Episode 38: Assurance of Salvation

Rural Church Podcast 2.0

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son with whom

00:05

I am well pleased. He is honored and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

00:13

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

00:21

The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

00:26

Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

00:37

Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

00:44

Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast, Episode 38.

00:54

How long are we going to go, Eddie? Man, I've got all day. No, I mean an episode.

01:01

Oh, man, I hope we go a long time. Yeah. We're, what, two episodes past the max of the first?

01:12

I think in Ruled Church Podcast the original, the OG RCP, was 34 episodes.

01:21

Okay, so we're like three past. Yeah, sure. Maybe four, really, 38.

01:26

Anyway, the point is we've gone further, and we're recording out ahead, so I think that has been a tremendous help to us.

01:37

Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. I'm Allen Nelson, your co -host, pastor of Prairieville Second Baptist Church.

01:44

With me is my brother in the faith, partner in the ministry, co -laborer in the gospel,

01:50

Eddie Ragsdale. Say hello, Eddie. Hello, everybody. Where are you pastor at? I am the pastor of Marshall First Baptist Church in beautiful Searcy County, Arkansas.

02:02

You always say beautiful Searcy County, but you know what? You're right. That's right.

02:08

It's right. It is. It is beautiful. Hey, on today's episode, we want to talk about the doctrine of assurance of salvation.

02:18

That is, can a believer really know that they're a believer? Can they actually have assurance of salvation?

02:26

I'm going to start out by reading a little bit. Maybe it's only four paragraphs, so we might work our way through this whole thing if we want, but I'm just going to read the first paragraph right now of chapter 18 of the 1689.

02:37

It says this, temporary believers and other unregenerate people may deceive themselves in vain with false hopes and fleshly presumptions that they have

02:50

God's favor and salvation, but their hope will perish. Yet those who truly believe in the

02:56

Lord Jesus and love him sincerely, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience beforehand, may be certainly assured in this life that they are in a state of grace.

03:07

They may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, and this hope will never make them ashamed.

03:14

So the confession says that believers can know whether or not they're in a state of grace.

03:22

Agree? Agreed. Let's start first with the idea of false assurance.

03:31

What is false assurance? Yeah, I would say that false assurance is, it's actually probably more of a pandemic than anything we've seen in our culture because so many people believe that they're

03:48

Christians when they're not. They believe that they have entered into true life when they've had no real true life in them, and that's because what many people have heard is a watered -down version of the gospel that actually has given them a work to do.

04:07

It's given them something that they could do and then believe that they've jumped through a hoop, that they have met some criteria, and therefore they're saved, and so they're assured of that when they're actually not born again.

04:21

You know, we do door -to -door evangelism here in Perryville. We try to do it about once a month, and we only started it this year.

04:31

I've had so many conversations with people who know, know,

04:37

I'm putting that in quotes, know that they're a Christian, and yet their life is not changed.

04:44

They don't go to church, you know, but, oh, but they know. And I think it's one of the most sobering passages probably in all of Scripture is

04:51

Matthew 7, at the end of Matthew 7, where Jesus says, not everyone who says to me,

04:56

Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. You know, the fact that they call him Lord, Lord is an acknowledgment that they know who he is, right?

05:06

Mm -hmm, mm -hmm. So there is a reality out there today, a false assurance, and I think it's a very serious problem, and that is people think because they've said a prayer or they've had some sort of experience in their life and their name may be written on a church roll or they have some sort of date written down in their

05:29

Bible, they think that because they've done those things that they will meet God in favor in eternity when actually they are, if nothing changes, will meet

05:41

God in judgment. I think that's one of the most alarming places to be, to think that you're in the favor of God, to have convinced yourself that you're in the favor of God, and yet in reality you are not and you will meet

05:58

God only in divine judgment. Right. Or if you've been convinced by someone else.

06:05

I mean, I think there is a great danger in our evangelistic tactics and strategies if through those things we make false converts.

06:20

We want to be careful. We want to preach the gospel earnestly and urgently to sinners that they would repent and believe.

06:28

We want to call people to repent and believe today. Today is the day of salvation.

06:34

But at the same time, we want to be careful that our methods are not making false converts instead of true ones.

06:44

And we've got to trust the Holy Spirit to be a better counselor than we are to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ.

06:51

Amen. We may have talked about this before, not on the podcast, but we might have been together when we heard this, but we heard a guy or I heard a guy one time that said something like the worst thing, the worst place to be is to be a

07:07

Christian and to not have assurance of salvation. Well, I don't think that's the worst place to be.

07:15

I think the worst place to be is to not be a believer and think you are a Christian. That's right. That's the worst thing.

07:20

You may sleep better at night, and the struggling believer who doesn't know is not going to sleep as good as you, but he's in a lot better place than you are.

07:31

Right, because at least he's a believer. Because at least he's a believer. It's not the worst thing to doubt your salvation.

07:42

A couple of different times in the scriptures, explicitly we have commands from the writers of the

07:52

Bible and the Holy Spirit then to examine ourselves, examine yourself,

07:58

Paul says. I think it's 2 Corinthians 13. Examine yourself to see whether or not you're in the faith.

08:06

And then in 2 Peter 1 .10, I believe it is, Peter says, make your calling and election sure.

08:15

So when we talk about assurance of salvation, we're not just talking about this magical thing out there.

08:21

What we're talking about is an assured faith. Maybe I should say this too. The Puritans were good about this, and the

08:29

Reformers were good about this. We need to be good about this too. Saving faith and assurance of faith are not the same thing.

08:36

That's right. So it is possible to possess saving faith without assurance.

08:46

Yeah, and I think one of the things we want to point out that there are different kinds of doubt. So I would say there are some people who are not converted, and their doubts consist in doubts of God.

09:01

They doubt whether or not God really exists. They doubt whether or not God is really spoken in the Scriptures.

09:07

They doubt whether or not Jesus really died on the cross for them and really has washed away their sin and brought them life in his resurrection.

09:16

They doubt those things. And I would say, friend, if you doubt those things, if you don't believe those things, you're not a

09:23

Christian. But then there are other people who doubt themselves. They really do believe in God as he is presented in the

09:35

Scriptures. They really do believe that the Scriptures are the Word of God. They really do believe that Jesus is very

09:41

God of very God and that he came to redeem us from our sin, that he lived a perfect life on our behalf, that he died on the cross in our place, our substitution, that he was resurrected on the third day.

09:54

They really do believe that. And what they doubt is themselves. They doubt their faith.

10:02

They doubt are they trusting. Maybe they've been under bad teaching. And I would say to many of those people, they're actually converted.

10:11

They just need to understand what the Bible teaches about faith, what faith really is.

10:19

And so I think we need to distinguish between people who are doubting God and people who are struggling while believing in God.

10:28

They're struggling maybe against a works -based system. Maybe they've been fed something that wasn't true.

10:35

And so that's causing a false kind of doubt. Yeah, and I think it all comes down to our theology.

10:44

People listen to them.

10:51

Hey, don't doubt, don't doubt, don't doubt. And so every time someone has a doubt and they think, they just try to push that away.

10:57

They just say, well, no, I know I'm a savior. I'm not supposed to doubt, not supposed to doubt, not supposed to doubt. Well, there are people even listening to this podcast perhaps that need to,

11:07

I'm not going to say doubt, but need to examine yourself. That's right. Think through why it is that you think that you're a

11:15

Christian. Instead of immediately when you begin feeling some sort of doubt, to just dismiss it because of some sermon you heard 30 years ago or something.

11:23

Or because you tied a knot in the reins, or you tossed a stick into the fire, or you tossed your rock into the lake.

11:34

All of which things I've heard, this is your confession of faith because you tied this knot in the reins.

11:44

Signed the card, walked an aisle, prayed the prayer, jumped in the Baptist tree. None of that guarantees that you're a

11:52

Christian. And so don't immediately take your doubts and say, well, I'm not supposed to doubt.

11:57

No, take the biblical commands and examine yourself. Make your calling and election sure.

12:03

So now we transition into that. How then can a Christian have proper biblical assurance?

12:13

The classic passage, as you're thinking about that, Eddie, but the classic passage that we'll mention is in 1

12:21

John 5 .13. He says, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the

12:28

Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. So in other words, the

12:35

Scriptures testify that assurance of salvation, not only is it a good thing, it is possible for the believer.

12:45

Like the confession of faith says, not only possible, I would say it's more of the normal reality for the

12:52

Christian, for the true believer, even though we may struggle with doubts, we can have assurance of faith.

13:00

How do we have assurance of faith? You know, for me, a little bit of my own testimony here,

13:11

I struggled for years without assurance. After I was converted when

13:19

I was about 12, a couple of years after my conversion, our church back then was very emotional, was very driven by kind of the normal, what you would think of as a, they called us baptocostals, but I mean, it wasn't actually charismatic in terms of the gifts of the

13:43

Holy Spirit, but it was charismatic in terms of the charisma of the pastor and all those kinds of things, and encouraged to have an emotional experience every single service.

13:57

And I remember hearing a testimony from a lady of how that she had thought she was saved and she wasn't.

14:06

And I went up at the end of the service and told the pastor,

14:12

I mean, I remember that being the first time that I even considered that, you mean what

14:18

I did a couple of years ago, I could actually not be saved. And that started what, for me, was more than a decade, even after entering the ministry of struggling with assurance of salvation.

14:31

How could I know that I was saved? And I would hear pastors say, you got to know that you know, that you know, that you know, that you know.

14:38

And I was like, I just never felt like I could get there. And I was struggling. I was a pastor.

14:45

I was actually pastoring that same church that I'd grown up in and struggling with assurance of faith.

14:51

And I can remember lots of what we would call, you know, dark nights of the soul, just spending all night in God's word and in prayer and just seeking that assurance.

15:03

And, you know, I had prayed that sinner's prayer thousands of times, and I'd went forward in so many different services over the years because, you know,

15:14

I was always promised, if you'll just, if you'll just step out, if you'll just take that step, then the

15:21

Lord will do the rest, you know, and it never worked. And finally,

15:26

I'll just tell you what happened for me was I got to the point where essentially

15:33

I said to the Lord, Lord, I'm either saved or I'm not, but I don't have anywhere else to go but your word.

15:42

I've got a Bible, and I'm just going to pour myself into it. And if I die and go to hell, well, I die and go to hell.

15:48

But where else am I going to go? And I really hung on these words from John chapter 6.

15:57

It says, after this, this is John 6, 66. After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.

16:05

So Jesus said to the 12, do you want to go away as well? And Simon Peter answered him,

16:11

Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that you are the

16:19

Holy One of God. And, you know, that really became for me my confession. I got to the point where I said,

16:28

Lord, I just believe, I'm going to believe anything that's in this book, and I'm going to believe your words.

16:34

You have the words of eternal life. This is the only way I'm ever going to find salvation.

16:40

Now, with that, the Lord radically changed my theology.

16:46

I went through almost like a second conversion when it comes to my understanding of the

16:53

Scriptures and of who God was. But in that, he brought me to assurance of faith.

16:59

And it really came down to, was I going to trust God's word or was I going to trust my feelings?

17:07

Yeah. Amen. I want to read some more from chapter 18 of 1689, paragraph 3.

17:15

This infallible assurance is not such an essential part of faith that it is always fully experienced alongside faith.

17:22

In other words, we differentiate between faith and assurance of faith. But true believers may wait a long time and struggle with many difficulties before obtaining it.

17:35

Yet with the enabling of the Spirit to know the things freely given to them by God, they may attain this assurance using ordinary means appropriately without any extraordinary revelation.

17:48

Therefore, it is the duty of all to be as diligent as possible to make their calling and election sure.

17:54

In this way, their hearts may be enlarged in peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, in love and thankfulness to God, and in strength and cheerfulness in the duties of obedience.

18:04

These effects are the natural fruits of this assurance. Thus, it does not at all encourage believers to be negligent.

18:12

So I have a few things that I would say similar to what you're saying. Number one, I would say, if you're struggling with the assurance of salvation or you're struggling with doubt, first and foremost, you must, you must, you must not begin with self, not begin with things that you've done.

18:26

You must begin with Christ. Christ is the foundation of our assurance.

18:32

Look to Christ. Look to his gospel. Look to his fulfilling all righteousness.

18:40

Look to him being truly God and truly man. Look to him taking our sins in his body on the tree, bearing the wrath of God against us, a wrath that is a propitiation, a wrath -satisfying sacrifice that is sufficient for whoever will come and trust him.

19:00

Look to his resurrection and victory, raised, Paul says in Romans 4 .25, for our justification.

19:07

You must begin your quest for assurance by looking to Christ. And then let me say this.

19:14

It says ordinary means in the Confession, and I say this,

19:19

I've said this a lot, if you are living in open defiance of the Lord, if you're living together with a person outside of wedlock, if you're, you know, living in drunkenness or homosexuality or thievery or you're just, you're not going to church and yet you have some sort of assurance of salvation,

19:41

I would say that's alarming. You're in a serious situation.

19:46

You want to consider yourself virtuous because you're able to live in rebellion against God's word and yet at the same time possess some sort of assurance.

19:55

My friend, I'm going to tell you, that's a false assurance. If you can be assured of your faith while living in open rebellion against God, continuous open rebellion against God, you're in a dangerous place.

20:13

I would say that's the very thing that the psalmist in Psalm 19 pleads with God to save him from presumptuous sin.

20:22

If you're in the midst of sin and you're saying, well, I know I'm a

20:27

Christian because of whatever took place in the past and you think you can just live that way, that's a presumptuous sin and we ought to beware of that kind of presumptuous sin.

20:41

Amen. So look to Christ, kill sin, turn away from sin, and then these ordinary means, that is, put yourself in the pathway, as it were, of the operations of the

20:56

Holy Spirit. Read the Scriptures, seek the Lord in prayer, stay plugged up to the local church, sit under the sound preaching of God's word, fellowship with brothers and sisters.

21:10

And by the way, when I say fellowship, just to be clear, because as Baptists we think, well, fellowship's you're just eating a meal.

21:16

No, no, fellowship, Christian fellowship, is way deeper than that. Talk of the things of Christ with one another.

21:21

Sure, go bowling, go out and eat ice cream, that's great. But as you're doing these things, you're speaking about eternal matters, you're speaking about the things of Christ, you're speaking about your own

21:34

Bible reading and the things that God is doing in your family. So these are the ways that we seek to have assurance.

21:44

And then another thing is we have the church, and this is why we need to live, and I've already mentioned this, obviously, the church, but this is why we need to live in close proximity to our brothers and sisters.

21:58

I'm not talking about geographically. It's okay if you're driving a ways to church, but you need to spend time with brothers and sisters, because as you wrestle with doubts, they're able to give you counsel.

22:11

Your doubts may be warranted, you know? Yeah, that's right. You might say, I'm just doubting my salvation, and you may have someone who loves you enough that says, you know, when

22:20

I hear you pray, it makes me think you don't understand some things, and maybe we need to talk.

22:28

You know what I'm saying? We can't imagine having conversations like that because we live in such a superficial sort of Christianity, but those are the kind of deep and challenging conversations we need to have.

22:39

We need to have brothers and sisters who are willing to point out to us our faults, but also willing to point out to us our triumphs.

22:50

One of the passages I think about right now is Hebrews 3, verse 12. It says, Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living

23:01

God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

23:11

So false assurance is a reality, but the church helps to guard against that.

23:16

And I would say on a day of technology, used to you couldn't do this. Used to it would be like, man, you know, these guys are walking four hours to get to church, and I don't see them during the week.

23:28

But guess what? Now in the age of social media and cell phones and such, you can reach out and stay in contact with people every day and encourage one another every day.

23:40

And this is the kind of relationship these are the kind of relationships that we need to be building in the local church, and these are going to have a direct impact on biblical assurance.

23:51

Yeah. And I want to just mention, you mentioned biblical fellowship. Dr. Don Whitney, in his book on the spiritual disciplines, in his chapter on silence and solitude, he gives a definition of biblical fellowship.

24:07

He says, biblical fellowship is more than Christians socializing, which is often what we think it is, right?

24:15

We sit down to have a meal, and we talk about guns, or we talk about deer hunting, or we talk about whatever.

24:24

But biblical fellowship is more than Christians socializing because it involves talking about God and the things of God.

24:32

If it's real biblical fellowship, it doesn't mean that as Christians we can't socialize.

24:38

I think we should. I mean, our closest friends ought to be our brothers and sisters in Christ, our brothers and sisters in the church, and it's fine for us to talk about razorback baseball or whatever.

24:52

But the conversations we should enjoy the most are the ones about God and the things of God.

24:59

And so that's the kind of biblical fellowship. Listen, if you're struggling in your faith, you know who you most need to be around?

25:07

Christians. Amen. The world doesn't have anything for you. So get in God's word and get around Christians because maybe you are unconverted, but it's in God's word and with believers who are going to speak the gospel to you where God may do a work of salvation in your life.

25:25

And if you are converted, it's going to be in God's word and through the fellowship of believers that God's going to bring you into real assurance of faith.

25:38

Let me go ahead and read paragraph 4. We wind up skipping paragraph 2, but you can go back and read the chapter 18 of 1689.

25:45

But paragraph 4 says, True believers may in various ways have the assurance of their salvation shaken, decreased, or temporarily lost.

25:55

This may happen because they neglect to preserve it or fall into some specific sin that wounds their conscience and grieves the

26:02

Spirit. It may happen through some unexpected or forceful temptation or when

26:07

God withdraws the light of His face and allows even those who fear Him to walk in darkness and to have no light.

26:14

Yet they are never completely lacking the seed of God, the life of faith, love of Christ and the brethren, sincerity of heart, or conscience concerning their duty.

26:25

Out of these graces, through the work of the Spirit, this assurance may at the proper time be revived.

26:31

In the meantime, they are kept from utter despair through them. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're saying,

26:37

Well, I just don't know. I'm wrestling. I don't know if I'm a Christian. Maybe Sunday I'll just sit at home and figure it out.

26:44

And when I figure it out, then I'll start going back to church. No, that's not what you do.

26:50

You keep going. You keep plugging. You keep wrestling. You keep struggling. You keep praying. Surround yourself with godly people as Eddie just exhorted us to.

27:03

And seek the Lord's face. Repent of any known sin. And look to Christ as your only suitable and all -sufficient

27:12

Savior. Yeah, you need to hear the Word proclaimed. You know, as important as it is for you to read the

27:19

Word, maybe you need to hear the Word proclaimed by that pastor as he stands before God's people and proclaims the gospel.

27:30

You need to hear that. And so you need to go and you need to be under that.

27:36

That is the means by which the Holy Spirit works in the lives of people. Even to bring assurance.

27:42

Not only to bring conversion to the lost person, but assurance to the saint. There's a reason why the old song says, you know, those who know the story best love to hear it the most.

27:54

Or that's not it. I can't remember the quote, but you know what I mean. We do love to hear the gospel.

28:02

And that's one of the ways you can look for assurance. Do you love to hear the gospel?

28:09

That's a strong evidence of conversion if it's a joy and a delight for you to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.

28:23

Amen. Amen. I think that's good. Hopefully this is helpful. If we can be more helpful, feel free to reach out to us.

28:31

But I'll encourage you more than anything else. If you're struggling with this and you need, this is why you need a local church, you need to go to your pastors and you need to talk these things through.

28:45

Just to my left, I'll give you a book reference. It's called Knowing and Growing in Assurance of Faith by Joel Beeky.

28:53

Knowing and Growing in Assurance of Faith by Joel Beeky. I read that recently this year. It's good.

28:59

Very good. Works through some of the things we've talked about. You got anything else to add, Eddie? No, man.

29:05

I think that's good. I would just encourage people, as I shared my testimony earlier, if you're out there and you think,

29:15

I'm never going to be able to have assurance, that's where I was. I had concluded that I was never going to have assurance.

29:24

And let me tell you, that's not true. If you will trust in God's word and you will give yourself to that only, just I'm going to trust whatever

29:39

God says, then you can have assurance and you can know that you have eternal life.

29:46

As Tom Askel says, we have a book. That's right. Look to it.

29:51

Thank you guys for joining us on this week of the Rural Church Podcast. Say goodbye,

29:57

Eddie. We'll see you guys next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

30:06

God's doing. This is His work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the hoemos, the masterpiece of God.