Perseverance in the Psalms

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One of the things I most enjoy about listening to Brother Mike, if you don't understand what Brother Mike's been saying when he's done, it's because you haven't been listening.
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Because Brother Mike is so clear and crystal in his explanation.
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So I really enjoyed hearing that about Jeremiah.
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I learned a lot about the prophet myself.
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So thank you, brother.
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The other thing I admire about Brother Mike is how he can stand in the pulpit with his hands behind his back and preach.
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I can't, and so they've already given me the mobile, the wanderer microphone.
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So many things I admire about you, brother.
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All right, so as we come now to the second part of our day together, I want to begin by making a few remarks.
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If you have your Bibles, we will go to the 121st Psalm.
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That will be our text this morning.
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So if you want to open your Bibles and turn there, but we will get to that shortly.
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Psalm 121.
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Friends, we are really considering a great and glorious topic this morning.
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As we speak today on the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, it is really something that is such a blessed truth.
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Not simply a doctrinal statement, but a blessed truth.
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And I hope you've noticed that even as we've titled the conference, The Perseverance of the Saints, that we did it that way versus saying, once saved, always saved.
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We purposely avoided that statement of once saved, always saved, because I think there's good reason for that.
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And I wanted to at least mention that to us, in that I believe if we simply were to have titled the conference Once Saved, Always Saved, we could have portrayed or transmitted, or people would have understood it in perhaps an erroneous or even a harmful way.
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There's a great difference between the perseverance of the saints and the statement, once saved, always saved.
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Is it true that once saved, you are saved eternally? Absolutely.
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But in the way that it's presented, I believe it can be harmful.
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So again, why we termed it The Perseverance of the Saints.
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And I think, to me, one of the greatest reasons for it and the difference is this.
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When we say The Perseverance of the Saints, we are implying that there is going to be a continuation in the faith, that even as the Lord Jesus Christ said, he who endures to the end will be saved.
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However, when we mention that once saved, always saved, to many, unfortunately and wrongly, that begins to create an opportunity for people to think that continuation in the faith is optional.
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The Perseverance of the Saints, as we hopefully will see through the psalm, is not optional.
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And it's not a, I've heard people say to me that when you talk about once saved, always saved, that basically what you're saying is a get out of jail card for free.
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And that's not the truth.
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So we were very careful.
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And I wanted to at least set that right before us, that that is why I would stay away, and I'm sure others would, I would stay away from speaking of the Perseverance of the Saints in the sense of once saved, always saved.
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And I would take great exception to it, rather than someone say, well, you say it your way, and I'll say it my way, but we mean the same thing.
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And I don't believe that we do mean the same thing.
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And I hope to show you that as we progress and go through this.
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So having said that, my task, what's been assigned to me is to look at the Perseverance of the Saints from out of the psalms.
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And I truly appreciate looking out of the psalms for anything.
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I have found myself, as I've gotten a little bit older, that the psalms seem to me more precious and more instructive.
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And so I truly am glad that I've been given the opportunity to speak to us about the Perseverance of the Saints out of the psalms.
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And the reason for it is, and what I hope that we will take away from this when we speak about the Perseverance of the Saints, is that, again, it's not just some doctrinal statement or a doctrinal platform that we stand on, but that we see it, and you will see it in the psalm, that it's the result of a experience, a life-changing experience that we have as we have been encountered by the Spirit of God, brought out of the deadness of sin, and brought to life.
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And certainly in the psalms, that is one of the characteristics of the psalms in general is that often the writer who is inspired to write that particular psalm, he will write it, or they will write it out of a personal experience which has changed them and forced them to, if you will, speak.
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And of course, our God is so great that He takes even that and uses it in an inspired way to give us His Word.
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So again, I'm thankful to have this opportunity.
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So as I said to you, the text is Psalm 121.
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I'm going to ask us if we will to read the psalm together.
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It's only eight verses, and so I think we can be able to handle it in one sitting.
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But let us read the Word of God together.
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And if you don't know, I read it in the New King James.
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So if you have a different version, it might be a little bit different.
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Psalm 121, I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help.
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My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
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He will not allow your foot to be moved.
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He who keeps you will not slumber.
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Behold, he who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
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The Lord is your keeper.
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The Lord is your shade at your right hand.
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The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
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The Lord shall preserve you from all evil.
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He shall preserve your soul.
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The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth and even forevermore.
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Let's just ask God's blessing again.
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Father, thank you for our time together.
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Thank you for your Word.
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And now we come, Holy Spirit, and we ask you to do what only you could do, and that is to take your Word by the power of the Spirit of God and make it real to us in a way that we will be able to understand it, in a way that we will be transformed by it, and in a way that we will honor you.
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So Lord, may the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart at this time be acceptable in your sight, for you are our God, our rock, and our Redeemer.
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In Christ's name, amen.
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Let me make a couple of general statements about this psalm before we get into looking at some of the more details that are given to us.
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If you were to read this psalm in comparison to other psalms, you will find there is no author given to us.
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Many of the psalms will have an author attached to it.
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This psalm is termed as a song of ascents.
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And what's interesting, and just so you can consider this going forward, if you read from Psalm 120 to Psalm 134, you will find that that is a group of psalms that all have that way of setting it out as a song of ascents.
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And really, what I've been able to understand, that some have called Psalm 120 to Psalm 134 the pilgrim psalms.
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And the reason why they've called them the pilgrim psalms is because they believe that as the Jews would go up to the festivals and go up to the holy days, that they would take this group of psalms and that they would sing them and repeat them as they were going to the festival or to the feast day or to worship God.
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As we look at it, I hope you will see that I believe in some sense that will fit into what we're talking about.
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So in this group of Psalms 120, again 15 psalms, you will find that David himself actually pens four of them.
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King David will actually be the author of four of them.
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That's Psalm 122, 124, 131, and 133.
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Then you'll find that Solomon writes Psalm 127, which of course, many of us know, unless the Lord build a house, they labor in vain to build it.
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And the other 10 are without an author given to us.
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So again, as a takeaway from this, you might want to read this group of psalms, these 15 psalms, in one setting and think of it in the terms of the psalms that the worshipers of God sang and spoke of as they were headed towards Jerusalem to worship.
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Perhaps tomorrow morning, you'd want to read these 15 psalms before you come and worship.
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But again, I think that at least gives us some understanding of the background.
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As I said, the author is not really given to us.
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And as I was able to look at some of what the other brothers have written down through time, that there are a good number of them that believe that this psalm was penned by one of the exilic prophets, the exilic prophet being those prophets that prophesied after the captivity of Babylon, as Brother Mike spoke of Jeremiah.
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And some have even tried to say that they believe it was Ezekiel.
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And whether that's the case or not, I'm not absolutely sure.
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But I think, again, it'll fit well as we begin to look at the psalm and to consider the meaning of it.
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The psalm starts, if you will, I think of it almost like a train pulling out of the station.
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And as the train starts, it gets moving at a slow pace.
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But by and by, the psalm, I mean, the train will pick up speed, pick up power.
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And before you know it, it's flying down the tracks.
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And I looked at this psalm, and the more I read it, I felt that in some sense that was the same way, that the psalm will start at a slower pace.
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And then as it continues on, it will pick up speed and power.
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And I believe it almost as if, as I read it over and over again, that each word or each few words gives fire, if you will, or feeds the next few words.
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And that therefore, when we look at it, we should be able to gain much from it as we continue to look at it.
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The way it starts out is somewhat general.
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I will lift up my eyes to the hills.
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And we'll speak about that in a moment, what that might mean.
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But it starts at that place.
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I will lift up my eyes to the hill.
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And then it goes from there.
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And it winds up, if you look at it in verse 8, just as an outline kind of way, the Lord shall preserve you, going in and you're coming out from this time forth, and even forevermore.
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In other words, the psalmist starts where he's at at that moment, in his situation, in his life.
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And before he's done with the psalm, he's speaking of eternity.
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And so again, as I say, it goes from a general statement in the beginning, and by the time he's done, in his thoughts, he's already eternally with God, speaking of how God would preserve him forever and ever.
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Another way, perhaps, that you could say that he goes from the general to the specific is, as we look at the psalm, we'll see that he speaks of God's persevering grace that is given to him in a general way.
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And then he gets down to some more specifics.
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And again, as I say to you, as you go through this and as you think about it, this doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is something that we have to really consider in its totality.
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Again, that it's not just the pea and the tulip, friends.
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It's not just a point of doctrine to be made, but rather it is something for you and for me to grab hold of and to hold on to.
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And so the psalmist, I believe, does that as he starts out with his opening consideration.
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And then, as I say, at the end, he makes that glorious statement that the Lord will preserve him both now and forever.
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And so in order to break that out, I want to break it out with three different thoughts just to help us to outline it.
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The first is this.
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In verses 1 and 2, I want us to consider that the psalmist looks out.
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And then in verses 3 to 7, which is probably the body of it, I want us to consider that not only does the psalmist look out, but that the psalmist looks up.
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And then I want to ask us, as we close, to look at verse 8 and to consider that the psalmist is looking for something.
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So he looks out, he looks up, and he looks for.
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And as we break it out that way, I hope to show that this doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is something that is to be held by us from the very beginning all the way on into eternity and that you and I should follow, in that sense, the same way in which the psalmist does it, that we need to first look out, then we need to look up, and then we need to look for.
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The perseverance of the saints is a life-giving anchor for the soul.
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I'm going to say that again, because it sounded very profound to me, that the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is not more than doctrine, is much more than doctrine.
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It is a life-giving anchor for the soul.
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Because here's the reality of it.
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If the perseverance of the saints is not true, then you and I are here today, and the best we can do is have a hope-so faith.
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If God is not the preserver, then you and I are forced to consider nothing more than a hope-so faith.
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And I will say this to you, and I hope you'll agree.
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If all we have is a hope-so faith, then we have no faith at all, right? If it's not for sure, then we have nothing.
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Same thing as it comes to the cross of Christ.
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If, in fact, He did not do what He said He came to do, if, in fact, He is not who He say He is, then we have real no hope for a Savior, a Redeemer.
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And certainly, as we come to this glorious doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, that you and I could never finally, in any true way, reach our final destination.
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And I hope, I pray that this morning, our final destination is to be with God.
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I pray that our final destination is to be in the presence of God, and to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.
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And the perseverance of the saints is such a glorious truth that allows us to see ourselves in the light of God, in His work, in us, for us, that we can lay hold of the hope that's been set before us.
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Because here's the real part of that, friends.
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If all we have is a hope-so faith, then I'll say, just like the writer says, he says, vanity, vanity, all is vanity.
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I'll put it to you this way.
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If my faith depends on me, all is vanity.
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If your faith this morning is solely resting on you, then you're in big trouble.
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And the psalmist here speaks of it in a way that I believe will allow us to understand it.
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So in verses 1 and 2, he says, I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help.
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My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
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I will lift up my eyes to the hill from whence comes my help.
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My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
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There's probably a few ways to consider this statement that he makes in these first two verses.
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And let me give you two of them.
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And I'm not going to spend too much time on it, but I wanted to at least bring that out.
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That we could look at this and say that the writer is saying that he is on his way towards, or at least looking towards, Jerusalem and the hills that surround Jerusalem, where the worship of God was centered.
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And as he looks out and he sees the hills that surrounds Jerusalem, that he would consider that that is the place where God has chosen to show his presence and that he is looking to that place, to God, to those hills that surround it, and he's seeking to find help.
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Certainly, that is one way to consider it.
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I've also asked you to consider, and I've looked at this a little bit, and I've read some of the other brothers, and some believe that, in a sense, he's saying not so much that he is looking towards Jerusalem in the presence of God, where God was pleased to reside, but that he is saying that he will lift up his eyes, or he says, shall I lift up my eyes to the hills? In other words, that as he looks about, because in the scriptures, hills many times depicts kingdoms and authorities.
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And so some have said that it's more to be taken that way, that the psalmist says, shall I lift up my eyes to the hills? Shall I look to this world? Shall I look to the authorities, and the governments, and the things of this world, and the false gods? Shall I find help there? Again, I say to you, we could spend a lot of time on that.
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And here's the thing that helped me to think about just mentioning it and moving on, because I believe either way you take it, it still gets you to the place where you ought to be.
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And the place that you ought to be is where the psalmist, I believe, is going, is that the psalmist knows that his help, his ability to persevere, his ability to remain in the faith is outside of himself.
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As I say, friends, if you're here this morning and you think that you in and of yourself are able to persevere in this most holy faith once delivered to the saints, then you're in big trouble.
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Because I want to say it to you as clear as I can, that the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is stating and teaches that in and of ourselves we cannot do that very thing of perseverance or remaining in the faith, but that we need, we need divine grace, mercy.
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We need God to be our keeper.
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We need the power of the spirit to keep us in the faith.
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Now, that doesn't negate the fact that we are personally responsible, and I hope you don't misunderstand me.
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I am in no way saying that, because that's basically what once saved, always saved is stating.
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Basically, you just believe, and then God takes care of the rest.
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But there's a personal responsibility as they're not attached to this.
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Look how the psalmist says it in these first two verses.
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I will, this was an activity of the psalmist.
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I will look up to the hills, and he considers where my help will come from.
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Perseverance of the saints has a glorious truth in that it is, even as Brother Keith said in the opening of our meeting today, that we are confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in us will continue it until the day of Christ.
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And I wanna make sure that we understand this as we move through this.
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At the very same time that that is absolutely true, so is the truth that we must, we are responsible to persevere in the faith.
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Remember, as I said to you, and as the Lord Jesus Christ said, he that endures to the end shall be saved.
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I could have taken you to Luke's Gospel, and in the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus is speaking of what is to take place before his second coming, he looks to those that are in front of him, and he says to them, by your patience, possess your souls.
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By your patience, possess your soul.
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And yet, there is also another glorious truth, and it's this, that even as Brother Mike spoke of Jeremiah, in Jeremiah it says the ways of a man are not in himself.
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It's not in him who walks to direct his own steps.
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You see, the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints must look at it in both ways, in God's absolute sovereignty, in man's absolute responsibility.
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And if we don't do that, I believe we're gonna fall into the ditch.
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Because the reality is, we must persevere in faith.
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And yet, God, who began a good work in us, will continue that good work in us until the day of Christ.
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Peter said that we are kept by the power of God through faith, ready to be revealed in the last day.
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Isn't that great? We are kept by the power of God.
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We are, as Paul says to the church at Thessalonica, we are those who would agree and praise God that he who calls us will also do it.
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Perseverance of the saints, my friends, has to be understood on both platforms, that God is the one who began the work, God is the one who will complete the work, and yet we are fully responsible to persevere, to press on, to continue in the faith.
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There was only one other section I wanted to physically ask you to look at, and if you want to, that'd be fine.
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It's in 1 Corinthians chapter one.
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I just wanna look there for a minute, and then we'll come right back here.
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But I wanted us to understand that this doctrine of the perseverance of the saints in the reality of the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man is so embedded, particularly in the apostle Paul, that he speaks freely of it in both of those aspects, that we must endure, we must press on, and that God must be the keeper.
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Look at this in 1 Corinthians chapter one.
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It might not always be a section that people will go to to show the perseverance of the saints, but in verse four of 1 Corinthians chapter one, Paul says this, I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that you are enriched in everything by him in all utterance and knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Now look, who will also confirm you to the end that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ? God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
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You see, friends, we must keep that in our minds, and I believe that the psalmist, in the way he sets the psalm out to us is doing that very thing, that he understands that as far as knowing where his help will come from, he has to look outside of himself.
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He must, he must lift up his eyes and look elsewhere because he in and of himself cannot control his own breath, never mind his own eternal perseverance in the faith.
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So if I can make no other point to you up to now, it's this, perseverance of the saints must be understood in light of the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man.
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And usually what'll happen is you'll find people go off the cliff on one side or the other.
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Again, they'll just, well, God saved me, and that's, God will take care of the rest.
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Or the other side, and they both have great dangers in them, the other side is, I gotta continue, I've gotta do it, I've gotta, I've got to, I, I, I, I, and that's particularly dangerous as soon as we start to see that the very thing that we say we have to do, we can't do.
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So we must understand it in light of the sovereignty of God and also the responsibility of man.
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Well, let me frame it to you this way.
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The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is a solemn oath made by almighty God to those he calls.
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The perseverance of the saints is a solemn oath on part of God unconditionally to preserve those who he called.
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And, and, perseverance of the saints is a solemn oath on our part to press on and continue in the faith.
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Now, you might think that's kinda hard to put together, and I would agree with you, it's kinda hard to put together, but it's no less true.
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I don't understand much of Bible, but I know it's true.
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And so with this doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, let me just leave you with that thought.
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As the psalmist in these two verses, I will lift up my eyes to the hills.
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From whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
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He has to look outside himself, and so he looks out.
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The next point I want to address is what we see in verse three through verse seven.
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Let's just read it again together, in that the psalmist not only looks out, but he looks up.
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I will lift up my eyes to the hills.
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From whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
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He will not allow your foot to be moved.
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He who keeps you will not slumber.
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Behold, he who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
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The Lord is your keeper.
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The Lord is your shade at your right hand.
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The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night.
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The Lord shall preserve you from all evil.
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He shall preserve your soul.
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That the psalmist at this point, as he considers this glorious truth of where he is and where he desires to be, that not only does he look out, but he looks up.
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And so he begins to address it as it ought to be addressed.
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The Lord is the maker of heaven and earth.
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See, in reality, much of what we need to understand as concerning the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, it's based in the very being and attributes of God.
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As my trust in the Lord Jesus Christ is that he was the God-man.
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He was the sacrifice for my sins.
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He paid the punishment for my sins.
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And it's in his being, in the character of who he was, that I can find comfort and rest.
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And so as the psalmist looks at it, he says the Lord is my helper because it is the Lord who made heaven and earth.
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Isn't that great? Friends, we are helped, we are kept today by the creator of it all.
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It doesn't get much better than that.
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We are kept, it says the Lord is the maker of heaven and earth.
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It says that the Lord is your keeper.
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The Lord is your keeper.
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God is the one who sustains us.
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It says that God is our shade.
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God is our great comforter.
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It says that God, the Lord, shall preserve you.
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It says that the Lord shall preserve our going in and our coming.
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Who is this God anyway? It's Jehovah.
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It's the great I am.
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It's the one who needs nothing, answers to no one, does whatever he's pleased to do.
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He is the one that is our keeper.
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He is the one, it's the great covenant God that revealed himself to the children of Israel.
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That is the one who the psalmist is looking up to.
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And I thought it was interesting as you read through these verses that the psalmist lays it out in a way.
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He speaks of what God will do in his protection, his keeping, his comfort, and he also speaks of what God will not do.
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There's a positive and a negative in this.
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And I wanted to say this, just as you think about it.
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We ought to thank God for what he will not do as much as we thank God for what he will do.
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And so as he lays it out, it's just so compelling to me that he, God, is the one who keeps us.
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He, the creator, the sustainer, ultimately the judge of all the earth.
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The perseverance of the saints is such a glorious truth because it's based in the very being and character of God.
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Remember what Jesus said.
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That one who was sent by the father, he said, of all that you have given me, what? I will lose.
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Our feet shall not be moved, verse three.
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You will not allow your feet to be moved.
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That doesn't mean we won't slip.
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Don't mean we won't slide.
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But our feet won't be moved off the rock, Christ Jesus.
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Our feet will not be moved in such a way that we will become cast away.
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Remember the parable, remember the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ of the house that was founded on the rock and the house that was founded on the sand and the house that was founded on the rock had the same wind and trials and tribulations as the house that was built on the sand? And it wasn't necessarily the house itself.
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It was the foundation, right? And what was the foundation of the rock? Christ Jesus.
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So our feet will not be moved.
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The cost of our life is on solid ground.
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Through all the wind, all the rain, all the hail that comes against us, we shall not be moved.
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The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is just we are to find our comfort in the very character, being, promise of God himself.
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He's the one that never sleeps.
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I've thought about that.
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Ever since my eye has gone wacky, I can't sleep more than two hours at a time.
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I get up for an hour, run around the house like a yo-yo and I go back to sleep for another two hours, I get back, I can't even sleep right anymore.
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And I'm just so grateful that God neither needs nor does slumber nor sleep.
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Isn't it great that the one who's preserving you right now is the one who never sleeps? Some of us can't even keep our eyes open in here.
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You can see a lot of things when you're looking out, by the way, I just want you to know that.
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But that's the way we are.
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How many times do we say something, whether we say it verbal or we just, in our own hearts, we'll say, well, I'm gonna do this for the Lord, or I'm making a stance right here and then two minutes later, we're fast asleep.
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It's in the one who neither slumbers nor sleep.
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Let me ask you to think about this.
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And I want you to look at it in the Psalm.
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It says in verse three, he will not allow your foot to be moved.
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And then he says this, he who keeps you will not slumber, praise God.
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Behold, he who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
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Now I wanna say something and you might agree, you might disagree.
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And if you disagree, ask Brother Mike or Brother Keith.
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If you agree, I'm good with it.
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But I want you to think about this.
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Not only is the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints as it relates to each and every one of us individually, but it is also the truth of us corporately, right? When Jesus said of all that the Father had given me, I will lose none, he wasn't just speaking of this one or that one or this group or that group.
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He was speaking of all that the Father had given me, I shall lose none.
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And so let me say to you this way.
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There is not another saint that's walking the earth today that is any more preserved than you are, even a bigger mess like you.
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You can look and think about it all you want of the great men of faith and great women of faith in our day or through church history and those great minds and hearts and lives that were raised up and missionaries and theologians.
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And I say to you, I say it with absolute truth, they were no more preserved than you are.
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If you are his, you are his.
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I'll take it one step further.
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There isn't a soul in the presence of God that is any safer than you are today in ocean way.
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Do you believe that? I hope you do because that's the truth of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.
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We will press on, yes, and our God will make sure that we will finish our course.
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And if we don't finish the course, it's because we were never his from the beginning.
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You can fight that all you want.
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He who endures to the end will be saved.
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One writer said it this way.
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He said, Israel's watchman is not a human watchman liable to fall asleep while on watch.
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I remember when I was younger, before I even met my wife.
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And I would go out, I'm not, I would go out and my mother used to stand in the picture window.
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We had a picture window, we lived in New York, and she would stand in the window waiting for me to come home.
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And I wasn't the best, so she stood a long time waiting for me to come home.
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And I remember coming home and I'd say, mom, what are you doing? Why do you? And she would say to me, you don't understand the heart of a mother.
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And then when I started to have kids, although I never stood in front of the window, but I can't say that my eyes were able to shut sometimes at night.
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And God is watching over us, friends.
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And he's not gonna let us go.
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And that's the great and glorious truth of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints that our God, the true God, versus the God of Baal, remember that was one of the things that Elisha said, right? When the prophets are calling out to their God to come down and to consume the sacrifice.
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And I so like what the prophet does, because I think he was, maybe your God's sleeping.
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Maybe your God's busy somewhere else.
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Or maybe he's taking care of himself.
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Basically that's what he says to them.
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And your God can't, our God never sleeps, no slumbers.
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He is the omnipotent, omniscient, almighty, incomprehensible, loving, all those attributes of God.
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I gotta say this, if you wanna know God better, learn who God is, learn about his being.
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We have so many people that walk around and all they talk about is the love of God, but they have no understanding of what the love of God actually means.
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The psalmist is not only looking out, but he's looking up.
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And he says, the Lord is your keep in verse five.
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The Lord is your shade in your right hand.
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The shade shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
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The Lord shall preserve you from all evil.
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He shall preserve your soul.
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Listen to what Isaiah said, Isaiah 27.
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I'll let you find it if you wanna go to that chapter.
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But Isaiah says this, he says, concerning Israel, as the people of God, in Isaiah 27, three, he talks about them and he says that the Lord will keep Israel.
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He says, I, the Lord, will keep it.
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I water it every moment, lest any hurt it.
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I keep it night and day.
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That's what the perseverance of the saints, in essence, is teaching us, that we are going to press on in this faith.
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We are going to put our hands to the plow and not look back.
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We are gonna battle, we are gonna wrestle, we're gonna fight, we're gonna run, we're gonna do all those things that we ought to do.
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But at the same time, we realize that the very one who holds us is the one who's watching us every moment.
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I'll tell you what, if you don't know God, that's a fearful thought.
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I'll tell you what, to know God is a fearful thought.
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God is always watching me? That God is the preserver? You know how many people there are today who think that Mother Nature's gonna preserve us? Although it depends who you ask because some people say we only got eight years left, but we're gonna spend money for the next 20 years so that we, but the government's not gonna save us.
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The government can't keep us, they can't watch over us day and night.
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Science can't keep us, can't preserve us.
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Listen, Google can't even do it.
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And guess what, neither can Peloton.
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Yeah, I know what Peloton is, yeah.
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All the people that bought Peloton equipment when they were on COVID and they thought that'll keep them going, that'll preserve them, that'll keep their life force going.
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It's God who keeps people.
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Only the one who never slumbers and sleeps can help us.
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You see it in verse five and verse six again.
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The Lord is your keeper, the Lord is your shade and your right hand.
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The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night.
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Is that not why Paul said, I know whom I believed in and I am what? What did Paul say? I know who I have believed in.
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It was a act on the part of Paul.
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I know whom I believed in and I am, somebody say it.
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I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day.
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I thought about this and I'm gonna give you an example of it as we move through this.
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I thought about the life of the apostle Paul.
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Brother Mike did such a great job speaking of how God preserved Jeremiah, especially because of his message and because the way his message was received.
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But I wanna give you an example of how the doctrine of perseverance of the saints must be understood in that way of the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man.
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If you remember towards the end of the book of Acts, Paul is told that he's gonna have to go to Rome.
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God tells him, I want you to, you're gonna appear in Rome.
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And if you remember those last couple of chapters in the book of Acts, Paul is through many different circumstances on his way to Rome and he encounters problem after problem and situation after situation.
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It wasn't like God said to Paul, I'm gonna bring you to Rome and Paul went down to the airport, got out of the Uber, jumped in first class and when he got out, there he was and the sunshine of Rome was shining upon him.
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No, no, it was months and months and months of journey on the sea, in perils, in trials, in tribulations.
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They stop on one island and guess what? He gets bit by a viper.
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They get back in the boat.
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God told him you must appear.
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God said he will bring him there.
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Paul presses on, he's in the midst of all kinds of trials and tribulations.
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At one point, if you remember, there's hurricanes out there on the water and the ship is in danger of being torn to pieces.
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And at one point, Paul turns to those men in the boat of which many of them didn't even believe in the God that Paul believed in and you remember what Paul says to him.
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Paul says to him, as long as you stay in the boat, you will be saved because he knew that God had said he would preserve him to get him to appear in Rome.
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Ain't that glorious truth, friends? As long as we stay in the boat, we'll be saved and that boat is the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Isn't it great? As long as Noah stayed in the ark, he was saved.
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As long as the disciples had Jesus in the boat, they were saved.
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You see, the responsibility was on Paul to weather all those trials and yet he understood that God had told him and what God says.
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It says he will preserve us from all evil.
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Not some of the evil, not most of the evil.
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Some of us could probably speak about our past lives and say, you know, I was saved from this and I was saved from that and someone else.
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It's a funny story and I won't mention the name but I remember talking to a dear saint in another church and we were having this discussion about where we were saved from and the life we lived and she looked at us and with a most serious face and she said, I was bad and I didn't wanna know anymore.
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But she said, I kicked a garbage can over one day.
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Some of us have been saved from a little more evil than that but nevertheless, God preserved us and God preserves us from all evil.
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God preserves us because he is the great preserver.
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God keeps his people at all times through all perils all the way.
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Isn't that great? God keeps all his people at all times through all perils all the way.
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What a blessing.
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Listen, if the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints doesn't feed your soul, then you don't understand the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.
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And if you think that the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints and the sovereignty of God that allows you or me to live any way we want, then we don't understand the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints because the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is that we will continue in the faith, not outside the faith.
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It is not a get out of jail free card.
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God keeps all his people at all times.
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We must press on.
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We must continue, friends.
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We must move forward and upward.
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Our faith is going to fail.
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As I said to you, we sometimes can't even keep our eyes open.
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We will stumble.
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We will sin.
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We will do things that we will be so sorry for in the depths of our hearts, and yet the truth is we must press on.
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We must continue in this most holy faith because God will never fail.
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Do you and I really, when was the last time we really just chewed on that for a while? God never fails.
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That's just not something to just say and walk away.
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It's the truth.
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In Isaiah, it says, even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fail.
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But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.
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They shall mount up with wings like eagles.
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They shall run and not be weary.
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They shall walk and not be faint.
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Isn't that great? And if you were to read what's just before that, it's based on the very character of being on God.
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He says, has you not known, have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the heavens and the earth, he neither faints nor is weary.
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His understanding is unsearchable.
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That's why I say to you, the doctrine of the perseverance of saints is something more than just a teaching.
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Same way that the cross of Christ is more than just a teaching.
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Our God will never fail, and therefore he will never allow evil to overcome us.
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Doesn't say that we will not face evil things.
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He said evil will never ultimately overcome us.
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Greater is he who is in you than he who's in the world.
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We are kept by the power of God.
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And then finally, I just wanna mention this in verse eight.
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The psalmist has looked out, and then he's looked up, and look at verse eight just quickly.
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The psalmist looks forth.
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And he says, the Lord shall preserve you going out and your coming in from this time forth and even forevermore.
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The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints has a destination attached to it, friends.
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And that destination is to be in the presence of God forever, to be able to go.
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I just love that statement.
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And I think about what Jesus said in John chapter 10 about him as the shepherd and his sheep.
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If you remember what he says in John 10, they are able to go in and come out and find pasture.
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Nothing greater, right? To be able to go out, venture out, to be able to come back in.
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I remember when the kids were growing up, they would go out, and if there was trouble, they'd come back in.
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And that's how God preserves us.
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He allows us to go in and come out, and he preserves us forever and ever.
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Listen, friends, in Isaiah, it says, even to your old age, I am he.
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Even to your gray hairs, I will carry you.
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I have made, I will bear.
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Even I will carry you and deliver you.
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Glorious.
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Who can say that but us? Can the followers of Islam say that? No.
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Can the followers of Buddha say that? No.
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Can the followers of this religion or that religion or this faith or that faith or this understanding or that understanding say it? No, why? Because we trust in the living God.
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The only God who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think.
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Even to your old hairs, I will carry you.
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May I encourage us this morning that if, if, if, that's another message, but if by repentance and faith we have fled for refuge in Jesus because he lives, we shall live forever.
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As I often say, you better get used to me because you're gonna see me in eternity.
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You might not wanna see me in eternity, but you're gonna see me.
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And it's gonna be because God's gonna preserve me.
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And it's gonna be because I'm gonna press on.
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I'm not turning back.
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I'm not turning back from the one who gave me life, are you? I'm not turning away from the one who is the savior of my soul.
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We shall cross the veil, friends.
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You and I will cross the Jordan if we're his.
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Some of us this way, some of us that way.
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Some of us will go there in old age, some of us be taken in young age.
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Some of us will go healthy.
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Some of us will go through great trials.
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The doctrine of the perseverance of the saint teaches us that we will cross the spiritual Jordan because the reality is all lives are different, aren't they? Every one of us are walking a different path and yet we're walking the same path, right? If we're in Christ, in one sense, we're all on the same path.
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We're all headed to be in the presence of God.
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And yet at the same time, we all have these different paths that God has cut out for us.
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And we must walk through them.
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That's why I'm so opposed, I gotta stop.
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I'm so opposed to people trying to mimic other people's lives.
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And where other people's names, and I'll get in trouble for this, but oh well.
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People putting other people's names on their shirts as if they wanna be them.
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Well, listen, if God wanted you to be them, he would have made you them.
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He didn't, he made you you.
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Made me me.
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He's given me a path and he's promised me that he will keep me and preserve me from this time forth and forevermore.
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I'm gonna leave you with this word.
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If you are not his, and by the way, I must say it.
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Just because you came to a conference, a Bible conference doesn't mean you're not his.
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It doesn't mean you're a child of God.
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And just because you think something about someone doesn't make him a child of God.
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The blood of Christ makes someone a child of God.
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But I wanna say this this morning, if you are here this morning and you are not his, I want you to understand the great danger you're in.
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If you are not a child of God, you have so underestimated the danger you're in.
01:00:00
I'm gonna read you this as I close from Isaiah.
01:00:02
It says, thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, I am the Lord, your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you by the way that you should go.
01:00:12
Oh, that you had heeded my commandments.
01:00:16
Then your peace would have been like a river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.
01:00:22
Your descendants would have been like the sand and the offspring of your body, like the grains of sand.
01:00:27
And his name would not have been cut off nor destroyed from before me.
01:00:38
Those that are his will preserve with him forever and those that are not his will preserve in judgment forever.
01:00:49
May God bless us.
01:00:50
May we continually lift up our eyes to the hills and see from where comes our help, amen.
01:00:58
All right, let's just, you're gonna do your, you're gonna do your, shouldn't he be like on TV, right? This is the Brother Keith hour.
01:01:08
I got a face for raising.
01:01:11
God bless you.
01:01:15
Okay, well, I'll ask a question, just like kick it off.
01:01:19
You spent a lot of years, Andy, as a pastor in a Baptist church, is that right? Yep.
01:01:25
Okay.
01:01:26
I know it's right, I want them to know.
01:01:30
What would you say is, cause I'm gonna deal with some of what you dealt with in my message as well, as far as doctrinally the distinction between one saved, always saved and perseverance of the saints.
01:01:41
Cause I think that distinction, what you said is right on.
01:01:44
It's important to understand.
01:01:46
In your years, you know, of Baptist life, do you have any particular memories of experiences where you saw that doctrine used in a dangerous, negative way in the lives of people? And I'm not asking you to name names.
01:02:04
No, no, no, no, I know what you're asking.
01:02:05
I think I know what you're asking.
01:02:07
I've seen it over and over again.
01:02:10
And it many times was presented in the setting of carnal Christianity.
01:02:18
Yeah.
01:02:19
That many, many people were taught one saved, always saved versus pressing on in the faith.
01:02:26
And it was couched in, or it was a way to comfort those who were living what they were promoting was a carnal Christian life, which of course would have wrong understanding of what carnal Christianity really means in the sense.
01:02:43
But I think we've seen that over the years.
01:02:47
I think Candy and I have experienced many times where we've been shocked by the people of God for lack of better term, right baby? We've been shocked at what the people who call themselves the people of God have done or not done.
01:03:06
And a lot of that has been because they believed one saved, always saved.
01:03:13
And I think it's not only that, I will just add this.
01:03:16
I think it's prevalent in the South, in the Southern Baptist churches, right? And even in the churches in the North, because many of those churches take a Arminian view of everything else.
01:03:34
And I think that just feeds the fire.
01:03:36
And I better stop there because I could go on for another 25 minutes.
01:03:39
Yeah, if we get in the distinction between North and South, we might have a...
01:03:43
There ain't no distinction.
01:03:44
I'm just kidding.
01:03:45
You're all crazy, you don't speak right.
01:03:52
Who else would like to ask brother Andy a question? You explained it so well, I think is what we see.
01:04:03
Anyone? All right, sister.
01:04:07
You gotta get the pump primed, you gotta get them warmed up.
01:04:14
Did you say that David wrote that psalm? Did you say that David wrote that psalm? No, he said, that's one of the psalms that has no name attached to it.
01:04:23
David wrote Psalm 121, 122, 131, and 133.
01:04:31
Solomon wrote Psalm 127 and the rest of them have no name attached to them.
01:04:35
I was thinking of the scripture that said he will keep me from evil.
01:04:41
Well, the person who wrote the psalm, if they were experiencing earthly evil, and I believe you indicated that the evil that they're being kept from is judgment.
01:04:57
So, I mean, can you expand on that particular scripture? Someone going through an evil experience in this life, not think that that's what God is keeping them from instead of if it means it's keeping you from judgment.
01:05:19
I understand what you're saying, but I'm not fully understanding.
01:05:24
In other words, I understand what, from the standpoint of this, I think we need to be careful when, you know, and I think about what Brother Keith has spoken many times, that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to his purpose, and we love to use that as a shield and a sword and all those other things, but perhaps we have a misunderstanding of it.
01:05:45
I mean, God never says he's going to keep all evil away from us, but he does say he'll preserve us as Paul.
01:05:54
That's why I mentioned the example of Paul because God had told him he was to go to Rome and Paul purposed to go to Rome.
01:06:01
And again, you would think that God would have had a first-class seat for him since it was God's will.
01:06:06
We obviously know it was God's will, and yet Paul had to work through all those evils, right? Including the hurricane and all those other things.
01:06:13
So I think we would be nothing but naive to believe that we will be preserved from the evils of this world, but we will be preserved forever and ever if we understand true preservation is to be with God.
01:06:34
Just like to know God, remember that's what Jesus said.
01:06:37
This is eternal life, to know God, right? How many people think eternal life is heaven? I bet you there's a lot of people, if you ask them what is eternal life, they'll say, oh, to be in heaven.
01:06:49
Well, I'll tell you what, in that sense to me, heaven is a side dish.
01:06:57
Eternal life is to know God.
01:06:59
Well, don't get me started, I'll go crazy.
01:07:03
Get wound back up, here you go.
01:07:06
You said once saved, always saved.
01:07:09
It's not how to get out of jail free card.
01:07:12
Is that like parallel Roman six? What shall we say then over continuing sin that grace may abound? Sure, yeah, I mean, that's one of the arguments that Paul's presenting, and that's one of the reasons why he presents it is because not only were there others that were doing that very thing, but even Paul was accused at times of doing that, of being one who was teaching, well, if I'm free, I'm free, and then I can just live any way I want.
01:07:42
And how many people have closed their eyes on this side of the veil and woke up and realized that that doctrine is just not true? How shall we continue in sin? How should we live any longer? He who has been freed from sin, he's been freed to, let me just say it this way, maybe this will help.
01:08:05
We've been freed from one master to be bound to another master, right? We've been freed from the slavery of sin to be bound to the slavery of the Lord of righteousness.
01:08:20
And that's what he says, to whom your servants, to that one you'll obey.
01:08:25
So, yeah, I would say that you could certainly use Mormon six as a parallel on that, yeah.
01:08:33
Are there others? Nope.
01:08:37
No, okay.
01:08:41
Well, if there are no others, Brother Andy, thank you for giving your time today.
01:08:47
And we are really doing well on time.
01:08:53
It's just about noon and that was.