the Holy Spirit. From there we went into looking into angels and demons.

Those are all in book number one. Book number two, we looked at the doctrine of man, anthropology.

We looked at the doctrine of sin, and we looked at the doctrine of salvation or soteriology. So what do we have left?

We have two more classes left, although there'll be more than one class, but series of lectures.

And that'll be on the doctrines of the church and end times.

Those are the two major sections of a systematic theology that we have left.

And we'll have basically one book for each. So that's where we are in our classes.

That's where we're headed. We're working right now on a new class that we'll probably try to do after we complete systematic theology on apologetics.

And we're going to actually start with a school of apologetics where we'll have an intro class, an intro to apologetics with a very special teacher.

Yes, that's right. You won't see this ugly mug for all of your classes. We'll be introducing our first guest lecturer, and you're going to be hearing more about that as time goes on.

Very excited. We're speaking with the professor of the next class just today.

He sent an outline for his syllabus. We're getting all that together, and it is really, really, really exciting.

I can't wait to see. We're all going to learn, because I'm going to learn too. I'm going to sit in class as well.

Maybe I'll be like you guys sitting in the chat room and not actually paying attention. No, I'll be a good student.

But anyway, speaking of those chatting in the chat room, there was someone who said that there's no way that I would be able to get through this lesson this week, in one week.

And so I'm going to leave it to the chat room to decide whether we are going to rush through everything that we have to do this week and get it done in one week just because I'm going to be prideful and prove that I can do it, or if you guys actually want me to slow down and make sure we get to all those stuff.

And if we go a little into next week, then we do. And that way, I can blame you guys if I don't finish.

I could say, hey, I'm sorry. I couldn't finish. Chat room said, let's go longer.

So it's up to you if you want me to rush through and maybe miss some things, or if you want me to go slow and make sure we don't miss anything.

Up to you guys in the chat room live. Go. All right. I'll wait for a response.

So let us look. We've been dealing with so far, as we look through the

Doctrine of Salvation, some things that are a tad bit controversial and whatnot. But this one is one where I think that we're going to see some things that we would see as the blessings of our being saved.

What are the blessings? Now, this is not why we're saved. In other words, we don't choose

Christ to get these blessings. That would be selfish. And we don't come to Christ rightly using selfish means, okay?

But these are byproducts, benefits. The real thing is we want to get right with God.

But getting right with God has certain byproducts that we get to be blessed by. So we're going to take a look at those.

The first one we're going to look at is sanctification. Now, sanctification is going to take some terminologies that we're going to need to explain.

Actually, I should back up in your syllabus there and say very few Christians contemplate all of the blessings that they receive at salvation.

For some, the only blessing that many think of is, eternal life. I just want to be saved.

Some think they just want to avoid hell. I would hope that it's more that you want to be with Christ, not avoid hell.

But for others, the blessing of salvation is solely on what can be for them now.

In other words, they don't really think about all of the blessings. And so this study, we're going to examine some of the many blessings that Christians receive in the moment of salvation.

Now, notice I said the moment of salvation because what you're going to see with these is each one of these you receive at salvation.

It's not something that you get afterwards, which kind of goes in the previous lessons that we looked at on whether you can lose your salvation.

But let us start with sanctification. Now, I'm going to define it here. If you have your syllabus,

I'm going to give you some blanks there to fill in. When we discuss being sanctified, we mean basically three ideas.

Ready? This is your first blank. Positional sanctification. Positional sanctification is one.

Second blank there is progressive sanctification. Progressive sanctification.

And third blank there is perfected sanctification. And the last one there's some confusion on, but we hope to clarify.

So, positional, progressive, and perfected. So, let us begin in our look at sanctification with positional sanctification.

Positional sanctification can be defined as at the moment of salvation we are set apart.

That's your blank there. In other words, positionally we're moved apart from where we were. We're set apart by God as objects of His ownership.

We will be released from the penalty of sin. That's your next blank there. Penalty of sin.

So, what this means is that in a positional sense, not in a practical sense, but in a positional sense, by God's view we're now set apart for God, for His ownership.

This kind of shows how some of the things we are looking at, we looked at how we can't lose our salvation, why that is.

At the point that we're saved, we're set apart to be sanctified.

Sanctification means to be made saint -like. Saint -like is to be set apart.

We're set apart for God. We're made more in His image, set apart from the world, and more like Christ.

And what are we set apart from? We've been released from the penalty of sin. So, let's take a look at some verses here to see this.

We see in 1 Corinthians 6 .11, and such were some of you.

Now, I should back up because many people like to have this verse.

Maybe you've seen guys on the street. They have all these verses of all the sins, you know, no adulterer, no effeminate, no homosexual will enter the kingdom of God.

They don't like this next verse. They stop at verse 10. Look at how this verse is. It says, and such were some of you.

In other words, all that list that people always go to, that describes all of us. And such were some of us.

But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ by the Spirit of our God. So, what you see there is that we were set apart when we were washed by what

Christ did. God puts us in a state that even though you and I are still in this body of flesh, positionally, we have a position of being set apart for God.

Alright, let's look at another verse in Hebrews 10. I'm going to look at, this one has

Hebrews 10 people we looked at before with the salvation. But if we take a look at this one here, we see here a passage that is kind of clear that, you know, we dealt with I should say in the past.

So, it's, I hope it's clear at this point I should say. So, let us look at this.

It says here in Hebrews 10, it says that we are justified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

And every priest stands daily for his sacrifice, for his service, sorry, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins.

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting for that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.

For a single, for by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Really the big issue is the end there. If you see there, it is for the single offering,

Christ's offering, he has been perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

So, what that's saying there is that we're, it's showing that we're set apart. That is the positional sanctification.

Now, does that mean that I'm never going to sin? No, we're going to get to that. But it does mean that in a positional sense, we now have a position of being set apart.

Okay, it's like being given the position of President of the United States. Once someone has that title, that position, they always remain with that title.

It is now a position that they have that even though they're not actively in the office of the

President, they're not acting as the acting President, they still have that title for life.

All right, so let us go to the next one which is progressive sanctification.

Progressive sanctification. And here what we have is defined here, an individual who has been positionally set apart by God will progress in becoming more like Christ.

We will have been delivered from the power of sin. That's your blank there, the power of sin.

So, in the first case, we're set apart in positionally and that releases us from the penalty of sin.

Now, because of that state, because of that position, we are progressing somewhat slowly maybe, we hope quickly, but we are all in a progressive state of sanctification.

So, we're moving in a state where we're becoming more and more like Christ and then you see in progressive sanctification, there your blank, we've been delivered from the power of sin.

So, we're in the first in our definition, we're released from the penalty of sin, now we're delivered from the power of sin.

All right, so this is the idea that sin no longer enslaves us, it no longer empowers us, so that we don't have to obey it anymore.

We obey it more than we would like, but the reality is it doesn't have the power that it had when it used to enslave us.

All right, so let's look at some verses here. 1 Peter 1, as obedient children do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but he who called you is holy and also your conduct be holy.

So, what you have here is this idea of holiness is this idea of being set apart.

So, leave this up for a second. What we have here is a case where we can be conformed over time in our conduct.

Now, do you notice that as obedient children, we need to be conformed in our conduct. So, this is talking about now that we are believers, we're going to be slowly changing, slowly moved into the conduct that we should be having as believers.

John 12, 17 says, the crowd that has been with him when he called him out of the tomb.

I think I gave a wrong verse there. I probably put that in a wrong word. So, let's skip that one.

I have a wrong verse for that one. All right, I got to change that. But you can look at, what you can see in the 1

Peter passage is our conduct is one that should be constantly making us act more like Christ.

We should be in a position where we are behaving ourselves more and more like Christ and making sure that in the things that we do over time, in other words, when you look at someone that just becomes a believer, you may not recognize much change in the first few weeks, months, something like that.

But over time, it would be something where I would think that you would see more change in people.

So, you know, you have a case where, let me give you this as an example.

When I look back, when I first got saved, even maybe 5, 6 years after I got saved,

I didn't have a lot of teaching. I looked back and there wasn't as much difference, shall we say, in my life.

But I remember after about 20 years, I looked back and saw a major change in the way that I was acting and behaving.

And so, the thing is that that's what we should be looking for. Now, being now that I've been walking with Christ for 30 years,

I see even more change in my life as I look back. So, sometimes we have to be aware that we look in these small time segments and we may not see much change, but over the long haul, we should see some.

And that's the point. The point is that we should be seeing changes in our life over time.

And when you look in small increments, like if you have children and you watch them grow, you don't see the major changes in their growth because you're living with them every day.

But when the grandparents come and see them like once every couple of months, it's like, wow, how much they've grown. Why? Because they've seen the gap where we get used to it by seeing it every day.

All right? And so, that's sort of the thing here is when we talk about progressive sanctification and where this really comes in is keep in mind that let us think about those that are in our churches, maybe those who are new believers, and we think, oh, why is this person not maturing?

Why are they not growing? Why are they not acting in a more biblical way?

They're still young. Give them time to grow. That's on the side.

We expect everyone to have learned everything that we've learned, forgetting that we grew slowly and had to learn it slowly.

All right? So, we have positional sanctification, progressive sanctification.

Now, to the next one is perfected sanctification, perfected sanctification. Now, let's look at this.

The definition that we have here is that the believer will be ultimately and totally separated from sin and with God for eternity.

This speaks of our deliverance from the presence of sin. That's your last blank there for that one, the presence of sin.

So, we're released from the penalty of sin. We're delivered from the power of sin.

And now we see that it speaks of the deliverance from the presence of sin. This is a future thing.

Okay? So, again, just like we mentioned with the doctrine of salvation, a past, present, future, we see the same thing here.

We have a positional sanctification. The moment we're saved, we're set apart unto God. Progressively, we're continuing to be more made like Christ, more set apart for Christ, and then perfected in a glorified state when we die in the future.

That is then this future thing. People do get confused with this because they talk about a sinless perfectionism as if we could be perfected here and now, confusing these two areas.

So, let's take a look at two verses here. First is 1

Thessalonians 3. It says, and may the Lord make your increase and abound in love for one another and for all as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before God our

Father at the coming of the Lord Jesus with all his saints. So, what you have here, as you see it, this is a future tense where our hearts will be blameless.

Let's go to the next one, though, because this is an interesting one because so many of the people that believe in sinless perfectionism go to 1

John and they don't understand what 1 John is actually talking about, where he's talking about this idea of those who think that they could sin here on earth, but not sin spiritually, just physically.

It was a Gnosticism, but what you have in 1 John 3 is, beloved, we are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when

He appears, we shall be like Him because we shall see

Him as He is. So, this is, again, a future thing. We are going to be like Him at that future state.

So, one benefit, and this may not always seem like a benefit, but one benefit is that you and I are being made more in the image of Christ every day.

That is one benefit. Let us look at another benefit and that is our union with Christ, our union with Christ, and in here what we have, we have a case where, if you look in your syllabus, this reality is associated with the spiritual baptism, that is your blank, baptism, with the spiritual baptism that occurred at our salvation.

Now, we see this in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, for in one spirit we were all baptized into the body,

Jews, Greeks, slaves free, were made to drink of one spirit.

So, we are baptized into a union with Christ, and while there is no comprehensible way to define this union specifically, we will examine biblical descriptions of the nature of our need for the union of Christ.

So, let us start with the nature and then we are going to look at our need. So, the nature of our union with Christ, it is a supernatural union.

Let us look at John 14 to see this. It is a supernatural union, that is your blank there, supernatural.

Jesus answered him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word and the

Father will love him, and we will, notice the we, God, the supernatural being, will come to him and make our home with him.

That talks about a supernatural union. 1 John 5 talks about a vital union.

So, not only is it a supernatural union, but your next blank there, it is a vital union. And this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his

Son. Whoever has the Son has life, whoever does not have the Son does not have life.

Do you see how it is vital? Without the Son, without this union, you do not have eternal life.

Romans 8 talks about the fact that it is an inseparable union.

We looked at this before, when we looked at can you lose your salvation and eternal security, but it is an inseparable union.

That is your blank there, inseparable. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights, nor death, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

So, nothing can separate us, nothing that is in creation. In other words, only God, and God says he won't, therefore it is an inseparable union.

And then the last blank that you have there is in Colossians 1, 26 -27. It is an unexplainable union, an unexplainable union is your blank there.

The mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints, to them

God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of his mystery, which is

Christ in you, the hope of glory. This talks about, it is something beyond our ability to understand, it is an unexplainable union.

So, this union with Christ, its nature is supernatural, vital, inseparable, and unexplainable.

Now let's look at our need for the union with Christ. Our union with Christ is the source, that is your blank there, is the source of all spiritual blessings.

We see this in Ephesians 1, 3 -13.

We're not going to look at that passage, you can read that on your own, because I'm going to determine that I think

I can make it through this class without skipping anything. But we've read that passage before, it's a lengthy passage you can look at, but let us look at your blank there.

This need, what's the need for this union? Well, it's essential for life in Christ.

Galatians 2 -20. I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer

I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life that I now live, I live in the flesh,

I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So, it is essential for life. You can look at Romans 6 -4, we're not going to look at Romans 6 -4,

Ephesians 2 -6 to talk about the essential for life. Let's also look at, it's essential for the resurrection of Christ.

It's essential for the resurrection of Christ. Let's take a look just at, let's look at John 14, if we could pull that one up.

Should we do that one? Actually no, let's do Romans 8 -2.

We'll do that one. For the law of the spirit of life has set you free, Christ Jesus, from the law of sin and death.

Let's also look at the next one, 1 Corinthians 1 -13. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus who became to us the wisdom and the righteousness, the sanctification and redemption.

Okay, this is, let's look at the last one, 1

Thessalonians 1 -4 -16. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet the dead shall be risen first.

So, the resurrection, our resurrection, our future resurrection is tied to this union with Christ.

Just as Christ physically resurrected, so you and I will physically resurrect.

So, the need for this union is it's essential for the life in Christ, it's essential for resurrection in Christ.

Lastly, if you're blank there, essential for union with Christians. Essential for union with Christians.

Let's look at the passage, we looked at 1 Corinthians 12 -13 already, but let's bring that up for, in one spirit we are all baptized into one body,

Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, we're all made to drink of one spirit. That talks about a union that we all share being in Christ.

So, we are, number one, sanctified as a blessing. A second blessing is that we're unified with Christ.

A third blessing is that we are justified. We are justified. Now, let's look at the significance of this.

Significance is that justification is that judicial act of God which

He declares, that's your first blank, declares, not make, that's your second blank is make.

Justification is the judicial act of God where He declares, not makes, the believer righteous before Him.

The basis of justification is based on the union with Christ. So, because we have that union, we're positionally sanctified, that's what gives us a union with Christ, that union with Christ is what justifies us.

Now, this is important. The declaration is just like that position. God declares us righteous.

He doesn't make us righteous. Now, why is that important? The declaration is something because it won't be fully realized until we die and are in a glorified state, but we're in a position now where we are declared as righteous, meaning that in God's eyes we are already right, in a right standing with Him, though you and I in time still sin.

We still break His law, but in a positional sense we're in a right standing before God.

That's the significance. Now, let's give a summary. I'm getting this from Doug Bookman's book.

He deals with this well, I think, in explaining this. So, this is actually from some class notes that I got, not really a book.

I said a book because I think someone's going to end up asking, what book? It's actually from class notes that I got from my pastor, but they were notes from his class on man, sin, and salvation.

I like what Doug Bookman had put here. It's summarized well. So, the source of justification is grace.

That's in Romans 3 .24. Your first blank is grace. So, what's the source of our justification? It's by grace, the grace of God.

What's the basis of our justification? Christ, Romans 5 .9.

Christ is our basis for justification. What is our appropriation for justification?

Faith, Romans 3 .28. Faith is how we appropriate justification.

And then lastly, what is the evidence of justification? That is the godly works that you see in James 2 .24.

So, you have the justification is grace, the basis of justification is

Christ, the appropriation of justification is faith, and the evidence of justification is godly works.

Now, we are sanctified, we are in a union with Christ, we're justified.

There's one more that we're going to look at. Actually, two more we're going to look at, but one here is that we have been adopted.

We have been adopted, and that's your blank in your syllabus, we've been adopted. God adopts the believer into his family at conversion.

To fully appreciate this doctrine, we need to understand the background and examine the blessings of adoption.

We're removed from what it meant in the day of the writings of the

New Testament and what this adoption means. So, let me give you some background to adoption, first century adoption.

The concept is taken from a Greco -Roman idea of adoption of a child by parents who were childless.

So, by Roman law, these adopted children were entitled to everything natural children would be, even if the parents adopted children and then had natural children, or had natural children and then adopted children as well.

There's equal benefits, equal inheritance, equal in all things. So, the idea there is that we are adopted into the family of Christ.

We have an equal footing, you and I, all of us. We have equal right to the inheritance of Christ.

So, what's the basis of the adoption? Well, the basis of it, if you look in your blank there, the predestination of God.

The predestination of God. Ephesians 1 .5. Your blank there is the predestination of God.

He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will.

Now, this verse, remember God is outside of time. When He talks about us being predestined, it's language for us to understand.

He's not saying that He did something in a time factor, but it's for us to understand it. But this is the basis of it.

Then we also see your second blank there is the death and blood of Christ.

The basis of our adoption is the death and blood of Jesus Christ. Galatians 4 .4

.5. Alright, so now we looked at the background and the basis. Let's look at the benefit of adoption.

One, we are placed into the family, into a family to which we did not previously belong.

Who's that family? That's God's family. Ephesians 2 .3.

Among whom we all once lived in the passion of our faith, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, we were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

So where were we? We were children of wrath. That's the family that we were in.

Now we're adopted into God's family. That's the change that took place.

Second benefit, we have all the rights and privileges of being in God's family.

We can look at Romans 8. It says here, You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry,

Abba, Father. Because we're in this family, we have an intimate relationship with God the

Father. We can call him Abba. In Hebrew or in Aramaic, it would be Daddy, an intimate term for Father.

So we don't go back into slavery of sin. We've been received into the spirit of God. In 1

Peter 1, it says, To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept for you in heaven.

So that is the idea that we have all the rights and privileges of being adopted into God's family.

And third there, if you look in your syllabus, we are promised full adoption when we are home with our

Heavenly Father. In other words, an adopted son may have that inheritance, but it's not his until that final stage.

We receive our final inheritance the moment we die and we're in a glorified state. We still look forward to that, alright?

So let us again recap on some of the benefits. We are blessed when we become believers.

We are sanctified. We're in union with Christ. We're justified. We're adopted. One last one that we want to look at is that we are provided access to God.

We are provided access to God. We are provided this, okay?

This doctrine speaks to the priesthood, that's your blank there, your priesthood of a believer.

In other words, this is different than the way the Old Testament was. In the Old Testament, there were a group of class of people that were priests that acted and served on God's behalf.

And they had access to God. The high priest had special access once a year.

The group of priests had access to God throughout the year when they would serve, but the people did not have direct access.

They had to go through a priest and once a year in atonement of sin through the high priest. What was always something that the

Jewish person looked forward to was this new covenant. What was the new covenant? That the Holy Spirit Himself would indwell all believers and that as believers we would have access to God, direct access to God.

This is something to a Jewish person they would look forward to and yet for many Christians we take it for granted.

Do you value the fact that you can enter into God's presence anytime, anywhere? You don't need to go through a mediator.

You can go directly to God the Father, the Creator of the Universe. So, let's look.

God has provided each believer access into His presence, 1

Peter 2. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness to His marvelous light.

So what you have there is you see we are able to be this royal priesthood because we're adopted.

We have the right to go into God the Father and have this access. You can't just go into a king's court or into the president's house.

You need an invitation. But if you're the son, you have direct access.

You can go in anytime. That's the idea that we have here. Because we're a child of God, we have direct access to the

King of Kings. Now, the basis of this access is

God's grace. Romans 5, 2. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith.

So see how we obtain the access? It's by faith. Into this grace, into which we stand, we rejoice in the hope of the glory.

Now, the blessing of that access is in Hebrews 4. The blessing of access is the help in time of need.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace and help in time of need.

When we are in a time of need, we have that access. So the basis is

God's grace. The blessing of this access is that we have help in time of need.

Third is the boldness of this access. Our relationship with Him gives us a boldness.

Hebrews 4. We'll just look at this one. Or we looked at this one already. Hebrews 10 then.

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that opened for us the curtain.

Remember, there's this curtain that separated the holy of holies. This curtain that is through His flesh.

What we have there is now that curtain is ripped. That curtain is done. We no longer need to go through the curtain.

What do we have? We have a case where now we have direct access to God. So we've been sanctified.

We have a union with Christ. We have been justified. We've been adopted into His family and we have access to the

King of Kings. Those are the blessings of salvation. Now, the next time that we pick up the

System Act Theology class, so if you're watching on YouTube and you're watching, you're going to see that you won't realize that there's been a gap between here because we're going to switch to a different study.

But when we pick this back up, we're going to be dealing with the next book, book number three,

Looking at the Church. Now, if you have any questions about this or anything else, please feel free to email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

Now, with that said, if you have questions, you can also go to Facebook and ask us questions there.

Now, I do have to make a point. There will be no class next week. No class next week because I will be in New York doing ministry all weekend and Monday when

I get back, I'll be getting back late. I won't have time to get everything prepared for class.

So, if you do want to pick up, though, the book, like if you want to pick up the Growing in Grace book, you can feel free to go to our store and pick it up there.

That way you can get your own copy if you don't have. It's only a couple dollars, but you may want to pick up multiple copies so you can use those in training in your church.

I want to encourage you lastly, or not lastly, but second to lastly, to register for the

NorCal Fire. Greg Coco will be speaking, Paul Taylor will be speaking, I'll be speaking, but you want to come listen for the other guys.

We're going to be talking about some issues within apologetics, some helpful things for you there. Ohiofire .info

to register for that. One last thing that you guys know that we do, as we teach these classes, we always want to encourage you to encourage others.

So, the brother of encouragement this week is Brother Andy from TrackPlanet .com.

It used to be, what, Custom Track Source or something like that. He changed the name to TrackPlanet. TrackPlanet .com,

if you come to any of our events and you see the tablecloths that are done, Andy does those.

Many of our tracks are done by Andy. This card that we have that you can get, this

Process of Reconciliation card, a flow chart, a quick reference card, Andy did that.

So, what we're going to be doing is encouraging you to encourage him.

So, let me give you some reasons. One, this is a brother who really tries to keep costs down to get the gospel out by producing tracks at a low cost.

He does that, does a great job with that, does some great graphics. He's someone who goes out and shares the gospel himself, and he's somebody who really cares for the things of God.

A good brother to get to know and someone that if you have any kind of printing that you want done at your church, or your ministry, or just for yourself, contact him.

He is really good with allowing a lot of different things in line with producing things for the

Kingdom of God. So, I just want to reiterate once again so that people don't go, hey, you didn't tell us.

There will be no class next week. I will be in New York City with the

Christian Collegian Network. They have their annual Repent and Witness camp where we go in for four intense days of open air preaching, evangelism, gospel track distribution.

Long, long, long days. Start off early. I will be doing the teaching.

I'll be teaching this year on, I was asked to teach on discipleship and how to follow through after someone becomes a believer.

What do we do? How do we follow through on that? So, that's something that we're going to be doing.

If you're in New York City, well, you're not supposed to be coming out with us, no. But you can meet up with us.

The neat thing is if you are in the New York City area, I guess I'll make, if I get in trouble for this, oh well.

But if you're in New York City, you're watching live or shortly after live, you want to come, we will be having church service,

I think probably about nine o 'clock. I don't know the time. But you can always contact me on Facebook and I'll let you know.

But we'll be having church service in the open air. We're going to have church service at Union Square, New York.

Union Square is an area where we witness regularly. We have a lot of local hecklers there.

So, we'll be praying for this. We have guys that are homeless there. We minister there often.

People know many of us that go there regularly on a first name basis. And so, we're going to have church right there.

Brother Mitch is going to come out and play some music, lead the worship. I'm going to be presenting, bringing forth a message.

Basically, I'm going to be looking at the deity of Jesus Christ when He put His deity on display in offering the forgiveness of sins, that He has the authority to forgive sins.

That is going to be a message we're going to do in the open air church service, in the public streets.

So, it'll be a neat thing. So, that's what I'm going to be doing this weekend. Until next time, remember, no class next week.

By the week after that, we'll be starting the Growing in Grace book, unless you're watching here on YouTube, and then you'll just watch when we pick back up in Systematic Theology.

So, until next time, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God. See you then.