1 What Every Believer Should Know 1 That God Loves Me and That will Never Change Today we want to begin a series about what we think every believer should be assured of. We have a lot of fairly new believers in our family here at FBC, and many who are just now growing in their spiritual lives. So we felt this would be a good time to go over some basic things all Christ followers should know. The demon of doubt can plague even the most seasoned saint. So periodically it is wise to remind ourselves of those things we know for certain, those truths that sustain us and empower us. In our walk with Jesus, we need regular reminders of the truths that enable us to walk in faith and confidence. So over het next few weeks we will be sharing some truths we feel that are essential to our growth and well-being. In my personal opinion the most important thing that a believer should know is that God loves them and that will never change. Human love is often fickle and subject to change. Human love is often much more selfish and self-serving than it is sacrificial and giving. But God s love is constant, unchanging, unrelenting, unending, and eternal! You can trust the heart of God. Another way to put that same statement is this: It is my opinion that the most important thing every believer should know is that they are saved for all time and eternity. It is His love that has saved us, and that love is eternal. We need to embrace the assurance that our salvation is likewise eternal and unalterable. Our salvation is something you need to know beyond any shadow of doubt. What do you mean, pastor, when you say I should know that I am saved. I mean (1) that you are confident that every sin in forgiven because it has been punished in the Cross of Christ. (2) I mean that you know that Jesus Christ in His Holy Spirit is alive in your life. (3) I mean that you are sure that when you die you are going home to heaven to spend eternity with Jesus. Every believer should have this absolute assurance. It is better to be a shouting Christian than a doubting Christian. You don t need to be walking around with a question mark on your forehead but an exclamation point! We should never be saying, I hope I am saved, or I think I am saved, but rather, Praise God. I know that I know that I am saved! Adrian Rogers told about doing a funeral for a dear saint and proclaiming that she was in heaven. One of her sons later said, Nobody can know that she or anyone else is saved. He turned to 1 John 5:13 and read, These things have I written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. He asked the fellow, Do you see the word know in that verse? Of course I do. Then I can assure you that a believer can know that they are saved. If you can have salvation and not know it, you can lose it and not miss it. The fact of the matter is that if you have genuine, biblical salvation, you should know it; and if it is that real biblical faith, thank God, you will never lose it! You might ask, Well, Pastor, is it possible to be saved and still have doubts? Well, if that were not true, John would have had no reason to write those words! Obviously he was encouraging some who had doubts to set them aside in faith. You really need to deal with your doubts today. I have never known a believer who was really effective and at peace who did not know the full assurance of their salvation. John used the word know or known 38 times in his short little letter we know as First John. He wrote it so that you and I today might have absolute assurance that we are heaven born and heaven bound. But this morning I want us to begin in the Gospel of John in that beloved verse in chapter three. 1 Assurance begins with the New Birth John 3:16 Would you agree with me that birth is a definite experience? Sure! If you are here today, you have been born. How do you know? Do you remember it? No. The evidence is in that fact that you exist at all. Life begins with a certain beginning. You are here today because you were born earlier in your life.
One night a very religious man visited Jesus to talk about spiritual things. Before he could get very far, Jesus cut to the chase and declared, You must be born again. Just like life certainly began with a physical birth, spiritual life begins with a spiritual birth. ~ At birth, a completion is celebrated. You were conceived and grew in your mother s womb until it was time for your birth. You will not know until you get to heaven all the elements that God orchestrated that led up to your spiritual birth. ~ At birth, a continuation is expected. All you need for life is given you at birth. All you need is time and nurture and you will grow. You are expected to grow. If you don t something is wrong. When you are born spiritually, you are expected to grow. If you don t, something is very, very wrong. 2 Assurance Continues with Insight into how we are saved Ephesians 2:8-9 We have a small but vital part in being saved. The essence of that truth is found in Ephesians 2:8-9. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. This passage clearly tells us what saves us and what does not. This takes all the I hope so s out of the equation. Look at what does NOT save us not ourselves and not our works. In our world we have this fake theology that we do the best we can and God grades on the curve. If we get to the end of life and we have done more good than bad, God opens heaven to us. But look at the Word. God says, It is NOT of yourselves not of works. If you don t get this you will never get the assurance God wants you to enjoy! Not one element of salvation can be up to you. It all has to be accomplished by our Lord. If you think any part of you being saved is up to you, to your performance, then you will never know if you have done it right, or done enough. You will never have confidence. You really need to get this into your head or you will not get the confidence Holy Spirit wants to instill in your heart. So what does this passage say DOES save us? Let s look at the text. For by grace you have been saved through faith. GRACE! Grace is what saves us! Grace is that part of God s character that loves the unlovable. The fact that God loves us, as undeserving of His love as we are, is evidence of His great grace. He doesn t love you because you are valuable you are valuable because He loves you! Let me give you two acrostics that will help you see Who does the saving and how. G R A C E is God s Riches At Christ s Expense. When you think of Grace, think of Jesus taking your sins to the cross and dying there to take your punishment. Think of Him being buried to take your sins to the depths of the earth. Think of Him rising again to give you His very life. What do you do to deserve all of this NOTHING! Nothing we have, nothing we do will ever merit what He did for us! It was all His love gift to us. It is a Gift! It must be a gift! If you pay anything for a gift, it ceases to be a gift. Suppose your best friend who is really rich wants to do something special for you, so he buys you a $50,000 automobile. He drives it up to your house and gives you the keys. It s yours! Now suppose you feel kind of bad receiving such a gift, so you say, Friend, I can t let you do that alone. Here is a dollar to help offset the cost. So now you drive off and someone sees you and says, Nice car! To which you respond, Yes! My friend and I bought it. What an insult! He paid $49,999 and you gave a buck! What a disgrace to grace! We can t pay anything for a gift or it cease to be a gift. Our salvation is a gift to us, not because of any one dollar effort we can offer, but because of His grace! God made it so that you can t pay a buck towards your redemption. If it could it wouldn t be grace. But that is not to say that there is not a role for you to play in being saved. That brings me to the second acrostic. F A I T H is Forsaking All I Trust Him. It means I forsake not only my sins, my stubborn willful determination to do life on my terms alone, but also I forsake my need to earn my own way to 2
heaven. I forsake all attempts to earn my way and I totally, fully, completely trust in Jesus and Him alone to save me. Here is what it looks like. I put my faith in God s grace. It in not my faith that saves me but the object I place my faith in. His grace is what I put my faith in. My faith lays hold of His grace. Grace is God s hand reaching down from heaven and saying, I love you. I want to save you. That nail-pierced hand reminds you that He paid dearly for your sins. Think of Faith as your sins having stained the hand reaching out to you. Then say to Him, I want You. I need You. You put your hand of faith in God s hand of grace. For by grace you have been saved through faith, that that is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Halleluiah! So assurance begins with the new birth and continues with insight into how we are saved. 3 Assurance is Demonstrated through the Birthmarks of the Believer. As we read in 1 John, we find that we all have birthmarks from being born again. These birthmarks are evidence that we are believers. Let s look quickly at three of these that John mentions. 1) The commandment birthmark. Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, I know Him, and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked. (1 John 2:3-6) John doesn t beat around the bush here. He says in essence, Don t tell me you are saved if you are not keeping God s commandments. If you say you are, you are lying! Now let me be clear, based on my first point: You are not saved because you keep the commandments you keep the commandments because you are saved! Right away you might have doubts flood in. Pastor, I am not sure I can tell you that I have kept all the commandments since I was born again. Good point! Let me clarify something that is embodied in that word, keep. It is tereo in Greek and means to watch over. It was used most often by sailors to refer to them keeping the stars. Way back then there was not GPS technology no radio signals to guide through the seas. They sailed by the stars. Their system, that some still use today, is called, keeping the stars. Sailors would occasionally get distracted and waver off course, or get blown off by some gale, but they would correct their course by the stars. They called that keeping the stars. When we keep the commandments, we steer our lives by them. We determine right from wrong by them. We accept them as the true and only reliable directions. That does not mean we will never wander. It doesn t imply sinless perfection as some would suggest. What it means is that a birthmark of every true believer is their heart s desire is to keep the Word of God to do His Will and follow His Way. We may mess up, but we come back to the Word and get back on track following Christ. From my earliest memories as a believer, I longed to do God s Will and keep His Way. I have not always done that, but I have always been guided back to Him by His Word. That is keeping the commandments, as John required. That is the first birthmark of a believer. 2) The Companion Birthmark We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. (1 John 3:14-15) When we are born again, we inherit a new nature. We are new creatures. And let me tell you a wonderful truth: We have a new family. That family is known as the church of Jesus Christ. His very Spirit lives in us. Since that is so, we become partakers of His nature as well. When we do, we find we love what He loves. Paramount among the things He loves is His dear family. That is the Church. 3
Jesus put this birthmark in clear language. He said, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34-335) Jesus said, By this By what? By the love that Christians demonstrate for one another! By loving the brethren you will what? Know! Know that you are really His disciples. It is utter nonsense to think you can say, yes to Jesus and no to His church. The Bible likens the church to a building and Christ is the foundation. Who can say yes to the foundation and no to the building He has built on top of it? The Church is His body. Who can say, yes to the Head and no to the rest of the body? The Church is His bride. Who can say, yes to the groom and no to the bride? Can you imagine saying, I love you, Jesus but I can t stand your wife. How well do you think that would go over? One of the birthmarks of being born is a love for fellow believers. How is it the world will know that you are one of His your love for fellow believers. That is one of your birthmarks. 3) The Confidence Birthmark He who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; he who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has given of His Son. (1 John 5:10) When the bible speaks of confidence, it is not talking about what you know in your head. That is knowledge, intelligence. Biblical faith is not what you know about Jesus but believing in Jesus. In this verse the word believe is in the continuous present tense and can be translated, He who believes and keeps on believing. Our confidence is in the present tense. Now let me carefully burst a bubble. I think it is significant to have a spiritual birthday. I think it is good to know the day you were born again. But our confidence is never past tense. Our confidence can never be in something that happened years ago. How do you know you are alive? Don t tell me you know you are alive because you were born many years ago! That is foolish! You know you are alive because right now, this very minute you are breathing, your heart is beating, and you are conscious enough to know it! Your confidence in being alive comes from the present not the past. That is what I am saying now. Your confidence will never be sufficient if it is only based in the distant past. It has to be based in the now! Sometimes when asked if they are saved, someone will say, Yes. I remember the day and the hour I walked down the aisle and took the pastor by the hand and gave my heart to Christ. I may not be living for Jesus today, but I remember when I was saved. Now I understand that testimony and am in no way belittling it. But the Bible never uses a past experience as proof of salvation. It never points back to an event. It always deals in the present tense. The Bible doesn t offer assurance based on something you did in the past, but on what you are doing in the present. He that believes, is in the present tense. It is simple. If you are believing now it is evidence that you did believe then. So the question is, Are you believing now? Well, pastor, how do I know if I am believing now? This passage gives us two witnesses to our present faith. 1) The witness of the Spirit verse 10. This is the Holy Spirit within you bearing witness that you are indeed His! That you belong to Jesus! Holy Spirit speaks a quiet confidence into the depths of your spirit that you are saved and secure. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. (Rom. 8:16) 2) The witness of the Word verses 11-13. Let s read those verses. And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the 4
5 Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. Here the Bible says you can have confidence because you are right now believing in Jesus and have right now eternal life. How can I be sure? I remember leading a man to faith one night. After he prayed I offered him his spiritual birth certificate. That is John 5:24. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. I asked him, Do you believe this? He said, Yes I do. I read, He who hears my word. Have you heard His word? He said, Yes, I have. I read, and believes on Him who sent me. Are you believing in God who sent Jesus? He said, Yes I have. I read, has everlasting life. Do you have everlasting life? He said, I hope so. I said, OK. Let s read this again. And we did. Once again I asked him if he had everlasting life. He said, I hope so. So we read it again. The third time he got it. He said, Yes! Yes! I have everlasting life. I asked him, Who says so? He said, God says so! The Bible says so! Now that is the confidence that is the birthmark of a believer! Put together, the Spirit and the Word gives us confidence that we are loved, that we are saved, and that it will always be so. How sure can we be? Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. (Heb. 7:25) As long as Jesus is in heaven at the right hand of God interceding on our behalf, we can be sure we are saved to the uttermost! Don t leave here today with any I hope so s. I want you to know that you know that you know that God loves you and always will. I want you to be absolutely assured that you are saved and will always be.