1 John 5:13
The Lordship of Christ, Part 2
In "The Lordship of Christ, Part 2," Pastor Albert N. Martin expounds on the forgotten fundamental of biblical assurance of salvation, primarily drawing from 1 John 5:13 and Romans 8:15-16. He argues that true assurance is founded on three pillars: the promises of God's Word made real by the Holy Spirit, the evidence of a transformed life (discerned through self-examination against biblical tests), and the concurrent witness of the Holy Spirit with our own spirits. Martin warns against false assurance, instructs the doubting believer to focus on present evidences of grace, and guides those with true assurance on how to regain it when lost through sin or neglect of means of grace.
Primary Texts
Topics
Outline 10 sections · 69 min
- Prayer for Divine Reception and Review of Forgotten Fundamentals 0:05
- Introduction to the Forgotten Fundamental of Assurance of Salvation 8:00
- The Distinction Between False and True Assurance 10:58
- Three Factors of Bible Assurance: An Overview 17:09
- Factor 1: Promises of the Word Made Real by the Holy Spirit 19:47
- Factor 2: Evidence of a Transformed Life (Tests from 1 John) 29:58
- Factor 3: The Witness of the Holy Spirit 46:18
- Warning to the Deceived and Instruction to the Doubting 49:51
- Guidance for Those with True Assurance: Regaining Lost Assurance 56:20
- Summary and Concluding Prayer 64:21
Key Quotes
“A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven.”
“The sound convert takes a whole Christ. It takes him for all intents and purposes, without exceptions, without limitations, without reserve. He's willing to have Christ on any terms. He's willing to have the dominion of Christ as well as deliverance.”
“What I do is seek to lay the truth to your mind and your conscience and then urge upon you to act in the light of that truth as the Holy Ghost deals with you. ... Beloved, that's the only evangelism that's taught in the Bible.”
“The person who is so cocksure that he won't examine the validity of his assurance is the one who is the most likely to go to the judgment with a false hope.”
“He never does it to an unbroken, impenitent heart. Robert Murray McShane said, It's only a broken heart that can receive a crucified Savior.”
“The Christian may stumble, scrape his knees, he may get spattered, he may be defiled but he never signs a peace treaty with his sin. He's never at home in his sin.”
“Whoso trusteth in his own heart is a fool.”
“You just get up and get busy doing what the Bible says you ought to do. And assurance comes as a byproduct.”
Applications
All listeners
- Consciously confess to the Lord that you will receive nothing unless He gives you the grace and ability to receive.
- Examine yourself, prove yourself, whether you be in the faith, and make your calling and election sure.
- As a preacher, mother, father, or Sunday school teacher, seek to shut people up to God with an open Bible, so they might seek Him until He announces Himself to their hearts.
- Honestly and objectively evaluate your life against the standards of 1 John to discern if you are truly saved.
- Go home, get on your knees, and ask God to search you out as thoroughly now as He will on the day of judgment, especially if you have a cocksure assurance.
- If you doubt your salvation because you can't pinpoint the exact day or hour of conversion, don't look back, but ask yourself if the Holy Spirit has made promises real, if you trust Christ, love the brethren, obey Him, and desire holiness in the present.
- If you lose your assurance, deal with the specific sin or neglect of grace that caused it, and return to active obedience to God's will.
- Do not give anyone assurance; it is not your job.
A full transcript is available on the tab. 209 paragraphs, roughly 69 minutes.
Prayer for Divine Reception and Review of Forgotten Fundamentals
Again tonight, just a text of scripture before we pray.
John answered and said, A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven. A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven. He's come tonight to deliberately waste two and a half hours out of an evening figuring the time you left your home, the time you're here and get returned to your home. And yet this is exactly what that two or two and a half hours will be unless God is pleased to give us something.
We can receive nothing, but we can't even receive what God has created unless it be given us. Once again, as we come to our study of the word, may we consciously, not just part of the Protestant ritual, bow our heads and shift our minds into neutral until we hear the preacher say amen and then sort of put our minds back in gear. I do that many times. I confess to my shame.
When someone leads in public prayer, I'm not actively praying with them. I'm just sort of shifting into mental neutrality and tell the amen and then I come back to active thinking. But let's consciously, shall we, each one of us individually, as we bow together in prayer, say, Lord, that's true. I'll receive nothing tonight unless you give me the grace and ability to receive.
Let us unitedly confess that to the Lord and then trust him who said ask and it shall be given. Let us pray together.
We acknowledge that the root of our creature pride to be told by your word that we can receive nothing except to be given us from heaven. From heaven tonight, that special perception and understanding.
Open thou us that we may behold wondrous things out of your law. We pray that you would give us dispositions of willingness to receive that which the Spirit would give us. Say to us, we know Lord among us in many ways a bundle of prejudice and preconceived notions.
Have mercy upon us tonight that we shall assume the role of students before your truth and whatsoever you say unto us by your grace we desire to receive as you give us the grace to it. To that end, we commend our time of study to you and thank you for the blessing of your grace. May God bless you and your spirit upon it. Through Jesus Christ the Lord.
Just as the pastor must for the sake of visitors introduce me each night, so for the sake of those who are with us for the first time, I must take just a few minutes to review the main headings of truth that we are considering because in one sense, the whole week is one unit. And it was encouraging last night, one or two folks saying, well, I've stuck it out all week and now lights are beginning to flash and things are beginning to fit together. And that's generally, what happens when you're seeking to focus upon aspects of God's truth that have a vital interrelationship.
We're considering together some aspects of truth that I have entitled some of the forgotten fundamentals of fundamentalism. In truth that have by and large been lost in the rubble of neglect and obscurity in the evangelical church. We consider the first of those as the biblical concept of the transcendent majesty of God. The God with whom we deal is the God who is the high and the lofty one seated upon a throne of absolute sovereignty,
a God whom the scripture describes as a consuming fire. Nobody cuddles up to a consuming fire.
You and I are continually trying to make a God with whom we can feel at ease in our sin, with whom no one can be truly at ease until his sin has been taken care of the only way God has provided, through the merits and redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then for two nights we looked at that area that we called the Lordship of Christ. That the blessings of the cross of Christ, implications of the crown of Christ, inseparably joined in the salvation of Christ. And if I will not have the implications,
of this crown, then I cannot know the blessings. So to summarize what it took me about two and a half hours to is just to read a paragraph from the book. Then I'll ask you when you think this man was writing. The unsound convert takes Christ by halves for the salvation of Christ, but he does not appropriate the person of Christ.
He divides the services and the benefits of Christ. This is an error in the foundation. God's life, let him beware here. It's an undoing mistake of which you've been often warned.
Now listen, and yet none is more common. It's a sweet name. The men do not love the Lord Jesus in sincerity. They will not have him as God offers him, a prince, 531.
Divide what God has joined the priest. Be infinitely careful here. Your soul depends on it. The sound convert takes a whole Christ.
It takes him for all intents and purposes, without exceptions, without limitations, without reserve. He's willing to have Christ on any terms. He's willing to have the dominion of Christ as well as deliverance. He says with Paul, I don't have me to do anything, Lord.
He said there's no more common mistake in his day than to divide the offices of Christ. When do you think he wrote? In the 20th century? No.
The book was written in the early 1600s. A young Puritan preacher, named Joseph Hylian. You see, the human heart has not changed. And the subtlety of the devil has not changed into seeking to move men to think they can have the benefits of the cross without the implications of the Christ.
Introduction to the Forgotten Fundamental of Assurance of Salvation
We come to the third of these forgotten fundamentals of fundamentalism. And it is what I am calling forgotten fundamental of Bible assurance of salvation. The forgotten fundamental of assurance of salvation. Now, just several introductory remarks that I trust will help us.
Now, you've got to stick with me. I know this is hard. I remember one time I was out in meetings in the Midwest when I was in the traveling ministry. They called me an evangelist.
I was afraid of the term because it had some very nasty connotations to me. And someone came up to me after a few nights and said, you're not an evangelist. I said, what do you mean? I said, what do you mean?
I knew what she meant, but I wanted to draw her out and get her to say it. Well, look, I'm just not an evangelist. I said, well, why do you mean that? She said, well, yes.
Come to clear understanding of yes. And do I speak with some measure of urgency and apply the word to the will and yes? Well, what's the problem? Well, I said, I know what you're trying to say.
What you mean is this. I don't stand up there and try to squeeze and wrestle your will and emotions until you make some kind of decision. What I do is seek to lay the truth to your mind and your conscience and then urge upon you to act in the light of that truth as the Holy Ghost deals with you. You see, what she meant was that I was making her think and was giving her truth before I ever asked her to do anything with that truth.
Beloved, that's the only evangelism that's taught in the Bible. You read the evangelism of Paul, and his evangelism was not come to Jesus, come to Jesus, come to Jesus, come to Jesus. It says he went into the synagogues and he reasoned and disputed, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. He came with a barrage of words.
He brought the Bible truth to the minds and the consciences of men, and only then did he seek to elicit a response. Now, he did. He said, then we beseech men, be reconciled to God. But true evangelism is always instructive.
Now, I got off on that because I said, I know this is going to make you think, but don't lose me now, will you? Stick with me now. Gird up the loins of your mind and follow me through these few introductory words, and then when we get into the substance of the message, I think it will be a bit easier to follow. The Bible gives a different answer for both of them.
The Distinction Between False and True Assurance
Believe in our Lord Jesus. Repent and believe. A different question. And the Bible gives an entirely different answer.
Now, much confusion in our day on the subject of assurance is because people have not recognized those are two different questions, and the Bible gives two different answers. ...that a man may possess of assurance of salvation.
Do you know it's possible to be absolutely convinced you're saved and be deceived? We read these words. A generation that is pure in its own eyes, yet is not washed from its filthiness. Searching word, isn't it?
There's a generation that has been washed. 14, we read these words. They have heatily the heart of the daughter of my people, saying, Peace, peace! But God says it was a false assurance.
To be something when he is nothing, he deceiveth him. ...to be self-deceived.
...a confidence that will perish.
...to be deceived.
Then why does the word of God exhort us again and again? Let no man deceive you. Ephesians 5. 1 John 3.
Let no man deceive himself. Galatians 6. Be not deceived. As I've traveled different parts of this country over the past ten years, I've come to the conclusion that the average person sitting in the average evangelical church doesn't really believe that it's possible for him to be deceived about his assurance.
But the Bible teaches not only is it a possibility, it says that many will actually go to the day of judgment clinging to that deception only to have Jesus Christ wrench it from their hands and say, Depart from me. I never knew you. Isn't that what Matthew 7, 19 says? 21?
Many will say unto me in that day. Now, who are the many going to be made up of? Not the liberals, because they don't preach in his name.
They don't mourn the supernatural works in his name. He said it will be those who've carried my name. And they're going to be many. It's possible to have a false assurance.
The same Bible that teaches that it's possible to have a false assurance also teaches that a man or woman may have true and valid assurance of salvation. Perhaps the best known text, 1 John 5, 13. These things have I written unto you that believe in the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life. Again, the Apostle Paul says, I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to guard that which I have committed unto him against that day.
Hereby do we know that we pass from death unto life. 1 John 3, 14. Now, here we have these two. An assurance that is a deceptive assurance.
To have a peace that is a false, and yet not to be washed from my filthiness. To have a hope and an expectation that will perish. In the day of judgment. The same Bible teaches it's possible to have a solid assurance of my acceptance before God in Christ.
Now, if I take the Bible seriously, then two principles drive me to the place where I say, oh God. Assurance. The hope of the hypocrite that shall perish. Or is it that hope that is born of the Holy Spirit and is one of the fruits of his working?
Well, I'll tell you one way you better not know. It's just to go out and say, well, I just know that my assurance is the real thing and I don't even need to have it an open question. That's the surest way to damn your soul. The person who is so cocksure that he won't examine the validity of his assurance is the one who is the most likely to go to the judgment with a false hope.
For he has put himself out of the reach of the Bible's exhortation to examine yourself, prove yourself, whether ye be in the faith. 2 Corinthians 13. 2 Peter 1 says, Make your calling and election sure. And when I meet people who say, I'm so confident, I don't need to examine myself, I don't need to check my assurance by the Bible, I say, when you get beyond the place where you say you're exempt from the commands of the Bible, you're on dangerous ground, for it's a Bible duty to make our calling and election sure and to examine ourselves and prove ourselves whether we be in the faith.
Three Factors of Bible Assurance: An Overview
And so tonight, God helping us, this is what I wish to do, is to focus upon what the Bible teaches of true assurance and along the way to contrast it with false assurance. I'm convinced that the Scripture teaches that there are three factors involved in Bible assurance of salvation. Not deceptive assurance. Those factors are, I'll give them to you and then we'll go over them one by one.
The promises of the Word of God made real by the Holy Spirit. The promises of a transformed life and the witness. And one of the most thrilling things to me was when God hammered these things out of His own Word and made them real to me. And then I began to study the old Westminster Confession.
I found out, well, I had some good company. Will you listen to this section on assurance? Listen carefully. Critics and other unregenerate men may vainly deceive themselves with false presumptions of being in favor with God, believe in the Lord Jesus, and love Him in sincerity, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before Him, may in this life be certainly assured that they're in a state of grace.
Certainty is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion grounded on a fallible hope, but an infallible assurance of faith founded upon, now listen, upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation. Number one. Evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made. The evidence of a transformed life.
Number two. And the testimony of the Holy Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God. See the three things? Men who knew God were steeped in the system of biblical truth to which we hold.
When they came to pen what they were convinced the Bible taught on this subject, the same Holy Spirit led them to state that He has led His servants in other times to that same precise truth. Conclusion. So let's consider these three assurances of salvation. Number one.
Factor 1: Promises of the Word Made Real by the Holy Spirit
The promises of the Word made real by the Holy Spirit. Remember when the Lord Jesus was here in the days of His flesh that in several instances He spoke directly to sinners and told them that they were saved, that their sins were forgiven. You remember several of those instances in Mark chapter one? Let's look at it for a moment, shall we?
Mark chapter two. Mark chapter two. Jesus was teaching in a house and you remember there was such a press that those who came carrying this man who was palsy could not get to the Lord Jesus through the door so they dug up the tiles on the roof and let the Lord, let this man down in the presence of Christ. And we read in Mark two verse five.
And when Jesus saw their faith He said unto the sick of the palsy, Son of sin, be forgiven thee. Now try to picture this. The Son of God who knew what was in men saw in that man the workings of His own spirit in producing repentance and faith and He absolves his sin. He says, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.
And that man from that moment on when he left that place after the Lord healed him, whenever doubts would come, whenever the enemy would accuse, he could go back again and again. Jesus Christ the Lord spoke to me saying, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. He had the personal word of the Son of God to His own ears. And I'm sure He sucked sweet comfort from those words again and again and again.
For there's some intimation that perhaps His present state may have been part of that inbuilt retribution that comes when a man sins and brings upon himself even physical suffering at times. And when he would think of his past life and they would come up and rise up like a mountain, how sweet for him to take hold of the word of Christ. Son, thy sins be forgiven. You find a similar instance with the woman taken in adultery in John chapter 8.
We don't have time to look at it. But the Lord said, neither do I condemn thee. And I'm sure again and again that promise of God's forgiveness spoken from the lips of Christ came back to her and was a bomb from the very heart of God to her own smitten heart. But now the Lord Jesus is gone.
John 2. He need not that any should testify of men. He knew what was in men. And He could trace out the actings of repentance and faith.
And He could pronounce forgiveness. When we receive the direct word of pardon from Christ, He's gone. The practice in the Bible is general promises of mercy. Now if you've begun to sleep, I'll wake you up with this statement.
But don't shut me out after I make it. Don't shut me out. There's a verse in the Bible that says you're saved. There's a verse in the Bible that says that you are saved.
I'll give you a thousand dollars to find one verse in the Bible. I'm sure you won't. I don't have a thousand dollars, so I can make a promise like that. There's not a verse in the Bible that says you are saved.
A verse in the Bible that's got your name in it. And says John is saved. There's not a verse that says Al Martin is saved. Not a verse.
Now what this Bible does say, For all who seek Him, there are general promises of mercy to seeking, repenting believers. And for those seeking, repenting believing sinners, the promise of mercy becomes the personal word of mercy. Who's the only one that can do that? The Lord has appointed someone else to do it.
And it's not the personal worker in the inquiry room. And it's not the preacher in your home. It's God the Holy Ghost. ...to the heart,
has produced in men a recognition of their sin, repentance for their sin, and a turning to Christ in faith. He who knows God, he who knows that heart, and is working the graces of repentance and faith within the heart, he will assure the heart of the promises of mercy. ...young Charles Spurgeon,
who having spent five years under deep agony of soul as a young lad from the ages of ten to fifteen, crying to God, seeking to embrace the offers of the gospel, but unable to see the promises of mercy as his own, crying, hungry, That memorable, memorable day when he sat up on the balcony in the little Methodist chapel and the layman stood up to preach from Isaiah 45, Look unto me, all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved. And he looked up and said to the young man, Look and be saved. And he said, At that instant I did both, and I knew I was saved. What happened?
He'd been seeking the Lord for five years. He'd been reading the Word. But the Holy Ghost was not pleased until that day to take the general promises of mercy and to make it a special, personal word of mercy to the heart of Charles Spurgeon. And when God did it, it was done.
Thank God. ...running around trying to take the place of God during those five years,
and saying, Well, Charlie, believe it because I tell you. Oh, you see, all we can do as preachers and teachers and witnesses is to bow to men, the authors of mercy, and to lead with them to embrace the promise of mercy, to urge upon them to close upon those promises of mercy. But there comes a point where you and I can go no further, and it's that point where God the Holy Ghost, who works in the hidden springs of men's hearts, when he brings that person to repentance and faith in terms of the promise of mercy, he'll take the general promise, and he will make it a special word of mercy.
Has the Holy Ghost made real to you the promises of mercy? Let me let you in on something. He never does it to an unbroken, impenitent heart. Robert Murray McShane said, It's only a broken heart that can receive a crucified Savior.
And it's only a person smitten by the Spirit that hears the word, Son, thy sins be forgiven. By sitting down and going through what you'd call a little syllogism, does God say, He that believeth is saved? Yes. Do you believe?
Yes. Well, therefore you're saved. Doesn't God say it? Doesn't God say it?
Don't doubt God. And the poor person feels sort of brainwashed and says, Well, your logic is good. God says it, and I've done it, therefore I've done it, and you're of better authority than I am, and you know the Bible, you've been flipping through those pages, and I'm pretty ignorant, so I guess maybe you're right, and so I'll believe it. And then they say, Now, you may not feel a thing, you may not, but you just trust the word, trust the word, trust the word, trust the word, trust the word, you love it, listen, that is wrong deception.
He knows that hard. He's been served his play, he's been grieved, and withdrawn his presence, and for the large part of evangelism is nothing but applied psychological techniques and religious brainwashing that has very little, as a preacher, as a mother, as a father, as a Sunday school teacher, to seek to shut people up to God, that they might seek him with an open Bible,
until the day when he comes, when he comes, when he comes, when he comes, when he comes, when he comes, when he comes, when he comes, when he comes, until the God whom they seek will announce himself to their seeking hearts. We don't want to do that. We feel we can do a little better job than God. We're just afraid to shut men up to God, aren't we?
Factor 2: Evidence of a Transformed Life (Tests from 1 John)
We're just afraid of that. But that's the most wonderful thing we can do. Well, let's hurry on to the second aspect of true Bible assurance. For as we read in the Confession, and as the Scriptures clearly teach, not only is it founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, promises made real by God, by the Spirit, but also the inward evidences of those graces unto which those promises are made.
In other words, there is the evidence of a transformed life. Will you turn to 1 John 5? This is one of my, I guess, I sort of always fight for the underdog. And this poor verse has been kicked around and abused and insulted.
It's a wonder he just doesn't put his tail between his legs and slip out of the Bible the way he's been treated. But he stays there. We'll just let him talk to us. 1 John 5, beginning with verse 11.
And this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life. He that is not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe in the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life.
John, why did you write these things? That people might have assurance. And so in almost every thing on assurance, I could show you right now a little booklet that has gone out through this country and it's gone in all kinds of church witnessing programs. Did you ask Christ into your life?
Were you sincere? Where is he right now? Christ said he would come in. Where is he?
He's there. Whether you feel it or not, trust him. And then they quote 1 John 5, 13. These things have I written unto you that ye may know.
And they put the word know in bold black letters. But now I want to ask one simple question. What things did John write that men might know? What did he write?
Things I've already written that you might know. What things did he write? He tried to give them assurance. Did he give him a string of texts?
No. You know what he did? He gave them a series of texts in which to judge themselves. That's how you get assurance.
He said, I've written these things that you might have assurance of whether or not you truly are the children of God. Well, what are the things he wrote? Well, let's just look at several of them very quickly and notice what they are. 1 John 1.
The message which we've heard of him, of Christ, and declare unto you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. We say that we have fellowship with him. Fellowship means to participate with. If we say that we are in vital participation with God, if we say that we've come to the possession of eternal life, and what is eternal life?
To know God and his Son, Jesus Christ. If we say that we have this eternal light, that we are fellowshipping with God, and we walk in darkness, and we do not the truth, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we are having fellowship one with another. So the first test, John says, do you want to know whether you're his? I'm not going to give you a verse and say stand on it.
I'm going to give you a test and say judge yourself by it. The test of light, the realms of existence, darkness, the realm of light. John chapter 3 gives the same thing. He that doeth evil hates the light.
He that doeth truth comes to the light. There are degrees within each sphere, but there's no third sphere. We're either doers of darkness and sin, or we're lovers of light and of righteousness. John says, do you want to know, you believers, you who profess faith in Christ, do you want to know that you really know him?
Ask yourself this question. Do I seek to walk in the realm of light, of purity, of holiness, of his countenance? Is my greatest longing to see his face, to walk under his smile? Or, content that I think I'm saved from hell, do I love the murky shades of the pollution of my own heart and the defilement of a wicked world?
Which is it, John says, these things have I written that you might know. There's the test of light. Then the test we looked at last night, so we don't need to expound it. Most of you were here.
Chapter 2 says, verse 2, verses 3 and 4, Hereby do we know that we know him, we keep his commandments, present tense. He that says, I know him, and keeps not his commandments, he's a liar, and the truth is not in him. He doesn't say he's backslidden, he needs to get sanctified. He doesn't say that he's in a state of spiritual dryness and needs to get refreshed.
If he is indifferent to the commands of Christ, he is a liar in the profession of the Lord Jesus Christ. You ask yourself, do I really seek to obey him? It's hard to know the will of God and by his grace to do it. Well, how did that happen?
You weren't born that way. You were born with a clenched fist. I was born with a clenched fist. The carnal mind is enmity against God.
It isn't subject to the law of God. Neither indeed can it be. Romans 8, 7. Well, who produced that change then?
The devil didn't do it and I couldn't do it. So if I find it in my heart to obey Christ in the light of the word of Christ, John says, I can know that I'm his because only God can take the rebel sinner and make him a loving, willing, obedient servant. I get assurance that way. In the inquiry room or by the bedside or anything else, John says, you know by the present evidence in your life.
Are you keeping his commandments? Then you read on in this same chapter, verses 15 to 17. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man is in love with the Father, be attached to this world system.
Basically made up of that trinity of the lust of the flesh, the desire to enjoy things, the lust of the eye, the desire to have things, the pride of life, the desire to be somebody. John says, if you're living just to enjoy things, have things and be somebody, you're in love with the world and the love of the Father's not in you. It's not there. So that's another test.
The test of my relationship to the world. Enjoyment, possession and pride. Then he comes in chapter 3 to the test of righteousness. Notice carefully.
Chapter 3. What abides in him does not practice sin. That synod is in the present tense. Does not make a practice of sin.
Whosoever practices sin is backslidden and needs to be restored. Whosoever is practicing sin is a carnal Christian and needs a deeper work of grace. No. Whosoever is practicing sin hath not seen him neither known him.
Never seen him. Never known him. Making a deliberate, willful, continual practice of sin. Whosoever is born of does not make a practice of sin for his seed, the principle of divine life remains in him and he cannot practice sin because he's born of God.
The children of God are manifest and the children of the devil. Not according to their profession, not according to their clever manipulation not according to their text but he says we know that this is the dividing line between the sons of God and the sons of the devil. Do you practice sin or do you practice righteousness? The Christian may stumble, scrape his knees, he may get spattered, he may be defiled but he never signs a peace treaty with his sin.
He's never at home in his sin. Not enough just to have your conscience troubled. Even the heathen has his conscience troubled according to Romans 1. I've heard a lot of people say well if you sin no, no, that just may prove you're a heathen for it says the conscience of the heathen accuses or excuses them.
They've never even heard the gospel. Do with what your conscience tells you. Do you repent of your sin? Do you hate your sin because it crucified Jesus and hides his face from you?
Ah, that's something that only the Christian knows. Man by nature may have a guilty conscience but man by grace alone because of sin as he thinks of it may he look to his Lord his cross his fellowship. So there's the test of righteousness then he gave the test of verse 14 of love to the brethren. We know chapter 3 verse 14 We know that we've passed from death unto life because we are present tense the brethren he that loveth the father is abiding in a state of death.
Could be plainer than that. Now may I speak again out of the burden of my heart from church for those five years in the traveling ministry you know what the great plague was in church after church not that elders and deacons were chasing around with other people's wives it wasn't that they were out raising cane drinking in the beer halls and going to the honky tonks and burly shows note the problem was that was choking off blessing in church after church professing Christians who had long too deep-seated bitternesses animosities envies and
jealousies who were not even a ship and they claimed to be born of God John says he that loveth not is abiding in a state of these things have I written unto you that you may know do you find that all things be equal there's nobody would rather be within God's people ones that are different from you I gave W Tozer used to like to tell the story of one of the old bishops who said well you know
the Lord has this treasure in earth and vessels he's put this treasure in earth and some of the vessels are a bit cracked says you'll love the Lord's people even the cracked one not just the ones who agree with you on every point asking would that brother who's the multitude love thinketh no e'en do you put the best construction on your brother's actions if there's a possibility that what he did was a neat deed a gun in meanness or just a deal darling thoughtlessness do you put the motive of thoughtlessness or do you look
for the motive of meanness when you're going out Sunday morning just as you've to your pastor, he turns away from you, doesn't shake your hand, what motive do you put on there? Do you say, uh-huh, I thought so, uh-huh, I thought so, he's getting irritated with me. Or do you say, well, I know, he probably turned away because he just thought of somebody he had to see and I know there was no real meaning behind it. You see, love, love is seeking to express itself in those ways, thinking no ill of its neighbor, bearing all things, believing all things. John says, do you want to know whether or not you're saved? See what
your attitude is to the brethren. Do you find love in your heart to the brethren? He says, then you know you're born of God. Now you go through, I don't have time tonight, that old clock, that white man with the black hands, I call him, he's always haunting. I'm looking
forward to the day when I can't see good enough to see it, then I can say, well, I couldn't see it, but I can still see the clock back there, even without my glasses. Seriously now, do you see how John says? You come to know whether you're saved or not. You take these tests and then you put your life up alongside and you say, oh God, I need to evaluate myself as honestly and
objectively now. In the day of judgment, do you settle for anything less than that? And if you can honestly and objectively lay your life up to those standards, John says, these things have I written that ye may know. See it? And so assurance then is based not on
the promises of mercy made real by the Spirit, but it's based upon the evidence of a transformed life discerned by honest self-examination. Other passages fit in as well. I'll just mention several. If any man be in Christ, well, Lord, I do believe I have an interest in Christ.
All right. He is a new creature. Not he ought to be. He'll become eventually, or it would be desirable for him to be.
But he is a new creation. Old things are, not ought to, shall eventually, may, in some circumstances, if he has the right teaching, know. Old things are passed away. Behold, old things are become new. And that's not talking about whether or not you go to the
movies and smoke cigarettes. It's talking about the basic inner motivation of your life. It's changed from self to Christ, from earth to heaven, from sin to righteousness, from pain to eternity. Have old things passed away and all things become new? If you're in Christ, he says, that's
what will happen. I came to the place where I said, Lord, either that's true and a lot of people think they're in Christ who aren't, or you've stopped saving people the same way you used to. Because there's so much that said it was in Christ, but it didn't have the marks of his cremated life. So when the Son of God enters the life, he always leaves the marks of his entrance and the evidences of his presence. You got it? And John says, when you see those evidences,
you can know that. You are his.
Factor 3: The Witness of the Holy Spirit
Because I want to leave a little time to apply this in a very practical way, is the witness of the Holy Spirit. Romans chapter 8, which is the key text on this subject, that the witness of the Holy Spirit is not a direct, independent testimony from God to my heart, but notice it is a coordinated witness with something else. Notice carefully, Romans 8, 15 and 16. He had not received the spirit of bondage again to fear.
But ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself, the itself should be better translated himself, beareth witness for spirits of the children of God. The Holy Spirit will witness of our own spirits. You see what happens?
I face those standards of the word of God, and my spirit bears witness to me that I do love the brethren, not as I ought, not personally. Not perfectly, not completely, not without blocks or failure, but there my basic love his people.
I do love to live the life of holiness. I do love the way of his commandments, not practically, but basically. And my spirit tells me, yes, I am his child. Now, Paul says, the Holy Spirit, God's testimony, comes along and amens our testimony.
He bears witness with our spirit. And that's the only way I know to explain it. The understanding I have of the witness of the Spirit is that as I have embraced the promises of mercy and God has made them real, as I face the standard, the objective standard, and I have some reason to believe I'm his, the Holy Spirit comes and he amens my conclusion. And thus gives me liberty to come and say, Abba, Father, my Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Amen. The promises of the Word made real by the Spirit, the evidence of a transformed life, and then the witness of the Holy Spirit, a divine testimony in concurrence with the testimony of my own spirit and the Word, that I am the child of God, giving me liberty of access unto my God. He has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, whereby we cry, what?
Abba, Father. Somehow the witness of the Spirit of God is coming to us. The Spirit is connected with this sense of freedom of access unto my God. Wonder of wonders, though I confess that he is infinitely holy, and my sin is aggravated in his holiness and his justice, I dare to come and call him Father, because I verily believe I have an interest in the blood and righteousness of his Son.
He answers to the blood and tells me I am.
Warning to the Deceived and Instruction to the Doubting
Information be. I have been giving you instruction.
Now may I move into the realm of exhortation.
And as I do, I want to give, first of all, a word of warning to some of you tonight who are deceived about this matter of assurance. To the conclusion that one of the cardinal sins in the eyes of most evangelicals in our day is that you should ever doubt you're saved. Well, that's worse than going chasing around with somebody else's wife. Or that by saying, well, David did that, so you're not too bad off.
But the minute somebody begins to doubt. Whether or not they might be saved. Everybody says, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Is it terrible?
They're doubting God. No, they're not. Most men and women who've ever lived, and with what few exceptions you find that they would periodically go through periods of great searching of heart. People in whose lives there were the most obvious evidences of grace were many times the slowest to believe those evidences.
And when I see people who don't measure up one hundredth of a degree. to these people in holiness and zeal and love for God and men, saying with a cocky attitude, I'm saved, I've never doubted it from the day...
I'm afraid. Here tonight, dear one, you say, I know I'm saved, I don't need to read the book of 1 John to find out or anything else, you're on dangerous ground. God may be giving you up to believe a lie. The best thing that could happen to you tonight, young person or adult, is for you to go home and get on your knees and say, God, search me out as thoroughly now as you're going to search me out in the day of judgment.
When I read in my own devotions from time to time going through the Gospels and I come to that section in Matthew that some will preach in His name and He'll say, depart from me. I don't go around doubting my salvation all the time, but I tell you when I read that I have to say, Oh God, oh God, I believe I'm Yours. Your promises of mercy have been sweet to my heart. And I do things as far as I can see, Lord.
I never in my life unless You change me. I love Your Word, I love Your people, I love Your Son. But oh...
Oh God, if there's one chance in a million that I'm fooled, God, show me now. Lord, dig me up, plow me, expose me. Is that biblical to do that? I think it is.
Because my Bible says, examine yourself. Make your calling and election sure. And I trust that some of you will go out of this place tonight and you'll go back home not to read the newspaper or look at the 11 o'clock news or anything else, but get down on your face and call upon God that He might speak to you. Oh, you say, but I know...
Oh, I'm His. I can see your heart. You know what the Bible says in Proverbs 28, 26? Whoso trusteth in his own heart is a fool.
Whoso trusteth in his own heart is a fool. Whoso trusteth in his own heart is a fool. And as I utter those words, I'm praying, God, by the Holy Ghost, make it an arrow into somebody's heart tonight.
Trust your heart to the place where you don't need to objectively face yourself in the light of the book. God says you're a fool. Oh, beloved, may you search your heart.
Everything, word of exhortation, is a word of instruction to the doubting.
There are some of you who, because you don't know when you pass from death into life, it's trouble. You've come under the merciless statements of some misguided men who've said, unless you can point to the day and the hour, you're not saved. I don't see anything in the Bible, not a thing in the Bible to substantiate that. May I say to some of you who wonder, am I the Lord's or not?
I have no glowing testimony. I had no lights flashing. I had no feeling of liquid love pouring over my soul. All I know is it just seemed to be like a dawning.
I was indifferent to God and to His Word and to truth and holiness. And suddenly, after a period of months or several years, I found myself at home with God's people. And when the preacher stood and opened the book, my heart went out saying, Oh, God, speak. And when God spoke, I went down and said, Lord, help me to walk.
And I love His people and I try to witness. And yet I can't point to any time and I can't trace out any deep, deep agony of soul. I saw my sin is bad and I see it now is ugly and I hate it. And you've had doubts because the work of God's grace, instead of being like the bright illumination that comes in a dark building when the lights are put on, has been more like a dawning.
Oh, may I say to you, doubting soul, don't look for assurance back there. But you, right? Now, ask yourself this question. Has the Holy Spirit made the promises of mercy real to me?
Do I trust in Christ alone for righteousness?
I love the brethren. Do I obey Him? I want to be holy. Evidence is a present tense.
You won't find a one that tells you to look back. It says, look in the present moment. You say, well, where did I get saved? That's none of your business.
God wanted you to know He'd let you. That's fair enough, isn't it? I say to the doubting soul, who may be a true member of the kingdom of God, but you doubt, because you can't interpret the past. Forget the past.
Look in. Look up. And then bless God that you're His. And then may I say a word of guidance to those of you who have a true Bible assurance.
Guidance for Those with True Assurance: Regaining Lost Assurance
Your assurance is not the hope of the hypocrite. It's not the assurance of those who are pure in their own eyes. Listen, you may lose your assurance at certain times in your spiritual experience. You lose your salvation.
You lose the assurance. He lost his role when he slept. You remember? In Pilgrim's Progress?
He lost that role, which was his testimony of his assurance. He lost it. And the child of God may lose his assurance. That's laid out so beautifully in the Westminster Confession.
You lose your assurance. Remember, Christian went back and says he sought it diligently until he found it. Generally, the way you lose your assurance is when you neglect the means of grace. And you lose your evidences.
The Bible says, he that is born of God keeps his commandments. Well, if there's several areas where I've got a controversy with God and I've got the bit in my mouth and I'm not obeying him, the Bible says a Christian obeys him. I'm not obeying him. What happens?
You begin to lose your assurance. And rightly so.
You begin to have a cantankerous attitude to your pastor or to the guest preacher who comes and rocks the boat. Hmm?
Spirit of anger, fester. You lose your assurance. Because the Bible says Christians don't act that way. Christians love the brethren.
Isn't that what it says? And if you want to love...
And you're assured... Your assurance will begin to wane.
It'll go down a few degrees. By turning down the radio, instead of having a bright, clear witness that comes through with loud tones, you begin to lose your assurance. Now, how do you get your assurance back? Well, you deal with the thing that made you lose it.
You see, the Holy Spirit's ministries... I wish I had a blackboard.
It's been kind of frustrating this week not to have a blackboard.
A large panel. Try to picture it with me. Here's a large instrument panel. And there are, well, let's say six big knobs.
And those are the different ministries of the Holy Spirit. Here's His ministry of illumination. He opens the Word. Here's His ministry of empowering to witness.
As we witness, He's pleased to empower us and to take the Word of God through our lips and use it. Here's His ministry of comfort and consolation. Here's His ministry of assurance. See it down here?
And here is His ministry of sanctification, making us holy. And here's His ministry of perhaps guidance. All right, now. Six knobs.
There are more, but I've just mentioned six. Like the controls on these driver training cars. You know, they're dual controls. When the fellow over here turns the wheel this way, the wheel over there.
It looks funny when you drive by one and only one person's sitting there. He turns the wheel, that wheel turns. He turns it this way, that wheel turns. That's like the controls on an airplane.
They are interrelated. They are integrated. Now, the ministries of the Holy Spirit are tied in. And if you tune out the Holy Spirit in an area of sanctification, say you get a mean attitude toward your mother, to your brother, toward your sister, toward some other member of the body of Christ, and you tune out the Holy Spirit in an area of sanctification, you've got some pet sin you're not willing to deal with.
You know what happens? When you tune Him out there, all the other dials go down. The Bible becomes a closed book. You can't have the Holy Ghost as the spirit of illumination
when you're tuning Him out as the spirit of sanctification. That's why the Bible always becomes a closed book when you've got deliberate, known, unconfessed sin in your life. That's why it becomes a closed book. You didn't know that's why, but that's why.
And in the same way, I tune Him out in the area of sanctification, then I tune Him out in the area of assurance. You can't have deep, satisfying assurance by the witness of the spirit when you're grueling and quenching and tuning out the Holy Ghost.
What would be to encourage the cleanses that kill their sin is He'll let them lose their assurance. That's what happened to David. These Bible teachers that say no intelligent Christian should pray Psalm 51. I tell you, beloved, I feel that's heresy.
And I believe these men who teach that are butchering the Word of God.
Say that I, as a Christian, don't need Psalm 51. I tell you, beloved, I needed it this morning. And I had to pray it through on my own knees. Praying when he said, take not thy spirit from me.
He didn't mean the Holy Ghost was going to leave him. He was going to be lost. No, but he sensed that the operation of the Spirit in giving assurance, in giving joy, in giving power to witness, the operations of the Spirit were withdrawn. So that's why he said, restore me the joy.
Isn't that what he said? When shall sinners be converted unto thee? And that's what happens to every true Christian.
Because of unconfessed sin in the life. Or because neglect of the means of grace. Now how are you going to get your assurance back? Go back to the Bible.
To the place where you lost it. That's what Pilgrim had to do. And you go back to that attitude toward that person. And you grab it by the ears.
And you tell God, Lord, you call that thing sin. And I'm going to call it that.
Then, be active in what you know is the will of God. You shall never fail. Don't think your assurance is going to come back by sitting in a corner and conjugating. Jesus said in Revelation 2, Repent and do the first work.
Actively doing what you know to be the will of God. And as you move out and seek to exercise, your Christian responsibility and the means of grace, wonder of wonders, the development of the graces, brings the increase of assurance. You see, you don't get assurance by sitting in the corner meditating and picking over your heart. You just get up and get busy doing what the Bible says you ought to do.
And assurance comes as a byproduct. Haven't you found this true? When have you been most filled with a deep abiding assurance that you're a Christian? Hasn't it been when you've been most obedient to His word?
And most active in carrying out His will?
If God's given you an opening, a witness, and you've obeyed the Lord, and you've stuck your neck out, and you've began to witness, as it were, in cold blood, and then the Lord has warmed your heart, and that person's responded, and you've just had a wonderful opportunity of witness, well, I tell you, you just feel that's the next thing to heaven. You come away, and the dial of assurance is tuned up good and loud. Isn't it?
Maybe later on in the day, there's another opportunity, and through fear of man that brings the snare, you kept your mouth shut, and you went away, and you lost your joy, and dejected. See? Assurance comes in the way of actively working out, with fear and trembling, that which we know to be the will of God. Trust the Lord by His Spirit will give us understanding, and will give to those of you who Bible assurance, and will take away from those of you who ought not to have it, that assurance which is not of God, but is the hope of the hypocrite.
Summary and Concluding Prayer
May I just give you the three headings again, briefly? What is Bible assurance based upon? The promises of the Word made real by the Holy Spirit. And He never makes those promises real to an unrepentant, unbroken heart.
If you ever again give anybody assurance, it's not your job. Don't do it. Second line of evidence of assurance? A transformed life.
These things have I written unto you that believe that ye may know. Not a string of text, but a series of tests, by which we must evaluate ourselves. The witness of the Spirit. A divine testimony concurring with the testimony of the Word, and of our own hearts, giving us freedom of access unto God.
A word of warning to you who have a cocksure assurance that is simply based on your own thoughts, and not upon the Word. May God send you home to be searched. A word of instruction to the doubting. May God grant that you, as you face the test of life, and discern them in your heart, you'll rejoice in what He has done.
And a word of guidance, that if we lose assurance, the place where we lost it, and begin to actively work out the will of God, and assurance. I'm trusting that...
Well, I know I've got your pastor sold on this study manual of the Confession by G.I. Williamson. He's got some good material in there on assurance.
Maybe, pastor, you can... have somebody cut some stencils on that section, and make it available.
I think maybe that might be helpful. I'd hope to read from there. But that man on the back wall tells me, it's time to be done. We thank you for your Word.
We pray that you would help us. ...to our feet, and a light to our pathway.
We pray that you would strip away the assurance of some here tonight. Lord, in mercy, strip away the false assurance that leads to death. That you will give assurance to those who are...
who are yours, but who are doubting, because they cannot trace out clearly the inception of life. But Lord, as they see the evidences of life, may they rejoice and be grateful unto you. And then we ask for those of your children, who this night are blessed with a solid Bible-based assurance. Lord, when they come into those periods, when they lose their assurance, call to remembrance what they've heard tonight, and grant that they may seek diligently that place, where it was lost.
And then by your grace, having repented, may begin to do the first works, and know the blessedness of a deep abiding confidence that they are the children of God. Lord, may no one who's heard your Word tonight go to the judgment to see. We've sought, Lord, to clear our hands of their blood. Oh, Father, in your mercy, heal your Word.
Bring it to remembrance in the days ahead, as we have needed it. And as you're pleased, to do this, our hearts will rise up both now and in eternity with gratitude and praise through Jesus Christ.
This transcript was generated by automated speech recognition and may contain errors. It is provided for study and reference only; the audio recording is the authoritative source.
Passages Expounded
This verse is the central text for the sermon's theme of assurance, with Martin explaining that the 'things' John wrote refer to the preceding tests of a transformed life.
This passage is expounded to define the nature of the Holy Spirit's witness, clarifying it as a concurrent testimony with the believer's spirit and the Word.
Texts Expounded
Also Referenced
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