Christians Should Fear - 12

Well, Christians are frequently taught that we should never fear. And understood in the right context, that is exactly the truth, and we rejoice in the knowledge that in Christ Jesus and clinging to the promises of God, that the fears that generally consume other people should not and need not trouble the children of God. And yet to hold on to the concept that we should never fear is not to take into account the entire counsel of God. Because we read in some places, as for example in our text today in Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 1, that we are commanded to fear. Therefore, since the promise remains of entering his rest, let us fear, lest any of you seem to come short of it. And so we have what we might consider to be a paradox.

Two statements that seem to be contradictory and yet upon more careful examination are not contradictory at all. We need therefore to be able to sort out what is proper fear and improper fear, godly fear and god dishonoring fear, unbelieving fear and believing fear. That's what this text for this morning will help us to do. Indeed, Christians should have godly fear. And today's passage will help us to make a distinction between that which is ungodly and that which is entirely appropriate and necessary. And so we're taking verses 1, 2, and 3 of Hebrews chapter 4. In verse 1, we shall see something to fear. In verse 2, something to understand. And in verse 3, something to celebrate. First of all, something to fear.

And I read again Hebrews 4 verse 1. Therefore, since the promise remains of entering his rest, let us fear, lest any of you seem to have come short of it. Something to fear. And let me give you four things that I take out of verse 1 that fall into the category of something to fear.

Something to fear. Number one, that we will ignore God's command to fear. Because here we have a command to fear. And if we're not careful, we shall let other statements rob us of this command and cause us to pay it no attention. And that is something to fear, that we will disregard a portion of God's word. There's something to fear, namely that we will be like the Old Testament Israelites.

The therefore which begins this section, which opens verse 1, takes us back into the context of chapter 3 where we read about the Israelites who, having great promises of God, did not receive them because they did not believe them. And we are told here to have a godly fear that we do not repeat that error. There's thirdly something to fear, in that we may squander our promise of rest. The Israelites had a promise of entering into God's rest, and that of course referred primarily to the land of Canaan, but that is used as a picture of eternal rest, namely heaven, and we are told that we need to be careful lest we fall short of our promised rest, namely the eternal rest of a heavenly abode. And number four, and very close to it, we need to fear that we will come short of salvation. In our text it says, to come short of it. Let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it, and the it there is referring to the salvation of heavenly rest.

Now let's take these one by one and break them down. Something to fear, first of all, that we will ignore God's command to fear. And if we think about it, we know that there are commands in the Bible to fear.

We know, for example, that the Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. So there's an appropriate fear, a proper fear, a necessary fear, and other similar statements could be quoted. And yet on the other hand, how many times did angelic messengers come to God's people and say, fear not. So here we have, we must fear, and on the other hand, let us not fear. So there is something to fear, and that is that we will ignore God's command to fear because we hold on to one set of instructions to the ignoring of another set of instructions, which should not be thought of as being contradictory, but rather as being explanatory and parallel. So let us fear that we will not ignore God's command that we should fear. And what, therefore, is godly fear? Godly fear apprehends the right nature of God, His character, His holiness, His justice, His power, His holy wrath, which are just as true of God as His characteristics of love and of mercy and of grace. And I think all of us would readily admit that in our Christian world today, there is a great emphasis upon the love and the mercy and the grace of God, which we delight in, and a sad ignoring of the holiness, justice, and wrath of God, which is every bit as true as the other characteristics that we find so pleasing to our minds. And so we ought to fear God because of His holiness, because of His justice, because of His power.

He has the power to judge those who sin and do not come to Him for the remedy which He extends to us to be received by faith. We need to fear God because of His holy wrath. It is a fearful thing, the Bible tells us, to fall into the hands of the living God. We ought to fear that. And so let's be careful that we do not ignore God's commands to fear.

Fearing God not only involves a right understanding of God's character, but it also involves a recognition of the nature of sin, which in our humanness, our fallen humanness, we tend to minimize and not to take it as seriously as we should and fail to recognize that our sins are first and foremost grievous offenses against God, that holy God, that righteous God, that just God that we just talked about. And our sin is a failure on our part to uphold the creature's responsibility. God is creator. We are creatures. He made us. We owe our existence to Him. We owe obedience to Him. He made us. He gave us life. We are His creation.

And He made us for Himself. And we have a responsibility to honor Him, to obey Him. And every time we sin, we fail in that responsibility. And therefore, the nature of sin is not just what I have perhaps done to hurt someone else, though that's part of what we should take into consideration. And sin is certainly not just what I have done that might harm myself.

That's the way it is often portrayed in modern Christianity. Sin is not reaching your full potential. Sin is doing something so that you don't become as great as you otherwise could be. Well, that's true, but that's way down at the bottom of the list of things that sin is.

It is an offense against a holy God. And understanding that gives us a proper fear of what may happen to us because we have failed in our responsibility. A proper fear of God recognizes the realities of eternity, that this life is not all, and it does not end at death, and that we go on into eternity, that we have a never-dying soul, that we'll live somewhere forever and forever and forever and forever and forever without end.

And the question is, where will our souls spend eternity? And there ought to be a reverential fear that we might miss God's salvation and spend eternity in hell. A proper godly fear takes the warnings of scripture seriously when we have warnings like this. It does not skip over them lightly and pretend that they don't matter.

They do matter a great deal. God has given wonderful promises in his word for which we rejoice. God has given us some serious warnings in his word, which we need to take seriously, and we need to fear lest we ignore God's commands for us to fear. We need to fear, number two, lest we be like the Old Testament Israelites, who, we were told in chapter three, hardened their hearts against God and against his word.

Against the Old Testament Israelites who possessed, we are told in verse three, an evil heart of unbelief. We need to fear lest we, like the Old Testament Israelites, are deceived by sin so that we do not understand the word of God nor understand our true condition before him. And lest we be like the Old Testament Israelites in failing to enter into God's rest.

Yes, there are things to fear. We need to fear, number three, that we may squander our promised rest. The Israelites had a promise of rest, a long extended promise. God made that promise to them to take them out of Egyptian slavery and into the land of promise, and that promise was kept before them year after year after year after year, and they kept rejecting God's grace and complaining against God, and ultimately failed to enter into that rest. The whole generation that came out of Egypt died in the wilderness and failed to enter that rest. And that is a picture, that is a type, that is an illustration of how it is possible for people who profess to be Christians to fail to enter God's rest. We should take that seriously.

We should fear. The Old Testament Israelites had a promise of entering God's rest in Canaan, but we too have a promise of entering God's rest. His rest, as it is called in Psalm 95 and quoted several times in the book of Hebrews. He's entering His rest.

We'll talk more about that, Lord willing, next Sunday. What does that mean, His rest? Does that mean His promised rest? Does that mean the rest that He enjoys?

We'll look at that, Lord willing, next Sunday. But nevertheless, the Hebrews, to which this epistle is being written, were all professing Christians, and yet the writer of Hebrews is concerned, some of them fail to enter God's promised rest. A promise that was before them and stayed before them as long as they were living. But of course, there comes a day when that promise is gone because our life on earth is over and that promise does not extend into life after death. That promise is extended to us and it's still open to us today. Even if there are those here today who have up until now, for one reason or another, refused to believe that promise, the promise is still there.

It remains. Therefore, since the promise remains, we read in verse 1, of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have come short of it. Isn't it interesting to look at the pronouns here? The writer of Hebrews includes himself in the first statement. Since a promise of rest, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let not let you fear, may you fear, but let us fear. He's including himself in the possibility of being deceived about his relationship, his state before Almighty God. But then when he continues on, he shifts to direct his exhortation to them.

Lest any of you seem to come short of it. And so we need to fear lest we, like some of the Hebrews, perhaps, we don't know the end result of those who had this letter sent to them. Hopefully all of them came to a true saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But obviously the writer of this epistle was concerned that some of them professed faith which was not saving faith. They professed a belief that was not true saving faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so he says, let us take great care lest we fall short of it, lest we fall short of the promised rest. Which obviously is referring to salvation. He cannot be referring to entering into Canaan. This is, as he's writing, it's the first century. That period in history is over and done. The Israelites had that promise of entering Canaan in the days of Moses.

Those days are long behind. But he takes that language to apply to salvation and says you need to fear lest some of you fall short of entering the heavenly rest. Fall short of obtaining God's salvation. Fall short of obtaining it, the it that refers to eternal salvation.

So that is something to fear. But we move on to verse 2 and we consider something to understand. For indeed, this is obviously a continuation, for indeed, explanation here of what I mean in verse 1. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them. But the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.

There's something that we need to understand and understand clearly. In fact, two things in this text. Verse 2, we need number 1 to understand the nature of the gospel and we need to understand number 2, the appropriation of gospel blessings. The nature of the gospel. For indeed, the gospel was preached to us as well as to them. Now we hear that term gospel so much we probably seldom stop to think through exactly what that word means.

But let's take a moment to think it through this morning. The word itself in its basic definition means good news. We've heard that too.

You know that. The gospel means good news. But it can be used broadly of any kind of joyful tidings. And it is used that way in regard to the promise of entering into Canaan. The promise of entering into this wonderful land of milk and honey where there was all kinds of agricultural blessings to be received.

There was protection and rest from enemies. There was this release from slavery and release from the wilderness wanderings and all the blessings that went with the entrance into the land of Canaan. That was good news. That's what the writer of Hebrews here refers to as the gospel that was preached unto them. They were held up the prospect of this wonderful news. You have been delivered from slavery and you have been promised a land that is full of material blessings and full of peace.

And where you can really settle down and enjoy the material and spiritual blessings of God. That's good news. It was certainly good news to them. But many of them never received the promise contained in that message of good news because they didn't believe the word of God. But most commonly when we hear the word gospel today, the reference of course is to salvation of our souls from sin and from judgment. And that good news you understand and it is wonderful news.

There's no better news than that. I am a sinner who have transgressed against my maker. I have sinned against his law.

I have offended him. I deserve his eternal wrath. But he has extended to me the promise of forgiveness, the promise of cleansing, the promise of being justified before him, the promise of eternal life. What better good news could there be than that? That's the gospel.

That's good news. But don't forget that the gospel will never be properly understood nor embraced until first of all the presentation begins with bad news. You'll never understand the good news until you hear and understand and embrace the truth of the bad news.

And what is that? The bad news is you are a sinner. The bad news is sin deserves God's wrath, God's condemnation. That news is indeed bad, so bad that, as I've already pointed out, many elements of modern Christianity don't even want to talk about that, don't want to deal with that, just want to ignore that.

As if that is so unwelcome to deal with that we just will ignore that and only concentrate upon the positives. But that robs people of the ability to understand how good the good news is and to understand how necessary the good news is. Because if I don't understand how sinful I am, then how important is it that I have a Savior? And then the gospel in the minds of many people just simply becomes you can have a better life now, you can have your best life now, you can have material blessings now, you can have a wonderful home and family and marriage now, you can have all these wonderful things now. Yes, but what about life after death? What about the day you die?

What then? You better come to understand the bad news, the reality, the truth about yourself. All have sinned, all have sinned.

That means you, that means me, that means you. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The wages of sin is death, eternal death. The soul that sinneth, it shall die.

And so, paradoxically, I suppose we might say the good news must begin with bad news or the good news doesn't become very good in its news. It's not really as good as it truly is as presented in the Bible. But that's also true in the case of the people entering into Canaan because the promise that was given to them was actually a twofold promise. There was an earthly dimension, the promise of going into this wonderful country that would provide them so many blessings. But what else happened in the wilderness besides the reiteration of this wonderful promise again and again? In the wilderness, there was also given the whole law of Moses, the whole details of the old covenant religion, including in the things that they would have to inaugurate when they got to the promised land, but the priesthood and the sacrifices and on and on it goes.

And all of those things are also like the promise of breast in the land of Canaan. They are also types or symbols of something spiritual, namely salvation. The sacrifices in the Old Testament didn't actually take away sin, but they pointed to the necessity of a sacrifice. We must all have a sacrifice that is able to take away sin. And they all pointed forward to the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, whom God had promised to come and to be the sacrifice that can indeed take away man's sins.

And they had all of these types and symbols. The Old Testament covenant was filled with these, and so in a sense the promise of the gospel that was preached unto them was first of all and more obviously the promise of inheriting Canaan, but even more importantly the promise of eternal salvation in the future Messiah that God had promised to send. That was the gospel that came to them. The promise of Canaan, the promise of eternal salvation, but their failure by and large, most of them, to believe the promise about Canaan was also a manifestation of their unbelief of the promises regarding the Messiah. Those who would not believe God in regard to Canaan did not believe God in regard to the other promises. And those who did believe God's promises regarding salvation in a future Messiah gladly believed the promises about Canaan.

They had a whole different perspective about God and about his word. But what the writer of Hebrews is telling us is that the gospel of salvation that was preached in typology to the Old Testament Israelites has been preached in clarity to the Hebrews in the first century to whom he is writing and has been preached to us in the scriptures, those of us who are sitting here today, and we need to understand that message and to embrace it. There's something to understand, namely the gospel of God's grace, but now we must understand how that gospel is received, how it is appropriated, so that the blessings become ours, so that we become recipients of those to whom these promises are made.

And how is that? And it's very simple, as verse 2 tells us, it's a matter of faith. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them, but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith.

That's an interesting way of translating that. It was not joined to faith. The message that was proclaimed to them was not joined in their life with faith.

It was not mixed with faith in those who heard it. The instrument, we might call it, by which we receive the blessings of the gospel, the promises of the gospel, the salvation of the gospel, is faith. We all know that. I think nearly everyone here knows that, at least intellectually you know that. If you didn't know that and didn't believe that, you would probably be sitting in a very different church this morning than the one you're sitting in. You might be in one where there are statues all around the building and relics and other elements that direct your attention more toward works than toward faith. But you are sitting in a church that you know proclaims that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone and Christ alone. You believe that salvation is by faith, but so did the Hebrews to whom this writer is writing. They all knew that salvation is by faith. They all believed, in some sense, that salvation is by faith. They all evidently professed that they were Christians.

That's why he's writing to them as Christians. And so they all had made some kind of profession at faith, but the writer says, you need to be sure it's real saving faith because some of you are in danger of falling short of these gospel promises. The instrument of the reception of these promises is faith. But the Israelites, mostly by and large, failed to receive gospel promises by faith. The gospel will not benefit the Hebrews that are being written to in our text for this morning unless they receive it by faith.

Nor will the gospel benefit any of us if we fail to receive it by faith. Did the Israelites profess to believe the gospel was preached to them? Well, they did.

You go back into the Old Testament record and find various times where they said things like Moses gave them God's law, and they have an opportunity to respond, and they said things like, all that you have said unto us we will do. We believe it. We accept it.

We profess to accept this and acknowledge that that is exactly right and what we ought to do, and it is a proper and reasonable responsibility that has been given to us by our Creator. And yes, we believe that we will do it, but they didn't. They said it, but they didn't.

That's always the danger. Yes, the Israelites profess to believe the gospel, but their lives demonstrated unbelief. Their lips said, yes, we believe. Their lives and their lips on other occasions said, we don't really believe.

And there's so many evidences of that, it's hard to list them all. The golden calf, which they constructed in the wilderness, was evidence they really didn't believe the promises of God or the God of the promises. There was their heart of unbelief manifesting itself. And they came up to the edge of Canaan and were given promises to go in. We're here.

It's time to go in. God has promised it. He will help you conquer it. And they said, no, no, no, no, no, we don't believe we can, evidencing their unbelief in God. Of course, they couldn't conquer it, but God had promised to conquer it through them. Did they believe his promise? No.

No. They refused to go in to Canaan when they were given the opportunity, and they wandered after that 40 years in the wilderness. And on it goes. They're murmuring against Moses and they're murmuring against God and and their idolatry in the wilderness and on and on and on it goes. Oh, yes, their lips said all that you have said to us we will do, but their lives said we will we will be our own God. We will go our own way.

We will decide what we will do and won't do. We will not consider ourselves bound to God's commandments and his rule over us. We do not believe the promises of God. We don't even believe the position of God, that he indeed is sovereign, has the right to rule over us. We reject all of that. And they demonstrated that by their lives. And we can do the same.

Professing to be Christians, but demonstrating unbelief by the way we live and the way we speak. Yes, there is something to fear in verse one. There's something to understand in verse two. But there's something to celebrate in verse three. For we who have believed do enter that rest. Glory, hallelujah, praise the Lord.

We can celebrate that. For we who have believed do enter that rest. But the verse goes on as he has said, So I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest.

Why? Because he's already told us their unbelief. Although, and then here's more to celebrate, although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. What do we find here to celebrate?

We celebrate, first of all, the prospect of eternal rest. We who have believed do enter that rest. Here is a promise. It is a promise from Almighty God. It is a sure promise. It is a promise filled with good news. It is a promise of joy.

It is a promise that we can celebrate. If you will believe, you will, in fact, have already entered into this promised rest. There's also assurance of eternal rest in that second statement. So I swore in my way they shall not enter my rest was, of course, reaffirming what he's already said about the fate of those who failed to believe him in the wilderness and the fate of those who failed to believe him now.

And so, yes, God swore in his wrath that they would never enter his wrath best. But that's sandwiched between two statements that talk about God's assurance that those who do believe will enter his rest. The prospect of eternal rest is something to celebrate. The assurance of eternal rest to those who believe is something to celebrate, that those who believe escape the promised judgment of God, a promise that's just as certain as is the promise of salvation. God has promised salvation to those who believe. God has promised judgment to those who do not believe. And God always keeps his promises. But there's something else to celebrate, and that's the certainty of God's finished work, the last part of verse 3. Although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. Now that's going to be more fully explained as we move on to verse 4 and 5 and following.

He's talking here about the week of creation back in Genesis chapter 1 and 2, but primarily chapter 1, which tells us that God did the work of creation in six days and then on the seventh day he rested. We're going to get into that. It's dealt with a lot in the book of Hebrews and particularly in this fourth chapter. And there's a lot to learn from that.

There's also a lot to wrestle with about that. It's not something that all of God's people arrive at exactly the same conclusion as to what the Bible is teaching on this point. But here's what is being said in regard to our text for today. When God finished his work of creation, it was done, it was settled, and he has been enjoying rest ever since then.

See, it's a type, it's a symbol. It's hard to even know how to think of God as resting. And God certainly isn't resting from his works of administration of the universe and his providence and the affairs of all of his people and so forth. But there is a sense in which God, having completed his work, now says it's done, it's finished, I don't have any more to do.

I can rest now. And the writer of Hebrews is applying that to the work of salvation. He says the work of salvation in one sense was completed from the foundation of the world. And we know that's true.

The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ was crucified before the foundation of the world. And when God determines to do something, he does it. And when God says it and does it, it's done. It's completed. It's finished. It's irrevocable.

It's impossible to undo. And that's what he applies to the promise of salvation to those who believe. That's something to celebrate. Woo hoo! Glory! Hallelujah! I'm starting to sound like a Pentecostal here.

Having trouble with my holding back strap. Trying to get loose here. And it ought to for all of us. There's something to celebrate here. The salvation which is certified to those who believe. Because it was prepared long ago and because it was completed long ago.

Because it has already begun. God has already entered into his rest, his eternal rest. And his promise of rest to those who believe is to say, come on and join me in my rest.

I'm resting from all my work. And when you're trusting in Christ fully by faith for salvation, then you are resting in Christ and you are joining me in my eternal rest. Come, come, join me in the rest that I have entered into long ago. So with this examination of our text this morning, something to fear, something to understand, something to celebrate, let's quickly look at a few lessons that I think grow out of this text. The first and most important one for all of us is the necessity of possessing a living faith, not a dead faith. And how do we know whether our professed faith is living or dead?

And I'll try to help you with that. But a living faith is a growing faith. A living faith bears fruit. A living faith is like a healthy tree. It continues to grow.

It's a fruit tree. It continues to bear fruit. And so does faith that is saving faith. It is a living faith. It is a growing faith. It is a fruit producing faith. The Bible tells us to grow in grace and knowledge.

That's the way saving faith is if it is truly saving faith and not an empty professed faith. Remember, and I've brought this up several times, but it is so vital to understanding what the writer of Hebrews is saying. Remember Christ's parable of the sower and the four soils.

If we would get our mind wrapped around this, I think we'd understand exactly what the writer of Hebrews is saying. Of the four soils upon which the good seed of God's word fell, one was totally hardened to the extent that it didn't even receive the seed. So nothing happened there. But of the three soils, other soils, something happened in each case. Something produced, was produced. But in one case, the hot sun beat upon it and it withered and died. That plant that came up from that seed. In another case, the thorns grew up around it and choked it out and that professed faith, which is what it's a picture of, died.

It did not continue. And only in one of those four instances did the seed produce a plant that sprang up and in the first few days it looked just like the other two plants that sprang up. Three plants sprang up out of the four places where the seed was sown. But only one of them continued to grow and grow and grow and grow and grow and mature and produce fruit. And in the analogy of that parable, our Lord is saying that there are times when the seed of God's word produces something that looks like faith, something that looks like salvation, but it isn't long until it becomes apparent that it's not real. It isn't saving faith because it doesn't continue to grow, it dies out.

Because it doesn't bear fruit, it dies out. That's what the writer of Hebrews is saying. He's saying, be sure that you have living faith. You all profess faith, you all say you have faith, but some of you are in danger of failing to enter into God's rest because some of you have or very well may have a counterfeit faith, a professed faith, a secondhand faith, a cultural faith, a humanly induced faith, which is not true saving faith, it's not the work of God. And this should make us to be cautiously optimistic about professions of faith, cautiously optimistic when we hear of others who profess faith in Christ.

I hope you've learned that by now. Reports of conversions, depending on who's reporting them, are often greatly exaggerated and seldom do we ever hear a follow-up report. Bless God, we had 15 people saved and baptized this Sunday. Glory, hallelujah, praise the Lord. Fifteen people were saved, 25 people were saved next week, 37 people were saved the week after that.

Glory, hallelujah, praise the Lord. Well, let's just go check on each of those people a year later, two years later, and see where they are. I used to be on the mailing list of a church in another city that reported wonderful results like this, but they also reported, interestingly, their Sunday school attendance and gave yearly averages. And they were reporting like hundreds of people saved throughout the year, hundreds. I'm thinking something like 800 people saved, but the attendance went down. The next year, hundreds more saved, and the attendance went down, and hundreds more saved, and the attendance went down.

Now, I realize there are factors that could actually make that happen, but something's a little bit strange here, don't you think? We should be cautiously, cautiously optimistic about professions of faith. When we hear that someone has professed faith in Christ, we rejoice optimistically, but we rejoice cautiously. That's why we have come to the conclusion that it's probably not wise to baptize children at too young an age, even though they've made a profession of faith, and even though they very well may be saved. We're not saying they're not, we're not saying they can't, but we're just being cautiously optimistic.

But cautiously optimistic, let's give it enough time to see how it weathers the trials of life, the temptations of life, the storms of life, to see as they get a little mature. Do you see if that professed faith is a plant that is continuing to grow and bear fruit? And when we see evidence of that, yes, by all means, let's rejoice together and baptize them as believers in Christ and take them into the membership of the local body and help them as they follow the Lord. But there are reasons, there are biblical reasons to be cautiously optimistic, cautiously. Back in the early years of our church, and I'm embarrassed to say it now, we used to keep a couple of cement blocks on the floor in our baptistry for the ones that otherwise would be underwater when they were standing on the bottom to stand on so we could baptize them without drowning them.

We have used those for a long time. Now some of those people I think were truly saved. Every now and then, I'll run into an adult in Alamance County and say, I came to your church when I was young and I was saved, and they'll tell me where they're in church and where they're serving the Lord at age 40, 45, and evidently they truly were saved. Praise the Lord, glory, hallelujah.

But there are scores of others who show no life, no spiritual fruit. Let's be cautiously optimistic. And more important to this text, let's be discerning and diligent about our own profession. It's one thing to be cautiously optimistic about other professions of faith, but are you willing to examine your own? There are instructions like that in the Bible, you know. Examine yourselves, Paul tells us, to see if you be in the faith. Brethren, make your calling and election sure. We are to examine ourselves. We aren't to be cavalier about it and say, well, that's over and done.

I don't have to worry about that anymore. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says keep examining, keep looking to be sure that you have the real thing. Does your profession of faith bear fruit, spiritual fruit in your life? The fruit of faith, the fruit of growth, the fruit of growing obedience. Does it demonstrate a changed life? You're not like those who have not been saved by the grace of God.

Is there spiritual fruit in your life? Does my faith increase or decrease over time? You say, well, sometimes real faith goes through a barren period and decreases. Yes, and during times like that, there should be no positive assurance of salvation. There should be cautious fear and examination and saying this is not the way it ought to be.

Lord, help me, show me. Let me examine myself and let me come back to a vibrant, growing, fruitful life so that I have true biblical assurance of salvation. My assurance is not based in the fact that I did or said something at one particular time in the past. My assurance of salvation is that there is this evidence of God's working through the present.

That's what we look for. So the necessity of possessing a living faith. Number two, the importance of having a biblical doctrine of eternal security. The arguments about eternal security sometimes miss the point on both sides of the argument. Praise God, the Bible says once saved, always saved.

No, it doesn't. It talks about people who fall away. No, it talks about eternal security.

No, it talks about people who lose their faith and back and forth and back and forth it goes. And let's stop for a moment and get a biblical doctrine of eternal security and understand that there's truth on both sides of this argument, that both of them have missed the exact truth. But it's true there are people who profess to be saved and appear to be Christians for a while who fall away. But it's not because they lost their salvation as we are learning today. It's because they never were truly saved. They sprang up joyfully in a profession of faith, but they were choked out by the cares of this world.

They were wilted by the sun beating down upon them. So the Bible doctrine of eternal security is not simply once saved, always saved. Though properly understood, that statement is true, but it's often misunderstood. What it is not, and certainly is not, is once having made a profession of faith always saved because a profession of faith and being saved are not always one and the same.

That's what we're saying here. Once saved, always saved. Once professing salvation, not necessarily always saved. Profession and possession can often be two different things.

We could put it this way. God's work of salvation begins well, continues well, and ends well. He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

But man's work will falter and fail. And so many times the professions of faith are the work of men and not the work of God. Man's work, labor's efforts in evangelism must be God's work as well if that person who makes the profession of faith is going to enter into eternal rest.

And that's why we must maintain a godly fear in this regard. And that brings me to my final lesson, the importance of biblical evangelism as opposed to something that claims to be but really isn't. Biblical evangelism will proclaim the whole gospel, starting with the bad news. It will not minimize sin and man's exceeding sinfulness. Biblical evangelism will be patient for God-produced results to manifest themselves.

Biblical evangelism will not add elements that are not found in the Bible in order to speed up the process or to make the process more fruitful, adding things like altar calls and other human additions which can be found nowhere at all in the Bible but have become so common that some people think that's biblical. But it's not. Show it to me if it is.

Show it to me. Show me an altar call in the Bible. I know.

I used to give them. Some of you have been around long enough to remember that. But it's not in the Bible.

And a lot of other things that I won't take time for now can be added to induce, to coerce, to manipulate, to persuade people to do something acting upon their human will, to raise their hand, to walk an aisle, to pray this prayer, to repeat these words and then be pronounced saved. No, you've been saved. Have assurance.

Never doubt it. Unfortunately, you may have made a counterfeit profession of faith that has nothing to do with the work of God's Spirit, has nothing to do with the new birth, and now you are sevenfold more the child of hell than before because you have a false assurance that it will be harder to dislodge than your unsettled condition before you made that decision. Therefore, since the promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. Shall we pray? Heavenly Father, we have done our best to declare truthfully this portion of your eternal word. And now, Lord God, by the power of your Spirit, cause it to rest securely in every heart. Cause it to bear eternal fruit. Cause it to lead those who are outside of Christ and have a false assurance of salvation. Cause it to disturb them and to bring them to a repentant, humble faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray. Amen.