The Church of Eleven22 - Saturated 2018 - Friday: Pastor J.D. Greear

Episode Date: September 14, 2018

You all go on, sit down, sit down. Pastor Jobi did not allow me to see that video before he just showed it to you. And so for the last two minutes, I've been sitting there thinking, how do you transition out of that into this? So I guess that was it right there. Let me just begin with what he said there, Mindigo. I am from Raleigh, North Carolina. I certainly would appreciate your prayers, not only for my church,

but for my wife, who is here with me, because we left our four kids back in the middle of the hurricane. when we originally scheduled this, we did not know that there was a hurricane that was planned. And so we began our journey about four days ago, had a couple stops to make along the way. And now my wife just feels like a bad mom because we're here in sunny North Florida. And they kids are home in a hurricane. But I keep telling her not to worry about it. I keep looking at the weather channel.

I don't see them floating in the ocean anywhere. So I'm pretty sure that they are fine. But you pray for us in this next season as we minister to some people that are going to be. I don't think it's hit that bad. but I think there'll still be a lot to be done. Church of 1122. I've been looking forward to being back here since last year this time. I am so honored to be here.

I know that for some of you, if you're new here, this may sound like a, you know, Hey, Joby said some nice things about me. I feel obligated to say some nice things about him. And that's kind of true. But I told you this last time, and it is as sincere as I can say it to you, how much I admire your church, how much we tell stories about your church at our church, how much we use examples from your church to inspire the pastors and the team at our church, how much I hear at your church spoken about literally around the nation as an example of God moving

in another generation, which a lot of people say is just impossible to penetrate with the gospel. I truly believe, I say this with as much sincerity as I hope that you will hear it, I truly believe that your pastor is one of the greatest preachers of our generation. I mean that very sincerely. God has given your pastor the just it's I envy it the ability to communicate with anybody. I mean, first of all, he's got this, you know, North Florida accent going on where he sounds like he runs the bait and tackle part of the Walmart, you know, and I got that kind of thing going. But then, and then, but yet, y'all, he comes to Raleigh Durham where I live, which Forbes magazine, you know, says is the most educated place in America, more PhDs per capita than anywhere else in the world. and R.P., I mean, they love him. He is their absolute favorite. In fact, they're always asking

me, when's that guy, what's his name, the guy with the flannel shirts and talks to real country, when's he coming back? When's Pastor Joby coming back? Frankly, I'll be honest with him, I'm kind of sick of it. Our CrossFit coach, my wife and I the other day, we're at CrossFit, and he says, hey, I got a new man crush. And my wife looked at him like, excuse me, she said, yeah, used to be your husband talking about me. He used to love listening and preach, but now that other that Jobby guy. That's my, I listened to him all day, every day now. My kids, my kids were so mad this summer because the week that Joby came in to preach at our church, we were on vacation.

And so we're in San Diego. We're on our way to the zoo. And they're like, Dad, they need to pull it. They made me pull up the live stream in the car and watch Pastor Jobi preach at our church. So we did, they, thank you for sharing your pastor. I appreciate him, his ministry. I appreciate his friendship to me. I've just enjoyed getting to know him and Gretchen.

They're just real people. They're not pretentious. The same thing you hear from up here is just going to be what it is when they're offstage. In fact, we were having dinner with them the other night. And it was just, I mean, just real. And like, this argument breaks out in between them. I mean, it was like, I mean, it was a doozy. I'm not going to lie to you.

I was, you know, like, actually, Veronica and I, my wife and I got a little uncomfortable in the middle of the argument. Finally, Job, you get to his little vein popping out in his neck deal. And he looks at her and he says, woman, I do not understand how. God could have made you so beautiful and so stupid at the same time. And Gretchen looks back without missing a beat, and she said, God made me beautiful so you would fall in love with me and stupid, so I would fall in love with you.

So they have mentored us in our marriage and all kinds of stuff. If you got your Bibles this evening, if you'll open them to Hebrews chapter 3, Hebrews chapter three, there are parts of that story that may not be entirely true, just so you know. Hebrews chapter three, I want to address, I want to address the subject tonight of how you can know for sure that you are saved. For years, for years I struggle with this question. I always tell people that if there were a Guinness Book of World's Records for the amount of times that someone has said the sinner's prayer, I am pretty confident that I would hold that record. I'm not exaggerating. from the time I was in seventh grade to the time I left for college, I prayed the sinner's prayer no less than 5,000 times.

That's not an exaggeration. I think that is, in fact, that's probably a conservative estimate. It was embarrassing. I walked the aisle almost every single time at our church they gave an invitation. I got saved every single year at youth camp. I've been saved in youth camps all over the nation. I've been saved once and I think every denomination in North America. I got baptized. I got baptized four times. I'm not kidding. I was a staple in our church's baptismal services for a while. They gave me my own locker in the baptismal changing area because they knew it was consistent. Eventually, my dad, who was a very godly man, my dad was like, son, you just got to cut this out. But y'all, I didn't want to be wrong about this question. I didn't want to get to heaven and find out like, oh, you know, I thought I was, but I actually wouldn't. Because see, there's a number of places in the scriptures that warn about people who think that they're on their way to heaven when, in fact, they're not. When I was in seventh grade, when I was in seventh grade, my seventh grade Sunday school teacher had over our small little Sunday school class from our little Baptist church. We went over to his house. We were going to go bowling on Friday night.

And so he wanted to do a devotional before we left. And that evening he chose to do a devotional out of Matthew chapter 7 where it talks about, you know, many will say to Jesus on that last day, Lord, Lord, did not we do many mighty works in your name? Did not we cast out demons in your name? Did not we heal the sick in your name? and he said, and Jesus will look at that group and he will say, depart from me, you who work iniquity, I never knew you. My seventh grade Sunday school teacher looked at us and he said, he said, what that means is that there's a lot of people who've accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior and walked in a aisle,

prayed to prayer, gotten baptized, filled out a card, gone on mission trips, who think that they're saved and when they get to heaven, they're going to find out they weren't saved. And I think a bunch of you boys right in front of me are in that group. All right, let's go bowling. That was it. That was basically his devotion. And it just sent me into kind of a tailspin because I thought, well, I think I don't know how to describe it, but I thought, my heart is he said that, I thought, I think that's going to be me.

I mean, you ever think about what Jesus is saying there in Matthew chapter 7? I mean, there are people who have cast out demons in his name that are in that group. I don't know about Church of 1122 here, but when we select you at the summit church to be on the demon exorcism squad, that's varsity, okay? You're like really involved. You're not on the sidelines. It means that these are people that have prayed the prayer. they've joined the classes and gotten the small groups and gotten in the worship team and whatever

else there is to be involved with, but they don't actually know Jesus like they think they do. They are tragically mistaken. And I was afraid I was going to be in that group. And so for years, I obsessed about the question, was I really saved. And if I was, how could I know? I wrote a book a few years ago called Stop Asking Jesus into your heart. And I'm not trying to use this to promote that book because I know that promotion when you're preaching, self-promotion is really tacky. And somewhere in the Bible, it says any time you use preaching to self-promote, an angel loses his wings and a puppy dies in heaven. So I'm not trying to do that, okay?

I will tell you, though, that all the proceeds from the sale of this book, my wife and I have dedicated to feed hungry children. Their names are Karras, Ali, Raya, and Adam. They all live in my house, so you can feel good about it. But anyway, the title of the book confused a lot of people, including my oldest daughter, who at the time was like 10, and she was like, she asked me about the title of the book, and I said, stop asking Jesus into your heart. And she said, Dad, why would you ever want to tell people not to do that? You know, it's just confused people.

Like, what are you trying to say? But the basic premise was this. When we reduce salvation to the praying of a prayer, which we have in many cases, we often confuse people, causing them to mistake the praying of the prayer for actual conversion. Let me be very clear with you. you, there is nothing wrong with praying a prayer to receive Jesus. It's very natural. Paul says in Romans 1013, whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But what saves you is not the praying of a prayer. What saves you is the repentance and the faith that are expressed through that prayer. And see, when we elevate that prayer itself over the things the prayer is only supposed to express, then people get confused. And see, we end up giving assurance to a lot of people who should not

have it, and we end up withholding it from a lot of people who should have it. You see, for many people in churches like this one, and the one I pastor, the sinner's prayer, has become something like a Protestant ritual, a ceremony that you go through that get your ticket punch for heaven, kind of like a Baptist version of confirmation if you grew up in the Catholic church, right? But it's not a ritual, or it's not a prayer that the Bible says saves you. So that's the question I want to dive into for a few minutes tonight. What exactly is saving faith? What is it? And and how can you know for sure that you have it? So again, Hebrews chapter 3 is where we're going to be. Let's go. By the way, if you're taking notes, I'm going to give you four, four truths about saving faith from the book of Hebrews.

Number one, here's the first one. Saving faith is a posture. It's not a prayer. In the book of Hebrews, faith is always presented as synonymous with action. Hebrews 3, verses 18 and 19. Take a look. And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were, the word, disobedient. So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. Do you see how he uses the words unbelief and disobedience interchangeably? Because unbelief and disobedience are essentially the same things. In fact, later in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews 11 called the Great Faith chapter, it goes through and list all these great men and women of faith, but it describes every single one of them in terms of an action. Noah built, Abraham left, Jacob blessed, Joshua fought. In fact, it's really interesting. In the Hebrew language, there is no noun for faith. Faith only exist in verb form,

and that is because faith, biblically speaking, does not exist apart from action. Belief does not become faith until you act on it. The analogy I was always taught when I was a kid growing up was the analogy of a chair. And you may have heard something like this before. But a chair, you know, a chair, you don't really exercise faith in the chair until you put your weight in it, right? I can stand up here all day long and believe that the chair will hold me, but it doesn't become faith, biblically speaking, until I sit down in that chair. Well, see, belief in Jesus Christ for salvation means that you believe that Jesus did everything necessary to save you, and you believe that he is the Lord, but it doesn't become faith, biblically.

speaking, until you sit down in confidence that he has paid your sin debt, and until you surrender control of your life to Jesus' Lord. You can only be in one of two positions with this chair. I can believe that it will hold me up, but if I'm standing here, then it doesn't matter what I believe, it matters the posture that I'm in. Right? And so what it means is that with Jesus Christ, when it comes to his salvation, it's done. He's paid for your sin whether you believe it or not. and he's Lord whether you believe it or not. But it doesn't become saving faith until you transfer authority in your life from your heart to his and until you transfer confidence from what's going to get you to heaven from how good you've been or what you've done to what he has accomplished on

your behalf. That's when it becomes faith. You see, a lot of people equate faith to a prayer they pray to ask Jesus to be their Savior. Y'all imagine if I stood up here and just said to the chair, you know, oh, chair, I were a lovely chair. And then you were my favorite chair. And then you were my favorite chair and I want to invite you to be my personal chair that I'm going to sit in. Now, if the prayer, if the chair had ears, it might be touched that I was saying these things to it, but it's not really going to do anything for the chair. Right? It doesn't matter what I say to the chair. It matters the posture I take toward the prayer or toward the chair. In the same way, it doesn't matter what you say to Jesus. It doesn't matter how emotional you are when you say it. All that matters is

the posture you then take toward the Lordship of Christ and the Lordship of Christ. And finished work of Christ. Does that make sense? Saving faith is not a prayer. Saving faith is a posture to the finished work of Christ and to the Lordship of Christ. Every single person in here is in one of two positions to the finished work of Christ. Only one of two positions. You're either standing thinking, I can probably be good enough to earn my way there, and I'm in control of my life or you have seated yourself in confidence that he's done what's necessary to save you, and you've seated yourself and surrendered to him. Only one of two positive. This is the second truth. Number two, saving faith endures for a lifetime. Saving faith endures for a

lifetime. Look at verse 12 of chapter 3. Take care. Take care of the writer says, brothers, lest there be in any of you, an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. For we have come to sharing Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. The writer of Hebrews tells them that they are going to be saved, get this, only if they hold on into the end. In chapter two, in chapter two, the writer of Hebrew said it this way. Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away front hit. Here, salvation is like putting anchor down in a harbor.

And the writer of saying, you better drop anchor lest you get swept back out into the storms of God's judgment. So I'm glad that you started the process. you better put an anchor down, you better make it deep. In fact, you might want to put two or three anchors down because you very well could get blown out of this harbor of salvation and back into the waters of God's judgment. Now, I'm going to be totally honest with you. All that is different than how I learned to talk about

something in the Baptist Church, at least we call it eternal security. I was taught to think of salvation like it was a contract that you signed with God one time. Then you put a little record of it in your Bible and then a little date that you prayed the prayer and your grandma's signature on it and your tear stains and those things would prove that you had prayed the prayer and you meant it and that God honored that contract and you saw that contract in front of your Bible and he'd never go back on it, right? Your name was now in the

Book of Life. It was written in Indelible Inc. And God could never erase it. In fact, I think I heard that very analogy. But y'all look at it. Look at it. That is not how the writer of Hebrews talks about it here, is it? And be honest, just let's look at it. He wasn't like, okay, hey, prayed the prayer. Awesome. Got baptized even better. Now you're saved. No, he says you will only be saved if you hold your confidence firm to the end. In the book of Acts, when Paul was addressing a new group of converts, Paul urged them to, quote, continue on in the grace of God, because only by perseverance through tribulation are you going to enter the kingdom of God. In other words, it's only if you persevere, only if you endure to the end, only then are you going to be saved?

No, you're sitting there saying, well, wait a minute, J.D. Are you saying that we can lose our salvation, as in God saves you, but then he revokes it because you just don't live as a good enough Christian. Actually, no, I'm not. There are way too many places in the Bible that teach you that once you are truly saved, that you never can lose your salvation. John 10, for example, Jesus says that when you become his, he puts you in his hand, and the Father closes his hand over Jesus' and you could no sooner fall out of the hands of Jesus, and Jesus could fall out of the hands of the Father. Paul in the Book of Romans tells us that all those that God forek knew he predestined, and those he predestined, those he called, and those he called, those he justified, and those he justified,

those he glorified. And what that means is that salvation is like a train, and once you get on it at the beginning, when God puts you on it, then you're never, ever going to fall off no matter what happens. So see, you've got two truths. Now watch this. You got two truths which seem to be almost in contradiction. On the one hand, you got the Bible saying that once God saves you, you will always be saved. And then on the other, only if you endure to the end will you be saved. you've got to put these two truths together. And here's how you do that. One of the essential marks of truly saving faith is that it endures to the end.

That's the point. Jesus told a story one time about a farmer who goes out to scatter some seeds. And some seed, he said, falls on shallow soil. Now, what's interesting is how quickly the seeds in the shallow soil spring up. And they spring up and they start, they look awesome. And everybody's like, wow, look, it's just fantastic. But then Jesus says the sun of persecution comes out or the weeds of materialism grow up and because these seeds don't have any root, they wither away.

Here is the question you should ask. Do those seeds that spring up quickly, do they represent saved people or unsaved people? Do they represent save people who lose their salvation? No, they represent unsaved people. Watch this. Who for a while look like they're saved people. These are the kinds of people that come to, for example, for example. example, the Sonny Church or the Church of 1122 or when I go speak at youth camps, they're the kinds of

people that on that last Thursday night of camp, when we get everybody together, and they've been up all night, you know, every night, and they've slept two hours a night, and the band plays the favorite song, and I get up and tell a story about a kid dying on a car wreck, and boom, they all come down, right? And they're weeping, and I just watch it as a speaker. You got like a row of, you know, middle school girls back there are five rows in, and one them will start crying, right? And I don't know what it is about that age, but it's just like, it's contagious. They all the way down the line. They all come down and they go at the altar and they blow snotsicles on each other and they promise that they're going to be missionaries and never

sin and everyday boys until they're 40 and just anything, right? And that lasts about 10 minutes. In fact, it never makes it on the bus ride home. Why? Because it was this incredibly emotional moment in the minute. But one of the evidences of saving faith, listen, is not the intensity of the emotion at the beginning. The evidence is the evidence. The evidence is that the evidence. of saving faith is endurance over time. The evidence of saving faith is not how much you cried, not even how much you understood. The evidence of saving faith is that it endures for the rest of your life. I was sharing Christ a little while back with a guy at a gym that I was working out at, and this gym had a basketball court, and he just got picked up, started playing one-on-one.

And we're playing to 21. And so about three points in or whatever, I looked at him, and I he didn't look like the kind of guy that well let's just say he didn't look like a deacon in a church right you weren't expecting that i'm not trying to be judgmental but he just like he had hair you know comes down to the small of his back nothing wrong with that he had tattoos over literally every square inch of his body i'm not even what sure what color he actually was but everything was tattooed and nothing wrong with that um he had piercings over every single part of it looked like he'd fallen face first in a tackle box that kind

of guy nothing wrong with that um every other one other one word that came out of his mouth with some kind of curse word. You know, he probably should back that off. But anyway, this is just the picture of the guy you're getting at. It doesn't look like, you know. So I'm sharing my testimony with him. He stops, puts the basketball on his hip, and he says, dude, are you trying to witness to me? Now, I was, like, impressed he actually knew the word, like witness. So, like, that was like, that's insider language. I was like, maybe. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. He said, he goes, man, that's awesome. He said, nobody's tried to witness to me. in years. He said, it's probably because the way that I look. He said, but he said, man, he goes,

you are wasting your breath. Let me tell you why. He said, when I was in eighth grade, I went to camp, and man, the speaker got up there, and he just preached the pain off the walls, and he preached the hell out of me, and I went forward, and I got on my face, and I repented of my sins, and I asked Jesus to be my Savior. He said, and man, I became like super Christian. I went back, and I became a leader of my youth group, and I went on mission trips, and I led two or three other people in my youth ministry to Christ. And he said, it was amazing. He said, and then I got into my senior year of high school, in his words, I discovered sex. And I decided, you know what, I'm going to put this Christianity thing on hold for a while because I want to explore this over here. He said,

then I went on to college, and I just never really look back. He said, when I, about my third year in college, he said, one of my professors convinced me that I didn't really believe in God. He said, I'll be honest with you. I think I was just adjusting my beliefs to match my lifestyle. He said, but whatever it is, I'm an atheist now. He said, I'm an atheist now. He said, but here's what awesome. He says, I was saved in a Baptist church. And he says, now, you're a Baptist, right? And I was like, I'm not really sure where this conversation is going. I'm just going to just keep talking for a minute. And he said, well, here's the thing. In a Baptist church that I was raised in, we believe once saved all we saved, once saved all we saved, he says, what that means is, even if you're right and

there's a God and Jesus died for my sin, he goes, I was saved in eighth grade. He goes, so even if you're right and I'm wrong, I'm totally. totally covered. I'm totally covered because once saved, always saved, I can never lose my salvation, so, man, you don't have to worry about me because if you're right, I already got that box checked. Now, what do you say to a person like that? Right? Seminary did not prepare me for this kind of conversation, right? What do you say to a person like that? This guy is that seed that Jesus is talking about in this parable, that sprouts for a little while, even a few years he sprouts, but then he vanishes away. In fact, it might be true that some of you either hear

at a campus over in the Mandarin area is you're in the same category. Now you sprung up quickly, but now you're not walking with Jesus. And you might be that seed that sprang up quickly, but you had no root. And so you withered. One of the signs of saving faith is that it endures to the end. In fact, it is true, once saved, always saved, but it's also true once saved forever following. You've got to put the two of them together. Once saved, always saved, yes, but once saved forever following, and if not forever following, then not actually saved. So let me say it again. The sign that you have the faith that saves is not the intensity of that faith at the beginning. It is whether that faith endures for a lifetime. Once saved, always saved, once saved, forever

following. You see my fear in churches like the Summit Church and in a church of 1122 is you got a lot of people who pray to prayer and they think that's it. I've done it. I've checked that box. But if your faith does not endure, then it is not real faith, which leads me to number three. Number three, assurance can only be found through your present posture, never a past memory. The way that you know that you have truly put faith in Christ is not because you remember praying a prayer in the past. The way that you know you've put faith in Christ is because of the posture you are in and the present. Right. Let's go back to our image of the chair here for the a minute, okay? Everybody that I can see right now, just about everybody, is sitting down in a chair.

That means that when you came in, every single one of you made a decision to sit down in that chair. Right? Is that fair? Question, how do you know that you made the decision to sit down in the chair? Is it because you remember making the decision? Like, oh, yes, I remember exactly when it was. It was exactly 6.14 p.m. I walked in and I looked at that chair and I said, oh, that looks like a faithful chair. Hey, I can tell from its polycarbonite blend that it can hold the weight of my 210 pound body. And so I transfer the weight of my body to that. And I told my friends, I have found my chair. This is my chair. I love this chair. I receive this chair right now. And I sat. Is that what you do? Is that what, if that's you, okay? That's called OCD.

You know, you get help for it. But that's not why you know that you made the decision. The reason you are sure you made the decision is because of the posture you are in toward the chair right now. How are you? supposed to know that you made the decision to trust in Christ? It's not because you remember making the decision. It's not because your grandmother remembers you making the decision. It's not because of how much you wept when you made the decision. The way that you know that you made the decision is because you are trusting him now as Lord and Savior, because of the present posture you are in, because you are currently surrendered to him as Lord. Whenever the Bible, whenever the Bible, whenever the Bible,

Bible directs you to find assurance of salvation. It always, look at it, it always points you to a present posture, never to a past memory. See, I would tell you that most of us have got a view of salvation, or at least conversion that's wrong. Let me show you one other way. Let me get rid of the chair here for a minute and give you one other illustration here. I ask two people to come up here and help me for a minute. I think we're April over here and Justin. Is Justin, are you still over here? Justin, right here in the front row. Would you welcome Justin and April up here to? to our stage. All right.

Kind of hurry there, Justin, because I've got to just make up stuff until you get up here. So, all right, here we go. All right. Here we go. Justin, you were going to represent Jesus, a very well-built, stacked Jesus, okay, with a cross in your chest. That's how we remember. April, you're going to represent a center, okay? So these were, I didn't get suggestions for this from people as to who fit what profile best.

Okay? Here's how most people see conversion, and we got to do this kind of kind of, kind of compact because for our Mandarin campus over there, we've got to stay on this little carpet. All right. So here's how most people see salvation. Here's April. She is lost girl. She goes to a camp. She hears Pastor Jobi preach. She is really moved by it. She knows that Jesus is the Savior whose arms are open wide to receive her. Okay, right here's arms open wide to receive her. And so she comes and she asked Jesus for salvation. So she asks Jesus for salvation. Okay, you want to ask Jesus for salvation?

Okay, now this is the Lord of the universe. You should probably have a posture of humility. So you're going to want to be down on your knees right here, okay? Reach up, reach up and ask him to save you, okay? And what Jesus does, what Jesus does, because he's a good and faithful shepherd is he, is he writes her a certificate of salvation? He writes her, right? And he gives it to her. And April says, thank you, Jesus. She stands up right from the altar. She puts it in her back pocket. She's got the certificate of salvation. Now she's saved. Okay. So Jesus states here, and April goes on throughout her life. Okay. This just represents. presents the journey of her life. And at some point, she's like, wait a minute, did I really, am I really saved? So what does she do? She reaches in her pocket. She pulls out the certificate of salvation. She's like, oh, here it is. Right here signed by Jesus. He can't go back on it. Boom, I'm saved. Right? She puts it back in. But then she has a really rough time with an old, sinful struggle she used to have and she falls to that sin again and she feels really bad. And she says, wait a minute, am I really safe? So she pulls it back out. She looks at it and she's

like, you know what? Maybe this is not legit. I better go back to ask for another one. So she goes back to Jesus. She gets down on her knees. Jesus is super patient. So he's like, absolutely. And he writes her another one. She gets up. She goes on through life. She gets 10 years later. And then she gets really super spiritual. And she hears another sermon by Pastor Job and she's like, oh, this is awesome. I'm not sure if I'm saying. I better go ask Jesus again. Back she goes to Jesus. And over here. This is over and over and over. This is my life from seventh grade all the way through college, okay? That is a totally wrong view of salvation. That is not how the Bible presents salvation as a certificate that you get from Jesus. The way that the Bible presents salvation is,

April realizes she's a sinner, she comes to Jesus, right? And so she, you ready for this, hops up into his arms, okay? Because she is going to trust Jesus as, okay, now, okay, now, here we go. Are you up to this, Jesus? You got it? Okay, we're going to be up here for a few minutes. So now, now, now, now, now when April goes through life, okay, she goes over here, all right? Guess who goes with her, right? Right. Jesus, right? Now she's like, hey, am I really saved? Am I really, do I belong to Jesus? Right?

She's not going back over here to ask, did I sign it right? She's just looking at, well, he's got me in his arms right now, right? How do you know that you made the decision to rest on Christ and surrender to Christ? Very easy. You were in the present posture of resting in Christ. Does that make sense? Right? Okay.

All right, excellent job, Jesus. You can put her down. Ladies and gentlemen, Jesus and April. You can put your hands together for them. You get the image that we're trying to get there. Many of us have this idea of like, well, when I was 16 years old, or when I was five years old, or this or over here happened. And I just, I don't remember it.

Maybe I wasn't sorry enough for my sin, and maybe I didn't understand enough about grace. And then I had this other inconsistency in my life. And so I better go do it again. And you just go back and back. The way that you know that you have trusted in Christ is the present posture you are into the Lordship of Christ. Let me go back and say this again.

You can only be in one of two postures, right now toward the Lordship of Christ. You're either surrendered to him as Lord right now, or you are standing in rebellion against him. You're either trusting in what he did is your salvation. Why are you going to go to heaven when you die? Because of what he did. I'm resting all my hope in that. Right? Or you are hoping in your own righteousness, which means that when you read a statement like Jesus made in Matthew 7, where many say, Lord, Lord, didn't we do all these works? And Jesus said, I didn't know you. In your heart, you're like, well, that could never be. me. Charles Spurgeon said, the old great famous British pastor of the 19th century, he said,

I read Matthew 7 and he says, I can tell you, promise you Jesus will never say that to me. He said, not because I'm a great pastor or a great Christian. He said, because I would look back at Jesus and say, never knew me, never knew me. I rested all my hope for heaven on you. I rested every hope I had on what you had accomplished for me, and I was resting in your lordship and your grace, how could you say that you do not know me since I leaned everything on you? Salvation conversion is a posture that you begin at a point in time. Yes. Hear me. It begins at a point in time. But it is a posture that you continue on for the rest of your life. You know you made the decision, not because you remember making it, but because of the posture you are in in the present.

So somebody says to me, which I hear a lot, why don't remember? remember praying the prayer. It doesn't matter. It does not matter. All that matters is the present posture. That's the proof you've made the decision. And in the same way, somebody else who says to me, well, I remember the prayer. Oh man, it was a doozy. It was really emotional. But they're not in the posture. And I would just say, well, whatever decision you made is the wrong one. Conversion is a posture you begin in a moment, but maintain for the rest of your life. Now, I realize that begs a question. You said, well, wait a minute. Is it possible to be saved? The word that we always used when I was growing up in church is backslide, right? Or to use the analogy

we've been using, is it posture to sit down, is it possible to sit down for a while in the chair and then get up, you know, kind of go back and then go back to the chair? Is it possible to do that? And the answer is most definitely yes. All Christians do that. I do it every single day. Sometimes Christians backslide and badly and sometimes they do it for extended periods of time. King David slept with his best friend's wife lied about it, then had her husband murdered and covered it up for a year. I mean, by anybody's estimation, that's varsity, right? I mean, that's varsity-level sin.

When you are murdering your best friend's wife and lying about it for a year. And yet we know that King David was certainly a man after God's own heart, and we know that he was saved. But see, here's the deal. One of the signs of saving faith is that, yeah, sometimes all of us, because we're sinners get back up, but one of the signs of saving faith is that we all. always go back and assume the posture. One of the signs that your faith is real is that you may get up

for some amount of time. We all do it multiple times, but the Spirit of God will always draw you back to that posture of repentance and faith. 1. John 518 says that sin will not have final victory over the believer, which means that, yes, sin will take you over for a while. But eventually the Spirit of God will bring you back. He will bring you back. Or maybe my favorite statement on this is how Proverbs says. Proverbs 2416, the righteous man falls seven times and rises again. How does the righteous man show his righteousness? Not by the fact he never falls. In fact, you know that number seven?

That number seven in Hebrew is the number of completion, which means the righteous man falls all the time. Imagine walking in the mall behind somebody that fell seven times. Right? So the first time they fall, you're like, like you fell, right? They get up, they fall a second time. At this point, you're taking out your phone and you're like,

let me just see if I can get this on video. Third time, you're posting it on YouTube. It's going viral. Fourth time, fifth time, six times. You're feeling bad now because obviously he's got a problem. Guy falls seven times. You know that something is really, this guy can't even walk. Let me get this.

Listen, the righteous man falls seven times. Seven's the number of completion means all the dude does is fall. but every time he gets back up again. You don't show your righteousness, listen, you don't show that you're saved by never falling. You show your say by what you do after you fall. The righteous person falls, yes, and so they get up out of that chair and they fall into sin, but they get back up up again and they resume that posture of repentance and faith. The proof of conversion is that it endures all the way until the end. It is a posture you assume in a moment but maintain for a lifetime. And if you want assurance of salvation, then you look at your present posture, not a past

memory. It is true that people who have backslidden, maybe you're in that state right now, they can genuinely be saved, but they, listen, they cannot have the assurance of salvation. The assurance of salvation is a possession. It is a gift that God reserves only for those who are in the present posture of repentance and faith. Number four, last one. according to Hebrews, saving faith produces a new nature. Saving faith produces a new nature. The writer of Hebrews, after warning to Hebrew Christians in chapter 6, in the strongest language of what would happen if they fell away,

says this to that church he was writing to. He says, yet in your case, beloved, I feel sure of better things. Things that belong to, things that go along with, genuine salvation. In other words, let me translate. He's saying, I know, I know, I know you won't fall away. ultimately because I have seen in you evidence of the new nature. I've seen how your attitude towards sin has changed. I see how when you fall away, God quickly brings you back to repentance. And so I am confident that you have the faith that will endure. And I am confident that you have

the faith that saves. When you are genuinely born again, it is easy for others to look at you and tell because there is simply no way that Jesus comes into your life and people don't know it. it is just too glorious of a thing. The grace that God shows is too humongous for you just to take it in stride and not be changed anymore. And I don't know if Pastor Jeeves used this illustration or not, but here's I describe it to our church. I'm imagine if I came into this, you know, to this saturate thing late. And, you know, the worship team's up here and they keep playing songs, you know, like this is going on really long and why is it? And where's J.D.? And finally I kind of bust through the back door. And I come up here and I'm out of breath and my shirts, you know, all.

ripped up and I'm sweaty and I'm like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that I'm late. Let me tell you guys, I was coming from the hotel and I was driving here and I was coming down 95 and all of a sudden I had this flat tire and I got out of the car and I took off the tire and I was trying to change the tire and so I was putting the new tire on. I was putting the lug nuts on and one of the lug nuts dropped and rolled back out across I 95 and so I went over to get it and I reached down to pick it up and man, I reached down to pick it up and wouldn't you know it right as I was picking it up, I hear this horn honk and I look up and there's a tractor trailer coming to me going like 75 miles an hour. And man, he hits me.

He hit me going 75 miles an hour. He must have not me 300 yards. I didn't seem like that because as soon as I landed, he ran over me. And I guess he didn't realize what he did because he put it in reverse and see what happened. He ran over me a second time. Man, it hurt. I had to find a lug nut. I remember where that was?

I'd go back and get that lug nut and put it back on the thing and drove all the way over here. And that's why I'm late. Now, what are you going to say at this point? You're a liar, right? Because there's no way that you could get hit by that kind of force and stay the same. If you'd really been hit by a tractor-trailer going 75 miles an hour, you'd look different. You'd talk different. You'd walk different.

You'd smell it. Everything about you'd be different. There's just no way you could encounter that kind of force and remain the same. The same thing is true in the writer of Hebrew's mind about the Lord Jesus Christ. There's just no way. There is no possible way for you to have been impacted by the grace of God and it not show up in every part of your life. It'll show up in public. It'll show up in public.

It'll show up with your attitude towards your parents. It'll show up in your attitude towards your spouse. It will not just come and go. In fact, I don't mean to be harsh, y'all, but if your best friends, your best friends who hang out with you on the typical Friday night, if they could not come up here and give us convincing testimony of your faith in Jesus, it's because you're not. you don't have any. If your mom could not stand up here and give really credible evidence to the fact that you're born again, it is because you are not. You see, when Jesus Christ comes into a life, he comes in and he begins to transform. And it doesn't mean that you never fall, quite the contrary.

But what it means is that you've been impacted by this grace, and suddenly you've got a new nature, and you've got things that accompany salvation. You know, whenever Jesus met people, he created one of two reactions in them. They either responded with hatred or love. they either cried out, crucify him, or they fell at his feet and just love and said, I want to know you and I want to belong to you forever and I'll die for you. The one reaction Jesus never created in people was boredom. I would say the vast majority of people in our culture are bored with Jesus, which means that they've never actually met the real one.

Because if you have encountered the real one, you would be in one of those two categories. You'd either be his enemy who hated him, or you would be at his feet as a worshiper, the one thing you will never be is just bored. He paid too great of a debt for you. You would just fall at his feet. I heard a guy describe it like this one time. He said, you know, said, imagine you came home, and there was a friend that on your porch, and your friend said, hey, man, while you were out, somebody came by, you owed some money,

and I paid it for you. Don't, you know, don't worry about it. What's your reaction to that friend? and my friend who was telling the story said well it depends on how much money they paid right if it was the postman who came back and you owed you know whatever you were short 32 cents on a stamp then you just pat him on the back say thanks man you're a great friend he said if your friend says oh it was the mafia they finally caught up your gambling debts they caught up with you and they were here to kill you you owed nine million dollars to the mafia and don't worry about it man

I took care of it you don't slap them on the back say hey thanks I'll get you next time you fall at their feet and you say, command me, right? If you have any concept of what Jesus Christ has done for you, if you have any knowledge of it at all, the one of two reactions is, that's a lie. That's foolish, or you have fallen in your, on your face, you've fallen at his feet in worship. My question for you is, have you encountered, have you been impacted by Jesus that way? If you're bored with Jesus, by the way, I don't mean you don't believe in Jesus. Jesus. I say that you probably do for most of you. But you believe in Jesus the way that the book of James talks about demons believing in Jesus. The demons, I mean, the demons believe that Jesus is God.

They believe he raised from the dead. They were there when it happened. They're sure. But the demon's faith is not saving faith because the demon's faith never turns into a transfer of trust and in a hope in his righteousness and a surrender to his lordship. I would say a lot of people in churches like yours and ours have a demon's faith, which means they're going to suffer a demon's fate. Demons are not going to go to heaven. There are many people who believe in Jesus, and I always want to say, congratulations, you've reached demonic status. What happens is you then transfer that into surrender and worship. Have you been born again?

Have you been genuinely born again? Do we see the evidence of the new nature? my guess is that some of you may have never really understood the gospel at a heart level and maybe tonight for the first time you're kind of getting it you understand this chair again let's use it one more time this represents the fact that jesus when he died on a cross was thinking of every sin that you had ever committed or ever will commit he was thinking of it and he died for it and he paid for it once for all on the cross he said with a loud voice it is finished which meant it was paid he paid every single ounce of penalty for every sin you've ever

committed. He did it in your place. He offers it to you as a gift if you will receive it. And to receive it means you just take it as yours. You might say a prayer when you do it. You might say, hey, Jesus, thanks. I receive it as mine. You might not say a prayer. You might just transfer your weight. I don't know. It doesn't matter. What matters is do you receive it and own it? Because he that believes on the sun has everlasting life. Believe means rest in. It means sit down in. That's all that that matters. There's only two categories. Those that are believing and those that aren't. it represents his lordship of whether you're surrendered to it right now and maybe for the first time you understand i got kind of a twofold invitation here for you one is some of you for the first time

you understand it and i'm going to give you a chance to express that yes in a prayer you're going to express it in a prayer but you're going to express repentance and faith others of you say may i maybe for the first time i really i get what it means to have assurance why don't you buy your heads at both campuses here everybody listen and bow your heads. You listen to, but really close, listen. If right now you're in the category where you say, I think I understood this for the first time. I get that Jesus Christ is paid my sin debt.

And I am ready to receive it as my own. As far as I know, for the first time. And right now would you just say to Jesus, Jesus, I surrender to you and I receive you as my Savior. say it to him i surrender to you and i receive you as my savior maybe you're here and you've prayed something like that before but you're like i think i think i've done something like that before but i i really get now what what it signifies so maybe you want to express it to jesus again and say i may have done it back years ago but i know what it means now and i'm right now i'm transferring the weight of

my soul my hope for eternity on the finished work of christ and surrender to the lordship you can say the same thing to Jesus. I'm not sure what happened before, but right now I'm trusting you as Savior and right now I'm surrendering to you as Lord. Let me ask all across this auditorium and our friends over at the Manor and Campus, if you're in either of those categories where you're either doing it for the first time or in a time where you really understand it, would you just raise your hand? Really, could you just raise your hand? I just want to give you a chance to kind of acknowledge it all over the place. I can't see everybody, but just hold your hand up and to say, that's me. Right now, I'm receiving Christ. I see. I see how above you. I know a lot of you can't see

and some of you I can't. Father, I pray. I pray for those, God, who right now are understanding the gospel and God, as they reach out as they believe, God, you are saving them. I pray, God, for those that you're determined tonight was determination was to give them assurance. God, I pray that you would give them all courage to do now what I'm asking. I'm going to ask them to do. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I'll look up here at me for a minute.

Here's what we're going to do. You mentioned this at the beginning of the services. We're going to offer a chance for you to be baptized. Baptism is the sign externally that you have received Christ a Savior. Baptism doesn't save you. That's Jacksonville tap water. You'll be dirtier when you get out than when you went in, okay? It's just, there's nothing magical about that water.

water, okay? But it's a symbol, always compared to a wedding ring. It's like you put on a ring that just, you know, if I take this ring off, I mean I'm not married to Veronica, but this ring shows you that I'm married to her, and it shows you that I'm not ashamed to be married to her, and that's what baptism is. And so there's kind of a few categories here. Those of you that trusted Christ tonight, or maybe last night or the night before, you've never been baptized without any question. I want you to come down, and they're going to talk to you and answer whatever questions you have, and they're going to baptize you tonight. Others of you, you got saved years ago or maybe it was weeks ago but you've never taken the step to be publicly

baptized i want to give that invitation to you tricky categories for those of you that like well i may have been saved before and i'm not sure if i was but tonight i really understood and i gained an insurance i don't i'm not sure what to tell you honestly i tell you that i you know i took i got baptized four times two of those were the first time was when i was six years old and i'm glad i got baptized again when i was 16 because it was me saying that i you know i took and I understand now, and I know what it means to know that I belong to Jesus. Maybe you'll just have to listen to the Spirit of God. Now, for some of you that are new around here, you're like,

okay, this is not what I was thinking when I came here tonight, that I was going to go home wet. Right? And you're like, I don't really know what's going on. Listen, this church is awesome. They have thought of everything you will possibly need. They've got a change of clothes. They've got different kinds of products. They will make sure that you do not home looking like a disaster. Okay, they've got it all taken care of.

You say, well, you know, I was actually saved when I was a baby. or excuse me, I was baptized when I was a baby and, you know, it's just not the way to, I get that. And you're like, well, I don't want to insult my parents, you know, because my parents baptized me when I was a baby. I get that. Listen, here's what I always explain it to our church. When you got baptized when you were a baby, was there any kind of confession of faith that you were making as a baby? No, that was a confession of whose faith? Your parent. Thank God for their faith, right? Thank God that's what they said about you right there. And what they were saying to you is, I hope that one day my son or daughter grows up to follow Jesus.

And guess what? You are. You are. Praise God. Now you get to ratify what they did. You get to add your faith to theirs. Baptism in the New Testament is always a proclamation of your own faith. It's never a proclamation to somebody else's. This is not a repudiation of your parents' baptism of you. This is a fulfillment of their baptism of you. and you're going to call your mom and dad tonight and you're going to say hey mom dad what you what you did for me 30 some years ago or 22 years ago or however long it was and when you baptized me and hope i followed jesus mom i'm doing it dad i'm doing it and i just wanted you to rejoice with me so don't let that be an obstacle you say well i don't know if i didn't drive tonight i'm afraid

my person i drove with is not going to wait they'll wait i promise you they'll wait if i look at them right now if you drove somebody else here just look at them right now and say i will wait for you. Right? Just say it. Just I will wait for you. And if they won't say that, by the way, if they won't wait, first of all, you bring them up here to talk to me or Joby and we'll have a little conversation with them and then they'll be getting baptized, okay? Second of all, I'm telling you in a church like this, there's probably 300 Uber drivers and they will do it for free. They will take you home for free. So do not let that be an obstacle, okay? And just a minute, we're going to stand you up, okay? And Jobie's going to stand you up, Pastor Jovey, and just in one motion, right?

Don't wait, don't look at everybody else. You just do it, okay? By the way, nobody should come alone. This is kind of a scary thing to do, so if I do this right now, everybody, if you think the person, this is about to get weird. If you think the person besides you is thinking about it, if you just can reach over and tap them and just kind of nod at them, right? And that means I'll go with you. Just do it right now, sort of tap them on the leg. I'm just going to go. Kind of shake.

Nobody comes alone. Nobody comes alone. Okay? Pastor Jobi is, I'm going to pray for you. I'm going to pray for you. Pastor Jobi is going to come. And at both campuses, we're going to see, by God's grace. because a lot of people publicly professed their faith in Christ and their assurance of salvation.

Father, blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. The air of salvation purchased of God, born of his spirit, washed in his blood. This is my story. This is my song. Praising my Savior all the day long. God, I thank you for the proclamation of salvation we are about to see. I thank you for the assurance that you bestowed on many tonight. I thank you for God, those that you brought to faith in Christ for the first time. God, I pray that this would be like a defining moment, a beginning of something that is going to change them, their future families. God, their future children. God, that will change perhaps nations around the world because of this moment that is right here in front of us.

I pray, God, that you would give them the courage to do what you were telling them to do. We ask that, God, we believe it. In Jesus' name, amen.