Lately—actually, this has been going on for awhile, but especially lately over the last couple of months—people have been writing and asking the question, “How can I know that I am saved?”
This is because we have learned where we are in history. We are right up against the end of the world. May 21 in 2011 will be the rapture and then there will be that five months of torment. Then on October 21, it will be the end of this world and universe and all of unsaved man who are upon it. God will completely destroy all things.
People are hearing these things. With an honest reaction, they are looking at themselves and at their lives, as God commands us to do. He tells us to examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith, so people are looking and they are wondering, “Am I really born again? Am I a true child of God?”, because this is very important as we are approaching, day-by-day, ever closer to the end of the world.
Somebody was telling me a way of illustrating this the other day. I hope I get this right because it involved math and a few calculations. But he was looking at the time that we have left as if the whole history of the world was one day. He went through a calculation of the 13,021 years that the world has been around since creation and he related that to a 24-hour day. (I do not know exactly how all of this works out. I told him to send me an email so that I could really look it over, but he just told me on the phone.) He calculated that if the whole 13,023 years were one day, since we have about two years left, that would be around 13 seconds to midnight, according to his calculation.
I thought that was a good way of illustrating how little time we do have left, how short the time is. Two years are going to fly. Whether I will be here or you will be here, personally, we do not know because any one of us could die today or any day. But the Lord will continue the world for two years, and then that day will come for the world as God has planned it. It is going to happen as He has outlined this in His Word.
So this is a good image that we have on the “May 21” tract of an hourglass. You turn the hourglass over and the sand begins to sink into the lower part of the hourglass. If you look at the tract, there are just a few grains of sand left in the top portion and it is still continuing to fall.
As this is getting closer, day-by-day, questions that maybe people have had for a long time are coming up, “Am I really saved?” The true believer will be honest about this and will look at themselves, because God tells us to do this. We will look at ourselves in the light of the Word of God.
For instance, in 1 John 2, it says in the first verse, and I will read the first few verses, 1 John 2:1-2:
My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
This means that Jesus is the only Saviour. He paid for the sins of only His people and He is the only way to have sins forgiven in the world.
Then verse 3, 1 John 2:3:
And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.
This is what the Bible tells us:
And hereby we do know that we know him…
This means that we can understand that we are saved. We can have the knowledge that we are saved. But even with the true believer who recognizes that there has been a big change in their life, still, at times, doubts can come: like with King David, after he had fallen into sin with Bathsheba in having her husband, Uriah the Hittite, slain by the sword of the enemy. After being confronted by Nathan the prophet, where God revealed his sin to him and that it was not hidden from God—nothing ever is, “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do”—David was convicted of his sin. In Psalm 51, we find him crying out, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” And David was a believer; he was a true child of God.
So it is sin that normally brings doubt. It is our sin. This is why some people struggle, because they are still seeing sin in their life and they recognize, if we continue reading here in 1 John 2:4:
He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
We can definitely know that we are in trouble with God if we are going on in sin and we are not being corrected by the Word of God. If we are continuing in sin, if we are continuing to do the same things, maybe, that we have been doing for a long time, then God is saying, “Alright, if you are not obeying My Word, if you are not listening to My Word and understanding My Word, then you can know that you are not a child of God since you have that kind of reaction to the Word of God.”
There are some people who look at a couple of verses—like Psalm 51 with King David or maybe they look at Solomon, who was beloved of the Lord, and his sin—and they try to get assurance of their own situation through those cases, “Well, I did not sin like that, like Solomon; I never committed adultery in that way.” Or, “Look at David; he committed adultery and had someone killed.”
But that is not what these cases are designed to do. They are not designed to give us assurance because of our own sin that we are a child of God. God does not operate in that way. He is showing us that when sin comes into someone’s life, it brings doubt and fear and that they will begin to lack assurance of salvation.
Let us go back to 1 John 2:3, where it says:
And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.
And if we go over to John 14:15, it says:
If ye love me, keep my commandments.
This is restated in another place, “If you love Me.” God tells us in 1 John that we will love Him because He first loved us. This is the only way that this can work. We cannot love God and desire to keep His commandments without God first initiating this and taking the first step in working out salvation in our lives.
Here, Jesus is saying, “This is one way that you can know if you love Me, if you keep My commandments.” And the reverse is true. If we do not keep His commandments, then we do not love Him. We might say that we do. People profess to love Christ repeatedly and in countless ways.
If you ask a professing Christian in the world today, “Do you love God? Do you love Jesus?,” their answer is, “Yes; yes, I love Him and I praise Him,” and they will speak very well of Christ. However, they are not obeying the Word of God.
We know that God has commanded for individuals in the church to come out of the church; therefore, in obedience to God’s command, people ought to leave the churches and congregations and come out. There are many other doctrines that God commands and many people do not obey the Word of God. They do not obey God Himself and that is evidence that someone is not a true child of God.
Let us go to Philippians 2 and take a look at verses 12 and 13, where it says:
Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
What does God tell us about salvation in the Bible when we become saved, when a person becomes saved? He tells us that He gives us a new heart and a new spirit and that He will work in our lives to do His will, as it says here: it is God who works in you.
If we compare this with Ezekiel 36, which really says it very straightforwardly, Ezekiel 36:25-27:
Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.
Here is the way that any child of God can obey God. It is because God has given us of His Spirit. He has placed His Spirit in our souls. He has given us that new Spirit. He also indwells us. Then He causes us to walk in the law, to walk in the Word of God. This is why there should be a big change in the life of anyone who thinks that they are saved. There should be a dramatic change from how they used to live to how they are living now.
This is the case, but sometimes it is easier to see with people who have been out in the world. Like many of the other people in the world, they have been doing the things that everyone else has been doing in the world: drinking or drugs or smoking or cursing or lying or cheating, the whole gamut. Everybody is involved in these things, to some degree. Then when they come under the hearing of the Word of God and God gives them a new heart and a new spirit, there should be a dramatic change.
In some cases, this might even be easier for them to recognize because they are no longer drinking. They are no longer going to the bar or involved in other things that are contrary to the Word of God, but they are now endeavoring to do things God’s way. As they go along, they do find that they are obeying the Word of God more and more.
On the other hand, you can have some people who grew up maybe in a Christian home and from their early years, they were involved in hearing the Gospel. So it is not as dramatic, in that sense, for them because it is a little harder for them to see. They never got into a lot of that stuff.
However, there should also be a change in them because we all sin. We all have sins in thought, in word, and in deed; and so, they, too, should begin to see differences in their lives, as God’s Spirit is within them and causing them to obey His Word and to keep His commandments.
Let me ask everyone: can we know, as we look at ourselves, can we know that we are truly born again, based on how we keep the law of God? That is dangerous, is it not? That is dangerous, because God tells us:
And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.
So we can examine ourselves and we can look ourselves to see if we are in the faith; however, it only goes to a certain point. I do not think that we should look at our lives and say, “Well, I am not doing this and I am no longer doing that, so I must be a child of God,” and then just convince ourselves that we are believers.
I do not think that a true believer should do this. No. As we are examining ourselves, if we go to Psalm 139, the child of God is brought to this point, as we do look at our lives. It says in Psalm 139:23-24:
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
You see, this is what the Lord would have us to do, because self-examination brings us to a certain point. But when we are at the point of, “Okay, it is good that I have an interest in the Bible and in sharing the Gospel and so forth,” we must realize, “yet I, as a man, have a desperately wicked heart.” Naturally, when we are born into the world with that heart of stone and sin, it is very deceitful. It is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things.
This tells us that our heart is really not something to be trusted. We should not trust it because there are nearly two billion people in the world today who say that they are Christians, yet the vast majority of them are not. They are not and they give all kinds of evidence indicating that they are not true believers.
This is why the believer will come to a certain point and, really, cannot go beyond, where we see that we are doing things differently and in God’s way and yet we do not trust ourselves. We do not trust ourselves and so we cry to God, “Search me; try me; prove me to show me that I am a child of God, and then lead me in the way of everlasting.”
There is a good verse in Psalm 35 that really helps us out in this whole area of assurance. By the way, I forgot to mention this, but if some people lack assurance, it could be because they are not saved. They are not saved at all and they may not know it because, at this point, they are not yet saved. Well, here in Psalm 35, it says in verse 1, Psalm 35:1-4:
Plead my cause, O JEHOVAH, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for mine help. Draw out also the spear, and stop the way against them that persecute me: say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul: let them be turned back and brought to confusion that devise my hurt.
Isn’t it interesting that in this context here, it is discussing the spiritual battle, “fight against them that fight against me…the shield and buckler…stand up for my help…draw out the spear and stop the way against them that persecute me”? It is a Psalm of beseeching the Lord that the Lord would come and help us, that He would fight the battle and not we ourselves. And flowing along within this, we find in the last half of verse 3:
…say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.
I wonder why God puts this in this kind of context? I think that the reason is because we are in a spiritual battle, and many people can give examples of this kind of spiritual battle that the Christian is in. But the greatest of helps, the greatest of aids to someone who is a believer and who understands the Bible and the teachings of the Bible and is sharing it with other people is that, in response, there is reviling or there is reproach, or even on occasion, people are oppressing, and the biggest aid is for God, not to stop them from doing it—it is not to have them turn around or turn away from us—but it is to know that we are saved.
…say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.
Then, at that point, if we know that we are saved and that we are a child of God, then it makes all of the rest so much easier, so much easier. The burden is a great deal lighter and it helps us in every area of our lives.
But notice that this Psalm is a cry to God:
…say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.
How is God speaking today? How is the Lord speaking today? If we pray this to God, “O Lord, say unto my soul, I am thy salvation,” which is an excellent prayer, how could He speak to our soul? He cannot speak to us by breaking the barrier of the supernatural. He will not do that anymore. He is not going to speak from heaven with a bolt of lightning. That is not going to happen.
God speaks to us through His Word, through the Bible, as we know that Romans 10:17 tells us:
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
God is speaking to us every time we open up the Bible and we read.
What is a person to do, as we are getting shorter and shorter on time? What is someone to do? Are they just to say, “Well, I do not know if I am saved, but I will just keep going on; I will just keep continuing on. I think that there is a chance that I might be saved; but then again, when I look at other things, there is a chance that I might not be saved. So I will just keep continuing on”?
Of course, there is nothing that we can do to bring salvation to ourselves, and there are multitudes who give themselves assurance. But there is something we can do that God permits, as He tells us to “strive to enter in at the strait gate”; that is, put forth effort towards being under the hearing of the Word of God so that God can save us, which means to read the Bible.
Whenever we are reading in the Bible, no matter where we are reading, that is the Word of God and God is speaking to us. The Lord is speaking directly to the reader of the Bible, so this would be an excellent prayer every time someone read the Bible. God just spoke. When you are done, close it. You just read a certain portion of Scripture. Close it and then pray, “O Lord, say unto my soul, I am thy salvation”; that is, “Be my Saviour through the Word of God, and may Your Word testify to my soul,” as we find in Romans 8:15-16. It says:
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
We can see, once again, what God is saying, which is that we do not bear witness to ourselves. That is one way of putting it. We can look at ourselves and we can examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith, and then that self-examination finally brings us to a point where we cry out to God, “You search me, O Lord, to convince me.” Then we wait on God and His Spirit to testify or bear witness to our spirit that we are a true believer.
This is the part that so many people do not like, the part of waiting on the Lord, of waiting on God. There are multitudes of gospels and doctrines that are out there in the world that teach, “You can know right now that you are a believer. All you have to do is take these steps: come down the aisle, accept Christ, be baptized, say the sinner’s prayer.” After doing this, the pastor will assure you and the church will assure you that you are now a member of the heavenly kingdom, that you are now a child of God. And, “It is so easy. Why complicate it?”
Well, all of that is based on a misreading of several verses in the Bible where they do not realize that we can never bring salvation to ourselves. The Bible tells us, “With man, it is impossible”—there is no way that anybody can bring salvation to themselves—“but with God, all things are possible.”
It is His testimony to our spirit that we wait on, that He will speak to our soul and convince us through His Word. We keep reading the Bible—faith comes by hearing—and then we pray, “Lord, testify to my heart through what I am reading.”
This is the only safe way of waiting on the Lord, and there is a test involved if anyone does not know that they are saved. The test is: will that individual grow so anxious and grow so fearful of what is coming that they will cease to wait on God and try to gain assurance some other way through some other method? This is part of the test.
We are in a similar situation as the Israelites were when they came out of Egypt. They were led to the brink of the Red Sea and the Egyptian host was hot on their tails. They were frightful and fearful because there seemed to be no way out, no deliverance possible, and yet God moved Moses to say, “Behold! You will see the salvation of the Lord,” and the sea parted.
I think that God is—well, I do not know if I will say “pleased”—but I think that anyone who is waiting on the Lord for their salvation is much more pleasing than individuals who have taken it to themselves and have convinced themselves that they are believers, that they are children of God. It is much more difficult to wait for God to save us and to wait on the Lord for that salvation.
Let us go back to Psalm 130:1-4, which says:
Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O JEHOVAH. Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If thou, JEHOVAH, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.
Why are those two thoughts put together? We would think, “There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou might be praised or glorified.” But, no. It says, “There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.” Or in the first part, we could say, “There is awful wrath with Thee that You should be feared,” or, “There is terrible anger over sin with You that You should be feared,” but it does not say that. It says, “There is forgiveness with Thee.”
There is a real possibility for any person in the world, from our perspective—as we send the Gospel out, we do not know who the elect are—for any one of them to be one of God’s elect and for God to save them. But the whole ball of wax or everything involved with salvation is not in our hands, it is in God’s hands. Forgiveness is with Him, and that is one of the reasons why He is to be feared.
Has anyone who is doubting experienced fear? Have you experienced fear? “Well, I do not know. I do not know if I am really a child of God. Sometimes I do, but then I seem to commit that sin again and I begin to be troubled in mind and doubt.”
Waiting on the Lord is the time when fear can enter into a person’s life. We begin to fear God and think, “Well, I might not be a child of God.” But this is how God has laid it out where there must be waiting on Him, as it says in Psalm 130:5:
I wait for JEHOVAH, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.
Isn’t that a great statement? “I wait on the Lord; I am determined to wait on the Lord because I know that there is nowhere else to go. There is no other religion that can save. There is no other gospel. There are plenty of gospels, but there is no other real Gospel that can save. I am going to wait on the Lord and hope in His Word, because the Bible tells us that He is merciful. He is a merciful God. He is compassionate. He delights in mercy. He is kind. He is gracious and full of grace.”
God is all these things, and then we look at the life of Christ during His ministry when so many people were coming to Him to be healed of blindness and deafness or palsy. There were individuals who could not walk, and on and on. But in every case when people came to Him, He forgave them. There is not one case in the New Testament where someone came to Christ, at least that I am aware of, and He turned them away.
Nobody should take this to mean that if they go to God and they pray, “O Lord, have mercy,” that this is going to guarantee their salvation, but it does show us that the Lord Jesus is most compassionate and kind and gracious. All of those healings were pictures of salvation, so it does relate to salvation.
If we go to Him and beseech Him, we should know the character of God, that He is extremely merciful and that He might have mercy upon us. But we go like the Ninevites and we cry out, as we are desiring to turn from our sins, “Who can tell if the Lord will turn from the evil that He intends?” We just hope in the Word of God, “Oh, I hope that the Word of God saves me!”
Isn’t that our hope as we are reading the Bible, because this is how God saves? “I just hope that the Word of God saves me,” like Job who said, “Though He slay me, I will trust in Him.”
We are going to continue moving towards this day. Time is going to pass quickly. Some are going to come up close, if anyone is doubting, and they could still be doubting if this were May 3rd, 2011, which will be here shortly. You could have the same exact mind that you have right now with the same troubles and maybe even the same sins.
I do not know who is one of God’s elect or who is not, but God could have individuals who are truly His elect going right up against the end of the world and the day of the rapture and, at that time, still struggling with these things; but, yet, they are not running away. They are not going to a church, “Oh, I am going somewhere where it is much more comfortable to be, as far as people assuring me that I am a child of God, somewhere where I do not have to hear this ‘examining myself’ business at all and I do not have to worry about it.” There are a thousand different places people can run to, but God says, “They that endure to the end shall be saved.”
So here are individuals who are troubled, really troubled and mourning over their sin. They are going up to the last week, right up towards the very last day of salvation, and yet they do not know, like Job said, “Though He slay me, I will trust in Him. I will continue to seek the Lord and cry out to Him for His mercy.”
I think this idea is what we find in the book of Esther. In Esther 4, we find that Mordecai is encouraging Esther to go before the king. She tells him that there is only one law for anyone who goes into the king’s inner chamber without being called, which is death except he extend the golden scepter out and then one can find grace. At first, Esther is resistant to doing this, but finally she is convinced and she tells Mordecai to gather the Jews and to pray for her. Then it says in Esther 4:16:
Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.
So this is the only hope. Boldly, may we go to the throne of grace. As it tells us in Hebrews 4, “Boldly, come to the throne of grace to find grace to help in time of need.” This is what Esther is thinking, “I am going to go to the king who is seated upon his throne that I might have an audience with him and find grace in his sight, and yet there is a very real possibility that I could perish. I may not live.”
We know that Esther did go in, and it says in the next chapter, Esther 5:2-3:
And it was so, when the king saw Esther the queen standing in the court, that she obtained favour in his sight: and the king held out to Esther the golden sceptre that was in his hand. So Esther drew near, and touched the top of the sceptre. Then said the king unto her, What wilt thou, queen Esther? and what is thy request? it shall be even given thee to the half of the kingdom.
Again, here is another figure and type where God tells us to come to Him and to beseech Him for His mercy and His salvation. It could be that He will grant us His favor and grace and that we might become saved.
Okay. We are going to stop here.