You know, about 40 years ago, I first arrived in the Washington area, and I started attending a Bible-believing church. And there was a dear elderly lady there whom I'll never forget. She was a widow. She lived in an apartment near the church building. And this woman was a prayer warrior.
She was a deeply committed woman of God who loved the Lord like few people I'd ever met. But she was only 4 feet 11 inches tall. I used to kind of look at her as just a little pit bull for God. You know what I'm trying to say?
Well, anyway, one Wednesday evening after prayer meeting, I offered to give her a ride home because I didn't want her walking in the dark. And as we were riding to her apartment, I said to her, I said, Hey, isn't it going to be a great thing when you and I get to heaven? And she said, well, I certainly hope so. And I said, you hope so, what? And she said, Well, I certainly hope I go to heaven.
And I was flabbergasted. Suddenly, I realized that this godly woman, this pillar of the church, who had prayed so many other people into heaven, I realized that she wasn't sure that she was going to heaven herself.
Now, this is what we want to talk about today as we continue in our series entitled People Jesus Met. Today, we want to talk not so much about someone Jesus met, but we want to talk about someone whom Jesus told us he is, namely the good shepherd who gives every one of his sheep a place in heaven that is eternally secure. And so we want to go back to John chapter 10 and look and see what Jesus said there, and then we want to reel all that forward and talk about: well, what difference does that make to you and me? Today.
So that's the plan. John chapter ten is our passage, and we begin at verse seven. Here we go. Jesus said to the disciples, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.
I am the gate, Jesus says. Whoever enters through me will be saved. I am the good shepherd, Jesus says, verse 11. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
Now, of course, what Jesus is referring to here is his sacrifice on the cross for the human race, and he makes it utterly clear in these verses that it is his finished work on the cross that provides the only way that people can get eternal life, the only way that people can get into heaven. What did Jesus say? Verse 9: He said, I, not Buddha, not Confucius, not Muhammad, nor anybody else, I am the gate, he says, and through me, whoever enters through me will be saved.
Now, I'm sure you've come across people in your life, because I certainly have, who say things like, well, you know, I think whatever religion you choose to follow, you know, they all lead to the same God. Or they will say, you know, if a person sincerely practices any religion, it'll get them to heaven equally well. Friends, this is not what Jesus says in the Bible. In fact, in the Bible, Jesus says the exact opposite of this. He says every other way won't work.
Only the way that he provides will work. And as much as our friends may not want to hear this, folks, it is our sacred duty to tell them what Jesus said about how to get into heaven. Because, let me tell you why, it's because no one is going to pay the spiritual price involved in giving a person's life to Christ, the spiritual price of repentance, and the spiritual price of humility. And the spiritual price of submission to the Lordship of Christ. Nobody is going to do that unless they know that this is the right way to get to heaven, and there is no easier way to do it.
So Let's move on. Verse 17. For this reason, Jesus said, the Father loves me, because I lay down my life only to take it up again. No one takes my life from me, Jesus says, but I lay it down on my own initiative. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it up again, Jesus says.
This command I received from my Father.
Now, friends, please don't ask me to explain to you the precise inner workings of what the Lord Jesus says in verse 17 and 18, because I can't. Jesus is talking here in these verses about the deep things of God. He's talking in these verses about the unfathomable interrelationship between the first person in the Godhead, God the Father, and the second person in the Godhead, God the Son, and there is no human being. Being alive who understands that interrelationship fully. The good news is that we don't need to fully explain what Jesus says in those two verses to get Jesus's main point.
His main point is that as our good shepherd, Jesus went to the cross, he went there freely, he went there voluntarily, he went there willingly, and he laid down his life to pay for our sins. And then, by his own divine authority, he took his life up again and he rose from the dead. Hallelujah. Amen? Hallelujah.
Now Now, all of this sets us up for verse 27 and 28. Jesus says, verse 27, my sheep, as the great shepherd, my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give them, verse 28, eternal life.
Now, this is one of the cardinal truths of the Bible that sets true biblical Christianity apart from every other ism and every other ology in the world, namely, that people who embrace Jesus as their only gate into heaven, God gives those people eternal life as a gift. We don't have to earn it, we don't have to merit it, we don't have to deserve it, and we don't have to work for it. It is a gift that God gives us based on the saving work of Christ on the cross. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8 says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this salvation is not of yourselves, it is the, what's the next word? The gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one can boast.
And many of us know by heart, Romans 6:23, for the wages of sin is death, but the, what's the next word, say it? The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. You say, wow, Lon, that's great. Yeah, but there's more. Wait, there's more.
Verse 28 goes on. Jesus says, I give eternal life to my sheep, and they shall never perish. No one can snatch my sheep out of my hand. Jesus says, not only is eternal life in heaven a gift from God, but it is also a gift that can never be lost and can never be taken away or forfeited.
Now think for a moment. If there were anything That, as a follower of Christ, that you or I could do that would cause us to forfeit our eternal life, if there were anything that you and I could do that would cause God to abrogate and take back His gift of eternal life in heaven, then there's no way that Jesus could have used the word never here in verse 28. He could have said, Well, most of the time my sheep won't perish, or he could have said, Well, probably my sheep won't perish, or he could have said, Well, the odds are 70-30, my sheep won't perish, or he could have said, God bless you, sheep. I sure hope you don't perish. But that isn't what Jesus said, was it?
He said, My sheep shall never perish. Which means that once you and I have our salvations as followers of Christ, there is absolutely nothing that we can do to lose it, and there is no other being in the universe that can take it away from us, because Jesus said in verse 28, no one. Not even the devil of hell himself can snatch my sheep out of my hand. Folks, no one means no one. In fact, you can't even snatch yourself out of the hands of Jesus.
This is Jesus' solemn promise that he makes to every single born-again follower of Christ.
So, bottom line is that as followers of Christ, regardless of whatever dumb thing we might do, regardless of whatever stupid thing we might do, regardless even of whatever sinful thing we might do, Jesus declares that our eternal life in heaven is secure for all of time and all of eternity. Period, period. Exclamation point: praise the Lord. Huh? Amen.
Now, This is as far as we want to go in the passage because it brings us to the place where it's time to ask our most important question. Are we prepared? All right, everybody out there on the internet, all of you here at Tyson's Deep Breath. Here we go. One, two, three.
Thank you. Ha ha ha. Hey, how sweet is that? You say, all right, Lon, so what? You know, first of all, I'm not really sure that I see how practical this is to my everyday life.
And second of all, are you sure that you're not building way too much of a theological system on one word? I mean, you took this word never and you built this whole theological system on it. I mean, maybe you read way too much into that one word.
Well, let's talk about these things, okay? Friends, here in John chapter 10, Jesus's words formed the foundation of a monumentally important theological doctrine, a doctrine that does have profound application for your life and my life today. A doctrine that that sweet lady in my car 40 years ago needed to be certain of and to know. It's what we call the doctrine of eternal security.
Now, let's ask the question: what exactly do we mean by eternal security?
Well, the phrase eternal security. Itself never actually appears in the Bible.
However, it's a phrase that summarizes an unmistakable truth that is in the Bible, the truth we just saw in John chapter 10, namely, That when a person embraces Jesus truly as their personal Lord and Savior, God immediately gives that person eternal life, salvation, a guaranteed place in heaven, and that salvation is eternally secure, meaning that that person can never lose it, regardless of what they do or regardless of what they don't do from that point forward. To put it another way, the Bible teaches that as followers of Christ, not only is our getting saved not based on our human performance, but folks, also our staying saved is not based on our human performance either. From start to finish, from getting saved to stepping on the shores of heaven, it is all God's undeserved mercy based on the finished work of Jesus on the cross, which never Changes regardless whether your performance goes up or whether your performance goes down. Listen, if you and I are performing well on a certain day, Jesus' death on the cross is no more real on that day than on the day when you and I are performing poorly. And on those days, Jesus' death on the cross is just as real and just as efficacious.
Jesus' death on the cross never changes. Our performance goes up and down, but the cross never changes. And our salvation is not based on our undulating performance, it is based on the cross. That never changed. Changes.
You said Belon. Is there any more scripture besides the word never? To back this up? Oh yes, there is. Watch, here we go.
John chapter 5, verse 24, Jesus said, I tell you the truth. Whoever hears my word and believes in him who sent me has, notice the tense of the verb, present tense, has eternal life. Jesus said this in John 3, 36, whoever believes in the Son, that is himself, has eternal life. Jesus said this in John 6, 47. I tell you the truth.
The person who believes in me has eternal life. Friends, if you're a follower of Jesus here today, you are never going to have more eternal life than you have right at this moment.
Well, you don't get more eternal life when you get to heaven, my friend. You've got your eternal life right now. Heaven is simply the place where people who already have eternal life here on earth go to when they leave this earth.
Okay. You say, but Lon, that's not the issue. I understand that. But the issue is, can a person who has eternal life ever lose it? Can the situation ever be?
Reversed.
Well, wait a minute. Jesus goes on, John 5:24, and that person who has eternal life, because they believed in Jesus, will not be condemned, for they have crossed over from death to eternal life.
Now, the key to understanding the power that's in what Jesus said here in John 5, 24 resides in the verse, have crossed over. The verb Jesus uses here is in the perfect tense in Greek. The perfect tense in Greek is very seldom used in the New Testament.
So when it is used, it's significant. And let me tell you about it. The perfect tense represents a past, completed action. Your salvation given to you on the basis of the Lord Jesus Christ dying on the cross, and then the result going on for all of eternity, irrevocably and irreversibly. If we were going to diagram the perfect tense in Greek, we would draw a big dot.
On the page representing the past completed action, the cross and our salvation being given to us, and then we draw a line coming out of this dot going into eternity, representing the irreversible, ongoing result of that action. You go, all right, no, no, no, no, no, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. I didn't come here to get a grammar lesson. I don't want to learn Greek grammar. Lon, get to the point.
Okay. But now that you know enough about Greek grammar to follow it. Here's the point. And I'm going to retranslate. John 5:24 now, with you, in light of the fact that this verb is in the perfect tense, and you understand this now, I'm going to give you the RSV translation, the revised Solomonic version of this verse.
So, are you ready? Here we go. John 5:24. Here's what it really says: it says, He who believes in Jesus has eternal life and will not be condemned, for that person, here comes the perfect tense, has crossed over, that person is crossed over, and that person always will be crossed over from death into eternal life. In other words, here in John 5:24, Jesus tells us that when we embrace Him as our Lord and Savior, He irreversibly transfers us, God does, from a state of eternal death into a state of eternal life.
Listen, and there. There is no going back forever, ever, ever. There's no going backwards. Praise God for that, huh? Praise the Lord.
Now let's look at it another way. There's another way to look at it. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 16 says, And this is the covenant that I will make with them, that is with followers of Christ, my sheep. Their sins and their lawless deeds, I will remember no more. Here in this verse, Hebrews 10, 16, God tells us that when a person becomes a true follower of Jesus Christ, that person and God enter into a covenant together.
God makes a legal agreement with this person. God makes a contract, if you will, with this person, a contract that, remember, John 5, 24 says, is irreversible. And let me tell you the terms of the contract. Here we go. This is the contract God makes with you once you are a true born-again follower of the Lord Jesus.
Here we go. Term number one, their sins and their lawless deeds, I will remember no more. Hebrews 10, 17. Term number two, Our names are inscribed in the Lamb's book of life, Revelation 21:27 in Philippians 4:3. Third term, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ.
Romans chapter 8, verse 1. Term number 4 of the contract: God says, I will bury their sins in the depths of the sea. Micah chapter 7, verse 19. Term number 5 of the contract: We are indwelt by the Holy Spirit Himself. 1 Corinthians 6:19.
Do you not know that as a believer, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you've received from God? Term number six: We become adopted children of God. John chapter 1, verse 12. But to all who received him, that is Jesus, God gave them the right to be the children of God. Term number 7.
And I love this one. Is once we become true followers of Christ, part of the contract is that we are branded with God's personal seal of ownership, which is the indwelling Holy Spirit. Ephesians 1:13 says, Having believed in Jesus, we were marked with a seal. And what is that seal? The promised Holy Spirit, which is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance.
Hey, do you guys like old Westerns? Huh? I do. I love them. I love John Wayne.
How can you not love John Wayne? And hey, yeah. And are any of you guys old enough to remember Haas Cartwright? Huh? I love Haas Cartwright.
There you go. But my favorite, by far, topping all the others, is my good buddy Clint Eastwood. Love this guy. Love this guy. As a matter of fact, I don't know if you know this, but before Clint Eastwood began starring on all of the movies about the West, he was part of a TV series called Rawhide.
Rollin', rollin', rollin'. Keep them doggies rolling, rawhide. No time to understand them, just rope, tie, and brand them. Keep them doggies moving, rawhide. What do you think?
Yeah. All right.
Okay. You say lawn. Does this have a point? Yes, it does. Hold on, it does.
Okay, so now in the Old West, right, if you wanted to mark an animal and say that this animal was your animal, it was your property, so everybody could see it and everybody knew it for all of time, what would you do to that animal? You'd brand it. You'd take a hot poker and you'd burn your mark into the hide of that animal. And everybody who would ever see that animal for the rest of its life knew that animal belonged to you. We all understand that.
Now, in Ephesians 1:13, that we just read, those words, God has marked us with a seal, that word in Greek literally means to brand an animal. And so, what this verse is really saying is that every follower of Christ has been branded not with a hot poker, praise the Lord, but with the indwelling Holy Spirit, so that every creature in the universe for all of time and eternity will be able to look at us and see we belong to God. We are His property. Every angel can see it. Every seraphim can see it.
Every cherubim can see it. Every demon in hell can see it. For all of eternity, we are. God's property, how cool is that? How cool is that?
And finally, term number eight in this contract is: as we've just seen in John chapter 10, we become one of Jesus' personal sheep who can never. Perish, right? Those are the terms of the contract. Let's think. As a follower of Christ.
If one of us were to ever lose our eternal life, If one of us were ever to lose our salvation and miss heaven after God had given it to us, here's what would have to happen. Are you ready? Here's what would have to happen. Number one.
Someone would have to cast the indwelling Holy Spirit out of us. Number two, somebody would have to eradicate God's brand from our height. Number three, somebody would have to cancel our adoption papers as children of God. If we were to lose our salvation, number four, somebody would have to talk God into remembering our sins and our lawless deeds once more. Number five, if we were to lose our place in heaven, somebody, fifth, would have to sneak up into heaven and erase our name out of the Lamb's book of life.
Number six, if we were to lose our salvation, six, somebody would have to convince God to rewrite Romans 8:1 so that it now read, There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, except in the following circumstances. Number seven. If we were to lose our salvation, somebody would have to scuba dive down and dredge our sins out of the bottom of the sea. Number eight.
Somebody, if we were to lose our salvation, would have to turn us from being Jesus' sheep into being the devil's goats. Number nine, if we were to lose our eternal life, somebody would have to snatch us out of Jesus' hand while he wasn't looking And finally, number 10, and most important of all, if a believer was to lose the salvation that God had given him or her, somebody would have to make a liar out of Almighty God because God made a covenant with us, God made a contract with us, God made a legal agreement with us saying he would never do any of these 10 things, things he would have to do if a true believer ever lost his or her salvation. Friends, the bottom line is when you and I genuinely embrace Jesus as our Lord and Savior, God consummates a legal agreement with us, a covenant with us guaranteeing our place in heaven. It is a covenant that is irreversible. It is a covenant that is irrevocable.
And it is a covenant that you and I can take to the bank from the day we get saved until the last day of eternity, and there ain't one. Praise God for that. Amen.
Amen.
You know, this a while back, I was actually having lunch with a friend of mine, an unbelieving friend of mine. And while we were sitting there at lunch, he said to me, he said, Tell me, he said, do you really believe that hell is an actual place? And I said, I certainly do. But I've trusted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior and Messiah. And so I'm glad to say that I'm not going to hell, I'm going to heaven.
He said, You really believe that? He said that a person can know for sure that they're actually going to heaven, and I said, absolutely. And he said, but don't you think it sounds just a little bit arrogant? To sit here and say, Well, I know for sure that I'm going to heaven. He said, Don't you think that's just a little arrogant?
And I said, No, not at all. I said, I'm not going to heaven because of anything I did. I'm going to heaven because of what Jesus Christ in His mercy did for me on the cross. And I said, and I want to tell you, if you'll accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and your Messiah, like I did 39 years ago, you can have this same assurance of eternal life in heaven as I've got. 1 John 5, verse 13.
And I'm writing you, John says, who believe in the name of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, that you may K-N-O-W-that you may know that you have eternal life. Listen here. God says in the Bible that it is normal for us as followers of Christ to know for sure that we are going to heaven. That is normal, not abnormal. This is our birthright as the sheep of Jesus.
This is our birthright as the adopted children of God. To know that we are going to heaven is our birthright as branded recipients of God's covenant of salvation. And as followers of Christ, we need to believe what God tells us. We need to accept what God tells us. And we need to rejoice and revel in the fact that we We can look people in the face and say, Yes, I know I'm going to heaven because of what Jesus did for me on the cross.
That's the normal Christian life, my friends. You said but lawn. What if I do something really bad? I mean, what if I really mess up? and really sinned and really let God down.
Well, folks. Did you hear the song that we sang earlier for the offering? What did it say? It said, For every fault. God sees our fault.
Is that what it said? No. That song didn't say that. The song said, For every fault, God sees the cross.
Now, listen, I'm not saying it's okay to mess up and sin and hurt people and do things wrong, that we don't need to apologize and go back and make things right and ask God for forgiveness. I'm not saying that. But, friends, I'm saying that regardless of our performance every day, when we get it right, when we get it wrong, when we get it in the middle, the good, the bad, or the ugly, it doesn't make a bit of difference. Once we have given our life to Jesus, Jesus doesn't see the fault when it comes to judging our getting into heaven. He sees the cross and he sees the blood of Christ.
We are hidden behind the cross. We are hidden behind the blood of Christ. For every fault, praise God, God sees the cross. And this means That you and I As followers of Jesus, It means that we can look death right in the eyeballs and we can say to death, I am not afraid of you. Because I have a contract with Almighty God, a contract that has been sealed with the blood of the risen Savior and Lord of glory, guaranteeing me a place in heaven and death.
You can't mess this up. As a matter of fact, I can't even mess this up. Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
Now I gotta tell ya. Listen, I got to tell you, I need a plan of salvation like this. Maybe you don't. But I do. Friends, you give me any plan of salvation that I could mess up, and I will mess it up.
Self-destruction is one of my spiritual gifts. I'm telling you, it's true. I'm so glad that God gave me a plan of salvation that I can't mess up even if I tried to mess it up. I'm so glad about that. And I'll tell you, when I get to heaven.
I believe the Lord Jesus is going to put me on his display somewhere on the shelf or whatever, call every angel in heaven over, point to me and say, you see him? If I can save that guy, and if I can sanctify that guy all the way into heaven, there is not a human being in the world I can't sanctify and save into heaven. You look at him. He's proof I can do it for anybody. Friends, I'm telling you, the reason I'm going to be there has nothing to do with me.
Leave it up to me, and I'd never get there. I'm so thankful it depends on the cross and the blood of Jesus that never changes. That's the only hope I got, and I got to tell you, that's the only hope you got. But praise God, when you come to Christ, that is the reality and the hope. And nobody can take that away from you.
Amen.
Amen.
So Let me just say, friends, I don't care how bad your day is going. Because of eternal security, there's always something going right with your day. I mean, if you leave work, walk out in the street, a bus hits you, bam, and kills you on the spot. The next breath you take as a follower of Jesus will be on the shores of heaven, and it's been a good day. And if you go to lunch, with your friends at work.
And you choke to death. on your shrimp. The next breath you take will be on the shores of heaven, and it's been a good day. And if your husband comes home from work, And at the front door he looks at you and says, honey, I want to hear all about your day. And he walks you over to the couch.
And he sits down next to you. And he takes your hand and his hand, and he looks you right in the eyes, and he says, Tell me everything. everything about your day. And you have a stroke. Your next breath will be on the shores of heaven, and it's been a good day.
And so the question I want to leave you with is this, my friends, something to think about, something to talk to other people about. How would your attitude towards things in life be different? How would your attitude towards your failures and your mistakes be different? How would your attitude towards the sin that we all commit every day be different? How would your attitude towards sickness and towards the uncertainties of the future and towards the fear of death?
How would all of that be different if eternal security wasn't true? How would it be different? And then, after you talk about that and you're thoroughly depressed, I want you to come back and remember: but eternal security is true. It is true. And all of that stuff you talked about, all those fears, all of that insecurity doesn't exist because eternal security does.
And it wipes all that away. Man, I tell you, if you can't walk out of here as a follower of Jesus encouraged today, I don't know what will do it for you. But I'm just telling you, I praise God. That he gave us this plan of salvation, that he gave us, and that it is eternally secure. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, I thank you for the Word of God. And I pray that you would help us believe it. At face value, Lord, straight up. Remind us, dear Father, That when Jesus gives, He never takes back. And when he gives salvation, and when he gives heaven, and when he gives eternal life, it is forever forever.
Irreversible. Irrevocable. And so, Lord Jesus, encourage our hearts with this great truth today. Yeah, we got problems. Yeah, we got struggles.
But, Lord Jesus, when it's all said and done and the dust clears, if we know you, we will be in heaven. There is no doubt about it. Help us to be as sure of that as we are of our own name. More sure And help us live. in the beauty of that.
Help us revel. In the assurance of that. Lord, help us. to have peace. In the comfort of this truth.
And change the way we deal with our life because we were here and we learned from your word today. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. And what did God's people say? Oh, come on, what did you say? All right, have a great day.
Watch out for those shrimp. God bless you.
