Secure in Christ

And today we are going to be looking primarily at verses 37 to 40.

The title of today's message is Secure in Christ, Secure in Christ.

The comfort and security of the assurance of one's salvation is one of the greatest blessings that any

Christian can enjoy. Certainly, because we believe our salvation is both accomplished by and secured by Christ, we can live with the expectation that He who began a good work in us will actually accomplish it.

Yet, the blessing of assurance eludes many people, either because they do not understand the basis for their salvation, or because they do not recognize that it is the power of God that actually keeps them saved.

Well in today's passage, Jesus is going to address both of these important truths.

He's going to address how a person is saved and what keeps a person saved.

And hopefully, my prayer is by the end of this, is that for those of you who are believers that this would encourage your assurance.

And for those of you who have not yet bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, that today you would hear the gospel and be saved and be able to sing along with believers, blessed assurance,

Jesus is mine. Let's stand together and read the text. We are going to read, again, beginning at verse 37.

I'll have the English Standard Version on the screen. This is the text that I'll be reading from.

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me

I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.

And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise

Him up on the last day. Our Father and our

God, we come to you in Jesus' name, and Father, I ask by the mercy of God, because of the work of Christ, by the power of the

Spirit, that you would keep me from error. For Lord God, you know that I am capable of preaching error, you know that I am capable of many wrong things, and I pray that you would keep me from that.

As I preach your word, Lord, that I would stay tied to the post of your sacred text, and that I would not stray.

And for the believers in the room, Lord, that today would be a balm to their soul, that it would comfort them, that it would encourage their assurance.

And for the one who has not yet believed on Christ, Lord, that they would see Christ as beautiful today, and wonderful, and majestic, but Lord, we know that you are the one who opens our eyes to see that beauty.

You are the one who opens our heart to believe in Christ. You are the one who draws us to yourself.

All the Father gives me will come to me, says the Son. So Lord, I pray today that you will do what only you can do, and that is through the preaching of your word, save souls and sanctify saints.

And I pray this, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. The Gospel of John is an apologetic work, meaning that it is written, according to its own testimony, for the purpose that whoever is reading it might believe that Jesus Christ is the

Son of God. He says this at the very end. He says, these things have I written that you would believe that Jesus Christ is the

Son of God. And throughout the writing of John, we have these various times where he provides for us witness or testimony as to why we should believe in Jesus.

He has seven different miracles that he points to. Each of these he calls signs, the first being the turning of water to wine in Canaan, or Cana, rather, excuse me.

And then we move on to the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda. And now we come to chapter 6, or we came to chapter 6 a few weeks ago, and we see two more signs.

One, a public miracle. The other, a private miracle. The public miracle was,

I have said over the last few weeks, the most public of Jesus' miracle. He fed over 5 ,000 people with only five loaves and two fish.

Having multiplied the loaves and the fish, and the text says there were 5 ,000 men, not counting women and children, which means there was a multitude of people who were there for that miracle.

Well, that night, Jesus sends his disciples across the Sea of Galilee, and he goes up onto a mountain to pray by himself.

While he is up on that mountain, the storm rises on the Sea of Galilee, which was very common because of its geographic location, that it would have storms that would rise up quickly and violently, and the men found themselves rowing hard against a choppy sea, and Jesus came out and walked to them on the water.

And when he walked to them on the water, this private miracle took place in their life, and we know there were actually multiple miracles that happened.

Jesus walked on the water. Peter walked on the water. The sea ceased to be moving about, and when

Jesus stepped into the boat, and as soon as he got into the boat with them, they were at shore. They traversed time and space and were there on the shore of where they were going.

Well, the very next day, so we have the feeding of the 5 ,000, and then we have the very next day,

Jesus is in Capernaum, and many people come after him, and many of the people that he had fed had followed after him.

In fact, they were wondering how he got there because they noted that he didn't get in the boat with the disciples when the disciples left, and so they were asking him, how did you come here?

When did you come here? They knew that he had not gotten into a boat, and they knew that he had not traversed the circumference of the

Sea of Galilee in one night, but they didn't know that he had walked on the sea, and we talked about this before.

They asked him the question, when did you come here? But Jesus did not respond to them.

Instead, he begins to engage with them about the problem that existed among them, and the problem that existed among them was the problem of unbelief, and it begins what we call the bread of life discourse, the bread of life discourse.

Jesus is explaining to his hearers, this multitude of people that have come, many of which were there the day before, and as one commentator said, some of them probably still had the crumbs of the bread that they had eaten in their beards, and they come to Jesus, and they want to be fed again.

They want to be fed again. Now, that stands to reason. Food doesn't last in the belly.

We eat a meal, and a few hours later, we're ready to eat again, and so the people came.

Hey, Moses gave them bread from heaven. Actually, they don't say that. They say in the wilderness, they had bread from heaven, and Jesus said,

Moses didn't give you that bread from heaven, but my father gave you that bread from heaven. They were appealing to the idea, though, that when the people were in the wilderness,

God fed them every single day. So they came to Jesus expecting, hey, you fed us yesterday.

Here we are again, empty bellies. Fill us again. And we get down to verse 36 in the interaction, and we have what

I consider to be the heart of this discourse. Verse 36 is the problem that Jesus is addressing.

Therefore, this becomes sort of the thesis for everything that comes after it. Notice in verse 36, he says, but I said to you that you have seen me, and yet you do not believe.

You have seen me, and yet you do not believe. He's telling a group of people that are following after him.

He's telling a group of people who are there to listen to him. He's telling a group of people that in all outward appearance would appear to be believers.

He says, you follow me, but you have not believed in me. You do not believe in me.

So last week in our message, and for those who are visiting with us, we do preach verse by verse through the text, so we have been going through this now for over a year, the

Gospel of John. And as we're looking at John chapter 6, what we noted last week, we asked this question, can a person be an apparent follower of Christ, but it not be genuine faith?

Can a person be on the outside an apparent follower of the

Lord Jesus, and yet not possess genuine faith? And the answer is, absolutely.

There is such a thing as false faith. There is such a thing as what the

Bible calls pseudo -adelphoi, and that means a fake brother. There is such a thing as false faith.

But today, as we continue on into the text, I want to ask a different question.

Because last week we asked the question, can a person follow after Jesus for a season and it not be genuine faith?

The answer is yes. But today I'd like to propose this as our question for the sermon.

Can a person have genuine, true faith, be born again of the

Holy Spirit of God, and then later be lost? See, last week we dealt with one half of the question.

Can there be fake believers? And the answer is yes. But today we're asking a different question.

Can a genuine, true, blood -bought, born -again, saved, sanctified, filled with the

Holy Ghost, however you want to say it, true believer, become an unbeliever, become lost again?

And I want to say, from the outset of this question, that this is a widely debated subject within church history and even in churches today.

If you were to go to different denominations, they might answer this, well

I don't say might, they would answer this question differently. And I say this without any hesitation.

I have brothers in many different denominations. I got

Presbyterian brothers. I got Lutheran brothers. I even got Methodist brothers, but don't tell nobody.

No, we got brothers and sisters in various denominations.

And they would answer this question differently. But I want to hopefully, through the preaching of the text today, explain why we come to the conclusion we do here at Sovereign Grace.

We are, in case you don't know, we are a Baptist church. We affirm the 1646

London Baptist Confession as we read earlier in our statement. And as a

Baptist church, we do affirm that if a person is genuinely saved, that that person will not ever then be lost.

Now there's different ways this has been described. I wanted to just mention some theological terms this morning.

One way this is described is eternal security. If you grew up a Baptist, and I didn't, we weren't always a

Baptist church. I grew up in this church. We were not always Baptist. I mean, God just shown that grace on us.

No, we weren't always Baptist. And so if you didn't grow up Baptist, maybe you've never heard this term.

But in Baptist churches, the term eternal security is pretty common. The term eternal security, meaning

God secures those who are his. It's simple enough. And it is an eternal security, not a partial or temporary security.

But that it is eternal. A phrase that is often uttered that I think most people don't really like, but it gets used, is the phrase,

I call it OSAS, once saved, always saved.

Now the problem with once saved, always saved, is not necessarily the truth of the statement because I would say as far as it goes,

I would maybe add the phrase if saved, always saved. But to say if you're truly saved, you're saved forever.

But the problem with once saved, always saved, as a language, is that it has been co -opted to be used by those who would pervert grace.

And who would say that if you are saved, it doesn't matter then if your life goes into a unbelief or if your life goes into maybe following another religion.

I've heard preachers say, yeah, if you believe in Jesus, even if six months from now you leave and become a Mormon or become an atheist or become agnostic or become a

Muslim, it doesn't matter. You're still Christian. That's tough. That goes back to the question of last week.

Can a person be a fake believer? And again, we say yes. And so we do believe a person can be a fake believer.

But the question is, the idea of once saved, always saved, like I said, I think it can be perverted.

And so in Reformed circles, and by the way, we're a Baptist church, but we're also

Reformed in our theology, which means that we hold to what might be referred to as a

Calvinistic understanding of salvation. The term that we tend to look at is the term perseverance of the saints.

Perseverance of the saints. Some people prefer the term preservation. And the difference really,

I think, for that is perseverance, sometimes people think that puts the onus on us.

We're the one persevering. And they prefer preservation because it's God who is preserving.

But allow me simply to say this. If God has saved you, he is the one who is keeping you.

So yes, he is preserving you. But what is he keeping you? He's keeping you persevering to the end, right?

So there are two sides of the same coin. This goes to Philippians, which says, to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is

God, this is the very next verse, for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do his good pleasure.

That verse is so important because it tells us that we're working out our salvation. It doesn't say we're working for, very important preposition there, working out our salvation.

But we're working out our salvation in fear and trembling knowing that it is God who is working in us both to will and to do his good pleasure.

Your desire to follow Christ did not come from you. And your ability to continue in Christ does not come from you.

For it is God who worketh in you both to will, that's the want, and to do, that's the do, and both come from God.

So this is why we prefer the term, the theological term, either the perseverance of or the preservation of the saints.

And I believe, as you may be wondering, why is he giving a theological lecture? Well, I believe that this text that we come to today gives us some of the greatest foundations that we have in scripture for why we believe this.

Now, I know, again, this is debated and there are those who disagree and there are those from other denominations who would come in and say, no,

Pastor Keith, you got that wrong. Well, I'm willing to say that I'm not perfect and I have made mistakes and I don't claim to have absolute theological knowledge of all things.

But this text to me seems pretty clear. And this text tells us some important things about how we get saved and what keeps us saved.

How we get saved and what keeps us saved. So let's look together, beginning again, at verse 37.

Here's the outline. The outline is simple. We're going to look at God's work, verse 37. We're then going to look at God's will, verse 38 and 39.

And then we're going to finish with God's way, which is verse 40. See, I just proved

I was a Baptist. Now, let's look at God's work, and this is verse 37.

And remember, Jesus is speaking to a crowd of people that He just said does not believe in Him.

That's an important contextual note. Jesus just looked at the crowd. He said, in verse 36,

He said, I said to you, you have seen me, yet you do not believe.

You're here, you've come, you're looking at me, but you're not believing. All that the

Father gives me will come to me. And the one who comes to me

I will never cast out. Now, those are two parallel ideas that Jesus is expressing to this congregation there in Capernaum.

The first one is a statement of the work of God in our coming.

He says, all the Father gives me will come to me.

Now, that word all is sometimes difficult to parse out exactly who is in view.

Sometimes all means everybody who's ever lived. And sometimes all refers to all within a specific group.

And sometimes it means all without distinction. And sometimes it means all without exception. And really it depends upon the context.

The word all in Greek is the word pos or ponta. And it really just depends on the context how it is to be understood.

For instance, in the Gospel of Mark, it says all Judea went out and were baptized by John.

Well, that doesn't mean every single person in Judea was baptized by John. There are many people who weren't, including the

Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Herodians and the others who didn't believe. Many of them were not baptized.

That's what we would say is all without distinction. That's where the use of the word all there is all without distinction.

Like if I were to say, and I've used this example before, all Jacksonville came out to see the

Jaguars play. Well, that ain't true. But it means all without distinction.

It means a large number of people. It means people of all kinds came out.

Rich, poor, all different diverse groups came out to see. So the all there is within a specific context.

Well, this particular context for the word all, all that the Father gives me, this is referring to the group that the

Father is giving to the Son. And so that raises the question, who does the

Father give to the Son? And a lot of people would respond and say, well,

God gives believers to the Son. Slow down. Here's the problem.

It's the giving of the Father that produces the coming. And it's the coming that equates to believing.

We know this because we go back up and Jesus says, whoever believes in me, whoever comes to me, he equates the idea of coming and believing.

So when he says all the Father gives me will come to me, another way of saying that is all the Father gives me will believe in me.

So the point that I'm making is we can't say that the ones who the Father gives to the Son are the ones who already believe.

No, it is the giving of the Father to the Son that is actually bringing about the faith.

Your faith, as I've said in the weeks previous and will continue to say, your faith does not originate within you.

Your faith is enabled by the Holy Spirit of God who quickens your dead soul and enables you to believe.

You were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the prince of the power of the air, and were by nature, what does

Paul say, Ephesians 2, 3? Children of wrath. But God, being rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ by what?

By work? No, by grace. By grace you have been saved.

So when we come back to verse 37 and it says all the Father gives me will come to me, we see the preceding work of the

Father to bring us to the Son. This is why the

Bible over and over and over again says salvation is of the

Lord. Because it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do

His good pleasure. The Bible tells us in so many different ways of our inability apart from the work of God.

And that God is the one who does the work in drawing us to the Son. All that the

Father gives me will come to me. If you believed in Christ it is because God did a work in your heart.

And don't we pray this way? I mean the old joke is everybody prays like a Calvinist.

Because when we're praying for our unbelieving neighbors, when we're praying for our unbelieving family members, when I'm praying for those of you who do not yet believe, do

I pray oh I hope he figures it out? No, I say God open his heart. God give him life.

God draw him to yourself. I ask God to do that work because I know that it is

God only who is able to do it. And that's the way we all pray regardless of our denomination.

We pray God save them. Because we know all that the

Father gives to the Son will come to the Son. So this is about the initiating work of the

Father. Divine initiative belongs to God. But then the second part of this beloved verse, and this is a beloved verse because it's so powerful.

The second part provides us both comfort and security that when we come, we talked about why we come, why do we come?

Because the Father gave us to the Son. But when we come the Son will not turn us away.

The Son will not cast us out. The word here ekbalo, I like that Greek word because the

Greek word balo means to throw. And I think about throwing a ball so it helps me remember that particular

Greek word. Ekbalo means to throw out. Ek meaning out, the idea of like an exit, to go out of something.

So ekbalo meaning to throw out. And in this particular construction of the

Greek language here, which we have in the original text, it actually uses a form of a dual negative.

Now it's not a double negative in the sense of our English where we would say a double negative negates and makes it a positive.

If I say like you're not not here, that means you are here, right? That's a double negative in English and we don't usually speak that way.

But in the Greek here, the construction is two adversitives back to back.

U and me. And we see this in other places. We see this in Hebrews chapter 13 where it's talking about God never leaving us.

And it says in Hebrews 13 5, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Well the phrase never there is u me.

I will not ever leave you nor forsake you. It's the idea of no not ever.

Never ever, never ever. Ever? Never. That's the idea, right?

Same thing in Mark 13 verse 31. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not ever pass away.

That's the idea. This dual negative is an emphasis on the no.

Well when we come here to Jesus' words and he says all that the Father gives me will come to me.

That's a fact. When the Father gives you to the Son, you will come to the

Son and when you come to the Son, he will not, no, never ever cast you out.

Amen. That's the blessing of this text. All the Father gives me will come and the one who comes

I will never ever cast out. The King James, I will in no wise cast him away.

Yeah, yeah. I have my King James consortium right here. But that's it.

I will in no wise cast out. I will never cast, no way. By the way, this is the great power we have in evangelism.

People say, well if you believe God's the one who does the work in the heart, what power do you have to go out and evangelize?

This is the power I have. I can say to anyone, if you come to the Son, he will not cast you out.

In fact, one of the pastors who had great influence on me in my early ministry was a man named

Roy Hargrave. I've talked about him a lot recently because teaching through the doctrines of grace on Wednesday night and he had a lot of influence on me in that area.

And Pastor Roy Hargrave, he was on a cruise. I listened to his sermon. He was on a, it was a

Bible conference and cruise. I don't know how you get on one of those, but if you know how to get in that, that sounds like a deal.

But it's a Bible conference and cruise and he was there and he was invited to speak on Calvinism and evangelism.

And he chose this verse. He said, all the Father gives me will come to me. That's Calvinism. And the one who comes to me,

I will never cast out. There's your evangelism. Now let's go to the pool. It was a joke, of course.

He preached a sermon, but the idea is the same. We have the balance of divine initiative and human response.

The balance of God's work and our response. Understand this, just because God is the one who opens our heart doesn't mean that it isn't us who come and believe.

We actually do believe, but we believe because we've been enabled to believe. God has given us life.

You remember when Lazarus was in the tomb? What was he able to do while he was in the tomb?

Stinketh, that's right. Four days dead, by now he stinketh. Roll the stone away.

And Jesus says, Lazarus, come forth. And Lazarus, the dead man, who could do nothing apart from the power of God, is able to walk out of the tomb because he has been enabled.

Is he walking on his own two legs? Is he coming because he wants to? Is he coming, in that sense, on his own will?

Yes, but he's doing so because he has been enabled by the power of God. And you too, who have come to Christ, we can say with great confidence, are only here because God has enabled you to come.

And therefore you can say, praise God from whom all blessings flow. For if it were not for the work of God, I would not be saved in any sense.

I wouldn't even want to be saved. I would want what my heart desires outside of Christ, and that is what my flesh desires.

But God, being rich in mercy, does the work, changes the heart.

And I come, and we can sing.

Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me. And that thou bidest come to me,

O Lamb of God, I come. I do come, but not under my own power.

I do come, but not under my own initiative. I do come, but not because it was on me.

It's because God chose to be rich in mercy toward me. And therefore,

O Lamb of God, I come. I come. All the

Father gives me will come to me, and I will no, never, ever cast them out.

Now, we look second at the will of God. This is beginning in verse 38.

Jesus says this, for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

Remember the referent here, this is important. When Jesus says, I have come down from heaven, he's actually reminding them of the very thing that they just brought up.

They just brought up the manna from heaven. You know, Moses fed them every day. And Jesus says,

I am the bread of life. And just a few verses forward, he's going to say, unless a man eat my body and drink my blood, he has no place for me.

That's a tough saying, and I look forward to us getting there and getting to walk through that together. They won't get there today. But this whole bread of life discourse is about Jesus being the nourishment,

Jesus being the spiritual food and drink for them, and it is equated to believing in them.

Understand this, eating the blood, or eating the body and drinking the blood of Jesus is in Jesus' parlance here, equated to believing in him, coming to him.

That's what it is. It's trusting in him. And so, he says,

I have come down. He's equating himself with the manna. I've come down. Manna fell from heaven.

I came down from heaven. And I've come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

Now, we need to clarify something with this section, verse 38. Jesus is not saying that he has a will contrary to the

Father. As if the Father has commanded him to do one thing and he wants to do something else.

That's not the point. Jesus is not saying, I've not come to do my own will, because if it was up to me, I'd do something else.

But I've come to do the will of my Father. He tells us later in John chapter 10 that he and the

Father are one. And the one there in John chapter 10 is one in purpose.

That the Father and the Son are united in their purpose. But what

Jesus is saying is that in his work here, his mission here, he has come in submission to his

Father. And he says in this text, I have come not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

And why does he say that? Because in the very next verse, he tells us what the will of God is.

And if you're looking for security, if you're looking for comfort, if you are today looking for something, if you're a believer, to give you the comfort that you need, listen to verse 39.

And this is the will of him who sent me. This is the will of the Father. This is the will of God, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

Forgive the typological error on the screen. I know it's thrown me off a little bit too. It shouldn't say all, it should say all.

This is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me.

Now, what is the context of the given? The context of the given is verse 37. All the

Father gives me will come to me. The one who comes to me I will in no wise cast out. Who is the one who comes?

The one who comes is the believer. Why does he come? Because he's given to the Son by the

Father. And here Jesus says, the one who is given by the Father to the

Son will not be lost. Will not be lost.

Jesus says, this is the will of him who sent me, that I would lose, I should lose nothing of all that he has given me.

In John 17, Jesus preaches,

I'm sorry, Jesus prays what some call the high priestly prayer of Christ.

In fact, if you, Brother Andy mentioned powerful prayers of Scripture and certainly he mentioned several great ones from the

Old Testament. If I were to point to additional prayer, it would be the prayer of Christ. Not that the prayer of Christ in John 17 is meant to necessarily be a model for us to pray, because it's not, it's

Jesus' prayer to the Father. But if you want a prayer that will provide you with the comfort and assurance of knowing this, that the

Lord Jesus Christ actually prayed for you, go and read

John 17. Because in John 17, he says, I'm not praying for the world.

Boy, I tell you what, that's a powerful thought. Jesus says in that prayer, he says,

I'm not praying for the world, but I'm praying for those you have given me out of the world.

Referring specifically to the men who were in front of him. He says, I'm not praying for everybody right now.

I'm praying for these men and for those who will believe because of their testimony.

And that's you all. That's us. That's the beauty that Jesus prayed for you.

Jesus prayed for those who would believe because of the testimony of the apostles. And by the way, isn't that why you believe?

You believe because you've been told? You believe because someone witnessed to you from this book, and this book was given to us?

Having been written by or authorized through an apostle? Matthew and John were apostles.

Mark was writing on behalf of Peter. And Luke was associated with Paul. Luke writes

Acts. Paul writes 13 of the New Testament letters. The general epistles are accepted through the church as having apostolic authority.

And Revelation, of course, written by John himself, the same one who wrote the Gospel of John and the three epistles.

We believe because we've been told. And we've been told by men who were there, by men who saw it.

This is the basis of our faith, is this word that comes to us through these apostles.

Jesus prayed for us. He said, I pray for not the world, but those who have given me out of the world and the ones who believe because of your testimony.

That's us. And Jesus says, going back to verse 39,

And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me.

God's will is that Jesus would lose none of all that he has given, that he has been given by the

Father. But instead of losing them, that the result would be that they would be raised up on the last day.

That they would be raised up on the last day. We're going to see that phrase come up again in verse 44 when

Jesus says, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

That's talking about the resurrection. Understand this. The purpose of your salvation, well, let me back up.

I'll say this. The goal of our salvation, the result of our salvation, and I would guess to say the purpose too, is that resurrection where we will be with Christ forever.

Salvation begins when we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and are justified, forgiven of our sins, filled with the

Holy Spirit. That's the beginning of our salvation, not the end. Salvation begins when

Christ saves us, but it doesn't end there. This is why the Bible talks about salvation both in the past and the present and the future sense.

It talks about us having been saved, being saved, and we'll be saved. Because in the sense of having been saved, our sins have been forgiven, we've been justified, we've been born again.

We're being saved because Christ is daily renewing us, sanctifying us, and he's presenting us before the

Father as our high priest. He lives forever to make intercession for us according to the book of Hebrews.

But then in the end, the great and powerful, wonderful day will come when if you are in the ground, you will be given life, your dead body, no matter how long it has been in a form of decay, whether it was put to the fire or to the flood, or whether it was destroyed by some type of geological event, or whether it ended up in the belly of an animal,

God will raise you to life and he will give you a new body through which you will live in the new heaven and the new earth forever with him.

And if that promise has come to you through the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is a promise that will not fail.

All the Father gives me will come to me. The one who comes to me I will in no wise cast out. This is the will of God that I should lose nothing that he has given me, but I will raise it up on the last day.

Now some will say to me, and some of you may be aching to say this to me, you know,

Keith, Jesus did say he won't cast us away, but he didn't say we couldn't walk away.

That's a response I often hear from people when I say I believe that once we are genuinely saved, we're truly saved to the end, and I look at verses like this where Jesus says

I will never cast them out, and people say, yeah, but we can walk away.

And my response is very simple, maybe overly simplistic, and maybe it doesn't satisfy you, and that's okay.

But my response is simple. Is your salvation based on you holding on to God or God holding on to you?

When I walk through traffic with Theodore, do I hold him more loosely or more tightly?

I hold him more tightly, especially in times of peril. Sometimes I even take him into my arms to ensure that he's safe.

Jude tells us he is able to keep you from stumbling, that it is

God who does that. And Paul says the one who began the good work in you will complete it in the day of Christ Jesus.

Where is our hope? Is it in us or is it in him? It's in him. As Voddie Bockham said, if I could lose my salvation,

I would. I know I would. So I have to trust that Christ is holding me and I'm not holding him.

So we end in verse 40 and then we'll close. It says, For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the

Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

Please understand that is the way of salvation. And it is the only way of salvation.

If you came here today saved and unsure of your salvation and unsure that you have the security in Christ, I pray that what

I've said so far has helped you and be encouraged in your security. But if you came here today and don't know

Christ, verse 40 is for you. This is the will of my

Father. Jesus is speaking. Everyone who looks on the Son and believes on him, and I do believe when

Jesus talks about looking on the Son, he's referencing back to John chapter 3 where he himself referenced the serpent in the wilderness.

Remember the serpent lifted up on the pole and everyone who was sick and dying had to look at the serpent and when they looked at the serpent they were healed.

Remember that story back from the book of Numbers? And Jesus says, As Moses lifted up the serpent, so too must the

Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes on him will have eternal life. And I can say to you today, with the authority of the

Lord Jesus Christ, if you would look to the Son and believe on him, you will be saved.

And it will be based on the work of God and not of you. But I can call you, based upon the authority of the

Son, to look at him and believe. You say, I can't see him. We see him through his word.

There's more evidence that Jesus rose from the dead than there is that George Washington crossed the Potomac.

Jesus Christ is alive today. Look upon him and live.

Turn from your unbelief. Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus.

And you will be saved. Let us pray. Father, I thank you for your word.

I thank you for your Son. And I thank you, Lord, that you have given us the confidence that if we believe in your

Son, we will, in fact, be raised up on the last day. Eternal life begins when we trust in Jesus Christ.

And, Lord, I pray that today eternal life may begin for someone under the sound of my voice who heard the gospel, who needs their sins forgiven, who needs to be saved.

And for those who came today that are saved, I pray, Lord, that they would have an extra measure of encouragement today that he who began the good work in them will complete it in the day of the