The Gift Of Security Part 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Jesus told the disciples that as the Good Shepherd, He would protect His sheep. But even more, He would give His life for His sheep. This gives believers the security of knowing that no matter what, they're in the safe keeping of the Savior. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, are believers secure even if they renounce their faith altogether?

Dave, you have asked a very penetrating question. I do believe that a true believer will not in his heart deny his faith, certainly even at the point of death. Now, during the history of the church, there have been martyrs and martyrdom took place and some people denied the faith.

But in the end, they came back. But the bottom line is this, that when it comes to salvation, it is really dependent upon God's faithfulness and not our own. I've written a book entitled The Inheritance of the Redeemed, claiming the spiritual treasures that are yours in Christ. And for a gift of any amount, this book can be yours. Here's what you can do.

Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Here at Running to Win, we are deeply committed to the good shepherd who carries his sheep and takes them all the way home. But then he says in verse 11, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd who does not own the sheep. He sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees and the wolf snatches them.

He flees because he's a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. Just as the father knows me and I know the father, I lay down my life for the sheep. Jesus here makes a contrast, a contrast between the shepherd who owns the sheep.

That word own occurs a couple of times in this passage. The shepherd who owns the sheep and therefore in his mind, he thinks of the sheep first and himself second. Shepherds oftentimes did lay down their life for the sheep. You know, they'd be fighting off wolves or fighting off marauders and they'd lay down their life. In fact, in the Old Testament, if you lost a sheep, you'd have to prove that it wasn't your fault. And that's why it says, you know, bring a piece of the animal and so forth. And Jesus here is contrasting himself with a hired hand who thinks of himself first.

He is in it for the money and that's all he cares about. And I don't need to tell you, do I, that today on the airwaves there are all kinds of false shepherds. My heart breaks when I think of the amount of money genuine Christians sometimes send to ministries that are clearly fraudulent and run by false prophets and false shepherds. I've sometimes said that sometimes I think God's sheep can't tell the difference between grass and astroturf. How do you tell whether or not he's a false prophet?

He's the one who says, send me money. The anointing is on me. And the Lord just showed me today that no matter how much you send within a month, you're going to get seven times the amount in return. False shepherds abound. And Jesus says here, he's the good shepherd.

I think I told you years ago about being in Dallas, Texas when I was a student there and we attended this huge tent rally, 7,000 people. And the false prophet was up there making a huge profit. As a matter of fact, he was actually, as I recall, we had several offerings.

People were putting their wristbands and their wristwatches into the offering basket. And I remember he said, I'm really fleecing God's sheep today. And the people still gave. Well, you can fleece sheep many times, but you can skin them only once.

And once you do that, people finally learn. So Jesus says that there are false shepherds who over promise, who draw attention to themselves, who do not properly distinguish between the false and the true. And they are hirelings. They are hired hands who will never protect the sheep because they come first. But he's the good shepherd. He lays down his life for the sheep. And you and I know that Jesus died for us. Imagine how he values us that he would die for his sheep.

We continue on. He calls them. He leads them. He dies for them.

He keeps his sheep. Some time later, Jesus was having a discussion. You can see it there in the beginning of verse 22 at the Feast of Dedication. And people came to him, and the Jews gathered around him and said to him, how long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. And Jesus answered them, I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me, but you do not believe because you are not part of my flock.

This is very interesting. Jesus is saying that the problem, the reason you can't hear is because you don't belong to me. And yet at the same time, we know that to belong to him, there has to be a hearing.

But it's a hearing created by God in the human heart. My sheep hear my voice. I know them.

They follow me. I give them eternal life. That is life without limit.

It is a surplus of life. And they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand.

I and my Father are one, one in essence. Notice what Jesus is saying. My sheep hear my voice.

They follow me. I give to them eternal life. That means life forever without any sin ever coming in between.

Don't you look forward to that when we can be with a good shepherd and there's no sin that marrs our fellowship. Life begins now. Eternal life begins now. But after death and after the end of time, that's when we really experience it in its fullness. Jesus says, I give to them eternal life, and they will never perish. Notice, I love this, two sets of hands.

They will never perish. No one will pluck them out of my hand. Oh, you say, but free will. I could pluck myself out of his hand.

It's a little more difficult even than that. And that is, according to the Apostle Paul, we are his hand. We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. So Jesus said, no one will pluck them out of my hand, and my father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one will pluck them out of the father's hand. So you have the hand of the father, and you have the hand of the son, hands in harmony, and that's where the sheep are, secure, belonging to him forever. And he will see to it that they arrive home. When you think of the security of the believer, please keep in mind, and this is the major bottom line I want you to understand today, when you think of the security of the believer, remember this, it is not even rooted in our own faithfulness, though obedience is assumed on the part of those who are genuinely converted.

It is really dependent on God. Your Bibles are open, I hope they are, or your cell phone, and you'll notice it says this, my father, verse 29, who has given them to me is greater than all. The sheep are a gift from the father to the son. This is found all throughout the Gospel of John.

And Jesus said that they are a gift. Now, can you imagine Jesus losing one of the father's sheep? Let's suppose, for example, that you had a situation in which a shepherd were given 100 sheep.

And he comes back in the evening, and they count them and it's 95. And they say, where are your other five sheep? Well, you know, they were rebellious. They have free will. They wandered around based on their own freedom, and what was I to do?

I mean, I didn't want to interfere with their free will. The other shepherds would laugh at them and say, free will, big deal. You were given 100 sheep at midnight, you have 100 sheep here.

And if you count 95, when you get in, you go out and you find the other five and you bring them so that they're all home by midnight. That's what good shepherds do. They don't lose sheep along the way. Oh, you say, but you know, I know this boy who really loved God. He was converted. He attended Bible studies, and now he doesn't believe anything. And he's out there living like the world. Let me say two things about that boy. First of all, the reason that he's in the world is probably not because of any doctrine or because of any intellectual arguments. It almost always has to do with lifestyle.

That's the first thing I'll tell you. And the second thing is that maybe he, or the first thing, maybe he didn't genuinely believe. You know, Jesus, when he told that story about the seed, he said that there was some seed that fell on shallow ground that immediately sprung up and brought joy to the sower, but it had no root. Maybe that's an explanation. I don't know. But second, may I encourage you by saying that as long as that person is living, we still not have seen the end of the road.

There are some people whom God has to drag from one briar patch to another and let them suffer and get entangled in everything until they say, I'm coming back to the shepherd. There are some people like that. Oh, none of you, of course.

You would not know. I'm not talking to anybody who's stubborn. We all are. And at the end of nightfall, God's sheep will be in the fold safely. By the way, there are many of you listening to this.

I hope that you're not taking this promise for yourself unless you are indeed God's sheep. See, it's easy for you to listen to this and say, well, you know, here I am. I'm a Christian. And I would assume that most of the people listening to this message are, but that would be a wrong assumption if I thought everybody was. Like one guy said, well, am I a Christian? Well, I'm in church, aren't I?

Yeah. I wasn't planning on saying this, but so is the devil. Unless there's been a time in your life when you recognized and you repented of your sin and received Christ as savior. It doesn't happen just by going to church, though I appreciate the fact that you're going to church. It happens only through those who come in repentance and faith. And that's how you find out whether or not you're part of the crowd of the elect that we've been talking about.

You come to Christ and he will receive you. There is a woman by the name of Lina. Really, her name was Carolina, but she became known as Lina. This was in the 18th century. And her last name was Berg.

So it's Lina Berg from Sweden. At the age of 23, Lina was on a boat with her father and the boat lurched and he fell overboard. He had been a pastor and she watched helplessly as he drowned.

Then two years later, her mother died and then she married and they had a son who died. What do you do with all that grief? You can do one of two things, either A, you can choose to become bitter and angry at God. That's one possibility.

Very detrimental and bad choice, but it happens. Or what you can do is to do something different and say, I'm going to pour my grief into something that will be of benefit to others because the circumstances of life are not going to interfere with my absolute confidence that the trials of life do not count against God's love for his sheep. So Lina Berg wrote the words of a hymn, which is day by day and with each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here, trusting in my father's wise bestowment.

There is no cause for worry or for fear. But she also wrote another song, Swedish song, of course. When I became pastor of a Swedish Baptist church north of here many, many years ago, people began to die. I don't think that there was any direct connection with my coming. There were a lot of older people in the church and I remember counting.

I think I had 25 funerals in maybe four or five years that I was there. And in every funeral, because of the Swedish background, this song was sung. We have already sung it, but I've asked him that we sing it a second time. Children of the heavenly father safely in his bosom gather nestling bird, nor star in heaven, such a refuge ere was given. Neither life nor death shall ever from the Lord his children sever. Unto them his grace he showeth, and their sorrows all he knoweth. Though he giveth or he taketh, God his children ne'er forsaketh.

His the loving purpose solely to preserve them pure and holy. If you are God's sheep, you'll make it to the other side of the river where the good shepherd is going to call you by name and express his love to you as a gift of his incredible grace. My sheep hear my voice. They know me.

They follow me. They will never perish. Father, we ask in Jesus' name that you'll give us a great deal of comfort by the fact that we do know you and that through faith in Christ, we are one of your sheep. For those Lord who aren't, we ask that you will help them to understand their need, overcome their blindness to their own need, and show them the beauty of Jesus, the Savior, the good shepherd, who leads us, who directs us, who restores us all the way to eternity. We pray in his name.

Amen. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ listening to this message, I'm sure that your heart has been greatly blessed and encouraged. But if you are unsure of your salvation, it may well be that you have never savingly believed on Christ.

Would you do that now? The gift of eternal life is given to all who respond to it. Cry out to God for forgiveness for acceptance. Receive the Savior. Receive the good shepherd. I've written a book entitled The Inheritance of the Redeemed, claiming the spiritual treasures that are yours in Christ. I wrote it because I think Christians sometimes do not realize that redemption is much more than simply the forgiveness of sins. He who spared not his own son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?

Well, this book begins to probe some of those all things that come with Christ. I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy because I'm going to be giving you some info as to how this book can be yours. Here's what you can do. Go to RTWOffer.com. That's RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. For a gift of any amount, you can receive the book The Inheritance of the Redeemed. And because I believe that this resource will be of such help to you, I'm giving you that contact info again.

Go to RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. And thanks in advance for your prayers, for your gifts, because you are partners with us in this ministry. Time now for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Many kids have best friends forever, or BFFs, and these relationships have great influence on their lives. Kate listens to Running to Win on KDKR in the Fort Worth area, and this is her story. My 13-year-old daughter's closest friend attends church regularly with her family and professes to be a Christian. Recently, she confessed to my daughter that she is gay.

Pastor Lutzer, I want to react as Christ would have me to, with love and understanding. However, I'm very concerned about the possible influence this girl could have on my daughter. We care deeply for this child and her entire family. I don't want to hurt them, but I also want to protect my child.

What should I do? Well, let me begin by saying how pleased I am that you would connect with us and ask this question, and what a wonderful example of the fact that parents have tremendous questions and struggles, particularly as they try to guide their children through those formative 13- and 14-year-old times all the way through their teenage years. Very, very critical. And a couple of comments that I want to make, however, as you seek guidance regarding how to handle this delicate situation. First of all, this 13-year-old girl who's a friend of your daughter, she needs to understand several things. The first is that this desire that she has, this idea that she is gay, may be passing. You know, according to a very well-known doctor, about 75%, for example, of all teenagers who believe that they are transgender discover that it is a passing phase. This might be true in her life as well. Furthermore, if these feelings continue and she really thinks that she is gay, it is incredibly important that she not become involved sexually with anyone. That is so critical. And she must realize that if her feelings do not change, that she must be committed to a celibate lifestyle.

That's God's will. And it is so critical that she received that information. I hope that her parents know. If not in one way or another, they should be finding out because after all, she is their daughter. As for your daughter, it's so important that you discuss this with her because let me tell you what happens.

What happens is, and especially among teenagers, they develop a firm bond. Your daughter begins to sympathize with this other girl. And in the midst of that sympathy, she might be willing to accept the gay lifestyle.

That's the next step. What you need to do is to help your daughter to understand that while we can have compassion and we can sympathize with those who have various sexual struggles, that does not mean that we must accept or that we should accept sexual behavior when it comes to the same sex relationship. Very critical to help your daughter through this. So at the same time, what you need to do is to stay close to your daughter, giving her that guidance, but at the same time, helping this other family process what their daughter has confessed to. I realize that you will need real wisdom to be able to walk that fine line. But that's what God has called you to, and in the midst of it, to trust Him both for your daughter and for this girl and for this family.

This isn't the end of the road. God is with us even in the midst of struggles, even in the midst of situations that we certainly wish we'd be able to avoid. But here we are, and God is with us. Some compassionate counsel from Dr. Erwin Lutzer. Thank you, Dr. Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer, or call us at 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. They say it's always darkest just before the dawn. A glorious eternal destiny awaits all believers, and that makes our present suffering worthwhile. Next time, the final gift God gives to the redeemed. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.