Can A True Christian Lose Their Salvation?

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If you'd like to turn with me, please, in your Bibles, we will be looking first in the Gospel of John, chapter 10.

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John, chapter 10, if you want to be ready to join with me there. We are continuing our series on what we call the doctrines of grace.

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If you're just joining us, we are toward the end of that series, which means we have laid a foundation.

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And indeed, in this last of what are called the five points, we've sort of expanded that out to six points, as most people do.

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But you are familiar with the acrostic tulip. We've expanded that out to something like srucep or something like that, which really is not nearly as memorable as tulip is.

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But we began looking at the sovereignty, the kingship of God, His rulership over His creation, the fact that He is the maker of all things.

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And then we looked at the depravity of man, his incapacity to do that which is right before God in light of his slavery to sin, his fall in Adam, Adam's federal headship.

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And the fact that man is dead in sin, that does not mean that man is not doing anything. Man is just simply very, very active in suppressing the knowledge of God and in suppressing the revelation that has already been provided to him.

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Then we looked at the doctrine of unconditional election, that God's electing choice is freely of grace.

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It has to be unconditional. If it's conditioned upon man's activities, then it's not grace. It's not free.

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It's not sovereign. It does not flow from His will. But we saw the repeated testimony of Scripture that it is

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God's will, His good will, that is the source and fountainhead of election itself.

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And that election is unto salvation. It's not simply unto service. It's not simply the election of a nameless, faceless group, or just simply certain nations, but it is personal and is directly attached to the concept of the work of Christ, which then brings us to the subject that we looked at that I presented two sermons on, and that is the atoning work of Christ.

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The fact that there is perfect harmony between the Father, Son, and Spirit in accomplishing the one decree of God.

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There is no disharmony. It is not like the Father has decreed to save only these people, but the

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Son then dies to save everybody, and the Spirit comes and tries to save everybody, but fails to do so, and you have the various persons of the

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Godhead doing different things. That is not how this works. There is harmony that takes place in the work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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Christ's death is substitutionary, and it's personal. That elect people are united with Him in His death burial and in His resurrection.

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There are many, many, many people that especially reject that concept. They do not want a decretal understanding of atonement at all because, well, because that leaves no space for the autonomous will of man.

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And so, if you have the Father decreeing from eternity the salvation of a specific people, if you have the

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Son dying in their place perfectly, entering into the presence of the

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Father in their place so that we have that forerunner in that holy place, as Hebrews 6 says, so that Jesus is able to save to the uttermost those who draw nigh unto

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God through Him, those that have been given to Him by the Father, John 6, if the

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Spirit of God then can come and make application and raise us to spiritual life, and there is no power in heaven and earth that can stop

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God from, at the time He has decreed from eternity, raising the rebel sinner to life, breaking the chains of slavery, taking them out of spiritual death, making them new creatures in Christ, then it makes perfect sense that God didn't go through all of that to then go, whoops,

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I lost one. Whoops, now it's up to you. I've done all this stuff,

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I've gotten you to this place, but now it's up to you to keep your nose clean. Don't know if you're going to make it or not, but I hope you do a good job.

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In reality, there is no reason whatsoever to believe in the doctrines that are very commonly taught by men, called once saved, always saved, or eternal security, if you don't have the rest of the theology that we just went over.

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If it was your autonomous free will act that got you into this situation, then your autonomous free will act can get you back out of that situation.

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But once we understand that it's God's purpose to glorify himself, that he has that specific elect people, that Christ has died in their place, the idea that then the triune

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God could fail, having brought that person to redemption makes absolutely no sense.

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And so the perseverance of the saints is the logical outcome of the sovereignty of God and everything else that we've seen in the doctrine of salvation.

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But you'll notice I made a very strong distinction between the popular phraseology of eternal security and once saved, always saved, and the terminology

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I use, and that is the perseverance or the preservation of the saints. When you use the phrase preservation of the saints, you're emphasizing the power of God that preserves us in the faith that he himself has given to us.

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We've already seen that saving faith is the gift of God. We've already seen that repentance is the gift of God.

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It is a work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the redeemed believer. So if that's the case, then if it's divine saving faith, then how could it fail?

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Because it's the work of the Spirit of God, and it is intended to glorify God in the salvation of that specific elect people.

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But if you don't have that, you do have a bunch of people who do believe in once saved, always saved, eternal security, but they don't believe in divine election.

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They don't believe in man's total depravity. They don't believe that Jesus Christ died specifically in place of the elect. They don't believe that the

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Spirit of God comes and and raises us infallibly to spiritual life. They don't believe any of those things, but they do believe once you get into it, you can't get out of it.

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But on what basis? What's the foundation of this? If it's so mightily important that we be autonomous creatures in getting into salvation, we would be told you're dehumanizing man.

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If you take away man's autonomous will, then you're making him a robot. And then they'll turn around and say, but once you're saved, it's okay to be a robot as long as you're a

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Christian robot. How does that make any sense? It doesn't make any sense at all.

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And yet there are many people who just naturally recognize that the language that we use to speak of salvation, the language that we use to speak of union with Christ, just does not make any sense if this is just some sort of temporary situation that may or may not last.

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We may or may not make it. And so as we think about this, hopefully what you will see is that when you talk about the preservation of the saints, you're talking about God's exercise of that divine power to finish the work that He has begun.

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But there is a perfectly proper way of referring to the perseverance of the saints, because the faith that is given to us has a purpose.

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The reason that God doesn't just save us and then take us out, just take us straight to heaven to be with Jesus.

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Why not? He could, but He doesn't. Why doesn't He? He doesn't because it's

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His purpose to conform us to the image of Christ. It is His purpose to use us as the means by which

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He proclaims His truth unto the nations. It's His purpose to build the kingdom of God upon this earth.

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And therefore, perseverance in faith is something that has been illustrated to us from the very first pages of scripture.

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And so it's proper to look at both sides. Preservation, that's God's work.

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Perseverance is the result of that in our lives, that we persevere in saving faith.

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Now it's not surprising that the primary texts that teach this doctrine are intimately related with those texts that teach the election and the electing grace of God.

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And so we've looked at John chapter 10 in one way or another throughout the course of looking at the doctrines of grace.

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But I want us to remind ourselves once again of what is found here. Remember that John chapter 10,

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Pastor Jeff opened up John chapter 6 to you and walked through that text.

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Remember, that's already in the past. That's already something that Jesus has taught.

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That's already something that the apostles have heard. The winnowing out, I've always said that John chapter 6 is the great church shrinkage movement.

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John chapter 6 begins with 5 ,000 excited people, some even row across a lake to come hear

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Jesus preach. I mean, those are the people you want to make deacons immediately, right? But by the end of the chapter, you have 12 confused disciples and one of them's the devil.

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And Jesus did it purposefully. He knew it from the beginning. It was the church shrinkage movement.

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You do not want a big church filled with driftwood. You want a church filled with people who have truly been changed by the

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Spirit of God. And that's what we have in John chapter 6. That's already a part of the apostles experience.

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And so now we've moved to Jerusalem. It's winter. We can at least think about how nice that would be at this time in Phoenix.

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And Jesus is walking in the portico of Solomon. And there has already been some, at the beginning of the chapter, you have his discussion of himself as the good shepherd.

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And we don't have time today to bring all the shepherd stuff into this and all the thing that's there. But what is important to recognize is that Jesus has already said to them, for example, in verse 17, because of this, my father loves me because I lay down my life in order that I may take it again.

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No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to give it.

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I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I've received from my father, vitally important.

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Jesus comes voluntarily. There is perfect unity between father, son, and spirit.

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He is not merely some angel or some creature that has been sent down to fulfill some type of sacrificial role.

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Jesus emphasizes the fact that he gives his life freely. May I just in passing, please emphasize to you, you must, if you have any opportunity to talk with our

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Muslim friends, if you take an Uber, you got a good shot at it, especially overseas.

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Every Uber I've ever been in was driven by a Muslim. When you have the opportunity, you must emphasize this truth, memorize this verse.

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The Muslim thinks that the death of Jesus doesn't make any sense, that it would be dishonoring to a great prophet of God for something like this to happen.

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We must emphasize to them the self -giving nature of the atonement. And this is, in my opinion,

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I mean, Philippians chapter two is great, but in my opinion, this is Jesus' own words. You can find other passages that say similar things, but not in this succinct way.

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He lays down his life of his own accord. No one takes it from him.

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This is being done voluntarily on his part. And so it's already in this context of self -giving that you then, in the next few verses, there's a division arises amongst the

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Jews because of his words, as has been happening a lot in the then you come to Jerusalem, you have

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Jesus walking in the Stoa of Solomon, the portico of Solomon, and the

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Jews surround him. Literally, that's the term it's used. They surround him and they say, how long will you lift up our souls?

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Keep us in suspense. Tell us openly, are you the

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Messiah? Are you the Christ? And Jesus' answer to them is, I've told you, and you don't believe, you're non -believers.

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The works which I do in the name of my father, these works testify concerning me, but you are not believing.

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You are not believers. Why? Well, before you look at, well, you already looked at the rest of the verse, you ruined it.

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You already know, you could already predict the rest of the verse if you've read chapters six and eight.

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If you've already heard Jesus say, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

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You don't have the ability. You can't come to me. In fact, in John 6, 65, he used the form of the

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Greek there that he was repeating this. He was saying it over and over again. No one could come to me unless it's been granted to him by the father.

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He made it an element, a repetitious element of his teaching. And then in John chapter eight, knowing what was coming, knowing they're gonna be picking up stones to stone him, he says, why can't you hear my words?

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Because you don't belong to God. The one who belongs to God hears my words. The reason you don't understand what I'm saying is because you do not belong to God, which was extremely offensive.

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Both John 6 and John 8, very offensive to these individuals who claim to be the people who knew

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God best. And Jesus says, no, you don't. And you can't.

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And so, but you are not believing because you are not of my sheep.

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You are not of my sheep. So when Jesus a little bit later on says,

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I give my life for my sheep, put two and two together. Think about the last point we were looking at in regards to the issue of atonement.

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Now, I know people have a way around everything. The way around this is say, well, they weren't his sheep at this point, but they could become his sheep later on by their free will choice.

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That sounds great over here in the United States, but I just invite you to go and talk to people who keep sheep and tell them that the sheep choose which flock they're going to be in.

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So that the shepherd just sort of stands up there and, you know, maybe he'll dress real nicely and have a little sheep sign.

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I'm not sure how you write in sheep, but you write and you put, you know, it's sort of like a resume, you know, and I would be a really good, it's sort of like presidential elections, sadly, is really what it's sort of be like.

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And these are all the good things I've done and things like that. And then the sheep come along and maybe they sniff you and things, because they have to be following after you, check on things like that.

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And then they make the free will choice to become one of your sheep. That is not how it works.

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The shepherd is the one that chooses the sheep. And Jesus says to them, you're not believing, why?

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Because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. They're not hearing his voice.

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They're just saying he was demonized. They just now surrounded him.

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Are you the Christ? Well, you can't hear my voice. You can't hear the works that I'm doing in my father's name.

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My sheep hear my voice and I know them.

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I know them. That is both comforting and terrifying at the same time.

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It's massively comforting to know that salvation is personal. Jesus cannot know a nameless, faceless group.

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You don't have to put on one of those, hi, my name is things for Jesus. But that's how most people present salvation.

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Because he doesn't know you until you let him know you. It's all your thing, you see.

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But Jesus says, I know my sheep. There is an intimate relationship. They know my voice and I know them.

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But remember something, when Jesus sends people away from him at judgment, what, and this is people who claim to know

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Jesus, what are the terrifying words he says to them? I never knew you.

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And that's spoken to people who claimed to be followers of Christ. I never knew you.

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Incredible words. I never knew you. Jesus says, I know them and they follow me and I give to them eternal life and they shall never perish and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.

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Now, let's listen to the verse. What does it say?

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What is, what is the assertion that Jesus is making? The fact that he knows his sheep and they follow him, he says,

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I give to them eternal life. Don't ever go past the volumes and volumes of evidence in the

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New Testament of the deity of Christ just because you're used to the story. No mere prophet would ever be able to say about God's people,

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I give to them eternal life. Isaiah couldn't say it. Moses couldn't say it.

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David couldn't say it. Why? Be blasphemy. But Jesus says, I give to them eternal life.

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He is the source of life itself. But that's not the first time he said that.

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He said that back in John chapter five too. These themes keep coming up throughout the discourses in John.

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They're meant to, there's a reason why they're there. And I give them eternal life and they shall never perish.

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Now, you already know, you've heard this a million times before, that in the Greek language, a double negative is actually a double negative.

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It really means what it means. It doesn't turn into a positive. This is called the eris subjunctive of strong denial.

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That sounds really good. You might want to write that down. It'll impress anybody you're talking to, or it will help you in Scrabble someday.

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One of the two, however, you want to work that out. Eris subjunctive of strong denial is one of the strongest ways of denying the possibility of something happening.

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And Jesus says, they shall not perish. Literally into the ages, forever.

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They will not perish. This eternal life he gives to them is truly eternal life.

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He's the source of it. And the result is they will never perish.

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And no one is able to snatch them out of my hand. Because little sheep, especially, you can carry them.

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Right now, my son -in -law and daughter have a new puppy.

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Thankfully, it survived the first week. I wasn't quite sure with some of the comments that someone was making on Facebook that it was going to live that long.

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It's still around? It's still there? Okay, good. Just checking. I don't want to do a whole sermon illustration, find out that it went bye -bye.

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That would be a bad thing. Clementine is still around? We're good? Yo, Clementine. Yo, hey,

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I'm talking to you, girl. Yeah, hi. Yes, I'm talking to you right from the pulpit right now. Do you still have a puppy dog?

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You still have a puppy dog? Okay, good. Just checking. I just want to be very truthful about my illustrations here. Now, Clementine carries this dog everywhere.

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I'm not sure it's ever going to learn to actually walk or run. Because as a puppy, it just has decided that this is how you move, is this one human carries me everywhere.

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So, I'm not sure if that's good or bad. But it's still small enough that she can do that.

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But it's getting harder and harder, and eventually that he's going to be carrying her the other way around. Carrying it, it's still small enough, can do it.

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You can do that with sheep too. And so, you've seen, how many of you have seen, oh man, remember back when we used to have

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Christian bookstores? No, seriously. I mean, there used to be a lot of them around. But you'd have that picture, that one painting of Jesus, and he's carrying the sheep, you know.

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It was the sort of the 1960s hippie Jesus, long hair type thing. Always a white guy. I'm not sure how that happened.

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But I think he may have been clean shaved. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how that happened either. But anyways, it's the picture of Jesus, and he's carrying the sweet little sheep, right?

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Well, that did have to happen. I mean, the shepherd would have to do that. And the idea is, no one could come along and snatch that sheep out of his hand.

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No one has that capacity. That's his assertion. What's amazing to me, is starting way back, oh my goodness, way before a lot of you were born,

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I remember having conversations with people in junior high and high school.

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I had this friend, we were friends. I found out years later, I figured out where he was actually at.

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He was actually a member of a oneness Pentecostal church. I didn't know that at the time. I'd never heard of it.

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Years later, looking back and thinking about the stuff he said, I'm like, oh, now I understand why he was saying the thing.

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So we'd have debates. We'd have arguments. And it just stuns me how many

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Christians will look at a text like this and say, well, yes, for his part,

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Jesus will never fail. He will offer you eternal life. And no one can snatch you out of his hand, but you certainly can jump out.

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You can jump out. You can choose. And it makes sense. I mean, they certainly believed, this particular friend of mine certainly believed it was all his free will choice in the first place.

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So if it was your free will choice to get into this relationship and you decide you don't like it, it would certainly be your free will choice to get back out of it.

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But you have to jump out of the hand of Jesus. And I'm like, but it says they shall never perish.

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What happens if you jump out of the hands of Jesus? What do you jump into? Well, that would be hellfire,

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I think would be the final destination, that situation. And so it doesn't make any sense, but there are people who are so wedded to the necessity that it wasn't

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God that saved me. I let God do it. I couldn't have done it without him, but he couldn't have done it without me, is the idea that they will actually look at a text like this.

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It says they shall never perish and go, well, they might, but it's only if you do this type of thing.

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I give them eternal life, shall never perish. No one snatched them out of my hand.

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My father who gave them to me. Where have you heard that before, folks? Where have you heard about being given by the father to the son?

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John chapter six. John chapter six. All that the father gives me will come to me.

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And the one coming to me, I will never cast out. If you want John 10 back in John chapter six, that's where it is.

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Same theme, different context, same meaning. My father who gave them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand.

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And so what's Jesus saying? I give them eternal life. No one can snatch them out of my hand.

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My father has given them to me, because remember, I've not come down out of heaven to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

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The will of him who sent me is that of all that he's given me, I lose nothing.

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Nothing. John 6 39. Do you believe that Jesus is able to do the will of the father?

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That's actually a place where you can say yes. Thank you.

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You are there. Good. It's a lot cooler in here this week than it was last week. I mean, last week would have been when we needed to do the perseverance of the saints thing.

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Okay. But now it's nice and cool. And so yes, we believe that Jesus is able to do the will of the father.

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But if the will of the father for the son is that he lose none that are given to him, what is the inevitable result?

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Jesus has to be a powerful savior. He has to be able to save in and of himself.

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And that's the problem. Mankind wants a savior who will save when we allow him to.

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Mankind wants a savior to do the stuff we can't do for ourselves, but we remain in charge.

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That's the essence of human religion. Same thing going on here. You have the perfect unity of the father and the son.

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In John 6, I've come down of heaven to do the will of the father. The will of the father is that I be a perfect savior.

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I lose none of those given to me. You see, what you believe about this is simply what you believe as to whether salvation is something

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God does to his own glory or something salvation is something God makes available to man and leaves it up to us.

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It's difference between being God -centered and man -centered. That's all it is. That's all it is. And so here, my father who gave them to me, he's greater than all.

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No one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand. And so you've seen the illustration.

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I've used it before. Same thing you have in Colossians chapter 3. You've died. Your life is hidden with Christ and God.

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I take my ring. I put it in this hand. My life is hidden together with Christ in God.

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They're in my hand. They're in the father's hand. No one can snatch them out of these hands.

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You can't get to that ring without going through these two hands. Can't be done.

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That's the essence. That's why we're secure. It's not because of me.

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It's not because of what the ring looks like. It's because of the power of the unity of the father and the son.

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Their stated purpose. And that, by the way, is the background of John 10 .30.

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John 10 .30 is frequently abused, to be perfectly honest with you. I and the father, we are one.

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I and the father, we are one. Well, one in what?

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In the salvation of God's people. It's not a statement about ontological unity and oneness.

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It requires that to be true, but the assertion in the context is,

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I and the father, we are one in the salvation of God's people.

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Now, there are lots of other verses we could look at that positively present this, but you and I both know that in these discussions, what we get are all the warning passages.

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We get the warning passages from Hebrews. We get Hebrews chapter six. We get all that kind of thing thrown back.

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Well, it can't mean what you're saying it means because of the reality of apostasy.

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Turn with me to the same author, most people say. Some people question it, but 1

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John chapter five, 1

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John chapter five. And you may know this particular passage because, you know, this is where you may know that you have eternal life.

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You point people to this type of thing and say, well, see, here's the reference to this in the text of scripture.

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You can know that you have eternal life and that kind of thing. But you also encounter the reality of a sin unto death.

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A sin unto death. Now, what on earth is a sin that is not unto death and a sin that is unto death?

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What's the difference between the two? 1 John chapter five, we have these words beginning in verse 16.

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If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin not to death, not to death, he will ask and life will be given to him, the one sinning not unto death.

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There is a sin unto death. I am not saying that concerning that sin that you should ask, you should pray about that.

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Every unrighteousness is sin and there is a sin not unto death.

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What? What's all that about?

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Well, it's important to know what the context of this is. This is also what's behind what we have in other passages of scripture.

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It's primarily what is behind the warning passages in Hebrews as well.

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When you think of Hebrews chapter 10, the sin that's described there is trampling underfoot the blood of the son of God.

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Well, what would that be? Isn't there a sense in which it's true that whenever we sin at all, that we're trampling underfoot the blood of the son of God?

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There is a sense in which that's true. And it's something we should think about.

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Every time I sin, I am demonstrating that I love myself more than I love my savior.

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And the longer you live and walk with Jesus, longer you live as a

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Christian in the Christian life, the more that should bother you. The more real that should become that when

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I sin in thought, in speech, in deed, in action, I am piling the sins onto Jesus that he bore in my place while then turning around and talking about how much

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I love him. As a believer, that should cause us to think, cause us to reflect.

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So there is a sense in which all sins unto death because God is holy and nothing unholy can be in his presence.

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So what is John talking about? He's talking about a specific situation.

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I think his audience would have understood exactly what he was saying. He's talked about the fact that we have a mediator with God.

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He's talked about earlier in the epistle seeking forgiveness of sins and God being faithful and just to forgive us our sins, the cleanses of all unrighteousness.

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But there is a sin unto death. A sin unto death. What would it have been?

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Returning to Judaism, offering the sacrifice, that's what the people in the book of Hebrews were being called to do.

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Come back and part of what you had to do to rejoin the

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Jewish community having once been a Christian was you had to offer sacrifice because by offering that dove or that lamb or that goat or that bull or whatever, you were denying that Jesus was the final sacrifice.

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You were equating, you were making him not only a false teacher, but you were saying that this animal's blood is more efficacious than Jesus of Nazareth's death.

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You're trampling underfoot the blood of the son of God and putting him to an open shame.

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That was the sin unto death. That's what the writer of the

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Hebrews is saying is no repentance. That's what John here is saying,

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I do not say that you should pray for one who has committed this sin.

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Don't even, don't even pray for him. Now, you might make the argument, yeah, but no one could do that today.

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And there is a sense in which that's true. There is a sense in which that's true. But I certainly have met some people that have done everything they possibly could to make sure that what they had said as a

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Christian was denied now by everything they do in their life. And I have to wonder if it's not very similar in how they take that attitude.

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You cannot read the New Testament without recognizing that there are apostates. Go back to chapter two.

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Chapter two, John's warning about the antichrists the antichristoi who lived in that day.

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If you're new to the faith, you may have heard people saying that there is one singular antichrist that's coming in the future and that only

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Tim LaHaye and a few other people know who it is. That's not what the

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New Testament teaches. There were antichrists in the days of the apostles. They had already arisen.

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They were there. And that's why he says now there are many antichristoi, antichrists, have gone out in the world.

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And by this we know it's the last hour. But what's worse is these antichrists came from within the

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Christian fellowship. They came from within the Christian fellowship.

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They were former Christians. That's why he says they went out from us, but they were not of us.

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For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. But in order that it might be made manifest, it might be made clear that they were not all of us.

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The apostle was fighting this. He was dealing with this on a regular basis.

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His own authority was being questioned by these false teachers who, by the way, were denying the true reality of the physical incarnation of Jesus.

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As they've gone out and John understands something that you and I need to understand, there will be apostasy.

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There will be people who will sit next to you in the pew, and three years later they'll be a member of a cult.

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They'll be out in the world, member of another world religion, or maybe they just won't care at all anymore.

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The sad reality is the longer you're in the church, the more names and faces you can remember of people who've gone out from us.

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I'm amongst the older people amongst us. I've been an elder in the church a whole lot longer than Apologia Church has existed, over twice as long.

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Sadly, that means I can think of faces of people who broke the bread and drank the cup with me, who testified that Jesus Christ is

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Lord, who met regularly in prayer meetings, and today if you were to meet them, they would say,

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I don't believe. I said I did. I thought

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I did. I didn't. Apostasy is real.

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Apostasy is real. And when it's people you know, it affects you.

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It impacts you. It cannot help but do so. So how do you put these together?

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We have to. We can't do what a lot of people do. There are a lot of people who would say, well, you need to understand, there really isn't apostasy.

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I mean, there are literally those who, as long as you tipped your hat toward God, as long as you said the right words and filled out the right thing and you shook the right person's hand, those people are going to heaven.

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Doesn't matter what they do in the rest of their life. They're going to heaven. They got their ticket punched.

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They're going to heaven. God might just let them go and they just live a horrific life and become mass murderers, but it doesn't matter.

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They're going to heaven because that gives me assurance. I don't know how it would give you assurance, but there are people who have that kind of perspective.

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Of course, a lot of people say, no, they were really apostates. They were really in Christ. In fact, it's interesting. Here's a little church history tidbit for you.

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This is another example of how you need to learn to appreciate while critically analyzing.

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But Augustine. Oh, Augustine. Not that one.

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The one in church history. The really old dude. Not the young baby one.

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That Augustine taught God's free grace.

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That God elected a people unto salvation. No question about it. No question about it.

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He defended that. But Augustine is a study in contrast. Augustine was, like you and I, formed by the debates that he was involved in, in his day.

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And I can't go into a lot of detail on this. We will when we do the church history thing. We finally get to Augustine, if we ever do. I'll be a part of church history by the time we get to that point.

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But the reality is he had been, the first big debate that he had was about the nature of the sacraments.

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It's called the Donatist controversy. And he had championed the view, which is today known as ex opera operato.

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And that is that a sacrament is valid, not because of who performs it, but because of the sacrament itself.

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That was over against the Donatists, who believed that if you weren't in a state of grace, if you weren't truly a

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Christian, then your baptisms wouldn't work. Did y 'all see the article recently about what happened? This was really weird because this is not

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Roman Catholic theology, but there was this guy who found out by watching his infant baptism video that he had not actually been baptized properly.

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The priest had said, we baptize you instead of I baptize you. And therefore he wasn't even a

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Christian. And so he had to get rebaptized and become a priest again. And everybody that he had married or baptized had to go through it all too.

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And this was just a few weeks ago in Roman Catholicism. I don't get that because Augustine said, no, that's not the case.

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Ex opera operato, sacramentalism. I guess I can see how it might work because it still has to be done validly as far as the actual form of the sacrament.

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That must be what's going on. Anyways, the point is this. Augustine had defended the idea of ex opera operato sacramentalism.

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And so you are brought into the church by your baptism, but he saw, just like Luther saw, just like Zwingli saw a thousand years later, that once you have a church that's just simply made up of everybody in an area that gets baptized, you end up with a lot of impure quote unquote

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Christians that you really know aren't really Christians. And so what

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Augustine came up with is you could actually be a Christian.

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You could actually be born again, but God has to give you, if you're in the elect,

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God gives you the gift of perseverance. If you're not in the elect, you don't get the gift of perseverance and you will fall away.

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So you can temporarily be in Christ, but then you fall away because you're not given a gift of perseverance.

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Only the elect received the gift of perseverance. Now, I don't know how you can be in Christ without being united with him in his death, burial and resurrection and all the things that come from the atonement.

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But he came to that conclusion primarily because of the debates he had been in before. We all have to be very, very aware.

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If someone as brilliant as Augustine can make a mistake like that, so can we.

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So can we. Good thing to keep in mind. So people come up with all sorts of ways to try to get around this reality.

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What do we do? What do we do? Jesus says, they shall never perish.

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I give them eternal life. I'm going to save every single one given to me by the father.

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It's the father's free will. It is according to his good purpose and grace.

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Ephesians chapter one, we are dead in trespasses and sin. So you've got what

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God does. Why are there apostates? How do we understand this?

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Well, you'll remember when we look at John, I'm sorry, Hebrews chapter six, when you have that strong warning passage, what comes right afterwards?

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We are convinced of better things concerning you, things relating to salvation.

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Remember when Jesus told the parable of the soils? That was so important to the disciples to understand that you can preach the word, you can cast the seed, and there's going to be people who spring up and oh, they're so excited.

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And man, in our day, when you're working in a secular world, and you have to bend over backwards to get people to even listen to what you have to say, man, when someone responds, you can just, oh, this is great.

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It's just like John chapter six, man, I'm telling you, those guys that rode across the lake, there's a sure sign of conversion, right?

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Right? No, it wasn't.

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Jesus knew you can have people who are excited and they start showing up to everything.

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One thing you learn after decades in ministry, it's consistency over time that matters.

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It's consistency over time. So there are many who will come into the fellowship and they may look the part, but what did

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Jesus say? Once the sun rises, well, there can be some rocks in the soil and they never bear fruit.

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But then there are others that bear 30, 60, 100 fold. It's all about the soil and who creates soil?

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God does. And can we tell necessarily just by looking?

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Well, in Arizona, we can. I ain't going to grow nothing. But in most places, you can't necessarily tell.

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You can't see if there's going to be rocks underneath there, or if that's just a thin layer of topsoil, you can't tell.

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Jesus warned his disciples, be aware, there's going to be those that sprout up, they're not going to last.

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How many times do you think, you think when Demas walked away, that Paul didn't think of that parable from Jesus?

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Now, Paul wasn't there when he told it, but I'm sure you heard it from the apostles. Those words entered into his mind.

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And so that's why we have warning passages. That's why you preach the warning passages.

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That's why we say to all of you, I can't look into your heart. I've known of men who were in the church for 15 years.

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And then as they got toward the end of middle age, the beginning of old age, something happened and they walked away.

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If you had asked me five years earlier to name the people that I had the greatest assurance of were true believers,

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I might've picked them. I was wrong. Does that mean my faith is to be shattered by that?

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No, it shouldn't be. We saw it happening. It happened to Paul. Paul put

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Demas in a position of service. You might go, well, so much for his discernment.

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We are not given the ability to look into the hearts and minds of other people. That'd be nice.

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Sure would help in a lot of Christian counseling situations. We don't have that opportunity. And so we preach the warning passages.

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And when I preach a warning passage and I say to all of us, we need to examine ourselves.

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Don't become apathetic. Don't compare yourself to other people. Ask yourself, honestly, am

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I growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ? Or honestly, is the things of the world catching my heart and my attention?

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When those words go out for the redeemed heart, the spirit of God uses that as part of the means of keeping you in the hand of Jesus, of waking you up.

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I was zealous of the things of the Lord as a younger person, but there was about a year and a half, two years, junior high into the beginning part of high school where I was not.

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And it was preaching on the radio from a guy that most of us today would not have a whole lot of respect for, to be perfectly honest for you.

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At the time, he was sort of a middle of the road Southern Baptist. He ain't no more. He was a fiery preacher.

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He was preaching on the radio that slapped me upside the head and got me serious about my faith once again.

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That was used. He challenged me. But those same warnings preached from the pulpit in the church can often be the very things that we hear later on.

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Well, you know, they're not very loving. They're a little on the harsh side, you know, and they drive people away.

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One thing's for certain. I hope the preaching from this pulpit, the preaching in our fellowship will always be such that if you're a hypocrite, you won't last long here.

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You won't last long here. You shouldn't. They went out from us. I have a whole sermon I preached years and years ago called

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The Blessings of Apostasy based on 1 John 2 .19. Why?

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Because it says they went out from us so that it might be made clear. You know, one of the greatest problems we face in our land today is people can't tell who the

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Christians are. They can't tell who the Christians are. You name any sin of the scripture and I can find you a person that calls himself a

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Christian scholar that will defend it. Most of them teach at Union Theological Seminary. Seriously, they really do.

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Synagogue of Satan, if there ever was one. But isn't it the case? How many times have you been in a witnessing situation and you say scripture says this?

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Well, I heard somebody on CNN and they're Dr. So -and -so and they're a theologian and they say you're wrong.

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Anybody ever have that happen to you? Oh yeah. They went out from us so it might be made manifest that they were not truly of us.

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So you see, there's no contradiction. They were not truly of us. They were not of those given by the

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Father to the Son. We cannot confuse the external vision that we have of the fellowship of the saints in this room with the reality of exactly who it is the

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Father has given to the Son. You see that over time. You see that over time.

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But if your faith is based upon some superstar Christian, if your faith is based upon this person over there or that person over there, that is not a good thing.

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Because we are entering into a period of time where there is going to be a tsunami of apostasy.

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A tsunami of apostasy. And your conviction that you are a follower of Jesus Christ must be based solely and completely upon your conviction that he rose from the dead, that he is

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King of Kings and Lord of Lords, not what somebody else does or says. Vitally important.

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So this is a divine truth that is of great comfort to us, to the to the sensitive soul to recognize that Jesus saves perfectly.

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I cannot save myself. I cannot bring about my own salvation. But he will not fail to save every one of his sheep.

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He has that power he has that capacity. He is able to save to the uttermost as we saw last week.

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To the uttermost. But you see the beautiful balance of seeing this in its proper biblical context is that that should never ever make us apathetic.

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It should never be a reason of boasting. It should never result in our taking lightly the warnings of scripture that God uses to keep us committed to what he's called us to do.

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The beautiful balance of scripture must be ours.

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Now I'm going to be honest with you. Most of the time that this stuff gets argued about between ourselves and others is not in the context of allowing all of scripture to speak.

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But that's what you have to invite people to. It may be a long conversation.

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It may not be the kind of conversation you can get done in one night because the reality...

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One closing illustration. I was challenged to debate a guy. For some reason people challenge me to debate.

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I've never figured out why it is. But I get a lot of these challenges and this guy challenged me to debate on a radio station back in St.

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Charles, Missouri. And he wanted to debate eternal security, quote -unquote.

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I said, well, I don't believe in eternal security. I believe in the perseverance of the saints. He said, well, whatever you want to call it. The fifth point of Calvinism, he says.

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However, I'll do this debate, he says, but you cannot mention the first four points of Calvinism.

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He didn't want me to talk about the sovereignty of God or total depravity or unconditional election. I couldn't talk about it.

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I could only defend the perseverance of the saints. And of course I said, that's absurd.

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That's the conclusion of the whole series of divine truths that tell us that God has saved and he's saved perfectly.

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So I can't build the foundation. So no, I won't. And we didn't.

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We didn't do it. But that's what people will frequently ask you to do.

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And so on just a very practical level, if you have believers in your life, this isn't really the best subject to go for.

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You've got to lay the foundation for it to make any sense, for it to make any sense at all.

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But for you as a believer, hopefully you are now seeing how beautifully woven together the scriptural teaching of God is the one who is glorifying himself.

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The gospel is about God. We get to be the beneficiaries, but it's about God first and foremost, beginning to end.

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Let's pray together. Our gracious heavenly

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Father, we know that you are holy, that nothing unclean dwells in your presence.

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And so what you have done to bring us into your presence, us knowing our hearts and minds is truly amazing.

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Oh, the beauty of the gospel. And we know it is all to your honor and glory that the son loses none of those given to him, but raises them all up at the last day.

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May we rejoice in this, but may it make us ever more serious in our faith, make it ever more that we would hate our sin, that we would never presume upon your grace, for every heart in this place that may be filled with fear and trembling, may those hearts be encouraged today to recognize they shall never perish.

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I give them eternal life. No one can snatch them out of my hand. May they be convinced of Jesus's love, of Jesus's power.