47 - Eternal Security, Part 2 (Can you lose your salvation)

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48 - Eternal Security, Part 3 (Can you lose your salvation)

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We're glad to have you with us.

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Nothing like having this cool little device that lets me talk to you guys. And then what happens?

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Just before we go live, the battery dies. It's a good thing to have happen.

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You always want to have a dead battery. Yeah. It was actually brand new, rechargeable.

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Here, here, here they are right here. Nice. Rechargeables are really good only when they have a charge.

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I guess these puppies don't hold a charge. That's why I have like tons of batteries that they have stuck around me so that for some reason you guys might actually want to hear me.

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I doubt it. Anyway, we are glad to have you with us.

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We're glad that you can enjoy laughing at me. Yeah, I know.

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That's what you do. But I guess since there's so much material there to make fun of me.

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Oh, the chat room is asking if I can transition that to the gospel, eh? Is that Ricky asking? All right, so that is because we have a transition game, which hopefully we'll be putting another video out on YouTube with us playing that game at Ohio Fire.

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That has gotten a lot of people, they got excited about our transition game and have started really playing it.

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And people are starting to copy it and we've been doing it on our Facebook group, asking people to transition.

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So real simple, if I was having to transition from these batteries that I thought were alive but really were dead because they didn't have a charge.

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Well, if I was going to transition that to the gospel, it would be exactly like what a false gospel message provides.

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It may look like it's got a full charge, but it's empty. It doesn't serve its purpose.

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Only the true gospel can serve the purpose. So for those in the chat room, how's that?

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So, but if this lesson, maybe we're continuing our lesson from last week, which actually got kind of cut off in the middle.

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That's right, I wasn't really done with it, but we had lost. But if you are paying attention with us, and if you're an enrolled student, you have a syllabus we've been going through.

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We're picking up where we left off last class, and that was in book number two, which we're just finishing up now.

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We've got two more lessons in it. We're in the doctrine of salvation. We're dealing with lesson nine that we're looking at with eternal security.

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Now, this is an issue that gets heated, gets people kind of upset, and some people get all riled up.

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And maybe you see the way Christians kind of behave on Facebook, where they go attacking before they start listening.

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And so if you've noticed that pattern, we have just the thing for you here.

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They can't really show this well, but that is our newest product here. Can you see that okay? This, so you guys get to see this live.

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This will be presented at Jersey Fire. Can you see what that says? I don't know. Can you see what it says? Process of reconciliation.

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That's side one, has a side two. Cool little quick reference sheet.

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Have you ever had a problem with another person and you didn't know what to do? You were struggling with should you confront the person, should you not confront the person?

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That's what this bad boy will help you with. It actually goes through and it's going to ask you, so kind of a little flow chart, is it a sin issue?

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If it's not a sin issue, you know what you do? You go right here where it says, forbear, pray about it, don't bring it up.

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But if it is, you know, if, so that's if it's a preference.

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If it is a sin issue, then you go down this path here. The question is what if it's a sin issue, but it's not their sin, it's your sin.

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Well, then you go down this path here. What if you actually have to confront the person? Then you go to side two.

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Matthew 18, right there, all four steps of Matthew 18. That's our newest product that is not available probably on the store yet, but you can always go to the store and contact us and we'll get that for you.

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I have a feeling that after this lesson, those who believe you can lose your salvation, you may want to pick up one of these cards before you email us and just kind of go through the steps and see whether you should be contacting us on your issue the way you view it.

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But because some people just like to fight, I'm convinced. And with that, you know, one of the things when you are wrong, it's always good as a

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Christian to admit when you're wrong. Now, last lesson, we were going through lessons and we were looking at the false views that people, that different groups have on eternal security.

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And I said that we have a student who tries to fill in all the blanks and that this student was not going to get the answer to these blanks because I just didn't think that they would.

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I was wrong. Did you hear? See, I'm not like Fonzie. Remember Fonzie from the

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Happy Days? I'm not going... I can say I'm wrong. It's okay. I can live with it. You already know that I'm wrong in a whole bunch of areas anyway.

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She actually did get the right answer. She knew what the answer was because her church actually was teaching through some of the

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Roman Catholic doctrines and she picked up on it. So she had the right answer.

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She sent me an email and let me know she was right. So that doesn't surprise many of you to know that I was wrong.

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I know. So we are going through the doctrine of eternal security. Now, this is what some call once saved, always saved.

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I don't like that term. The reason I don't like that term is a lot of people use that to argue that once a person becomes a

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Christian, they can live any way they want and they can't lose their salvation. In a sense, yes, that's true.

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But in another sense, if somebody, you know, is saved, they're going to live in a way that is drawing them closer to Christ and in a more sanctified way.

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The people who profess to be a Christian and are not are usually the ones that people are talking about.

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Now, as we go through this, I need to specify that difference that I just made. And this is a distinction that helps many people to understand what's happening here with this doctrine.

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There's a difference between possession of salvation and profession of salvation.

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In other words, if I profess to be saved, I'm just stating it. I'm making the claim.

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It doesn't mean I'm actually a believer in Christ. It means I'm making the claim that I'm a believer in Christ.

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How do you know if I really am a believer in Christ? Well, when I die and we're in glory, you'll know.

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Actually, that's the only way to really know. You're going to look at the fruit of my life and I'm going to look at the fruit of your life.

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And over time, we're going to see whether that fruit seems to be in line with Scripture or not.

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You see someone who claims that they were a Christian and then they seem to walk away from the faith.

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In other words, they deny Christ altogether. It is more relevant of what it's what

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John says in first John that they went out from among us because they were never of us.

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John 7, 21 to 23. Jesus says to the same groups of people that says,

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Lord, Lord, haven't we done these great things in your name? We've hailed the sick and cast out demons, done many miracles. And he says, depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.

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I never knew you. You see, those become important because it's not that he once knew them and now it's over.

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Never knew them, which means that they never possessed regeneration.

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They only made a claim of that. People make claims all the time. You ever hear people claim to be an atheist?

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That's wrong. It's just a claim. They're not really an atheist. Well, Andrew, how do you know that?

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Very simple. God says so. God says that every man knows he exists.

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Every man has sufficient knowledge of him. Romans chapter one. And therefore, everyone knows

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God exists. And because everybody knows that God exists, we can know that that guy who claims to be an atheist is just claiming it.

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He doesn't really believe it. All right. He's trying to convince himself, actually.

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So where we left off, we looked at some false views of this doctrine. Then we looked at some correct views of this doctrine.

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And so let me just give you the definition that I gave you last week so that we have that here so that you can review that because we really didn't get beyond much of that.

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We got to some of the defense of it. We have a lot to get through, so I don't want to review too much. But the biblical definition or the definition of the doctrine of eternal security is that God provides and secures.

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Now, notice there who's the source of that. It's God who provides and it's God who secures. We've already looked at that in previous lessons.

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If you have any questions, you should go back to the previous lessons on salvation. But God provides and secures final salvation for all true believers, not just the professors, the true believers.

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This is important to recognize that God is the author of salvation, not the church.

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That's Roman Catholicism and not the individual. That's Arminianism. Now, the defense that we gave was we gave several scriptures last class that were that gave direct scriptural statements for the defense of the biblical doctrine of eternal security.

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We don't have time to go through all of those again, but you can look at John 6 verse 39.

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You can look at John 10, 27 to 30. You can look really Romans chapter 8, a large portion there, verses 31 to 39.

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What can separate you from the love of God? Nothing can. But I think the strongest passage there is

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Romans chapter 11. And I do want to I want to pick up there again.

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It says, as regards to the gospel, and here the reason

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I'm bringing this up is I give you the context. Really, the verse we want is 29, but so you get the context.

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Look at what he's saying. The gospel. This is the question. So there's those who are enemies of the gospel says, as regards to the gospel, they are enemies for your sake.

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Then look what it says here. But regards but as regarding regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers.

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Now look at this for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Now, the context here is the gospel.

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The context is salvation. The gift and calling is regarding salvation.

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And look at what it says. The word there is irrevocable. It for those who will argue because there's some who argue that in Romans chapter eight, those that believe you can lose your salvation argue in Romans chapter eight that yes,

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God will not let you go, which is what basically John six and John 10 says that God is the one that is holding us in his hand.

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It is God who seeks and God who's going to hold us. And then you see in that passage, let's put that up again.

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You see there that it says for the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.

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Irrevocable means that you can't take it back. In other words, God is not an

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Indian giver. Does that make sense? God doesn't give salvation. And as some say,

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God does. God gives salvation. But then some will say, well, but you could be so bad.

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You can sin. And somehow they will, that God will give you over to your sin and you lose your salvation.

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And so what you have is a case there where in this passage,

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I think it's really clear. God is saying that this calling that he has on the believers is irrevocable.

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In other words, those who say that God gives it, but we lose it by our disobedience.

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God is saying that's not true. God is saying that the gift that he gives is irrevocable.

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Irrevocable means that God will not take it away. Period. Now, for us to lose our salvation, it is either that God takes it away or we do something so wrong that God gives us over to that sin and we lose that salvation by our own action.

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But if the gift and calling is irrevocable, then once given, it's solidified.

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Now, the thing to remember, where do we really get the solution to this? If you've been paying attention in class for any length of time, you know where I'm going to go to find the argument for whether you can lose your salvation.

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It's going to be in the character of God. Remember those first few lessons we looked at?

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If you've been paying attention, you realize how often we went back to those first three, four lessons on the attributes of God.

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See, God is omniscient. He knows everything. There's nothing you did. There's not a single sin you did that caught

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God off by surprise. God is outside of time.

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So being outside of time, everything's the same eternal second to him. It wasn't like he didn't know what you were going to do and when you did it, it caught him off guard because he didn't look down the tunnel of time to see that.

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No, God knew every sin you were going to commit after he regenerated you and he chose to regenerate you anyway.

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That should blow your mind. It does mine. I mean, does that cause you to be like, wow, like God knew all the things that I still do wrong and he saved me anyway?

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Wow. And then we don't want to forgive our brothers or sisters, right? So when we look at this, and you could look at Philippians, let's just look at that one actually,

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Philippians 1 .6 because I mentioned this earlier. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work, that's him being the author.

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And who's the source of this? That him who began a good work in you will bring it to a day of completion, okay, to bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

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So it is God here who begins the work and it is God who brings it to completion, not you and I.

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Do you see that? That's important because those who believe you can lose your salvation say, that we can do something to lose it, but God is going to make sure that he's the one that is the author and the finisher.

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He brings it to completion. That's a ministry that he does. Therefore, we cannot lose something unless we are, or really take it away from God, unless we're stronger than God.

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This is the reason I say that for us to be able to lose our salvation, we have to be stronger than God. God says our salvation is irrevocable.

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To say that I can lose it means it's revocable. And this is why

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I say that to do that, you're calling God a liar. Now, you're not doing that openly, but it's essentially what you're doing.

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Let's look at Ephesians 4 .30, And do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

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The Holy Spirit seals you. If he does the sealing, you're not going to get out of that. Okay, he sealed it.

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Let's look at another, 2 Thessalonians 5, verse 23 or 24.

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Now, may God, may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, who he who calls you is faithful and will surely do it.

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So, who is it that the character, what characteristic of God does this rest on?

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His faithfulness. It's saying here that God is faithful to bring it to pass. 2 Corinthians 3 .3

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says, 2 Thessalonians, sorry, says, but the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against evil.

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So, again, who is the source? The source of keeping us saved is

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God. So, if we can lose our salvation, then we must be stronger to God than God to do it, because he says he is the one that is going to hold us.

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All right, now I got to pick up the pace if I'm going to get through this lesson this week, and I know some think

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I won't. I do want to take the time with it, because there is some debate and discussion that goes on on this area.

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And some people, as we get to these issues, Calvinism or Minianism that we dealt with, whether you can lose your salvation or not, these seem to some to be very controversial issues.

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And often what you'll find is that it's controversial because they're not typically, and this is on both sides of the issue, many people are not arguing biblically, they are arguing emotionally.

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Okay, what do I mean by that? They're not going to the scriptures and saying, what do the scriptures say, and trying to say, hey, could

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I be wrong, right?

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That's the issue. Some think that they can't be wrong.

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We all are human, we can be wrong. God's word can't be wrong.

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So what we need to do is be honest with ourselves and we can be wrong to show ourselves approved, okay, a workman unto

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God, make sure that we're rightly dividing his word, not trying to add into his word.

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And so many people argue emotionally. So there's a number of doctrines related to the doctrine of eternal security that I'd like to look at.

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And this shows us again, we're looking at the character and ministry of God. So the priestly ministry of Jesus, we see this in John 17, says here,

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Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

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So whose ministry is it to keep them? Well, it is

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Jesus as the high priest. You can see this also, Father, I desire that they, oh wait, sorry,

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I was reading the wrong verse. Hebrews 7 .25, Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them.

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So who is it that does the intercession? It's the high priest.

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It's Jesus Christ as high priest so if Jesus's role as high priest is to be the intercessor for us to lose our salvation, he would have to fail in that role of high priest.

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The one that I kind of alluded to already was the Holy Spirit's role as the sealer.

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He seals us, Ephesians 1 .13. We looked at 4 .30 already.

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In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him were, notice that, sealed with the promise of the

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Holy Spirit. What does it mean to be sealed? That word sealed is the idea of a down payment, a down payment.

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In other words, you go to purchase a home, you put down money as a down payment saying,

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I will move forward in purchasing this home. Then you will put money down on the house where you will do that so that the mortgage, unless you can afford to buy the house outright, maybe you can.

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If you can, hey, go to the website right down there and donate to us as well. Just an idea. But if you can't, as many people, you end up going to a bank and getting a mortgage.

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When you get a mortgage, there's a down payment and then there's what you owe to the bank.

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So you really don't own the house until it's paid off. I actually did that with my first home.

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That's why I never went on vacation or anything else. I just paid off the home because I don't like being in debt. And then what

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I do, I got another house that put me in debt. I thought I'd have it paid off by now and be able to pay for college.

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Not gonna happen. Anyway, market went like that. Taxes went like that.

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Wrong directions. So what we end up having is that when the house is paid off, it's paid in full, you have full ownership.

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Same thing with a car or anything else. You put a down payment, which is to say, this is proof that I will pay.

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Now there's a difference. If you don't pay, you are unfaithful. Well, the seal of our payment, in other words, that which is our guarantee, is the

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Holy Spirit. He says, He is the one that seals us.

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He is the seal. He's the guarantee. So if He is the guarantee of our salvation, again, we would have to be stronger than God the

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Spirit to break that seal. That make sense to you?

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Let's look at a couple more doctrines that are related to eternal security. And that is God's purpose in salvation.

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In 1 Peter 1, verse 5, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time.

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Also Romans 8, 1. Now there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

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What that's saying is that there's no condemnation. There's nothing more that can go on. The purpose of salvation is to bring us to regeneration.

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Once we're regenerate, to lose that would break the purpose of our salvation.

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It makes salvation based upon us, not God. And then lastly of this, we're gonna see that this violates the believer's union with Christ in Colossians 3, 3.

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For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

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So this is talking about the union that the believer has with Jesus Christ, with Almighty God.

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So what you have there is you have a case where there is the union that we have with God in salvation.

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Okay, now I've given you the definition. I've given you the defense.

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I've given you the doctrines. If you realize this, we're gonna have one more and it's gonna start with what letter?

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A D, D, D, D, D, D, right? So let's look at the difficulties. I'm a preacher,

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I literate, you know. This is the thing, you know, this is what you do.

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You literate. So helps you to remember definition, eternal security, we have the definition, the defense, the doctrines.

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Now let's deal with the difficulties and there are some difficulties. Let us not, if we see somebody that is arguing that you can lose your salvation, let us not think that they have some scripture that they are leaning on to make their case.

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It is wrong to, on either side of an argument in this case and say, well, you know, you have no biblical grounds for that.

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No, there are some difficulties that we have. So let's deal with them and hopefully we can answer some of them and provide scripture for them.

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First is, what about the passages that speak of the Lord rejecting those who thought they were saved?

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Now I'm kind of given away because I'm even in the question. Most of the way that we typically be worded would be, what about all those passages that talk about the

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Lord rejecting those who were saved? And I'm saying those who thought they were saved because that's the distinction that I'm making, all right?

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So let me give you the explanation first and you fill in your blanks there if you have a syllabus. Those passages address professing, that's your blank there, professing believers and not possessing believers.

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So your blanks there are professing believers and possessing believers. In other words, those are passages that we see of people who claim to be genuine believers but they are not genuine believers.

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These people would be considered false converts. That's your blank, false converts.

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In other words, hypocrites. Did you ever notice? Do this as a study. Look at how often the

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New Testament deals with hypocrites and what genuine faith is. There are two entire books devoted to it. First, John and James are devoted.

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One is to the assurance of salvation. Let me make a distinction there. What is that? Assurance of salvation is that feeling that I'm saved, that feeling of closeness to the

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Lord. Eternal security is a positional thing. I am secure in Christ that I'm saved and I can't lose that.

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But what I can lose is that feeling of closeness. I can sin and in that sin not feel like I'm saved.

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That's assurance. First John answers that book. Book of James answers, how do you know if someone is a genuine believer?

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What does true faith look like? That's James. But then you can go through the gospels and you'll see most of the parables that Jesus Christ spoke of deals with hypocrisy.

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Why so much? Well, in a quick reading of Christ in the gospels,

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I noticed, I always heard this, that Jesus spoke more of hell than heaven and more than money than heaven and hell combined.

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But what I noticed when I looked through is I noticed that Jesus seems to speak more of hypocrisy than heaven, hell, and money combined.

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Why do you think he does that? Because there's lots of hypocrites in his day and age and there were lots of hypocrites in our day and age.

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There are those who make a profession but they don't have possession and much of the

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New Testament deals with that. So let's deal with some verses that deal with this. Matthew 7, 21 to 23,

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I referred this earlier. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven.

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So the idea of Lord, Lord, are those who make a profession of faith but the one who does the will of my father in my father in heaven.

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Now here, notice this, and I wanna give the argument. The way that someone who believes that you can lose your salvation is going to argue here is that, see, it says, if they do the will of my father, that they're arguing there for a maintaining of the faith.

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In other words, they're arguing that they can maintain their salvation. They get saved by Christ but then they maintain it by doing the will of the father.

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I would argue that they do the will of the father as we saw already because the Holy Spirit and the ministry of Christ is that he works through us to make sure that we do that.

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And then look at what it says in verse 22. And on that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?

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And I will declare to them, I never knew you.

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Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. So if those who argue that they got saved by grace but that some can lose that salvation by not staying obedient, do you see what it says there?

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If that's the case, then they never knew Christ. They never knew

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Christ. 2 Peter 2, 20 and 21. For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, they are again entangled, entangle themselves and overcome, the last day will become worse than the first.

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For if it would have been better if they never have come to know the way of righteousness, then after knowing it, turn back to the holy commandments, delivering to them.

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So this one is used to say, see, here's a passage where it seems to say that they're in a worse state because they notice what says, they knew the way of righteousness.

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Now, what you have here is people arguing that they knew salvation.

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I argue, no, they knew the way. They came into church, they knew the truth and then they rejected it.

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Okay, it doesn't mean that they possessed salvation. It means they knew about it. They were close to it.

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Let me give you some more arguments for that. John 6, 63 to 66.

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And you can just remember this by John 6, 6, 6 because that's the one that really hammers it. But it is the spirit who gives life.

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The flesh is no hope at all. Remember that's the argument there though is that they say that we're saved, we get life through the spirit but then we lose it by the flesh.

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The flesh is no help at all. They would say that's just meaning no help in the process of salvation, which we'd all agree with.

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The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.

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This is Christ speaking to people who are following after him. For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe and who it was who would betray him.

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And he said, truly this is why I told you no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by the father.

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After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked after him.

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So what you have there is a case where Jesus knew that there were some who would not follow after him.

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They would not be believers. And after he said some hard things, they left. Now I wanna deal with one more verse that really

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I think nails this. This isn't in your syllabus but it's one that should be. And that is 1 John 2 19. I've referred to it many times here.

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They went out from among us because this is the question. These people who were in the church but now they're not in the church.

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They deny the faith altogether. They went out from among us, meaning the believers. But they were not of us for if they had been of us they would have continued with us.

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But they went out that it might become plain that they were not of us.

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They went out from among us because they were never of us. How do you know they're not believers because and never were believers?

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Because they went out from among the believers and rejected them. That's how you know. It doesn't mean that if you see someone that sins once, twice, a hundred times that ooh, they were never believers.

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No, you're not gonna know that. They could be disobedient for many years even. But it is a case where when they start rejecting altogether they're revealing that they never were believers in the first place.

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And that can be hard for us to understand because sometimes we see real fruit. We see that there seems to be real evidence of salvation.

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I know a guy, he was a elder in the church where I served. And he was,

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I mean, just really looked like I mean, everything gave signs that he was a believer in Christ. He and I were in a church that was a church plant that we helped when it had just gotten started.

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And we served many years there and in the leadership. And when we had left we had some difficulties.

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We called another man to pastor and it just, he wasn't qualified.

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We realized that afterwards. And in the process both me and the other elder who were the leadership, we both left.

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And in that process, he got hurt. We went to another church and there he got hurt again.

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And he ended up getting very hurt by men in leadership in churches.

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And he stopped going to church altogether. And my heart went out to him and I tried to reach out to him and would sit down and talk with him.

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And he never rejected the faith, at least to me. But his life had no more evidence that he was a believer.

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This is a guy you would never have questioned if he was a believer. But when you looked at his life,

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I mean, he's now, the last I heard a couple years ago, he would have liquid lunches. He failed a drug test at work.

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This is a man who is no longer living a life of Christ. And he's taken his family with him.

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His wife, when I came to their door, I'm not the kind of guy you want to have as an accountability partner.

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Just saying, I actually do hold it serious. And so when he dropped out from going to church,

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I would try to call him when he wouldn't answer his phone. I would go by the house and ring the doorbell.

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And when I do that, and his wife would tell me he's not home. Once his wife told me he's not home as she opened the door and I can see him sitting at the dining room table with a bunch of friends, kicking back and having some beers.

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And now I'm not saying that if you drink a beer, you're not saved. Okay. But his wife is outright lying to me.

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I mean, I can see him sitting right there. And she's like, he's not home. I'm like, are you kidding me?

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There he is. Right. And she literally slammed the door in my face. I did what any good accountability partner would do.

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I sat around and waited until he'd get home from wherever he was out to at three in the morning.

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And I sat outside the house and waited for him. Kind of hard to avoid me when I'm sitting in your driveway and you pull out of your car.

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And he knew me well enough to know that I'm not gonna stop until I talk to him.

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And so one Sunday afternoon, he finally said, all right, let's go out.

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We'll have a cup of coffee and let's talk. And he really said that he was hurt by what had happened to him.

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He was angry with God. He didn't come to the point of saying he lost his salvation, but there is no evidence, no fruit at all that's visible in his life.

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I've spoken to family members of his and they're like, no, he actually goes out of his way now to kind of corrupt anyone that is of faith.

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And so it really is disheartening and it's sad. And if you're close to someone like that, it's heartbreaking, okay?

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I understand that. And I understand we wanna say that they were once saved. It makes it much easier to believe that they were once saved than to believe that we were fooled.

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But the reality is we were, if we were fooled, it's only because we are looking at faith, at the fruit of faith.

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And we said, yeah, it looks like there's evidence, but you and I can't know another person's heart. Let's keep that in mind.

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And I know I was really gonna try to rush through this lesson and finish up. We do have some things. It's probably not enough for next week, but I'll try.

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And for the person who, yeah, okay. For the person who was taking bets in the chat room,

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I guess you win. We won't finish this week. And the only reason is I don't wanna rush this.

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I don't want to rush through this and not be able to give an honest and fair response to these difficulties because there are difficulties.

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And I wanna be able to be just and fair with them and make sure that we don't just brush them off and think people that believe you can lose your salvation have no real basis.

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You know, I mean, they have some good argument. It's just, I don't think they're looking at the full scriptures in their context.

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And so when I look at a guy who's like this friend of mine, there is no way

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I ever, ever, ever, ever, ever would have questioned his salvation. We would, when there was someone that wanted to become a member of our church, and I don't know how your church does it, but in our church, what we would do, this individual and I, you had to meet with two members of leadership.

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And there were only three members of leadership of the elders, the pastors.

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We had one paid pastor, and then we had the two of us that were on eldership, on staff of the leadership.

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And so the two of us, even though we weren't paid, typically it would be the two of us that would meet with individuals. I mean, it would be two of the three of us, but we would sit and we'd question someone's salvation.

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And this is a guy who was very, very strict with making sure people had a right definitions of terms, a right understanding of salvation, a right understanding of baptism.

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He didn't want to let anyone get into the waters of baptism if they did not have a proper understanding of salvation and knew clearly what baptism meant.

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He was very, very strict with that. And you go, how could a guy that would be so strict with that be an unbeliever?

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Well, notice I'm not saying he is an unbeliever. Have you noticed that?

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I said he's got no fruit. There's no evidence, but I don't know his heart.

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Do you guys pick up on a distinction there that I'm making? I hope so. Because this is how you and I should be as Christians.

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Give some grace and mercy to one another. I don't know this man's heart.

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Could he be in a sinful disobedient state for 10, 15, maybe even 20 years?

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Yes, yes, he can. Does that mean he lost his salvation during those years?

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No, no, it doesn't. Does it mean that there's no fruit that we, no evidence of salvation, no fruit that we could observe?

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Yeah, there might be no fruit whatsoever. I want to believe he's still regenerate, just very, very hurt.

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But I could be wrong. I don't know his heart. And that's the thing that we have to be careful.

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We got to make sure we don't act as some do, as if we know it all.

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We have all the answers. There's no question. And we're the only authority that should speak.

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Okay, let's be careful not to do that. We got to be very careful with that. We have to make sure that as we speak, we speak knowing that we are fallible.

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Christ is not. So the only thing we want to make sure of is that we say, this is what God says in his word.

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And we don't go beyond what his word says. Is that fair? Okay, I hope so.

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So we're going to pick up with some of these difficulties. We're going to deal with, let me give you some of the difficulties we're going to pick up with next week.

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We're going to deal with, will the doctrine of eternal security encourage people to sin?

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That's an argument many people make. That's actually the argument that came from, that's all the way back from Augustine and Pelagius.

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Pelagius made that argument. How about the unpardonable sin? What is it? Can someone commit that?

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If they commit that, will they lose their salvation? What about the passage that speaks of Christian leaders who fell away from the truth?

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Just gave you an example of that. Are there any verses, are there not verses that say a believer may lose his salvation?

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We'll deal with those. How about those verses that suggest that an individual may lose the Holy Spirit?

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We will deal with those. So that is what is on tap for next week.

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Some things, if you want, you can always email us at theacademyatstrivingforeternity .org.

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You can go online to our Facebook page and join us there. If you want to get the nifty little card that I mentioned, you can email us at shopatstrivingforeternity .org

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or go to our store at storeatstrivingforeternity .org and pick that up. Another way you could do it is if you're watching this week,

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July, what day is today actually? July 7th of 2014.

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You can go to Jersey Fire this weekend. Take the drive, get to Jersey, jerseyfire .org,

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register. You will get one of these nifty cards, hard stock, so that you can, you know, when you get angry and you try tearing it up, it won't tear so easy.

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But you can get that in your resource bag with all the other DVDs, CDs, books,

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I don't know, all this cool stuff that's in there. So that is for you.

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I really want to encourage you to come to Jersey Fire. Really important. It is not just an evangelism conference.

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It is that. It is not just that, as we'll be talking about the family. Phil Johnson from Grace To You, Emile Zwang from Living Waters will be out.

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Phil Sessa, brother from the Bronx, will be down. And that will be good.

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So I encourage you to do that. Now, lastly, before we leave for the week, our brother of encouragement.

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Why do we do this? We do this every week because we want to encourage you to encourage others.

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We want to get from you names as this one was. This was a name that someone sent in of a person to encourage both this week and next.

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Someone sent in a name and said, hey, would you encourage these two brothers? And so we said that is a great idea.

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We didn't know some of the things that people said, and therefore we want to encourage you to encourage these people.

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Most people say the most encouraging things about a person when they're dead. Don't we?

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Let's try to say things good and encouraging while people are alive. I think we all, all of us, need encouragement.

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And so the brother of encouragement this week is Ed Romain. And I put his, there's his

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Facebook page. He's in the, should be in the Striving Fraternity group. So you can find him there. You can publicly encourage him there.

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Let me give you some reasons to encourage him. Specifically, the reason I was asked to give, to encourage him is because he is in Utah, has been,

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I think he's going to be there for a month. I think it's actually two months, truthfully. I know Matt Slick went out to visit him and do some evangelizing to Mormons out there.

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But they are in Utah for like two months. He is a seminary student. He's taking time off from school in the summer to go on mission and go to Utah and share the gospel with Mormons, Latter -day

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Saints out there in Utah, where it is strong. He is open air preaching. Now you say, well, hey, there's a lot of people that open air preach.

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Let me tell you why Ed is an encouragement to me. And maybe that'll help for you to encourage him.

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First met Ed at the Super Bowl outreach. I believe, I could be mistaken. I believe

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Ed has cerebral palsy. I think that's the disease he has, but he is in a wheelchair.

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He came to New York City in a wheelchair, getting on and off subways.

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That is not an easy thing to do in the hustle and bustle of New York to get in and out and around on the subway system.

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But he did that because the gospel was that important to him. This is also a brother who is a great encouragement to me because he's a guy.

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He gives me a call every about a month, you know, four to six weeks or so just to say hello.

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No, really no other reason. Sometimes he says, hey, brother, I just want to call and see how you're doing.

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I know that's a great encouragement to me. And I know if you get to know him, he'd be a great encouragement to you.

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That's the kind of guy he is. He just calls people up just to encourage them. And so I want to encourage you to encourage him because, you know, there are times we go out and we don't want to share the gospel because we're tired or it's raining.

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Oh, my, you know, my feet hurt. This brother goes out in the rain in a wheelchair and preaches the gospel.

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He doesn't let his physical limitations get in the way of the great commission to make disciples.

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So I encourage you to get to know Brother Ed Romain and encourage him this week.

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Even if you're watching this on YouTube sometime later, that's OK, he'll need the encouragement then too.

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So go out and encourage him. And until next week after Jersey Fire, we'll probably have a special pre -show live for only those who watch live.

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But we probably will do that as we usually do, give you some feedback from the event. We will try to do a live streaming, by the way.

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I did speak to someone that is going to try to bring internet to the church. That is going to be a little bit of a difficulty only because basically he had someone break into his house and steal all of his equipment.

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He is trying to borrow the equipment so that we could have internet wherever we are. And we're going to try to do live streaming on this channel on Ustream.

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So we will try to do that so that you can watch live what you're missing.

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You really don't want to miss it. You want to be there live, but that's OK. We understand some can't. So until next week, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.