Fruits of True Salvation – Hebrews 6:10

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You turn now please to Hebrews chapter six. Hebrews chapter six, and we're gonna read together verses nine through 12.

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Hebrews chapter six, verse nine. But beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you and things that accompany salvation, though we're speaking in this way.

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For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward his name in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints.

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And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

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Let's pray together before we begin. Father, we come now to your word with the confident expectation that your spirit will be our guide and our teacher today.

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And we pray that you would fill our hearts with a love for the truth, a desire to obey it. We pray that you would encourage and equip us and edify us and exhort us through the preaching of your word today.

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And may our time of study here and reflection upon these truths benefit our hearts and accomplish all of your good and sovereign purposes for us as your people.

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We pray your blessing upon this time and ask this in the name of Christ our Lord, amen. Well, some healthy self -reflection on our

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Christian lives is always healthy and can be very helpful. It is never good to sort of plow through our lives oblivious to any kind of self -reflection or meditation or at least some kind of introspection into where we're at spiritually ourselves.

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And scripture encourages us to examine ourselves. Paul wrote to the Corinthians and he said, test yourselves and see if you're in the faith.

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Examine yourselves or do you not realize this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you fail the test.

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And he wrote to the Corinthians to encourage them to do a little bit of self -reflection, a little bit of self -examination.

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And there is a measure of that that is healthy. We don't want to be overly introspective because when we start to look too much at ourselves and take our eyes off of Christ, we could begin to get kind of shaken and uncertain and we'd see nothing but our sin and our own failings and our own inadequacies and that can be unhealthy.

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But there is a certain measure of self -reflection that is good and a certain measure of self -examination where we look at our own lives and say, is there internal and external fruit of genuine conversion in my life?

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That is appropriate. And it's not often that people or Christians in churches around the nation are ever encouraged to do that kind of self -reflection.

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Often, Christians are just encouraged in most churches to just simply plot on with their Christian life and if you have prayed a prayer and if you feel a spiritual experience, then that is welcome to the kingdom of God, welcome to the family of God, that's all that is necessary.

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But scripture would encourage us to look inwardly to some extent to examine ourselves to see if we actually be in the faith.

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And the whole command to examine ourselves presupposes some kind of an objective standard that would be outside of us against which we could examine ourselves to see how we are doing.

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And part of that external standard that is objective, it's outside of us, can be found in the book of 1

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John. 1 John is great because in that little book of 1 John, the word no is used 40 times in five short chapters.

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That little tiny epistle at the end of the New Testament, the word no is used 40 times in those five short chapters because John is writing and he says in 1

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John chapter five verse three, these things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

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And not all the time but often in the book of John, that's how the word no is used. I'm writing this so that you might know that you have eternal life.

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By this you know that you've passed from death to life. By this you know that you're in the kingdom of God, et cetera, so these are sort of the standards and I'm gonna give you some of them from 1

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John. These are some of the indicators of genuine salvation in the life of a believer. 1

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John 2 verse three, by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. That's the first one, obedience.

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1 John 2 29, if you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of him.

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Obedience and practicing righteousness. 1 John 3 verses 14 through 19, we know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren.

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He who does not love abides in death and everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

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We know love by this that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. We will know by this that we are of the truth and we will assure our hearts before him.

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1 John 4 6, we are of God. He who knows God listens to us. He who is not from God does not listen to us.

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By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. 1 John 4 7, beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows

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God. 1 John 4 13, by this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his spirit.

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1 John 5 18, we know that no one who is born of God sins. But he who is born of God keeps him and the evil one does not touch him.

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You hear all of those measures by which we can know that we are saved? This is how we know that we pass from death into life because we love the brethren.

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We love the brethren, we practice righteousness, we obey him, we shun sin, we have the Holy Spirit abiding in us, we are of the truth, we listen to the words and teachings of the apostles.

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These are the outward marks and inward marks of genuine and true salvation given to us in the book of 1

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John. And that fruit can be perceived in us when we examine ourselves and it can be perceived by others outside of us who observe in the lives of God's people the fruits that ought to be there and are there by virtue of their salvation.

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And it is these kinds of fruits that the author of Hebrews saw in the lives of his audience in Hebrews chapter six that gave him assurance and confidence that they genuinely were salvation.

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Brethren, and after the harsh warning of verses four through eight, he says to them, brethren, we're convinced of better things concerning you, things that accompany salvation, for God is not unjust to us to forget your work and the love which you've shown toward his name in ministering and in still ministering to the saints.

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That's verses nine and 10. And he observes in the lives of those people certain things that were indicative to him of a genuine and true salvation.

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These are the fruits of eternal life, the fruits of salvation. So though we don't wanna spend all of our days just genuflecting and navel -gazing and examining ourselves and weighing ourselves and measuring ourselves by themselves, we don't wanna do that, but at the same time, we don't want to be oblivious to that activity either and not engage in any kind of self -examination or self -reflection.

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We ought to be able to look at our own lives and in the lives of people near and dear to us and say, are there evidences and fruits of salvation in me and are there evidences and fruits of salvation in the lives of other people whom

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I love who claim to be believers? And if those evidences and fruits are there, then we can say we have this assurance, we're confident of this, that God is not unjust and he will not forget these things and you have these marks of salvation.

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These are the things that accompany salvation. So we're looking today at verses nine and 10, actually the last half of verse 10, and we're kind of examining a little bit of the context here.

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After the harsh warning in verses four through eight, the author assures his readers of their salvation in verses nine and 10, and then he encourages them to continue in that salvation in verses 11 and 12.

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And a couple weeks ago, we looked at verse nine of what it is that he is referring to when he says, "'We are convinced of better things concerning you, "'the things that accompany salvation.

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"'What are the things that accompany salvation?' We're getting to that today at the end of verse 10. Last week, we looked at something that was true of God that gave the author confidence that those to whom he was writing would eventually be saved, that they would be saved and that they are secure.

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And what is it about God that is our safety and our security? He indicates two things in verse 10.

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God is not unjust, that is, God is just, and second, God will not forget, he is omniscient. So those two things, the justice of God and the omniscience of God, which are a terror to unbelievers, are the comfort and solace of the believer who is saved because he trusts both in the justice and the omniscience of God to finish what

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God has started and accomplished in our lives. So he says God is not unjust and God is omniscient, and those two things should be very comforting to those who are truly saved.

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But now he is assured of their salvation because of something that he sees in them, and this is the last half of verse 10 that we're looking at today.

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In verse 10, he says, "'God is not unjust so as to forget,' and here are the things, "'your work and the love which you have shown "'toward his name in having ministered "'and in still ministering to the saints.

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"'There were certain fruits that were evident "'in their lives, namely their works "'and their love for the name of God, "'that gave the author assurance of their salvation.'"

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So those are the two categories of fruits or evidences that we're gonna be looking at this morning, and we are gonna get through both of those, two evidences of salvation.

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So the first one is their works. I wanna point out a couple of things before we get into, actually, these two categories of things in this text.

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It is not unbiblical or irrational or unwarranted, nor is it judgmental or hypocritical or condescending or anything like that, to expect that there would be fruit in the lives of Christians, fruit in keeping with salvation.

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It's not irrational to expect that because biblical salvation is of such a nature that it is impossible to have true and biblical salvation and to not produce any fruit of that true and genuine salvation in your life.

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That is impossible. If you are truly saved, there will be some fruit, some evidence, some indicator, something present that would indicate that true salvation has taken place because the nature of salvation is such that it is impossible for salvation to be there and for there not to be a change because salvation is not just a matter of me affirming something that I never affirmed before and then rushing forward and getting baptized and then joining a group of people who all kind of look and sing and sound and act the same way that I do.

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That's not salvation. Salvation is moving from darkness to light, from the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God.

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It is moving from bondage to sin to a freedom from sin in Jesus Christ.

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It is moving from a place of being an idol worshiper and idolatry to the worship and service and love of the one, blessed, forever, triune

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God revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. It is moving from sin to holiness. It is nothing less than moving from death to life.

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Now, that's the type of language that scripture uses to describe salvation. It's not merely

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I attended a church and now I feel a lot better about my life, it's going better, things are easier.

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That's not salvation. Salvation is a spiritual resurrection from a place and position of spiritual death to spiritual life.

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It is impossible for that kind of radical transformation to take place and there to be absolutely no fruit of it, no evidence of it.

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So what are those evidences of it? Well, fruit in the Christian life, or fruit for a

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Christian is not always instantaneous. And sometimes this is the other area that we drop into. We think that if somebody gets saved that all of a sudden they should be just as sanctified as me.

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I've been a Christian for 40 years. And so they should have all of the fruits and evidences in their lives that I have.

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I mean, I no longer swear and I no longer think these thoughts and I no longer treat people like that. They got saved last week and if their salvation is genuine, they should be just as changed and holy and righteous and progressing in sanctification as I have.

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And sometimes that's an error we make. Fruit takes a while to manifest itself.

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Now some fruits will be immediate. In fact, there's somebody sitting amongst you here and I won't indicate who it is, who says that when he got saved, his swearing left him immediately.

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All of a sudden his mouth cleaned up and it was gone instantaneous. For me, it wasn't like that when I got saved, right?

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There were certain sins that immediately upon my salvation disappeared overnight. They were gone. But then there are other sins that we still struggle with to this day.

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If every sin were like that, we would all be perfectly holy. We would all be radiating the glory of Christ and our body would be, we would live forever.

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But that's not the way that salvation works. Salvation is this slow progress in sanctification and a pursuit of and a trend toward holiness.

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And we ought not to expect that these certain fruits will be evident, all of them immediately to the fullest degree. But there will be some fruit, there will be some kind of evidence and it is not wrong to expect that evidence, to expect that fruit.

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Because Jesus said that a good tree will produce good fruit and a bad tree will produce bad fruit and you will know a tree by its fruits.

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That's one of the evidences of a false teacher, they produce bad fruits. And a true Christian will produce and a true and good tree, which is a true

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Christian, will produce good fruit. There will be some kind of evidence in their lives. And observing those evidences can be a ground of our own assurance as to our salvation.

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Let me give you a couple of general observations of verses nine and 10 before we jump into the text. These things that were true of them, their work and their love for the name of God, these things are connected to what came first in verse 10, the character of God.

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Notice the author says, God is not unjust, that is, he will not be unrighteous and unjust so as to forget these things that you have done and these things that are true of you.

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In other words, these things that were true of them are indicative of the fact that they have salvation and therefore it would be unjust and forgetful of God to punish a believer in hell after they have produced the fruits of righteousness that are mentioned in verse 10.

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So there is a connection between what is true of them and what is true of God. Because these things are true of them, that they have works and deeds that are worthy of reward and because they love the name of God, God will not be unjust so as to forget that and to cast them into hell.

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Second, notice that these are the things that we're talking about now that are the things mentioned in verse nine that accompany salvation.

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Remember he says, brethren, we're convinced of better things concerning you, the things that accompany salvation. What are the things that belong to and accompany salvation?

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They're listed in verse 10. Your work and your love for the name of God. Those are the things that accompany salvation and so those things are better than the tasting and the enlightenment and the partaking mentioned in verses four and five.

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These things that accompany salvation are better than those previous things. Those previous things may characterize those who fall away, but these things characterize true and genuine believers.

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Good works, the works that are mentioned here and the love for the name of God. And in previous weeks, and this is by way of correction of something that I have said previously, in previous weeks

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I mentioned that there are three things here, their works, their love for God and their ministering to the saints, those three things.

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But now as I jumped into this text this week and looked at it, I realized that these are not three separate things, these are actually two categories and the two categories are their works and their love for the name of God.

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Those are two categories of evidences for salvation and their ministering and still ministering to the saints mentioned in verse 10 is an evidence of their love for God.

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You have evidenced, he says, this love for, you have shown love toward his name in having ministered to the saints.

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So the ministering to the saints is a manifestation of the love for the name of God and the deeds of the works that come at the beginning of verse 10, that is a separate category.

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So they're two separate and distinct categories of evidences and I wanna show you that there are a lot of things that fall into each of these two separate and distinct categories.

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One of them, the love for the name of God deals with our affections and the second one, the works that we do, that deals with our actions.

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So we have here both affections and actions and these two things go together. We're gonna take each one of them separately and then

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I'll show you at the end how these two things are sort of married together, how they go together and you really cannot separate them.

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So those are the two categories. First of all, let's look at your works. He says in verse 10, God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love that you have shown toward his name.

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What does he mean by work there? At this point in the text, Roman Catholics make a grave error because the way that they interpret verse 10 is to see the work here as describing deeds which merit salvation.

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So according to the Roman Catholic theology, the works that are described here are works that we do in order to contribute to the treasury of merit or even our own merit for our salvation.

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So in Roman Catholic theology, the deeds or the works of the saints over all of the years, they sort of pile up into this, what they would call the treasury of merit and if you and I do enough deeds to contribute to our salvation, then

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Jesus fills in the rest. What it is that is lacking after that, we have to purge off of us in purgatory through the suffering that we endure there but that these works that are described here,

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Roman Catholics would say, are the deeds or works that merit us salvation or God's favor.

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But you'll notice that in the text, he is not describing the means of salvation or the method of salvation or how it is that we're saved or what saves us.

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He's not describing any of that. What is he describing? He is really describing the evidences of salvation and not the means of our salvation.

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So they make the grave error of suggesting, and you can see how they would say this, because God is not unjust so as to forget your works, right?

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It would be unjust if God were to throw you into hell but God is not that way. He'll remember all of the good deeds that you have done in your life and bring all of that to bear in the end when he measures out your good deeds and your bad deeds, your sins and your merits and all of that.

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That's how they would interpret that but that's not what's being described in the passage. What's being described in the passage is the evidence of salvation.

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The word works, the word that's translated works there can refer to work or business or deeds or actions, a labor, a behavior or a task.

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So you can see this is kind of the broadest possible category of actions and activities that is being described here.

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The author is not suggesting one particular work but their actions, their deeds, their behavior, their works, their tasks, all of the various things that are done which would be considered good works.

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And these deeds obviously are not what earn us salvation and this is what James is describing in James chapter two when he describes a faith that is without works is dead.

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That faith cannot save you. A faith that has no evidence of itself in works that does not issue in good works, that faith cannot possibly save you.

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James chapter two verse 18. Someone may well say you have faith and I have works, show me your faith without the works and I'll show you my faith by my works.

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The person who has, says he has faith but doesn't have any good deeds that follow after that faith has a dead faith and that faith cannot save him and that's

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James's emphasis. That faith that you say you have, that you possess, it cannot save you, why?

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Not because the deeds make that faith powerful and if the deeds are not there then the faith isn't powerful.

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That faith cannot save you because it is not the nature of saving faith to be absent or vacant of good deeds.

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A true saving faith will be always accompanied with some deeds, some evidence, some works of righteousness that will be done because that faith, the faith that saves must produce good deeds.

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That's what we read in Ephesians chapter two when Paul says that by grace we have been saved through faith and that the faith is not of ourselves, it's the gift of God so that no one may boast.

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For we are his workmanship, Paul says, created in Christ Jesus for good works which

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God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, not created by good works.

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In other words, we are not made new creatures by deeds that we have done but those deeds that we have done are the things that we have been created in Christ Jesus and born again and saved unto.

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We're saved unto those good deeds and it is the evidence, good works is the evidence of divine election.

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Paul makes this connection in First Thessalonians chapter one verses two to four. Listen to how he describes it and Paul uses some of the same language that is used in Hebrews chapter six when he says to the

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Thessalonians, we give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers, constantly bearing in mind your work of faith, your labor of love and your steadfastness of hope.

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Now you will notice in Hebrews chapter six verses nine through 12 that steadfastness, or sorry, hope and faith and work and labor, all of these things are mentioned there.

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Those ideas are all mentioned there. Your work of faith, your labor of love, your steadfastness of hope in the Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our

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God and Father, knowing beloved brethren his choice of you. You know what the evidence of your salvation is?

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Your steadfastness of hope, that is perseverance all the way to the end, your labor of love and your work of faith.

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If those things are not there, there is no salvation. Period. There's no work of faith, there's no labor of love, there's no steadfastness of hope.

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If those things are not there, you are not saved. What is the evidence of one's election? It's those things.

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How do I know that I've been chosen by God? Have I responded in faith, and has that faith produced good works in my life?

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That's the evidence of divine election. And there are a multitude of different deeds that accompany the new birth.

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And as I said before, excuse me, as I said before, there's a bunch of things that go into this category of works and deeds.

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This would include serving others, caring for the poor, the oppressed, praying for others, giving, loving, encouraging, care for orphans and widows, submitting to authority, loving wives, serving your family, providing for others, using your spiritual gifts.

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Generally speaking, Paul says in 1 Timothy 6, verse 18, instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, and to be generous and ready to share.

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And listen to Titus, and I love the book of Titus. In fact, I'm considering preaching through the book of Titus after we get done with Hebrews.

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Some of you will be dead before we get to the book of Titus, but I am considering preaching through Titus when we get done with the book of Hebrews, and here's why.

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Titus is one of my favorite books, because one of my favorite themes in the book of Titus is the theme of good deeds and works.

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It's amazing to me how Titus develops that all the way through, because he writes to people, well, he writes to Titus, who was ministering amongst a people whom he describes in chapter one as liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons.

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Oh, that's good biblical language from an apostle right there. Liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons.

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And he tells Titus, you need to encourage these people, these liars, these evil beasts, and these lazy gluttons to engage in good deeds.

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So he says in Titus one, verse 16, they, that is, false teachers, they profess to know God, but by their deeds, they deny him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.

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Titus two, verse seven, in all things, show yourself to be an example of good deeds with purity and doctrine and dignified.

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Titus two, 14, Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds.

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Notice the contrast between lawless deeds and good deeds. Titus chapter three, verse one, remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed.

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And then almost as if he might sense that somebody might get the impression that deeds somehow merit us salvation,

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Paul says in Titus chapter three, verse five, he saved us not on the basis of deeds, which we have done in righteousness, but according to his mercy and the washing of regeneration and renewing of the

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Holy Spirit. It is not according to our deeds that we are saved. So Paul denies that deeds merit us salvation in any way, but he says you must be diligent to encourage them to engage in good deeds.

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Titus chapter three, verse eight, this is a trustworthy statement and concerning these things I want you to speak confidently so that those who have believed

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God will be careful to engage in good deeds. These things are good and profitable for men. Titus three, 14, our people must also learn to engage in good deeds to meet pressing needs so that they will not be unfruitful.

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Do you hear the emphasis all the way through Titus? Yeah, what a magnificent emphasis that is. Yeah, we're not saved on the basis of deeds, but salvation is never absent of any deeds, it's never void of any deeds, it is always accompanied by deeds.

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And these deeds, these works, these good works, the scripture describes, these are the product of the Holy Spirit. This always amazes me when

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I think about this. Any good work that you and I do that merits any kind of reward from the

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Lord is not done apart from the regenerating work of His Holy Spirit and the gracious empowerment of the

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Holy Spirit in His giftedness and His enabling and empowering grace through us to do that deed.

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In other words, left to myself, devoid of the Holy Spirit, I could never do any good work, not one. I couldn't do anything that would warrant or merit any kind of reward on the last day at all, ever, apart from the

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Holy Spirit. So God, according to Ephesians two, chapter two, verse 10, has prepared beforehand in eternity past good works for me to walk in and to do.

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Those good works, He then sends the Holy Spirit to dwell in us, to energize us, to do those works and those deeds.

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And so they are the produce and the product of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And then on the last day, God rewards us for those deeds.

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He's the one who prepared them and predestined us to do them. Then He empowers us to do the deeds and then

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He rewards us for doing it. Why would He reward us for doing that? Did we do it?

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Could we have done it without Him? Couldn't have done it without Him. You know what it is that God rewards on the final day in the lives of His people?

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It is those things that He has produced in their lives. That should just boggle your mind.

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He produces these things and then He lavishes us with rewards for doing the things that He produced in us.

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That is incredible. That is why it would be unjust for God to take that individual whom

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He has saved and produced that fruit and to cast them into hell. Because that person has rewards which He has done in their life that are worthy, or deeds which

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He has done in their life that are worthy of reward. And God cannot reward that person by casting them to hell.

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Therefore, the fruit that He has done and wrought in their lives must be rewarded. That person has to go to heaven and God has to lavish him with praise because God cannot be unjust to not reward the work that He has done in the life of somebody else.

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That is, that just boggles my mind. Our good deeds are rewarded by God, but they're not even done by us.

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I mean, they are done by us, right? We do them and we get tired. But they're not done by us in the sense that we couldn't have done them apart from His enabling and empowering grace.

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So that's the first thing, the deeds. God is not unjust so as to forget your work. That's the first category of deeds. The deeds, the first category of evidence is the deeds of the works that we do in His name.

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Second is our affections. First category is our actions. The second category is our affections. Notice what the author says.

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And the love which you have shown toward His name which is manifested in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints.

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There was a love that these people had for the name of God that manifested itself in ministry to others.

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Now what does it mean to love the name of God? Does it mean that you hear the word

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God and all of a sudden that fills your heart with affections because you love a word or you love a title or you love a name?

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When Scripture uses the phrase of the title the name of God or describes that, it's not describing a particular word.

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It is describing a person who is signified by that word. So that a love for the name of God is another way of saying a love for all that is

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God. God as He has revealed Himself in Scripture. It's shorthands. That's why we pray in His name, we evangelize in His name, we serve in His name, we love in His name, everything that we do in ministry, we do in His name.

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It is just simply a shorthand way of referring to all that is true of God, all that stands for God. His glory,

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His power, His authority, His grace, the name of God simply means, simply represents Him and it stands for all that He is.

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So what does it mean then that we have a love for the name of God? Does it mean that I have a love for the word

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J -E -S -U -S, Jesus, or a love for the word Yahweh? But it means that I have a love for the being and the person of God.

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And you say, but there are unbelievers who would claim to have a love for God, right? Have you run across these people in your witnessing encounters?

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Oh no, I love God. Where do you go to church? I don't, but I love God. I mean, I go out in the mountains,

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I wander around through the woods and I see the vistas and I see the sunrises and the sunsets and it's all beautiful and it just warms my heart and I think, oh,

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I love God. And really, the God they love is a God that they have made in their own image. That's the

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God that they love. A true believer will love God as he has revealed himself in Scripture in all of his attributes.

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An unbeliever loves the things about God that remind them of themselves. And so they will pick and choose the attributes of God.

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They will say, I love God as I want him to be or God as he should be, but there are certain parts about God and certain aspects of God and revealed in Scripture that I don't love so much.

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I have a book sitting on my shelf and I can't wait to read it because the subtitle is the best subtitle in the history of all subtitles of all books ever written bar none, promise you this.

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So here's the title of the book, None Greater. Here's the subtitle, The Undomesticated Attributes of God.

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Best subtitle in the world, The Undomesticated Attributes of God. In other words, there are things about God that make us very uncomfortable, are there not?

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Yeah, C .S. Lewis wrote in one of the Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan is not a tame lion. There are things about God that make us very uncomfortable.

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The fact that he is a just God and a righteous God and a holy God and that he will not blink towards sin and he will not let any crime go unpunished.

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The fact that God values his own glory more than anything else in all of creation, that is unsettling to many.

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The fact that he destroys nations and judges peoples and puts up kings and takes down kings and raises up empires and destroys empires overnight.

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The fact that God would use one ungodly nation to punish another ungodly nation and then turn around and say to that ungodly nation which was the instrument of his punishment, now

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I'm going to punish you for what you did to these people. That's the book of Isaiah, but that is a very difficult attribute of God, is it not?

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The fact that God would have mercy upon some and harden others like Moses and Pharaoh. The fact that God would love

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Jacob and hate Esau. Oh, that's uncomfortable, isn't it? The fact that God would have certain Psalms in the

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Psalter that describe the destruction of the ungodly and the wicked and where David would pray for this and desire this.

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That's an unpalatable attribute of God. The fact that he is sovereign and elects some and passes over others.

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And even more distasteful, that he doesn't reveal to you and I why it is that he elects some and passes over others.

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That just galls some people. One thing if God chose me or chose them, but it would be at least really nice for God to reveal to all of us that he chose me because I am so spanky.

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That would make me feel better. But the fact that God doesn't reveal anything about what his purposes are or what his basis of his choice was other than Ephesians chapter one, it is to the glory and the praise of his grace.

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That's it. He hasn't revealed why one and not another, why Jacob and not Esau, in order that his sovereign purposes would be accomplished.

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See, people don't like a just God, a righteous God, a sovereign God. They don't like an electing God. They don't like a

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God that has decreed in eternity past what his purposes are and then intends to accomplish those purposes, which is the glorification of his own name above all else.

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They don't like that God. They want a God that winks at sin, that is loving and good and kind, warms their hearts and fuzzy and pets them.

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A God that is really compassionate, makes them feel good about themselves. That's the God that most people worship. A believer has a love for God's name and that means a love for God as he has revealed himself in scripture.

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And a believer will see what God says in scripture and say, I will embrace and love and adore that God. Even that God and all of his undomesticated attributes.

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Even all of the things that make me uncomfortable, I will adore that God. That is what it means to have a love for the name of God.

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And that is something that only a Christian has. It also means that we have a love for the reputation of God and his honor and his glory.

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You can't possibly have a love for the name of God if at the same time you would desire or think nothing when that name is besmirched.

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So the concern of a truly regenerate Christian will always be, what will this reflect upon God if I do this?

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If I conduct myself in this way? Am I reflecting the grace of God and the glory of Christ?

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Am I reflecting the name of God well? Am I wearing the name Christian? Am I wearing the name of Christ in a way that does honor and glory to him?

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Or am I doing something in my conduct or my life that might besmirch him and tarnish his glory and tarnish his image in the eyes of other people?

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That is always the concern for a true and genuine Christian. That's what it means to have a love for the name of God. And of course, you can see that this is a broad category and would apply to our worship and our fellowship and our obedience to him.

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And the marks of this kind of love for the name of God is a ministry to others. Notice what he says in verse 10.

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In ministering and in still, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints. A ministry that had taken place that was worthy of reward and recognition and a ministry that was continuing to take place in the lives of these people.

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And whom are they ministering to? The saints. A love for the name of God will always manifest itself in ministering to other people, always.

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It has to. In some way, a love for the name of God is others -oriented.

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And in the scriptures, in the New Testament, it is primarily oriented toward believers, to the church.

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Now, the scripture is not opposed, it does not condemn, and it does not prohibit churches and Christians doing things of benefit and graciousness to the outside world.

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Doesn't prohibit that. But the emphasis, overwhelmingly in scripture, is that the good deeds of the saints is aimed at the saints.

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That's the primary emphasis in scripture. Not the pagan across the street. The best way we can show love for them is to evangelize them.

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Not to cancel a church service and go rake their lawn on a Sunday morning. You can rake their lawn Monday morning, you can rake their lawn all the way through to Saturday night.

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You can rake their lawn on Sunday afternoon, but it's not a testimony of the love and grace of God to cancel a church service to go do something for a pagan.

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That's not a demonstration of the love of God. Because the deeds in scripture that a saint does primarily are oriented and directed at other saints, all the way through scripture.

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Paul says in Galatians chapter six, verse 10, "'Do good to all men, "'especially those of the household of faith.'" See, it doesn't prohibit doing good to all men.

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But Paul says, especially, primarily, fundamentally, those who are the household of faith. The good deeds of the saints is to be aimed at the saints.

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Because we are the family of God, the household of God. And so we are concerned fundamentally and primarily about each other.

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Outside of that, if we have room and means, then we can do things to other people. Not that we withhold goodness from them, but that's not the emphasis or the focus for the people of God.

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1 John 5, one, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the children born of him.

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Our love and our deeds and the manifestation of our affections is to be geared toward other Christians, other believers.

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The early Christians shared their goods, not with pagans, but with others who were in the church. Remember Acts chapter two, they sold all their goods and they distributed as each had need?

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Was that to the high priest, to Caiaphas and his household? Who was that geared at, or aimed at? That was aimed at the other

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Christians within the body of Christ. That was the primary and foundational emphasis of the early church.

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Paul took up an offering during the famine that struck Judea and Jerusalem. He took up an offering to take back to whom?

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The saints who were in Jerusalem. Not unbelievers, not pagans. That wasn't the emphasis, that wasn't their emphasis, but to provide for one another.

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Do good to all men, especially to those who are of the household of faith. So love for God always translates into a love for his people.

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It has to do this because you know who the nearest physical representation of God to you is?

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The people that are sitting around you. See we can't, Christ doesn't appear to us physically and then we have an opportunity to serve him physically.

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But Christ is in his people, the church, in all of us. And the spirit of God dwells in us, and we are his children, bought by his blood, of his body, we are his bride.

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And when we serve each other, we're serving Christ. That's the glory of that truth. And so that is why all of the ministry and the deeds that are done by believers in the church, they are geared toward and directed at Christians.

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Not to the exclusion of unbelievers, but to primarily Christians. Because the nearest physical representation of God to you is the people that you're sitting next to.

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And so a true believer who loves the name of God will immediately say, how is it that I can serve this

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God? And a true believer will not come into a church. I have to be careful how

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I say this, but I'll say it uncarefully and I'll trust that you're generous enough to interpret it properly. A true believer doesn't come into a church like this one.

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I mean having done the work of figuring out that it's a solid church with sound doctrine and expository preaching and biblical leadership and meets all the marks of a good and healthy church.

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An unbeliever doesn't walk into a gathering like this and say to themselves, what can me and my family offer to these people by way of service?

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That's not what an unbeliever thinks. An unbeliever walks into a church and says, what can these people offer to me and my family?

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And the whole philosophy of church governance in our nation, in our age today, is 180 degrees around from where it ought to be.

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We ought to walk into a church, having done the background work of establishing it's a biblical church, the things are good there, we ought to walk into a fellowship like this and say these are the people, these are my people, these are the people that I can get to know, that I will get to love, and that I get to serve.

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So what can me and my family offer to this group of people? That's the concern of a believer.

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An unbeliever walks in and like walking past a buffet, says what can they offer to me? Do they have this for me, do they have that for me, do they provide this on Sunday night, do they provide this on Tuesday morning at 8 a .m.?

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That's what an unbeliever is concerned with. But a true believer says I love the name of God, these people are God's people,

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I'm gonna serve them. And I realize even in saying this, and there's a part of me that has difficulty even in preaching this, because I realize that in saying this, that this church only needs a reminder of these things, not a lecture on these things.

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This is, and I say this in all seriousness, revealing my heart to you, when we get together as elders, we sit around and we marvel at this body of believers that God has brought into this place.

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Which this is unlike anything that I would have ever expected, this is not like anything I've ever experienced anywhere. The love for the truth, the love for each other, the desire to serve, the willingness to serve, the generosity, it is evident by and large in this body from top to bottom, all the way across the board.

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It's unreal. So I feel like Paul, when he writes to the Thessalonians, and says you don't even need me to write to you about the love for the brethren, because you do it, you excel at it, but just continue doing it.

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And that's kinda how I feel like this. This is what biblical scripture says, it's just continue to do it.

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That God may be glorified of this, that he may be honored by the deeds that we do, and the love that we show to his name in ministering to the saints.

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So those are the two categories of works, the deeds of the works, the actions, and the affections, the love of our heart. And how do these two things go together?

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That's what I wanna answer next. How do these two things go together? And I'll try and cover this quickly. But before I do it too quickly,

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I have to bring up one more thing that I forgot. Couple weeks ago, Gordie Hunt, I get a hat tip to Gordie Hunt for pointing this out, because he came up a couple weeks and he pointed out something in the text that we were dealing with that fits in right here, and I have to mention this.

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These things, you'll notice that these things that he's describing here, which are the belong to salvation, they're the marks of salvation, you'll notice what they are.

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They are the actions of our lives, the behaviors, and they are the affections of our hearts.

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These are the things that the author of Hebrews says are better than, these things that belong to salvation, they are better than the other things.

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What are the other things? We looked at that a few weeks ago. Those are the things mentioned in verses four and five, that they had been enlightened, that they had tasted the heavenly gift, they had partaken of the

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Holy Spirit, they had tasted of the good word of God and the powers of the age to come. So those things that they had partaken of and tasted and been enlightened by, those things characterize the group that fell away.

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There is something significant about all those things mentioned in verses four and five. They are all experiences.

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Notice that. They're all experiences. They have been enlightened, they had tasted, they had partaken.

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Try it again. They had been enlightened, they had tasted, and they had partaken.

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Those are experiences. What is better than that? Not the experiences, but what?

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The actions and affections that belong to true believers. The evidence of your salvation is not an experience, unless of course you have experienced salvation, then the experience of salvation is evidence of salvation, right?

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But I mean, other than that, the evidence of our salvation is not the experiences that we have, because one can have warm, religious, spiritual, exciting and very real experiences without ever being transferred from darkness to light.

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But what is the evidence that you've been transferred from darkness to light? It is not something you have experienced. It's something you love and something you have done.

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Not experiences. It's not partaking and being enlightened and tasting. It is the affections of my heart.

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Because see, the evidence of salvation is that my heart no longer loves darkness, it loves light. That's the evidence of salvation.

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What do I love now? The things that I love now, I never loved before I was saved.

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That is the evidence of my salvation, my affections. And here's how these two things go together. My affections drive my actions.

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So that which we, the work or the things that we do, our love for the name of God is the affections that we have. These two things go together.

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They are married together, because the affections of my heart will determine what it is that I do. The affections of my heart will make me obedient.

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Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. The one who loves me obeys me. That was Jesus' command.

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So it is the affection that comes first, which is why we can never do deeds that would merit righteousness.

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Because first of all, before we could do anything that would merit any kind of reward from God, my heart has to be changed.

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I have to be made from a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. I have to be taken from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God. I have to be renewed in the inner man and born again so that I have new affections, new desires, and new drives, and that is what salvation gives me.

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And then once the affections have been changed, then Christ is precious. But before my affections are changed,

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I have no affection for Christ. Before my heart is changed, I have no, not only do I not have a love for Christ, I have no ability to love

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Christ. Because the wicked and depraved, sinful, rebellious, impenitent, stony heart does not have the ability to have the affections for God, which are the evidence of true and genuine salvation.

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And so the affections will always be married to and will always match the actions.

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They drive the actions. They are the thing that precedes the actions. And love motivates our service.

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Paul said to the Galatians, you were called to freedom, brethren, only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but in love, serve one another.

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Right, see the connection there? Between in love, serve one another. The affections and the actions always go together.

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The actions are evidence of an expression of the affections and the affections manifest themselves in the actions that we do.

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In our conduct, our service, our sacrifices, the way we spend our time, our money, they're all driven and determined by our affections.

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A heart that is filled with a love for Christ will not love the world. A heart that is filled with a love for Christ will not love sin.

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A heart that is filled with a love for Christ will not love darkness and it will not love itself and it will not love its sin. Thomas Chalmers described the expulsive power of a new affection.

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He wrote a whole sermon on it. I would encourage you to read it. The expulsive power of a new affection. And in that book, he says, the only way to dispossess the heart of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new affection.

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In other words, my old affections for love, my love for darkness and sin and pride and all those things, that has to be pushed out, not by anything that I have done.

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There has to be a new affection that is given to me that would expel or push out of my heart a love for all those other things.

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So that a man who loves his pornography, the problem is not that his lusts are too strong, the problem is that his affection for Christ is too weak.

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Because if the affection for Christ is what it ought to be and should be, he won't love those other things.

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Because of the expulsive power of a new affection. So when the heart is changed, the deeds will follow.

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And the deeds are the evidence of a changed heart. And those two things together are the evidence of salvation. This is why men will not come to Christ.

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This is why they are unable and unwilling. Why? Because they love darkness rather than light. And they will not come to the light.

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What is it that drives their unwillingness to come to the light? It is a love for sin. They love darkness and that makes them unwilling and it makes them unable to come to the light because their deeds would be exposed.

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And so because they love darkness, their deeds follow after them. They continue to do the deeds of darkness.

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What we need is a new affection. And that new affection manifests itself in the actions. So what therefore is the genuine evidence of salvation in the life of a

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Christian? It is deeds which are motivated by a love for the name of God. And when you see this in somebody's heart, when you see that somebody has a love for the name of God, his glory, his person, all that he is revealed in scripture.

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And that is coupled with the deeds that manifest themselves in ministering and in still ministering to all of the saints, in loving others ahead of themselves, those are the genuine evidences of salvation.

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Let's pray together. Father, we do love you and thank you for your gracious and kind goodness to us and saving us and giving us new hearts and changing them from hearts of stone into hearts of flesh.

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We thank you for that grace and glory that was manifested to us in Christ and for all that you have provided for us in him.

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Do this work of grace in our hearts. Encourage us all the more in our love for one another, our service to each other, and may our love for you in your name and your glory and your renown, motivate all that we do, both now and forever, we ask in the name of Christ, our