This is Connect with Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition, and we're so glad you've joined us for today's program. Connect with Skip Heitzig exists to connect you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times through verse by verse teaching of His Word. That's why we make messages like this one today available to you and others on air and online. Before we kick off today's teaching, we want to let you know that you can stay in the know about what's happening at Connect with Skip Heitzig.
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That's connectwithskip.com. Now let's get into today's teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig. Verse 11. Look at it with me. I love that. It means protect.
That's how the NIV renders it. Verse 12. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave me, I have kept, and none of them is lost except the son of perdition that the Scripture might be fulfilled. Verse 15. I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one.
Now Jesus said, I did it. I kept them. While I was with them, I made sure they were protected.
I kept them. But now that I'm leaving them, it's really important, Father, that you take and maintain that and that you keep them. Now we mentioned before the first time that if Jesus is praying this and He's praying the perfect will of God, you can be assured it's going to be answered. So please let this be an assurance to you. Some timid Christians will sometimes say, how do I know I'm even going to make it through? And I often will smile and say, because I know Him.
I know Him. And He can keep you, and He will keep you. The Bible promises that.
You'll make it through. Paul wrote to Timothy and he said, I know whom I have believed. I love that. Not, I know what I believe. I know whom I have believed. And I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him until that day.
And if you have committed you to Him, He will keep you till the very end. Whatever God starts, He finishes, right? He who has begun a good work will complete it. He's the author and the finisher of our faith. God is not like me.
I have so many unfinished projects here and there and everywhere. And it's not like God goes, oh yeah, you. I forgot about you. But I can't get to you for a while.
I'm so busy over here. Whatever God starts, He finishes. And some of you say, wait a minute, I looked at verse 12 too. What about that guy? Because Jesus said, I've kept and none of them is lost, except.
We're uncomfortable with that word. Except whom? The son of perdition that the Scripture might be fulfilled. That's Judas Iscariot. So you might be wondering, well, why didn't Jesus keep him?
Listen, you've got to want to be kept. Judas never did. He wasn't kept because he never wanted to be kept. There's evidence that he was never a true believer.
He just sort of went along with the crowd. He just went to church, just opened the book to the right verse, sang the right songs. His heart was never changed. His heart was never touched. He didn't follow Christ.
He just went along for the joy ride. But those that truly believed, I have kept and none of them is lost, except the son of perdition, Judas Iscariot, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. Now knowing that God keeps us produces stability. Not knowing that God keeps us produces instability.
There's a lot of unstable Christians because they just haven't got the grip on God's preserving, keeping, protecting hand that is not based on you or your nature or your activity but God's. You know what it's like? It's like if you go on a trip, you've got it all planned out, and then you discover you've taken the wrong turn and you're lost now. And now you panic.
Well, you might not panic. I did. I had moved to Albuquerque. I hadn't seen much of the state. Our son was born.
He was a little baby. And I said to my wife, let's see the state. Let's go down to White Sands.
Now you would think that's pretty easy. You'd never get lost there. But I did. And I took the wrong turn. I ended up in a little town called Carrizozo. Ever been there? I had never been there.
And I thought I had been transported 200 years back to the wild, wild west. Because my son is in the back seat and he was vomiting, so I knew he had a fever. My car was on the blink, so I needed to get a car fixed and I needed to find a doctor.
Neither was a possibility where I was. They said, oh, we don't have a doctor in these parts. A nurse comes twice a week. That's it.
And you can't get your car fixed for about 150 miles. So now I started panicking because I thought I was on the right road, on the right track. Everything was flowing the way I wanted to. Now it's very disorienting. That's what believers are like who don't have a firm grip on the keeping power of God. So we're in a dangerous position, but we're given God's protection in this world.
Here's the third principle. We need spiritual preparation. We need spiritual preparation. Now I don't know about you, but I am glad and I am grateful and I thank God that I'm going to be kept in this world, that I have that promise.
But frankly, that's not enough. I want more. I don't want to just make it through to the end. I want to make it through well. I want to finish well. I don't want to just get to heaven and go, man, I made it awesome.
I'll be saying that, but I want to say by God's grace, while I was here, I was ready for the task and prepared for the task to make a difference. Now how is that possible? In a single word, by the truth. That's the word truth. You and I need steady doses of sanctifying truth if we're going to make any impact at all in this world. Look at the 17th verse.
Notice the prayer Jesus prays to His Father. Sanctify them. I know that's an old-fashioned Bible word. It means, consecrate them, set them apart, dedicate them. It could also be translated, prepare them. Move them aside and prepare them.
Get them ready. Sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth.
Verse 19, and for their sakes I sanctify myself that they may be sanctified by the truth. It's the truth. This is how you can be in the world and not of the world. This is how you can be kept from the evil that is all around you by the truth.
This is how we can stand against a world that hates our gospel and hates those of us who preach it. And if you're going to make any impact in this dangerous world, it's because of the truth. You've got to know it and believe it. You know, there's something compelling, even attractive, about a person who believes the truth with such deep conviction. It moves people when they find that kind of authority and authenticity.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon used to say, set a man on fire and people will come to watch him burn. There was a man named David Hume. If you took philosophy, you know him well. He was a philosopher. He claimed to be a deist. He didn't believe in the deity of Christ. He didn't believe in the person of Christ. He didn't believe in salvation, et cetera. Didn't believe in the cross and atonement.
Didn't believe the Bible was inspired. And one evening he was going through the streets of London and somebody recognized him and said, You're David Hume, aren't you? He said, Yes, I am.
Well, where are you off to? He said, I'm going to hear George Whitefield preach. And the man was taken aback and said, George Whitefield, you don't believe a word he says? He goes, No, I don't.
But he does. And there's just something compelling that brought David Hume out of his house to listen to somebody who really believed what he preached. Set a man on fire and people will come to watch him burn. And the same has been true with Dr. Billy Graham all these years, who has stood in stadiums around the world. And from his youth all the way to his old age, he's always said, The Bible says. And often quoted, refrained, The Bible says, The Bible says. And it's the truth that he passionately believed. People are drawn to that. So the truth is what preserves you.
It's what prepares you. This world system will eat you alive if you don't get tethered and anchored to biblical truth. If you're like, Well, I don't really know what I believe.
I don't really know if that's true. Then you're James put it beautifully. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. And if you're double minded about the Bible, you'll be like a buoy bouncing up and down in the sea, right? But to hold to it firmly is what prepares you and I to do something in this world. Again, Charles Spurgeon said so many cool things. He said, A Bible that is falling apart usually belongs to somebody who isn't.
I like that. Look at a person's life. They're just on course, confidence, trusting the Lord. Look at their Bible. They've been in it a lot.
Pretty beat up probably. That doesn't mean you should go take your Bible home, run over with your car and tear a few pages out, write a bunch of stuff and go see spiritual. But this is why we tell people buy a Bible, own a Bible, bring a Bible to church, read it frequently so it becomes yours. It's the truth you refer to. That is how you will be prepared. Constant, steady doses of sanctifying truth prepare you.
You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. Before we return to Skip's teaching, misunderstandings about Jesus abound. Some see him as a prophet, others as a moral teacher, and still others as just a myth or mere historical figure.
But the Bible tells a different story about who Jesus is. We want to help you know the real Jesus of the Bible by sending you Skip Heitzig's nine message CD series, Who Is This Jesus? In this eye opening series, Pastor Skip addresses common misconceptions about Jesus, clarifying both Jesus's humanity and his divinity to equip you to confidently answer questions about who Jesus really is. We'll send you the Who Is This Jesus? series, as well as Skip's booklet for new believers titled Life Change, as thanks for your gift of $50 or more to reach more people with God's love through Connect with Skip Heitzig.
Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy when you give. Now, let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. So our position, we're in the world, not of it. Our protection, God promises to keep you like Jesus kept his own. Our preparation, the Word of God, that's why we come every week.
Get fed, get prepared. And the fourth really ties it all together. To me, this is the best part. This is the graduation part. This is where you graduate.
Because what good is it to be so prepared and so protected if you're not going to really do anything with it? And this is the permeation phase. That's the fourth principle we've been called to permeation. Look at verse 18. As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. Let that phrase just sort of seep into your heart for a minute. Think of that.
Break it up. Jesus recognizes, I have been sent into this world by my Father. I'm on a mission from God. He knows what the cross is all about.
He knows why He's here. I've been sent by you, Father. In the same way that I've been sent on a mission, I have commissioned them. I have sent them into the world. Now, would you allow me to have you look at another verse alongside of that to compare one verse with this verse? Because I want you to see something.
I think it's vital. Go back to verse 6, part of the same prayer. I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given me out of the world.
Out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to me, and they have kept Your word. Now look at verse 18. As You sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.
See how this all works? He takes you out of the world, spiritually. That's salvation. You're not part of the world. You're part of the kingdom of God. You're part of the church.
Different value system, different way of living. Taking you out of the world, that's salvation. He's cleaned you up, that sanctification. Then He puts you back into the world. That's mission. That's impact. That's evangelism. Out cleansed, and then, hey, guess what?
You're going back. And now you can really affect it. I want to close by having you with me in your mind, just compare different ways throughout history, up to this present time, that Christians have related to the world.
And we'll end on this one real briefly. Number one, historically, one of the means that Christians have related to their world is to isolate, to isolate, isolate themselves. That's the whole monastery idea. World is bad.
I have to leave all of it, and I have to find a lonely, quiet place and be away from it for me to even cope. That's to isolate. That's what monasteries are all about. It seemed to serve some well.
I don't think it's the appropriate response. I've even heard that idea in conversations. We had a conversation some years back, and I remember someone said to me, Skip, would it be cool if every neighbor in your neighborhood loved Jesus? And if the guy at the post office and at the grocery store, they were all Christians, and everybody in the police force and in the fire, all of them loved Jesus, and everybody in the town you lived in, if everybody was a Christian, think how cool that would be. I said, Friend, you just described heaven.
That's the millennium you're talking about, and that's wonderful, but that ain't going to happen. And to say let's go create one doesn't serve this world any good. So that's number one, to isolate. Response number two is to insulate. The world is bad. I've got to protect myself, protect my family from all the bad influences of the world, so I'll just kind of, we're here, but not really here. And so I'll be over here, and I'll point my finger at the world and say, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
But I won't really do anything about it because I'm insulated from it. There was a group in the New Testament that tried that. They were called Pharisees. That's what they were called. Pharisees is a word that means the separated ones. They were insulated from the world, separated from the world. They would walk through the streets of their town, especially Jerusalem, with their robes tightly around their bodies, heads down so as not to make eye contact with the Gentile, robes close to them so they wouldn't touch you or I and get cooties.
So that's how they would be insulated from it. Oh, by the way, the Pharisees pointed at the world and said, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. But never once do you read of a Pharisee doing evangelism.
Never once. Never reaching out to win a soul. A third response is to vegetate.
Not isolate, not insulate, but to vegetate. This is the apathetic Christian. Whatever world's going to hell, I'll let it. All I care about is personal comfort along the way.
I just want my share now. It's a very, very sad state when a person comes to the vegetate phase. A fourth response of believers has been not to isolate, not to insulate, not to vegetate, but to imitate. And this is the believer who says, well, you know what?
If we're ever going to reach the world, we really have to be worldly and be world-like. And once they see we're as cool as they are, then they're going to listen to us. No, they won't. You have no message for them at this point.
None. Because they can get you anywhere else. They can get your message anywhere else. It's when you're different.
That's what the word holy means, sanctified. So in stark contrast to where they're at, that they may listen. They won't listen if you're just like them.
What are they changing from and changing to? The fifth response and the final one is the best one. It's the biblical one.
It's the one Jesus prays for. It's not to isolate. It's not to insulate. It's not to vegetate. It's not to imitate.
It's to permeate. It's to get called out of the world system, get saved and cleansed by Jesus, and put right back in to make a difference, to make an impact. So he says, I don't pray you take them out of the world physically. You keep them from the evil one. And verse 18, I sent them into this world. Jesus will say, you are the salt of the earth. Get that picture. Salt would be pushed into corrupted meat to preserve it.
It is contact without contamination. It's making a difference. So to sum it up, our place as the believer in this world is twofold. We're to be in the word, and we're to be in the world. Not one or the other.
Both. In the word, in the world. See, if you're just in the world all week long, around the world, listening to what the world says, listening to the worldly music, listening to the worldly stuff, and you're not in the word, you're going to become like the world. Because you're in the world, not in the word. But if you're in the word all week, the word, the Bible, prayer, that's good.
I do it all the time. But if you don't make contact with the world, you get fat and sassy, spiritually speaking. The Christian needs the word, but the Christian also needs the world. You understand?
The Christian needs the word, but the Christian needs the world. I found an interesting illustration. Years ago, when they were trying to bring codfish from the East Coast out to the West, because an appetite had developed for it here, they first tried shipping it out frozen. They would freeze it, ship it out, thaw it out, eat it. But they discovered it lost a lot of its flavor from what they remember having it fresh out of the sea on the East Coast. Number two, they tried to ship it in tanks of seawater, but it was more expensive, took a lot longer. By the time it got here, the fish was mushier.
Mushier. It just didn't work. They tried, and this is where they succeeded. They tried by putting it in tanks of seawater, bunch of the codfish, but inserting into the tanks one or two catfish, which is the natural enemy of the codfish, so that from the East Coast to the West, the entire journey, the catfish was chasing the codfish all around the tank, all around the tank, all around the tank.
By the time they got here, fresh, textured, firm, flavorful. They found out that the codfish needs the catfish. Christians need the word. Christians need the world.
We need to be in the word and then send into the world to make a difference. When you live that way, you're really living. I'm going to read a little poem as we close. There's just four lines. Don't worry. There was a very cautious man who never laughed or played. He never risked. He never tried. He never sang or prayed. And when one day he passed away, his insurance was denied, for since he never really lived, they claim he never died.
If you really want to live, not just exist or make it through to heaven by the grace of God, you want to live. Get turned loose for Jesus. We've been in the word. Now the salt shaker gets turned upside down and the salt gets poured out into the community.
And that's where we make impact. We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember that when you give $50 or more to help reach more people with the gospel through Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you Pastor Skip's series, Who Is This Jesus?, and his booklet, Life Change, to help you better understand both who Jesus is and why you can trust what the Bible says and who you are as a believer in Christ. To request your copy of these resources, call 800-922-1888.
That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash offer. For more from Skip, be sure to check out the many resources available at connectwithskip.com slash store. We'll see you next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. Make a connection Make a connection At the foot of the crossing Cast your burdens on His word Make a connection Connection Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications. Connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.
