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Pastor Mike talks about Biblical assurance on today's show.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'".
In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.
Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. This is Mike Abendroth and I'm your host. And today we wanna talk about the topic of assurance, A-S-S-U-R-A-N-C-E, assurance. What is biblical assurance?
Can you have assurance? I know people who say you cannot have biblical assurance, and if you have, anyone ever tell you anything differently, those people are false teachers. I know other people who have always had assurance, whether they sin or whether they don't sin, they still say they have assurance.
I know unbelievers who say they have assurance. What is assurance? Baker's book of theology says, assurance of a relationship with God in Christ is the way believers express the mysterious connection between the infinite nature of God and the fallible nature of humanity.
So today we're gonna talk about assurance on No Compromise Radio ministry. Sometimes I critique things and sometimes I teach things. And so today consider this the latter. True or false? Question number one.
I like true and false. That means I can engage you and we can communicate and this can be authentic community. Gag me. All right, no, I'm not going immersion, but I'm about ready to get glasses. I always read now with glasses.
If I'm doing any long-term reading, I do not preach yet with glasses, but I'm very close to preaching with glasses. And so I'm gonna go get my eyes tested and then I would probably pick some kind of cool emergent glasses.
Just because the emergent guys wear these cool glasses, that doesn't mean I cannot wear cool glasses. And so you might not think they're cool, but I'm gonna pick cool to me because this is my world and I satisfy myself and I'm here for myself and I wanna be cool and look cool.
So I'm about ready for some cool glasses. I say that because I'm looking at my notes and I'm thinking, man, that font size keeps shrinking every single day. Number one, assurance is not a very important topic.
Assurance isn't very vital. True or false? Well, it is vital because A, it's in the Bible and B, it's something that people deal with all the time. And if you have a man-centered theology, a man-centered salvation like Dave Hunt or Norm Geisler, then this is going to increase your false assurance.
That is something that's going to happen. In churches that preach the truth at a very high level, a biblical level, an apostolic level, save people struggle with assurance more. If you're at a watered down church, you don't struggle with much with assurance because the word is not whacking away at your life.
The demands of the gospel are not given every week because you're in one and done. You don't have to really have much of a struggle if you're at a watered down church. But if you're at a church that's not watered down and week in and week out, biblical verse by verse, preaching is done, you are going to struggle with your assurance of salvation.
And I like it that when people sit underneath the word for a long time, their sensitivity to sin increases. When that sensitivity increases, the downside is when you sin, doubts about your salvation increase.
This is also another, it's an important topic for another reason, and that is because false religions don't have any assurance. And this is a good springboard for preaching. Maybe today we'll have enough time, maybe not, to talk about the number one religion in New England that is Roman Catholicism.
They do not have assurance of salvation. And if God says you could have it and they don't, wouldn't that be a good topic to bring up? Do you know for sure that you're going to go to heaven when you die?
Occasionally I'll meet people here in New England and I'll say, well, one thing's for sure, I know the second that I die, I am going to be in the presence of God. Not because of who I am, but because what God has done.
Don Whitney said, the devil's diabolical strategy in general is to convince lost people that they are saved and saved people that they are lost. The Puritan Joseph Carl in 1653 said, the greatest thing that we can desire next to the glory of God is our own salvation.
And the sweetest thing we can desire is the assurance of our salvation. In this life, we cannot get higher than to be assured of that which in the next life is to be enjoyed. All saints shall enjoy a heaven when they leave this earth.
Some saints enjoy a heaven while they are here on earth. End quote. Assurance is a vital topic. Don't let anyone ever come along and say, it's not that big a deal. There are other issues in life to be concerned about.
Edward Reynolds said of assurance, assurance will assist us in all duties. It will arm us against all temptations. It will answer all objections. It will sustain us in all conditions. And my last quote regarding the importance and vitality of the doctrine of assurance, that's twice today I've lost my voice.
It's kind of cracked. My son's 13 and his voice is starting to change a little bit and it's doing that once in a while. And maybe I'm having some kind of sympathy pains. Who knows? Baxter, Richard Baxter, the great English writer from Kidderminster, England.
I have a quick story in it, Richard Baxter. I drive to Kidderminster from London in the car with my kids, three at the time and wife. And we drive there and I pull into the little information kiosk and I said, you know, I'm looking for the church where Richard Baxter was the pastor.
You wouldn't happen to know where that would be, would you? Just by chance, I'm sure you wouldn't. English Puritan, you know, et cetera, 1600s. She said, oh yeah, it's right down the street. Take a left, you know, et cetera.
I thought, wow. So we went to the church and they were having some 12-step group meeting in the basement. Hello, here's what Richard Baxter said when he was on his deathbed. I bless God that I have a well-grounded assurance of my eternal happiness and great peace and comfort within.
He's about ready to die. And they said, how do you feel? And he said, almost well. I'm almost well. So I think it's very important. It is important for us when we sing with the writer of It Is Well With My Soul.
Oh, the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul. This doctrine is vital and it will make you sing.
How firm a foundation, you saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his excellent word. What more can he say than to you he has said, to you who for refuge to Jesus hath fled. And we would agree with that songwriter.
The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, I will not, I will not desert to its foes. That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I'll never, no never, no never forsake. Assurance of salvation is worthy of your study.
Number two, true or false? People can have assurance of salvation and still go to hell. True or false? People can still have assurance of, can have assurance of salvation and still go to hell. True, I think it was R .C. Sproul who said there are four kinds of people, four generic basic categories.
One, those who think they're saved but aren't, reference Matthew 7, 21 and following. Those who think they're saved but aren't. What, didn't I just read that? Those who think they are saved but aren't, those, oh, I get it, sorry.
Those, see, I told you my glasses. Those we think are saved but aren't, 1 John 2. Those who are saved but don't act like it. And those who are saved and they act like it. There is a false assurance. You can have a false assurance.
You can be a Christian and have assurance that you're going to heaven. You can be a Christian and have no assurance that you're going to heaven. And you can be an unbeliever without assurance or a believer, an unbeliever with assurance.
That's why John Bunyan said that at the gates of hell, there is a, at the gates of heaven, there's a porthole to hell. He said, quote, then I saw that there is a way to hell even from the gates of heaven.
And so if you get your assurance based on your weekly sacraments, I think you're going to run into a big problem. I think sacramentalists will say something like this. What is your name? You give your name.
Who gave you this name? My godfather and my godmother in my baptism, wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of Christ. There are some people who have assurance but they're not going.
And if you think your assurance is based on your infant baptism, then your assurance is null, it's void. Your salvation is null and void. Page 321 of the Roman Catholic Catechism says, by baptism, all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin.
That would create in you a false assurance. Lutheranism, another sacramental system says, in a booklet put out by them called Baptism Saves, baptism establishes a new relationship with God. Through Christian baptism, we have our sins forgiven, become heirs of eternal life and can remain his children forever.
Amazing grace. End quote. Why Baptize Infants, 1981, Osberg Press, page three. That, my friends, will create in you a false assurance. And you can get false assurance not just as a sacramentalist, but also as a legalist.
And you have some kind of code of conformity that you have to do, like a Plymouth Brethren, for instance, or some kind of strict brethren. And if you do this, you can feel your assurance. And if you don't, then you won't feel it.
People who are in easy-believism churches, they say to themselves, I have assurance because I walked an aisle, I went up to the altar, I prayed a prayer, I prayed the sinner's prayer, I memorized John 3 .16, I go to church, I send my kids to Awana, I shook the pastor's hand and he told me, welcome to the kingdom.
Friends, your pastor doesn't know if you're gonna be going to the kingdom or not. If somebody you know says, I hear about Jesus that you're preaching and I wanna go to heaven and I turn from my sins and I'm gonna follow him all the days of my life, your job, your responsibility, your prerogative, your privilege is not to tell them, welcome to heaven and don't let anybody ever tell you anything differently.
John MacArthur makes that very clear and you ought to read some of his books. Jesus makes it clearer than John MacArthur. In Luke 8, some people hear the word with joy and they don't bear any fruit, no fruit bearing, no Christianity.
And so you have to be very, very careful because not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, Jesus says, but that he that doeth the will of my father, which is in heaven.
You can be in a charismatic, you can be a mystic, you can be a subjective experientialist, that's the right word I'm looking for. And you can have some kind of point of contact with a TV, Benny Hinn can put his hand to the TV, stretch out your hand, have a point of contact, you touch my hand and I've got the gift of healing and send another $100 in and I'll make sure that you are sealed with the sign of salvation and you bear fruit, commensurate with the baptism of the Holy Spirit, speak in tongues and you're going to heaven.
That is not true. Number three, I thought this was in my notes somewhere and I thought I'd probably get in trouble when I said it and so now what I made implicit before I'll make explicit now. True or false question number three, my name is Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry, WVNE, I love VNE 760.
I love it that they'll put a controversial show on like No Compromise Radio. I love it that they'll say, do you know what? We want the truth. Now they may have a disclaimer, they might not agree with everything I say, but they want the truth of God through a local preacher, through a local ministry to go forward.
And they told me when I first started the show, if people in this area of Worcester do not have a good Bible teaching church that they attend, we want them to go to Bethlehem Bible Church. If you don't have a church, you ought to go to Bethlehem Bible Church.
You have to bring your Bible and come and say, is this church biblical? And if the answer is yes, we'd love to have you. If the answer is no, then I hope you talk to me, but you can always email me at info at nocompromiseradio .com.
All one word, nocompromiseradio .com. True and false today, we're talking about assurance of salvation. We're 13 minutes into the show and I can tell already, we're never gonna make this quiz. This quiz, we're not gonna finish it.
We're not going to finish this quiz today, but that's all right. Assurance of salvation. Can we have assurance of salvation? Should we have assurance of salvation? I probably should start off the show with the obvious, and that is the end of the gospel of John.
What does John chapter 20 say? It's the second to the last chapter. And here we have John 20, 30, and 31. Therefore, the writer says, many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book.
By God's sovereign purpose, they're not in the book. But these have been written. We have these seven Iams here in the gospel of John to all show forth the deity of Christ. One would have been sufficient, but we have seven.
But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus, this man who was born in Bethlehem, who went down to Egypt, who moved up to Nazareth, that this Jesus is the Christ. He's more than a man.
He is the Messiah. He is God incarnate. He is the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, same essence, same nature. And that believing you may have eternal life or you may have life in his name.
And that's something that people look at this and say, you know what? You have a book that says you should believe in Jesus and that by believing you may have life in his name. I love at the end of the book of John, and there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.
But we have enough. We have enough to understand that Jesus is God and that we can have assurance of eternal life. You can have assurance. If you're a Christian, God wants you to have assurance. Oh, if you're in sin, you ought not to have assurance.
That should prick your conscience and you should say, I want to obey and do the right thing. But you could have assurance. Now what John in his gospel makes implicit, now let me make explicit as I've used that statement twice today.
First John five, these things, verse 13, I have written to you who believe in the name of the son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. This is the confidence which we have before him that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
John writes first John, the five chapters in first John so that you might know you have eternal life. You can know. That's exactly what the Bible says. So we're having a true and false quiz to talk about the doctrine of assurance.
True or false. Number three, the most popular religion in New England calls assurance a sin. The most popular religion in New England calls assurance a sin. Do you know the Roman Catholic church teaches that this is called the sin of presumption, the sin of presumption.
If you believe according to the Roman Catholic church that when you die, you go straight to heaven, that you are presuming on the grace of God. And that is a mortal sin. It was a mortal sin according to the Roman Catholic church and it is a mortal sin.
I guess John the apostle in John's gospel and in his epistle, first John, have committed the mortal sin. What does that tell you about that false religion? What does that say to you about Roman Catholicism?
Now I know people are going apoplectic and want to take some tums when I continually refer to the Roman Catholic church. I want people to listen to what the Bible says and what Rome says, and then to say to themselves, they've obviously got another Bible that they use because these two don't go together.
The other Bible they use that they've elevated over the Bible is called the magisterium and the tradition. And so to their credit, Rome says these are our three points of authority. To evangelicals' shame, we somehow think that they're on our side, that they're on our team, that we're saying mean things if we ever criticize Rome.
Well, Rome criticizes Protestants all the time. Where's the uproar there? We cannot both be right. Protestants and Catholics cannot both be right. We could both be wrong. One could be right, but both can't be right.
Don't let some kind of amorphous, gooey, sentimentalized love of ecumenism come through and everybody's right, if it's right to them. I say, let the Roman Catholic church have freedom of religion to promote their religion.
There's nothing wrong with them saying, this is what we believe when they believe it. But what's wrong is, if it is wrong, then I'm gonna say, you know what, it's wrong. And for a Roman Catholic church to say assurance is a sin, they are wrong.
And you imagine how many millions of Roman Catholics out there go to bed every night thinking, I don't know if I'm gonna go to heaven or not. Did I confess my sins enough? Did I take Mass enough? Do I have any mortal sins?
Is there any indulgence I could buy? Is there any way for me to get out of this? And that's their system. In one sense, I'm really glad there's no assurance for the Roman Catholic because I want them to turn to the finished work of Christ Jesus and to read Hebrews chapter nine and Hebrews 10 and say, what has been going on?
It's right here in my Catholic Bible. Hebrews nine and 10, why am I going to sacrifice Jesus every week now? The Roman Catholic church teaches that this assurance of salvation, the subjective feeling, our knowledge, internal knowledge, knowing that you're going to heaven when you die is wrong.
They teach that no one can be sure, that no one can know they're certainly forgiven, that they will see God face to face. I guess they'll think that the thief on the cross committed a mortal sin as well because he knew and he knew from the words of Jesus.
And we know from the words of Jesus through the apostle John, that exact same thing. Gregory the Great, a seventh century Pope denied assurance was possible, but also taught that it was dangerous. Quote, the greater our sins, the more we must do to make up for them.
Whether we have done enough to atone for them, we cannot know until after death. We can never be sure of success. Assurance of salvation and the feeling of safety engendered by it is dangerous for anybody and would not be desirable even if possible.
Friends, enemies, you might be saying to me, I'm not your friend. Well, that could be true. I wish we could be friends in the gospel. If you're a Christian, we are friends. If you're not a Christian, I want you an enemy of God to come in to friendship with God himself.
And then you'll come into friendship with God's people. You know, we have one gospel, it's called the eternal gospel. And that gospel is not that Jesus needs to be slain again for sins, he was slain once.
He was the foundation, he was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Did you know the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic Council, said basically against Luther about justification by faith alone?
You know, that's not really far enough. Gregory the Great went far, but he didn't go far enough. When he said assurance was dangerous and not desirable, they had to push it. They had to push it farther.
And basically, here's what the Council of Trent said. Not basically, I'll quote it. January 1547, Council of Trent, quote, whosoever shall affirm that when the grace of justification is received, the offense of the penitent sinner is so forgiven and the sentence of eternal punishment reversed that there remains no temporal punishment to be endured before his entrance into the kingdom of heaven, either in this world or in the future world.
In purgatory, let him be accursed. Sixth session, Canon 30, if anyone says that after the reception of grace of justification, the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema.
Curse that person, damn that person, send that person to hell. Now, here's my question. What does the Bible teach? Does the Bible teach what Trent just said? Or does the Bible teach that you can know you can have complete forgiveness?
And there's really two factors there. Can you have complete forgiveness of all your sins, past, present, and future based on Christ finished work? Secondly, can you experience that as a fact in your heart and have assurance?
For you see, eternal security, preservation of the saints, perseverance of the saints, those things are different than the feeling that those things are true, feeling that you have a right relationship with God called assurance of faith.
Well, my name is Mike Ebendroth, this is No Compromise Radio. We're talking about assurance of salvation and we're having a little true and false quiz. We're gonna talk more about how you can know you have complete forgiveness of sins.
If you're not a Christian, you don't have complete forgiveness of sins. You have committed high treason against the holy God of the universe and for one sin against that holy God, although you've committed thousands, for one sin, you deserve to be hung naked on a tree and slowly tortured.
But Jesus was hung on a tree and tortured for sinners like you. And he was raised from the dead and you must believe in that work of Jesus Christ, the risen King, once slain forever in order to have heaven.
Today's a day to repent and believe and trust in Christ.
No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.
Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.