 The focus of this morning's class is assurance, and I'm going to spend, you know, our time basically going through the chapter in our confession of faith, chapter 18, the assurance of salvation, but I wanted to start with a quote from a sermon that Charles Spurgeon preached on the topic. And if you just Google Spurgeon Full Assurance, you can get the whole sermon, which I recommend. In fact, it would probably be good for me to just read you the whole sermon as opposed to telling you what I've got to say, but assurance of salvation. A well-grounded assurance is the most active worker in the field, the most valiant warrior in the battle, and the most patient sufferer in the furnace. There are none so active as the assured. Let a tree be planted in this soil and watered with this river, and its bows will bend with fruit. Confidence of success stimulates exertion, joy and faith removes sorrows, and realizing assurance overcomes all difficulties. Like the sword of Goliath, we may say of assurance there is none like it, give it me. Who cares for deaths or devils when he can read his title clear? What matters the tempest without when there is calm within? Assurance puts the heart in heaven and moves the feet to heaven. So this assurance that Spurgeon speaks of and that we can have is something that was central to the Reformation. And the reason for that is that Roman Catholic doctrine and teaching had basically taken this away, removed it from people. And when the Reformers began to reestablish this doctrine and retake this promise of the Bible that Christians can have a clear and certain assurance of salvation, the Catholics struck back and the Council of Trent, which was 460 some years ago, declared, let's see, Council of Trent, justification was declared to be offered upon the basis of human cooperation with divine grace as opposed to the Protestant doctrine of passive reception of grace. Understanding the Protestant faith alone doctrine to be one of simple human confidence and divine mercy, the Council rejected the vain confidence of the Protestants stating that no one can know who has received the grace of God. Furthermore, the Council affirmed against Protestant doctrine that the grace of God can be forfeited through mortal sin. So they issued a decree at the Council of Trent basically saying that if anyone says that justice received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works, but that said works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof, let him be accursed, basically. So if you believed, I mean this is still Roman Catholic doctrine, it hasn't changed, it's been affirmed repeatedly over centuries, I guess. You were accursed if you believed that you could have assurance of salvation. That's pretty extreme, I mean. So over the past couple of weeks I've been reading a book called The Whole Christ and in it Sinclair Ferguson says the Reformation was born out of the womb of the rediscovery of certitude. So this is a central issue to understand and to study out and in fact you have a duty as a Christian to work this out for yourself and working out your own salvation with fear and trembling includes understanding assurance. So let's look at, I wanted to just bring you one more thing from from Spurgeon and that sermon which I was reading actually on the way over here. It says only conceive my brethren if the Roman Catholic could get the full assurance of salvation surely the cardinals would hardly find money enough to buy their red hats. For where were purgatory then? Purgatory is an impossibility of full assurance be possible. If a man himself, if a man knows himself to be saved then he is not to be troubled with a silly fear about waiting in the intermediate state to be purified with fire before he can enter into heaven. So Spurgeon is very direct and critical and you know I mean if you read actually what the Confession says about the Pope himself it's pretty strong language just calls him the Antichrist. But so looking at chapter 18 of the assurance of grace and salvation I'm going to be going basically through some notes in this book which is Sam Waldron's exposition on the 1689. If you don't have the 1689 you know that's something you need to spend some time with and to work through all of the sections and look at the proof texts and you know come to working knowledge of you know what the 1689 says it is our confession of faith and so it's very helpful it's very helpful. So in the first section of this chapter 18 on the assurance of grace and salvation I'm just going to read the first part of it here he's addressing two sides of this issue of assurance. One the possibility of hypocrites having a false assurance that they're converted when they should not have any and then the reality that you can actually have assurance. Although temporary believers and other unregenerate men may vainly deceive themselves with false hopes and carnal presumptions of being in the favor of God and state of salvation which hope of theirs shall perish yet such as truly 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 are in a state of grace the state of grace and may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God which hope shall never make them ashamed. So I mean what we're being taught here would somebody mind grabbing me a bottle of water out of the fridge over there thank you is that the normal life of a Christian can be one of assurance of salvation it's not you know this unattainable impossible kind of thing and so as we go to the lesson today we're going to understand that there are all kinds of hindrances and you know ways that our assurance can be shaken and restored and those kinds of things but thank you very much. The normal life of a Christian is to be able to have this joy of knowing that we are saved and in the lesson that we normally use in the essentials class there are a couple of verses that point us to this this reality one is 2nd Timothy 1 12 but I am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me and in 2nd Timothy 4 6 through 8 he says for I am already being poured out as a drink offering and the time of my departure has come I have fought the good fight I have finished the race I have kept the faith henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge will award to me on that day and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing so you know Paul is not saying that you know because I am an apostle and you know I have this certainty I'm special and he's saying all who have loved his appearing or who look forward to his appearing who rejoice that he appeared can have the same confidence that Paul has look at 1st John 2 3 and by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments so it is a reality we can know that we have come to know him look at 1st John 5 13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life you know sometimes when we read scripture things are not clear and plain to us but you know it's been said that the main things are the plain things and this is pretty plain I mean you can know so the 1689 in the second section speaks of a genuine assurance as being infallible that while you can have a hypocrite who is you has a false assurance a genuine Christian can have a genuine assurance that is a certain thing that you can get past the point of constantly questioning whether you're actually converted or not you can have a certain assurance and so in the second part of this chapter of the confession it says this certainty is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope but an infallible assurance of faith founded on the blood and righteousness of Christ revealed in the gospel and also on the inward evidence of those graces of the spirit unto which promises are made and on the testimony of the spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are children of God and as a fruit thereof keeping the heart both humble and holy so what does that tell us then our three what are the three things that he's pointing to there give us this infallible assurance that we can have anybody Brenda that's that's certainly the where he starts um Waldron in his book says it's the first the first root um and um the blood and righteousness of Christ are the content of the promises such promises provide a basis for an infallible assurance for even the chief of sinners the absolutely free and gracious promises of salvation revealed in the gospel are the exclusive fountain of and central basis for such an assurance what what what's the next one right what what what do some of those look like yeah or anybody in first peter i'm sorry second peter one versus four to eleven you know he speaks of some of these things i'm going to start with verse three his divine power is granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire for this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self control and self control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love for if these qualities are yours and are increasing they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our lord jesus christ for whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins therefore brothers be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election for if you practice these qualities you will never you will never fall for in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our lord and savior jesus christ so peter wouldn't be telling us this if it weren't doable right but it's also true that apart from the spirit of god working in you these things are impossible um you have um you know a responsibility a duty to um obey this command to um to pray to study to um to pursue this kind of assurance that he's talking about that that is is achievable for us um so then there's a third thing so there's the the certain promises of god the the grace of god that we see at work in our lives and what's the third one does anybody bring their 1689 michael how would you say that works anybody want to add to that three is the spirit of god um testifying with us ben um this thank you yeah spirit that's good thank you that's helpful um the basis for this comes from roman's eight um 816 and we're going to talk about this more but roman's 816 says the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of god and if children then heirs heirs of god and fellow heirs with christ provided we suffer with him in order that we also be that we may also be glorified with him talks crawl so that's more sort of that second basis which is the grace of god working in us yeah yeah so there are a couple of things that um you know i i read in this book the whole christ that i they're kind of long quotes but they're helpful um sinclair fergusson quoted um um a couple of people who are addressing this topic um john owen um whom you've all heard of before um gives this uh analogy i guess you'd call it um the quote is now sometimes the soul because it has somewhat remaining in it of the principle that it had in its old condition is put to question whether it be a child of god or no and there upon as in a thing of greatest importance puts its claim with all the evidences that it hath to make good its title the spirit comes and bears witness in this case an illusion it is to judicial proceedings in point of titles and evidences the judge being set the person concerned lays his claim produces his evidences and pleads them his adversaries endeavoring all that in them lies to invalidate them and disannol his plea and to cast him in his claim in the midst of the trial a person this is the spirit in the midst of the trial a person of known and approved integrity comes into the court and gives testimony fully and directly on behalf of the claimer which stops the mouth of all its adversaries and fills the man that pleaded with joy and satisfaction so it is in this case the soul by the power of its own conscience is brought before the law of god there a man puts in his plea that he is a child of god that he belongs to god's family and for this end produces all his evidences everything whereby faith gives him an interest in god satan in the meantime opposes with all his might sin and law assist him many flaws are found in his evidences the truth of them all is questioned the soul hangs and suspends as to the issue and in the midst of the plea and contest the comforter comes and by a word of promise or otherwise overpowers the heart with a comfortable persuasion and bears down all objections that his plea is good and that he is a child of god the spirit bears witness to us when our spirits are pleading their right and title he comes in and bears witness on our side at the same time enabling us to put forth acts of filial obedience kind and childlike so i thought i think that's a helpful way to consider you in your struggles and end your doubts and you know your your travails that come from real hindrances that we experience in our christian life you know there's an always a time that you know you do something and you think well how could i even be saved and think that way or how could i even be saved and do that um and you know you struggle um when you're struggling the spirit of god can come alongside you and comfort you oliver so you're so recap that for me yeah yeah um waldron makes an interesting point about these things at the end of his discussion of this section of the 1689 um which i wasn't sure whether to get into or not but i think i will i'll just read it to you um each of the three roots of assurance mentioned here is crucial devastating error will result whenever any one of them is denied or depreciated the devaluing of the first root the promises of salvation turns the second into legalism so if you are relying on your performance looking at what you are convincing yourself is the spirit of god working in you and you are not relying primarily and looking first to christ then you are you you're going into toward legalism um the not the denial of the second root the marks of grace the denial that the second root the marks of grace has any connection with assurance turns the first and third into easy believism so you know you say i believe in the spirit is it working me but you're a drunkard an adulterer and a murderer at heart you uh are in another ditch and then the denial of the third the testimony of the spirit turns the first and second into rationalism so you you have really more just kind of an intellectual um agreement with the facts of christ and um you know you you're living a moral life but there isn't a relationship of dependence that you have on the spirit of god um so it turns it into just sort of an exercise um so i wanted to also read this quote from bb warfield that ferguson included in his book on this issue um and again this is the testimony of the spirit and one of the reasons i'm sort of camping out on this more is because i mean i think it's it's you know we can look and and see the the the blood and righteousness of christ and and i know that that's true and hold on to that and you know we can also we can see the um grace of god you know working in our lives and changing us but this issue of how the spirit testifies with us is not as um evident i guess not as simple to understand um so warfield said of this he said it is not intended as a substitute for the testimony of the spirit or to be more precise of signs of signs and marks but as an enhancement of it its object is not to assure a man who has no signs that he is a child of god but to assure him who has signs but is too timid to draw so great an inference from so small a premise that he is a child of god and to give him thus not merely a human but a divine basis for his assurance it is in a word not a substitute for the proper evidence of our child's ship but a divine enhancement of that evidence a man who has none of the marks of a christian is not entitled to believe himself to be a christian only those who are being led by the spirit of god or children of god but a man who has all the marks of being a christian may fall short of his privilege of assurance it is to such that the witness of the spirit is super added not to take the place of the evidence of signs but to enhance their effect and raise it to a higher plane not to produce an irrational unjustified conviction but to produce a higher and more stable conviction than he would be all unaided able to draw not to supply the lack of evidence but to cure a disease of the mind which will not profit fully by the evidence so those three things the third part of this chapter in the 1689 looks at the difficulty of attaining assurance the provision for attaining assurance and the duty of attaining assurance and i'm just going to read part of this it says the main point of the confession in this section is that it is not every christian's experience saving faith and infallible assurance are not so much the same thing that you cannot have one without the other so i think we probably know people who you know we believe are christians because of their own testimony the the life that we see them living and yet they themselves you know have a constant battle a struggle with assurance in the whole christ furgusson points to some issues that are caused difficulty for us in assurance because he says there's a section in his book he talks about the enemies of christians assurance and these are helpful there are three that he lists one is our native tendency to drift toward self-righteousness from the fact that our salvation is all of grace and even our active participation in its reception is both the fruit of grace and although active non-contributory to the salvation itself last sunday in essentials class i was recalling to the group something one of the brothers here told me long ago when i first came to this church um oh actually he was just praying and but you know this was the first place i'd ever been where groups of men got together and prayed together it was such a joy you know to to experience that i'd never ever been in a church where people did that but one of the one of his prayers was that we would not not allow ourselves to get into a state of mind where we are relying on our works that our reliance is on christ uh our you know the the change that we see in our life is a helpful thing for for as a source of assurance as we've talked about but um the problem there are many problems with it but when you start drifting toward this well man i'm doing really well now you know i haven't gotten drunk in 60 days and um you know whatever it might be uh where you're you're you're you're you're like you i've arrived um you'll fall and and you know the issue is you would start putting your reliance on your works and then you stumble and fall and then you go back to having no assurance um it's it's i mean it's the sovereignty of god that it works that way right i mean when you sin your your assurance should be shaken on some in some sense um it should cause you to repent but so so don't go there like don't rely on your performance um in another part of this book uh fergensen fergensen says um the key to the enjoyment of assurance is that our assurance is that he is a great savior and that he is ours um that christ is everything um it's not our assurance is not found and based on our sanctification the difficult so there's a second point that um um enemies of christian assurance the difficulty some christians have in believing that they are freely justified by the father who in his love sent his son for them um when grace no longer reaches back into the very fountain head then deep and suspicious thoughts of god the father develop an assurance is no longer possible fergensen speaks of a he says you they may have been nurtured in a womb of preaching that has portrayed christ as one who by his sacrifice persuades a wrathful father to pardon us in view of what christ is done um as if the only quality that god the father has is wrath that's not how you should view god the father god the father we know through christ and then a third enemy of assurance is um understanding arriving at an understanding the justify justification is both final and complete like you will never be more justified than you are when you were first justified um you know you you you can get yourself into a mindset of well you know i've got a i've got to do something more and something more and something more to preserve my justification um that's not that's not the way it works so did we read that third section let's see all right the infallible this infallible assurance death i'm sorry mine has the dots and the vows and so forth but um this infallible assurance does not so belong to the essence of faith but that a true believer may wait long and conflict with many difficulties before he be a partaker of it yet being enabled by the spirit to know the things which are freely given him of god he may without extraordinary revelation in the right use of means attain their unto and therefore it is the duty of everyone to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure that thereby his heart may be enlarged in peace and joy in the holy spirit in love and thankfulness to god and in strength and cheerfulness and the duties of obedience the proper fruits of this assurance so far is it from inclining men to looseness um so again you you you have a duty and a responsibility as a christian to work through this so that you don't live your whole life sort of floundering on on the issue of whether you're saved toria thank you and and so it's a it's a you know the issue is not to become presumptuous about that right um the the mercies of god are new every morning but that doesn't give you license to live however you wish um and every time i think about that i think about you know the catholic um confessional booth where i grew up in latin america and i i didn't have any clue in the world what a genuine christian looked like but i i there were many catholics whose mindset was well you know i'm gonna go i'm gonna go confess my sins and it's okay you know whatever as long as i go and confess them um so in this in this means of grace this is a this is a for for you to grow in your faith for you to know god better for you to have the kind of assurance that we're talking about you need to be practicing the means of grace you have a responsibility you know i think of some of the analogies that were used here uh in the past and one of them was you know you're not floating down lazy river you know straight to heaven that's that's not the christian life um in this book the whole christ there's a section where um ferguson talks about what john says to us um about the moral characteristics in the life of the believer that encourage assurance one of them is obedience to the commands of god when he quotes john 14 i think it is we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments whoever says i know him and does not keep his commandments as a liar and does not know him um john stresses that genuine assurance will go hand in hand with authentic commandment keeping to him law and love are not antithetical they are in laws faith works by love love expresses itself in obedience the obedience of faith attests the reality of faith so so you have no um right to have any assurance if you're living a life that is just loose you know that that isn't concerned with the glory of god and honoring god and proclaiming god um and you know we do that by the way that we live not just with our mouths genuine faith faith attests itself in righteous living um john teaches us that we are confirmed in the reality of our regeneration by the fruits produced in us by the spirit um assurance is confirmed by not sinning a radical breach with sin is the inevitable concomitant of the life in christ and the evidence that assures us of faith we know that everyone who has been born of god does not keep on sinning and another moral characteristic in the life of the believer that encourages assurance is walking in love whoever loves has been born of god and knows god um so you know these evidences and and you know availing yourself of the means of grace by being here prayer reading your bible listening to the preaching um the lord supper the baptism um services that we have where we hear the testimonies of how people's lives have been radically changed and and they glorify god um in that those are all you know critical things to consider when you're thinking about assurance and the the last thing I wanted to um the the fourth section of the of the confession in this chapter is um oops lost my place true believers may have the assurance of their salvation diverse ways shaken diminished and intermittent as by negligence in preserving of it by falling into some special sin which wounded the conscience and grievous the spirit by some sudden or vehement temptation by gods withdrawing the light of his countenance and suffering even such as fear him to walk in darkness and have no light yet are they never destitute of the seed of god and life of faith that love of christ and the brethren that sincerity of heart and conscience of duty out of which by the operation of the spirit this assurance may in due time be revived and by which in the meantime they are preserved from utter despair um and in the essentials class the last section um speaks of you know the uh well let me turn to it it takes me lots of notes to the the the fight for assurance does the christian have any part in their assurance or lack thereof and so that's what that's what we've been talking about and um the the you know the the uh and i think it's in eastern europe christians are referred to as repenters you know they say they don't say are you a christian are you are you a repenter well um i'm not sure that that's necessarily a good thing but it does speak to the the issue of you know um the necessity of repentance as as being part of your daily life uh in prayer and communion with lord and um you know not just uh holding on to the promises of christ um um confessing your sin before christ and and uh you know he is he's a forgiving uh god who um restored uh even david you know whose assurance was rightly you know terribly shaken um david said let me hear joy and gladness let the bones that you have broken rejoice hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities create in me a clean heart oh god and renew a right spirit within me cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy spirit from me restore me to the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit then i will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you deliver me from blood guiltiness oh god oh god of my salvation and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness um um so keep short accounts with god um you go a few days without praying without devotions and you're going to find yourself rationalizing sin and you know justifying yourself and and you know you just end up in a rack so don't do that um let's pray father in heaven thank you for um just the joy that we can know uh through christ in you and um we just are amazed at your kindness toward us we pray that you'll find our worship acceptable this morning in jesus name amen