WWUTT 906 No One Will Snatch Them Out?

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Jesus said, My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

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This is the doctrine of eternal security when we understand the text. Many of the

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Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty.

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Visit our website at www .utt .com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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Thank you, Becky. We continue our study of the Gospel of John, finishing up Chapter 10 this week.

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I'll start reading in verse 19, and we'll go to the end of the chapter. The Apostle John wrote,

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There was again a division among the Jews because of these words that Jesus said. Many of them said,

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He has a demon, and he is insane. Why listen to him? Others said, These are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon.

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Can a demon open the eyes of the blind? At that time the Feast of Dedication took place in Jerusalem.

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It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the colonnade of Solomon. So the

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Jews gathered around him and said, How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the

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Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, and you do not believe.

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The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.

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My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

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My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my

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Father's hand. I and the Father are one. The Jews picked up stones again to stone him.

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Jesus answered them, I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of them are you going to stone me?

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The Jews answered him, It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself

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God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law? I said,

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You are gods? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and Scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the

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Father consecrated and sent into the world, you are blaspheming? Because I said,

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I am the Son of God? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me.

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But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the

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Father is in me, and I am in the Father. Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.

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He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained.

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And many came to him, and they said, John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.

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And many believed in him there. So going back to verses 19 through 21, all of this is still related to Jesus having healed the man who had been born blind back in John chapter 9.

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So from the start of chapter 9 through midway part of chapter 10, all of this is still concerning the same event, all of the controversy that that had stirred up.

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And some people are just hearing the words that Jesus said and not considering what he is saying in light of the miracle that he had just performed.

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And so based on his words, they're saying he has a demon and he is insane. Why listen to him?

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But then there are others that are considering the words that he's saying in relation to the fact that he just healed a man.

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That is clearly something supernatural. Who could do such incredible signs but God?

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So others in verse 21 say, these are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon.

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Can a demon open the eyes of the blind? See, even the people recognized here, demons don't heal people.

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Consider the contrast that Jesus made in John 10, 10, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy only.

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He's not trying to make life better. He's coming to destroy people. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

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So demons did not heal people. They caused blindness. They caused people to have epileptic seizures and fits.

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And Jesus would cast out such demons or he would heal the blindness of a man who had been born blind for the purpose of showing the power of God through him.

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Demons didn't heal blindness. Jesus is the one that did that. So there are people that even recognize this.

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And I mean, it's as if these people are saying, hey, just because you don't understand the words that Jesus is saying doesn't mean that he has a demon.

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It means you have the problem. Jesus is not the one who has the problem. And this is something that we encounter even today when it comes to teaching soundly the word of God.

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There are those who will hate what it is that you have to say. Even when you quote the

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Bible exactly, they will hate it. And the reason why they hate it is because they cannot bear to hear the word of Christ.

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Going back to what Jesus said in John chapter eight, why can you not bear to hear my word?

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Well, hang on. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.

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You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

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So why is it that whenever you're quoting the word of God to somebody, they will hate what it is that you have to say, even when you're quoting it soundly in context, you are using it in the proper way, but they will hate it.

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It is because they are not the children of God. They do not know the words of their father or the word of Christ, his son.

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They want to do what they want to do. They want to hear what they want to hear. They are deaf. They are dumb.

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They are blind. And until they realize that they need the healer in order to open their eyes and heal their spiritual blindness or open their ears and heal their deafness or replace their heart of stone with a soft heart of flesh, cleansing them of their uncleanness is and causing them to walk in God's statutes and be careful to obey his rules until they recognize that by the healing power of God.

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They are going to continue to chase after the passions of the flesh. They will follow the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

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I'm quoting from Ephesians two, one through three, and it is God who has rescued us from that.

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He has made us from children of the devil into children of God by the spirit of adoption that is within us.

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This is what Jesus has done and what he has accomplished. So now through his healing power, we're no longer wandering around aimless, blind and dumb, but we have our eyes opened and we see

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God for who he is and we hear his word and we understand it and we desire to obey him.

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So there are people here who have received that testimony and believe it. And there are others who yet are closed off to understanding the word of Christ because they still love the sinfulness of their own passions or they want to exalt themselves in their own works.

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They want to believe that they can be saved by their own legalism rather than worshipping the son who was sent by the father.

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So then we have a passage of time that changes here. We that was verses 19 through 21, a passage of time when we get to verse 22.

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At that time, the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. The last feast that we had read about was the

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Feast of Booths. That was in chapters seven and eight. Now we've been through chapters nine and ten and we've come to the

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Feast of Dedication. So a span of about two months has passed over the course of these four chapters or so, seven, eight, nine and ten.

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And the Feast of Booths would have been in the fall. It was toward the end of October. The Feast of Dedication is toward the end of December.

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That's Hanukkah. The Festival of Lights. That's what the Feast of Dedication is. So at that time, the

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Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter. And Jesus was walking in the temple in the colonnade of Solomon.

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Now, even though a span of about two months has passed over these four chapters, John keeps this in context with what we had just read in chapter 10, because Jesus is going to continue to talk about the same thing.

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That's why it's included in such close alignment with what we had just read following the healing of the man that had been born blind.

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Now, Jesus is at the Feast of Dedication, but he's still talking about the same thing that he was talking about after he healed that man.

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So the Jews gathered around him and said, how long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the

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Christ, tell us plainly. And Jesus answered them, I told you and you do not believe.

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The works I do in my father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.

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So, again, all this still in context with what he just said, though time has passed, he's still talking about the same thing that he's been talking about over the course of chapter 10, that he is the good shepherd and those who hear his voice and follow him are his sheep.

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Jesus said, I told you. They've asked him, if you are the Christ, tell us plainly. And Jesus said,

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I have told you and you do not believe. Again, why is it that they don't believe? Because they do not have they do not have ears to hear.

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They hear what they want to hear. They do not hear the word of God because they are not children of God.

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So Jesus says, I told you and you do not believe. Why is it that they do not believe?

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Because they're not among his sheep. They do not know the voice of the shepherd. That's what

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Jesus is saying here. I've told you, you don't get it because you're not among my sheep.

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You are not going to be among those who follow me. I have called those who are going to follow me.

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And there are others that are not of this fold. And I must go to them and I will call them and they will follow me.

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And that's what he had mentioned, you know, midway part of chapter 10. And we had talked about that last week.

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I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice.

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So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason, the father loves me because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.

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No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again.

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This charge I have received from my father. So Jesus still talking about being the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep and those who are his sheep will hear his voice, believe him and follow him.

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They do not understand what Jesus has said because they are not among his sheep. They want him to tell them plainly if they if he is the

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Christ. And we really don't understand their motivation here. Do they want him to tell them plainly so that they can worship him?

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Or do they want him to tell them plainly so that they can kill him because they think that he's actually blaspheming and he has a demon?

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It's uncertain. It's kind of like they're they're saying, we want you to plainly tell us you are the

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Christ. Jesus is saying, I have told you that I am the Christ. That's really what is his answer is there.

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And yet they're not hearing it in the words they want to hear it in. We want to hear it a certain way to appease our flesh a certain way.

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No, my sheep are going to hear what it is that I say. You're not among those sheep.

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So you don't understand the words that I am saying to you. I told you and you do not believe the works that I do in my father's name.

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Bear witness about me. So it's the works and the words that go together. Jesus spoke the words.

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He performed the works. He did the works to show that he was sent from his father in heaven. So the words that he said were not man's words, nor were they by his own will, but by the will of the father affirming that the message that Jesus spoke came from God.

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The word that he spoke was the word of God. So he says the works that I do in my father's name bear witness about me again, even making reference back to the man whom he had healed, who was blind and from birth.

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But you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

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I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

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My father, who has given them to me, is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

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I and the father are one. That is like the quintessential passage related to the doctrine that we refer to as the doctrine of eternal security or once saved, always saved.

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Now, there is a right way to understand this doctrine and there's a wrong way to understand this doctrine.

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Here's the wrong way. Once saved, always saved does not mean that just because you prayed a prayer once in your life that you can now live like the devil for the rest of your existence and you're still going to go to heaven because you prayed a prayer once and maybe even wrote the date that you prayed that prayer in your

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Bible. And when somebody says, well, look at the way they live their life and then they're then they died.

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There's no way that person went to heaven. And somebody goes, well, yeah, but they prayed a prayer when they were 14 years old and got baptized.

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And, you know, once saved, always saved. So because they did that, we know that this person can be in heaven.

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And that's not how that doctrine works. That's not what that doctrine is arguing for. That's certainly not what

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Jesus is saying here. If a person prays a prayer and they get baptized and maybe they even write the date in their

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Bible of when these things happen, but there's no evident transformation in their life, they go back to living exactly the way they were before they made that profession of faith.

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Then the profession that they made was not genuine. They were a liar. People lie. Right. Can they lie about a prayer that they pray to God?

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Can they lie about a baptism? Yes, they can. But this baptism that they're doing, they're doing it just, you know, for for vain reasons, it's not because they are conveying by this.

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I've been buried with Christ in my sins and I've been risen again to new life. That's not what they're doing.

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They they're doing it because somebody told them they had to do it in order to have eternal life. So that's why they're doing it.

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But it's a passing opinion. They're not going to continue in what they're professing with their baptism.

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They have not actually been buried with Christ in their sins. Spiritually, that's never happened.

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So even though they convey that outwardly, physically with an act like baptism, yet that transformation had never actually occurred in their hearts.

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If they go back to living the way that they had always lived. Continuing to walk in this world, continuing to chase after the passions of their flesh, continuing to be enslaved to the sin that they in a moment had said

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Christ had freed them from. Apparently not because they're still enslaved to it. They're still walking in it.

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I just preached to my congregation yesterday out of Galatians chapter two, verse 20. I have been crucified with Christ.

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It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life

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I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

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In Colossians chapter three, verse five, Paul said, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you?

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And he goes on in verse nine to say, you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

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So we must no longer walk in the old sinful way. We must walk in newness of life, having or presently being renewed in knowledge after the image of our creator.

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Our mind is being renewed to have the mind of Christ. So if a person has made a genuine confession of faith, they have genuinely said,

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I was once a sinner, but now in Christ, I am a new creation. The old is passed away.

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Behold, the new is come. And they continue to show in their life a progression in their faith.

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They are maturing when it comes to their faith, when it comes to an understanding of things like repentance, when it comes to loving

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God and loving others, when it comes to understanding the word of God that we have given to us in the

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Bible. We see in this person's life there is a maturity in all of these areas.

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Then we can definitively say that their profession of faith is genuine.

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Their conversion was genuine. I remember hearing a story regarding George Whitfield and after one of the revival meetings that George Whitfield had preached, somebody came up to Whitfield and said, hey, so how many conversions were there at your at your revival that you just did?

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And Whitfield said, I don't know. We'll find out six months to a year from now. One of the things that Whitfield was conveying was we don't know if those people had become converted because they were caught up in an emotional moment or if that conversion was genuine.

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When we see that in their lives, they are continuing in the profession that they have made, then we know that that conversion was genuine.

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Now, I don't think that that means that when a person has made a profession of faith that we say to that person, well, we don't really know if you're genuine or not now.

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Rather, we need to continue to disciple them. We need to continue to grow and mature them. They've made that profession, take it seriously and warn them against apostasy or falling away.

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But if God has genuinely transformed the heart of a person, if a person has gone from being rebellious against God to becoming a lover of God.

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And all of this has happened by the power of God. Is God not also powerful enough to sustain that person in the transformation that he has caused in their life?

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Is God not so faithful to this call that he would allow them to fall away?

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This person whom he had predestined from before the foundation of the world to be justified and also sanctified and ultimately glorified?

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We read this in Romans chapter eight, verse 30, those whom he predestined, he also called and those whom he called, he also justified and those whom he justified, he also glorified.

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And later on toward the end of the chapter, we read this verse 38, for I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation.

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We'll be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our

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Lord. That's eternal security. That's once saved, always saved.

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If you're genuinely saved, you will stay saved. You once you have found eternal life by the the testimony of God and the transformation of the

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Holy Spirit in that person's life, making them into a new creation. When they found eternal life, they will stay in eternal life.

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If they lose eternal life, then it was never eternal. So you either have it or you don't.

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But a person doesn't come into and out of eternal life. Jesus says plainly here, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

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I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

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My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

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I and the father are one. We're going to look at another aspect of this doctrine tomorrow, the doctrine of eternal security.

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When we take a look at the parable of the sower in Matthew chapter 13, we'll talk to you again tomorrow.

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Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

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You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com. Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's word when we understand the text.