2019 Conference Message: Assurance of Salvation--(Part 2)

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.

Prayer for Biblical Thinking and the Glory of Christ

Father in Heaven, we commit this time for and unto your Son�s glory. We recognize that the only reason we know anything about you is because you�ve been pleased to reveal yourself. And we see in nature your power and your wisdom, but the only way we know about how you save and how you care for sinners and what it costs you by sending the Lord Jesus to die for us, what power He has to raise Himself from the dead, we couldn�t think of these things on our own.

We couldn�t look at trees in the Grand Canyon to figure it out. It has to be from your Word. And so I would pray for this dear congregation that you would keep her as men and women of the book, that they would subject their feelings, their thoughts, their emotions, not to polls, not to their own consciences, but ultimately to your Word.

And we want to do that. We want to honor you by thinking rightly and biblically about you. So by your Spirit�s power today, would you help us to do that? Many probably are tired, but would you use your Word to help us to think in a way that would give your Son honor and glory, because He deserves it.

And we think about how those in heaven now are praising your Son, and He is worthy to be praised. And so I pray this in Jesus� name, amen. Oh, one other side note. I think to myself, what do I do as an unbeliever on a Saturday?

It�s not to go to a Bible conference. You know, one of the things that the Lord does when He changes you and He gives you a new legal standing before God, He also gives you new affections, does He not?

And what you used to love, now you hate. And what you used to hate, and now you love. I used to hate Bible teaching, and now I love it. I used to hate going to Bible conferences on Saturday morning, and now you love it, and you think, how did that happen?

We�ll talk more about that tomorrow, but that is the change of your affections by the Spirit of God�s power in your life. I like that. Christian, did you know God wants you to have assurance? If you�re a Christian, God wants you to have assurance.

The Apostle John says it this way, �These things I have written to you, that you may believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know you have eternal life, and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God.

In spite of what other religions teach, the Bible teaches that God wants Christians to have assurance in spite of who they are, in spite of their failings, in spite of their sins. And I find it fascinating that some call it �sin� to teach the doctrine of assurance.

Some call it �dangerous. Some say if you teach this, people will go off the rails and they�ll become lawless, antinomian. They will be anti-law. Don�t teach this doctrine, because if it gets out of the bag, then Christians are going to run around like wild people.

Cardinal Bellarmine said this, �The principal heresy of the Protestants is� You�re going to just feel that, and if you talked to a Roman Catholic back in the Reformation day and he were to say to you, �The main thing I hate about the Reformers, the things about the Protestants that I dislike the most, there�s a lot of heresies, but the heresy of all heresies is� What do you think he would say?

Well, if you were at a conference on assurance, you might say, �That�s kind of underhand pitched there, like slow. �The principal heresy of Protestants is that the saints may obtain to a certain assurance of their gracious and pardoned state before God.

Out of all the heresies, this is the mother of all heresies. He was a personal theologian to Pope Clement VIII, and later he called this the greatest of all heresies, saying that if you have assurance, it�s a presumption that you can say before God, �No matter what the future holds, I�m saved.

And they said that�s deadly and that�s dangerous, and we don�t want people to have that, �No matter what the future holds, I�m saved. And by the way, what if you did have breast cancer and you didn�t know what the future held and you didn�t know if I was saved?

I don�t think it�s the heresy of all heresies, I think it�s the comfort of all comforts, is it not? The doctrine of assurance that Christians can know for certain, �No matter what the future holds and no matter what I end up doing or not doing, God is faithful.

The Roman Catholic Council of Trent said this, �If anyone says that he will for certain of an infallible certainty have the great gift of perseverance unto the end, unless he learned this by special revelation, let him be a cursed or anathema.

Trent said, �If anyone says that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in divine mercy, which remits sins for Christ�s sake, let him be anathema. The Council of Trent said, �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 that no debt of temporal punishment remains, let him be anathema.

But that works perfectly if you�re in a works-righteous system, does it not? You have to keep the people working. You have to keep the people meriting to attain their standing before God. Rome took away assurance because they needed the people to work and to do things.

But the Bible and the Reformers, by preaching the Word, granted assurance. And that�s what we�re talking about this morning and tomorrow morning, the discovery, the rediscovery of the Reformed doctrine, the biblical doctrine of assurance of salvation.

Sinclair Ferguson writes, �Indeed, in some senses, the Reformation was the great rediscovery of assurance. By the way, Pastor John promoted a few books. I don�t have it in front of me here, but if you have not read the book Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson, W-H-O-L-E, The Whole Christ, you ought to get that book.

Out of all the books that I�ve read in the last probably 15 years, that�s by far the most impactful and my most favorite book because it talks about this very issue, because it talks about what we discussed last night, the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ and what he does, the whole Christ.

I have a few books in my sock drawer that are my top five books of all time, and I don�t mean like Galatians or Romans, I mean outside the Bible. If anybody ever asks you a good book on baptism, say, �Well, my favorite book on baptism is Galatians.

But outside the canon of Scripture, I have some books that are in my sock drawer that have been the most impactful on my life, and one of those sock drawer books is The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson.

And if you don�t like to read, you can get it on audio, by the way, and on my bicycle, I regularly listen to Sinclair at 1 .5 speed. When I was asked 30 years ago or 25 years ago for my ordination, if you could ask the Lord, this is the last question, they did all the doctoral questions and the doctrine questions and everything, and they said, �If you could ask the Lord for anything to help you in your ministry, Mike, what would you ask for

I didn�t know they were going to ask the question. I mean, what would you ask for? And I said, �A Scottish accent. The church would be twice as big if I had one. Sorry. What do you think of earthly parents who keep their children in doubt for year after year after year?

Who is their real mother? Who is their real father? The Lord Jesus, Spirit of God and the Father wants you to know, Christian, that you are forgiven, and a son and future glory is waiting for you. So what we looked at last night in a little bit of review was how to deal with the issue of assurance, how to get assurance if you don�t have it, Christian.

And notice how I�m saying �Christian� regularly, because if you�re not a Christian, I don�t want you to have any assurance. There�s probably somebody here today who�s not a Christian, and when I had a friend come into my office and he said, �I�m struggling with anxiety.

Could you help me And I said, �Yes, I�d like to help you. And I said to this man, I�ll change his name, �Jim, I think you live with your girlfriend, don�t you �Oh, yeah. �I mean, living together, living together

�Yes. And I said, �And you have anxiety about work and other things �Yes. I said, �Well, you know what �Your problems are worse than you think they are. And based on your own profession, I�m looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 6, and it says, �Fornicators will not inherit the kingdom of God.

And I want you to know, if you die today or tonight, when you put your head down on that pillow, I don�t know your soul, but based on what you�ve told me, you�ve lived with this girl for 10 years in an unrighteous life, you�re going to die and go straight to hell.

You have a bigger problem than work. And he admitted himself to the hospital that day for anxiety attack. And I wasn�t happy that he had to go to the hospital, but I was happy that he had a conscience to understand.

I cannot just say I believe in Jesus and live whatever way I want to and just somehow have a demon faith. Even the demons believe in what? Shudder. So this is a very important issue, and so that�s why I say Christian.

If you�re not a Christian, the only way you can have assurance is look into the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in Him because He is the only sin bearer. He is the one that if you look back in the Old Testament and you see Adam sinned and God killed an animal and cloaked Adam with that skin so we see the idea of substitution.

Adam should have died, but the animal did instead. And you move a little bit further along in Revelation and you see Exodus chapter 12. The family doesn�t die, although they should have because they were sinful, but the animal, the Passover lamb dies and they paint the blood over.

One animal for one man, Adam, one animal for the family. You move farther ahead in Leviticus 16 and you see one animal for the sins not just of the person or of the family but the nation, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

And then you finally get over here and you see John the Baptist look and he sees Jesus, John chapter 1, and what does he say? Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the, not just an individual, not just a family, not just a nation, but Jews and Gentiles, the entire world.

So that�s the one in whom you have to look, this risen Savior, because outside of trusting in Jesus, I don�t want you to have assurance, but those who are trusting in the Lord Jesus and maybe you have a weak trust or a little trust or a tiny trust, I want you to have assurance because the Bible wants you to have assurance.

So how do you keep assurance if you don�t have it or how do you get it if you don�t have it, Christian? Well, number one we saw last night, don�t look primarily to yourself. Don�t look to yourself primarily.

And we looked at that essentially by saying if you look at yourself, you�re going to see nothing if you�re honest with yourself except sinful things. And so don�t look to yourself to find assurance. Secondly, we looked at the idea of looking to the Lord Jesus.

John Calvin said, �He who struggling with his own weakness presses toward faith in Christ in his moments of anxiety, is already in a large part victorious. Isn�t that interesting? You�re not looking to yourself for assurance.

You�re struggling a little bit and you think, �Okay, I�m not going to look at myself. I�m going to look at the promises of God and the love of God and other things we�ll talk about today and tomorrow.

And as I look at him, Calvin said, �In a large part, you�re already victorious because you�re looking rightly. You�re looking at Christ for us, not Christ in us. We talked about Jesus yesterday a little bit and how kind he was to Peter after Peter�s denials and remind me of the R .C. Sproul story.

I met somebody here today and they said they like R .C. Sproul. Who was it? What�s your name again? John. John, that�s right. Did you hear how he said that? John. Big bad John. So, John, here�s the R .C. Sproul quote for you about the nature of God when we look to Christ.

The prohibition uttered most frequently by our Lord is the command, �Fear not. He said this so often to his disciples and others that he encountered that it almost came to sound like a greeting. Most people say, �Hi� or �Hello.

The first words of Jesus often were, �Fear not. That�s who we talked about last night, the mercy and love of our Savior, the way he loves sinners. Now we move to new information. Number three, if you want to have assurance or if you�d like to keep it if you already have it, don�t look to any isms for assurance.

I-S-M. Any isms. Let me give you several isms where people try to get assurance but they�re faulty. They�re wrong. You don�t want assurance found in these places. Number one, sacramentalism. Sacramentalism.

Maybe you have a background like I do that when I was baptized as a Lutheran or into the Lutheran Church, questions like this were said to my parents, �What is your name They give the name Michael Lee Ebendroth.

�Who gave you this name My dad would say, �I did. And the list goes on. In the Catholic Catechism, page 321, it says, �By baptism, all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin.

In a little Lutheran book called Baptism Saved, it says this, �Baptism establishes a new relationship with God. Through Christian baptism, we have our sin forgiven, become heirs of eternal life, and can remain His children forever.

Amazing grace Why are you a Christian? What do you base your assurance on? If it�s because I�ve been baptized, I�ve been catechized, I�ve been consecrated. Let�s see, I�ll try to wake the kids up a little bit.

If I�ve been irrigated, consecrated, I try. If you want a sermon, you wait until tomorrow. Okay, this is a conference, right? We can have a little fun, can�t we? Bible conference? If you say, �I�m trusting in my baptism to be right with God that�s the wrong kind of assurance.

I don�t want you to have that, because that kind of goes back to number one last night, just looking to yourself and what was done. So many people think if I just do religious things, for me, I grew up in the Lutheran church and I was baptized, I was confirmed, I went on missions trips, I did all kinds of things and served, but I wasn�t saved, and I thought that I was.

And that�s the devil�s lie, right? Somehow thinking I�m saved as the father of all lies. There�s another �ism� that people refer to often for their own assurance. If I ask them, �Are you a Christian

�Yes. �How do you know that you�re a Christian? Do you have the hope of heaven They might say, �I�ve been baptized. Or they might say, �Number two, let�s call it legalism. There are certain systems of Christianity, even, where they have these ironclad, religious, rigid systems of what you can do and what you can�t do.

�How do you know you�re a Christian �Well, I don�t smoke. �How do you know you�re a Christian �I don�t drink. �How do you know you�re a Christian �I don�t play Call of Duty, or whatever it might be.

There�s this unwritten code, and as long as I don�t do these things, I know I�m good with God. And they�re all things, by the way, that you can do externally well, but internally you can be very far from God.

Let�s give you another �ism� that�s a bad way to get assurance. Easy �believe-ism. All you have to do is walk the aisle, sign the card, shake the preacher�s hand, you�re saved and secure, ready for heaven by just doing something.

How many people usually come up for the altar calls after the church service here on Sunday, John? We call people to salvation every single week, do we not? I just called you to salvation. But there�s nothing we�re trying to do in a kind of a decisional regeneration way.

If I do this, then God does that, and then I base my salvation on it. And so if you�re trusting in someone outside of Christ, or a system like sacramentalism or legalism or easy-believe-ism, you�re never going to be satisfied.

And the last one is what I�ll call experientialism. Experientialism. How do you know you�re a Christian? Well, I had a peace about something. I had this warm feeling. I had this experience. I spoke in tongues.

Where I live, people sometimes think if you�re baptized, then you come up out of the water, you�re supposed to speak in tongues, and you�re not really saved. And so what I usually do is, I don�t do baptisms anymore because I�m older, my back hurts, but when I did them, I�d say, �Here�s what we�re going to do.

I�m going to hold you like this, and I�m going to say to you, is there anything you�ve contributed to your salvation And you�re going to say something like, �No, except my sin I contributed. �Is there any other Savior you�re trusting in

�No, it�s the Lord Jesus Christ. �Is Jesus still in the tomb �No, he�s raised himself from the dead, and he�s coming back. Based on your profession of faith, I�m going to say that, and then I�m going to baptize you in the singular name, because there�s one God, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and I�m going to dunk you.

And by the way, if you come up from the water and you start speaking in tongues, back down you go. I just want you to know that. So, a lot of these �isms� could be summed up kind of with the word �I. I had this happen.

I did this. I did that. My parents did it for me. Either me, myself, or I, or my parents. Versus, here�s what the Lord Jesus did. Remember that song that I quoted last night, �My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus� blood and righteousness.

There�s nothing you can do to make yourself acceptable to God. You�re not justified based on any of these �isms. It�s the work of the Lord Jesus. Number four, how do you get assurance? And if you have it, how do you keep it?

Number one, don�t look primarily to yourself. Look to Jesus. Don�t look to any �isms. And number four, please turn your Bibles to Romans 5, look to the love of God. I want to talk a little bit this morning, Christian, about seeing God as father and not judge.

Seeing God as shepherd, not policeman. What�s your view of God when I ask you about God? I�ll tell you, here�s my big problem. I was in evangelicalism and I was sick to death about hearing a sappy, sentimental, romantic view of the love of God.

And I think I maybe swung too far over into judge and righteous. And, of course, He�s the judge and He is righteous. But the question is, does God love sinners? Does the Bible teach that God loves sinners or does it not?

Charles Hodge said, �If you�d like to give encouragement to Christians of their salvation�s surety, you talk about the love of God. And we�re going to do that today from Romans 5 and Romans 8. Charles Hodge said, �The infinite, immutable, and gratuitous love of God.

In the first ten verses of the fifth chapter of the epistle to the Romans, and in the eighth chapter of that epistle, from the thirty-first verse to the end, the apostle dwells on the characteristics of the love of God�listen to this, it�s so great�as affording an immovable foundation of the believer�s hope.

The love of God in Christ Jesus in Romans chapter 5 and 8 should contribute to your view of assurance. And you can read in the Old Testament and the New that God loves, does not Ephesians chapter 2 say, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He what?

Loved us. Can you imagine Ephesians, by the way? I want to go there, but just off the top of my head. You�re dead in trespasses and sins, Ephesians 2, 1 through 3. What if the next word in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 4, was therefore?

You�re dead in trespasses and sins, therefore. What if it was and, and therefore God did this, and God did that, but the next word in Ephesians 2, verse 4 is what? But God, you�re rich in sins, He�s rich in mercy.

He�s got great love with which He loved us. So we�re going to look at Romans chapter 5 now for some Bible teaching about the love of God. By the way, little P .S., I was told that Romans 5 is such a crucial chapter for every Bible student, for every Christian, that when you take your Bible and just let it open naturally, it should open up to Romans chapter 5.

So when I heard that, guess what I did? I made sure. So it just works. This is John�s Bible, by the way. Look at that. Okay, the Book of Maps. Okay, sorry. But we�re close. Romans 5 is so important. Verse 1, �Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we exalt in hope of the glory of God.

And not only this, but we exalt in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance. And perseverance, proven character. And proven character, hope. And hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

What a great introductory section about justifying faith and peace with God and what God does in our life. Now we�re going to look at verses 6 through 11, and I want to talk about it a little bit at length.

Now before I read this section, I don�t know if you like to go to weddings or not, but I love to officiate weddings. And here�s what I do in premarital counseling. I�m with a couple, the groom-to-be and the bride-to-be.

And I say to both of them, or in front of both of them, but I address the groom, I say, �Could you give me four reasons why you picked this lady to be your wife? She�s kind of blushing. He�s kind of blushing.

Would you please just let me know And he doesn�t know if I want theology or like real life. So he�s like, �Some have said this. I kid you not. One guy said, �She�s a five-point Calvinist. Wow. So romantic.

And they�ll say things like, �She loves the Lord. She loves serving children and teaching them. And then I�m like, �Do you like the way she looks �She�s beautiful. Like, that�s okay to say. And it�s so sweet.

And then I say, �By the way, could I say those four things in my message to the congregation during your wedding �Yes. And then I say, �Well, today we have Jim and Cindy, and Jim told me privately about these four things.

And by the way, let me share with you these four. And he picked her because she loves the Lord, she loves ministry, she�s self-sacrificial, and she�s beautiful. And then I say, �By the way, those are good reasons to pick a bride, are they not?

I commend him for picking her because of those things. I don�t hold it against him at all, but that�s not the way God picks. And we�re going to see in Romans chapter 5, verses 6 and following, four words that describe us, and they�re anything but beautiful and lovely and right.

I commend him for loving someone who�s lovable. He loves because of. That�s good. But what�s infinitely better is how does God love people in spite of. God doesn�t love you because of. God loves you in spite of.

That�s really great love. See if you can find those four words here in Romans chapter 5. I�ll highlight them with my voice. �For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

Can you imagine? There�s two words right there. �For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates. That�s a present tense, by the way.

He makes conspicuous his own love toward us. That while we were yet, that�s word three, sinners, Christ died for us. �Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.

For if while we were, and there�s our final word, enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only this, but also we exalt in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we now have received the reconciliation.

That�s how God loves when we�re helpless, ungodly enemies and sinners. That�s a lot different kind of love than I have for my wife. This is a much deeper love. Jesus dies for sinners who are neither righteous nor good.

And now that you�re not an enemy of God, now that you�re a child, does that change? Does God love you now less? When I think about verse seven, if you take a look at seven again. �Though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die.

I know there�s some dads here. I think you dads would lay down your life for your wife, for your children, wouldn�t you? If it had to be somebody, it was either your son or you, you would die for them.

But what about if we change the scenario a little bit and instead of, as Joel Beeky says, running into a house that�s burning and you�ve got to save your child, there are murderers and rapists and convicts and swindlers and other things that are worse but I just don�t even want to say what they are.

And you�ve got to run into that house and save those murderers and people that are on death row. That�s a little bit different. Beeky says, �I suspect that you would be slower to react. And then he said, �Would you substitute, by making the scenario even more complex, would you substitute one of your very own children to take the place of the death row inmate in the burning house?

I think no one in his right mind would make such a substitution Beeky writes. �But this is the nature of God�s love for us. For God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son. See, I can�t grasp that.

Can you? I can�t understand how somebody could love me. I remember I flew from Omaha to L .A. I was not saved and I�d been living in L .A. for about four years and my mom said, �Who�s going to pick you up at LAX

This was in the mid-eighties. I said, �I don�t have anybody to pick me up. And she started crying and I thought, �Why are you crying? I�ll get a taxi or I�ll invent Uber and be rich. And essentially she was crying that in a city of 10 million people or whatever the number was, I didn�t know anyone well enough, no one loved me enough to be able to drive to the airport and pick me up.

And then the more I thought about it and I thought, �Now that I�m a Christian, I don�t really care about getting picked up from the airport, but God knows about every one of my sins and He still loves me anyway.

I don�t have a death wish, but the day I die will be something marvelous will happen and not just glory. I won�t have all those things in my mind that I know I�ve done that I don�t want anybody to ever know about because I�m shamed.

Things that I�ve done with my mind and my body and the skeletons that are in my closet, I don�t ever want to think about those again. And the thing is, God knew about every one of those things and He gave His Son for me anyway.

When I was ungodly, helpless, an enemy and a sinner, Jesus Christ laid down His life for me because God loves sinners. And if God loves His enemies to that degree, do you think Christian because you didn�t obey Him properly yesterday, He�s not going to love you?

I don�t say this because I want you to be crazy and go sin in a wild way. I want to have you hear this because if God loves sinners like this, how does He love His children? I get it that God loves the good and the righteous and the pure, but how does He love these kind of people?

How could He love me? And you see that kind of language of how much more in verse 9 and following, how much more been justified by His blood shall we be saved from the wrath of God through Him. I said to you last night, if you�re a Christian, you will never ever experience the wrath of God ever because it was poured out in full on the Lord Jesus Christ.

And when He said, �My God, my God, why have you forsaken me for the first time ever, not calling God His Father the Father is pouring out His wrath on the Son even though the Son didn�t deserve it.

And to use the language of propitiation or satisfaction is good and right. But you might think about those concepts in the term of exhaustion. He exhausted the wrath of God on Calvary and therefore there�s none left for me.

I get no wrath because God doesn�t have double jeopardy and have Jesus pay and I pay. It�s amazing to me. How could anybody love me like that knowing ahead of time? I tell this story all the time, but it�s true.

So my wife and I were friends. We dated for four months. On May 6, 1989, I asked her to marry me. June 6, 1989, we got married. She was a brand new believer. I wasn�t a believer. People say, �Why did you only wait a month to get married

Well, here�s the main reason, because I didn�t want her to figure out who I really was. And I figured she was the lady of her word and if I could get her to say I do, I had her for life. Because the more she knew about me, the worse it was going to get.

And I�m not kidding. So I wanted her to say yes right away. It worked. Yeah, here�s the thing. God knew everything about me. And He knew everything about you before He saved you. And He had His Son pay for those things.

Because why? He loves sinners. That�s amazing to me. Go to chapter 8, verse 35. He talks about the same thing. I think we read the Bible in kind of a where�s Waldo fashion and we look for ourselves in everything.

And especially in 8 .35, we misread it. And if you misread this, you misread everything when it comes to assurance. Romans 8 .35. Now what�s He talking about there? Is He talking about your love for Jesus?

Or is He talking about Jesus�s love for you or the triune God�s love for you? And that�s important to figure out the difference. Does your love ever falter for the Lord and go through seasons? Of course.

But this is God�s love right here. What shall separate us? No. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? And I think you can figure out what�s happening. I�m going through a bad straight right now.

How could God still love me through this? If He loved me, wouldn�t He deliver me from these things? Wouldn�t He pull the escape hatch and let me out of this? Bad circumstances show that God doesn�t care for me.

Does He? And Paul answers the question, of course He does. What shall separate or divorce us from the love of Christ? This is Christ�s love for the dear Christian. And then he lists all these things that could possibly divorce you from God�s love.

Tribulation, this external pressure. That�s the idea there. Affliction in general. Distress. It�s got the word of kind of compression. I�m in a tight space. There�s no way out. Persecution. Famine. Nakedness.

You can think of Paul, who was often hungry, thirsty, naked. Peril, exposed to treachery. Sword. That�s a symbol of capital punishment. Paul would meet that sword one day on the Appian Highway. But in the middle of all these things, God�s love doesn�t change.

Charles Hodge said it is no ground of confidence to assert or even to feel that we will never forsake Christ. But it is the strongest ground of assurance to be convinced that His love will never change.

So let�s just be really practical since I�m getting to kind of know you a little bit. The last time you sinned, a day ago, an hour ago, three days ago, when you were actually sinning, was God loving you less?

That�s weird to think about. Does God love me less? If you�re in Christ, how could He love you less? Because He loves His Son perfectly. The book that was mentioned about Jerry Bridges, I found it fascinating that he talks about sin.

And did it in a way that I�d not really thought about before. So if I ask you the question, �Do you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? And do you love your neighbor as yourself Well, you know, I don�t really.

As often as I want to, sometimes I do. And then Bridges gives this list to really see what the law can do to force you to go to the Savior. And he asks questions to plumb the depths of this first great commandment.

�Does your love for God transcend all other desires in this life Children, spouse, job. �Like David, do you long to gaze upon His beauty and seek fellowship with Him? Do you rejoice in meditating on His Word, and like Jesus, you rise early to pray?

Do you always delight to do His will, regardless of how difficult it may be? A regard for His glory governs you and motivates everything you do. You�re eating, you�re drinking, you�re working, you�re playing, you�re buying, you�re selling, you�re reading, you�re speaking.