Lon Solomon Ministries
Eternal Security
Thank you, choir. Hey, we want you to take a Bible this morning and let's open it together to the very, very end of the New Testament to 1 John chapter 5. If you didn't bring a Bible, we want you to borrow a copy we have for you on the back of the seat, page 864 in our copy, page 864 in our copy, 1 John chapter 5. All right. Now, you know, 30 years ago, when I first arrived here in the Metro DC area, I began attending a solid Bible teaching church right here in Northern Virginia. There was a dear elderly lady there that I'll never forget. She was a widow. She lived in an apartment right near the church building. And this woman was a woman of God like I had just never met before and haven't met many since. She was a prayer warrior. She loved the Lord. She was only about five feet tall. She was like a little pit bull for God. It's kind of how I looked at her. But you know, one Wednesday evening after prayer meeting, I offered to give her a ride back to her apartment so she didn't have to walk by herself. And as we were riding along on the way over, I just very casually said to her, you know, isn't it going to be wonderful when we get to heaven? And she said, well, I sure hope so. And I was like, what do you mean you hope so? And she said, well, I hope that I get to go to heaven. And I was flabbergasted. I mean, I didn't know what to say. And as we talk more, I began to learn this lady had trusted Jesus over 40 years before and had lived the last 40 years of her life without ever knowing for sure whether she was absolutely positively going to heaven or not when she left this world. Friends, that is a tragedy. And that is not the way God wants you and me as followers of Christ to live. As a matter of fact, God wants the exact opposite. God wants us to be certain, to be definite, to be confident, to be convinced, and to be utterly sure about our eternal destiny. Look right here, 1 John chapter 5, where I ask you to turn verse 13. It says, I am writing to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, Jesus, so that you may, what's the next word? No. No, you may know that you have eternal life. I meet people. I'm sure you meet people who say things like, that's the most arrogant thing I've ever heard of. To say, you know for sure you're going to heaven when you die, how arrogant can you be? Well, friends, I'm sorry, but that's not what God says in the Bible. God says the exact opposite in the Bible. God says it's normal, normal for followers of Jesus Christ to know that they're going to heaven, and he wants every single follower of Christ to have this knowledge locked down airtight in their heart, in their soul, because this is a major building block of a life live for God that works, is to know for certain what your eternal destiny is. Now, that's what we want to talk about today. We want to talk in part six of spiritual bootcamp about eternal security. What I want to do is first explain to you what we mean by that term, then show you scripture that supports it, and then we'll ask our most important question. All right. So first of all, what exactly do we mean by eternal security? Well, eternal security is a phrase that is actually never found in the Bible itself, but it's a phrase that summarizes a truth that is found in the Bible. And that truth is that once a person has embraced Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, once a person has placed their trust in the blood of Jesus shed on the cross as the covering and the payment for their sin. And as their entry took it into heaven, then at that point, God immediately grants that person salvation, eternal life, and a guaranteed place in heaven, and their salvation, their eternal life is eternally secure, meaning they can never lose their salvation. They can never lose their place in heaven regardless of what they do or what they don't do here on this earth from that point on. In other words, the Bible teaches that our eternal life and our place in heaven is based not on our human performance, which changes day by day and moment by moment, but rather it is based on what Jesus did for us on the cross, shedding His blood to be our blood covering before God, and that friends never changes at all. Now if you're here and you don't understand exactly what I mean by blood covering that Jesus created on the cross, you need to get last week's message on tape where I explain all that, you can get it right upstairs. And may I also say at this point, I know there are very sincere followers of Jesus Christ who don't agree with what I just told you. I understand that, but I believe the weight of the Scripture is overwhelming on this point, and I want to share some of that with you now. Let's look, let's turn in the Bible to John's Gospel, John chapter 5, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, John chapter 5, it's page 754 if you're using our copy of the Bible, and I want to begin showing you Scripture that supports the position of eternal security. Here we go, John chapter 5 verse 24, Jesus speaking, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth." Now friends, when Jesus said, "I tell you the truth," you can take it to the bank. Here we go. "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes in Him who has sent me," notice the tense of this verb that's coming, "has," present tense, "has," eternal life. The first thing Jesus says here is that when a person believes in Him, that person is immediately granted eternal life by God. Friends eternal life is not something that we as followers of Jesus Christ get after we die. It's not something that we get after we live a certain amount of time and serve God here on this earth faithfully. It's not something we get after we've stayed in purgatory for a while, absolutely not. Eternal life is something that every genuine believer in Jesus Christ has right now here on earth. You and I as followers of Jesus Christ are not going to get any more eternal life in heaven than we have right this minute right here on earth. Heaven is merely the place where people who already have eternal life go when they leave this world. John 3 verse 36, "Whoever believes in the Son," that is Jesus, "has," present tense, eternal life. John chapter 6 verse 47, "I tell you the truth," Jesus said, "the person who believes in Me has," present tense, "eternal life." You say, "Okay, Lord." Well, whole time we got the point, but you're missing the whole issue. That's not the issue. The issue is not whether I get eternal life when I first trust Christ. That's not the issue. The issue is, "Can that situation ever be reversed? Can I ever lose my eternal life? Can I ever forfeit my eternal life? Would God ever take my eternal life away?" That's the issue we're talking about. Wonderful. Let's go on then and talk about that. Let's look at the rest of this verse. John chapter 5 verse 24, "And that person who has eternal life," because they believed in Jesus, "will not be condemned," the verse goes on to say, "will not be judged for their sin, will not be separated from God for all eternity, but rather that person has crossed over from death to eternal life." Now, the key word here is the word "crossed over." And the key point about this word is that it's not present tense at all, it's perfect tense in Greek. So I'm going to give you a little grammar lesson. Everybody ready? Here we go. The perfect tense in Greek is a relatively rare tense, hardly ever used in the New Testament. So when it is used, it's important, it's significant, somebody went out of their way to pick a perfect tense and use it. Now what does the perfect tense mean? Well, the perfect tense means there was a completed action, all done. And then there is a result that goes on, the result of that action that goes on irreversibly, indefinitely, and irrevocably. You understand? It's like a dot on a piece of paper representing that completed action and then a line coming out of that dot going on into infinity representing the result of that action that never ceases and never stops. You go long. We don't care about grammar. What is the point? Okay. Understood. Let me retranslate this verse now that you understand a little bit of Greek grammar. Let me retranslate the verse and give you the RSV translation. That is the revised, salamonic translation of this verse. So listen. Here it is. This is what this verse is really saying. The person who is believed in Jesus has eternal life and will never be condemned. But that person, listen now, here comes perfect tense, has crossed over, is crossed over and always will be crossed over from a state of eternal death to a state of eternal life. When we embrace Jesus Christ as our Savior friends, God irreversibly transfers us from eternal death to eternal life and there is no going back under any circumstances. That's what that verse is telling us. But let me tell you another way. Look at it this way. Hebrews chapter 10 verse 16. Look at this. It says, "And this is the covenant that I will make with them, followers of Jesus Christ, their sins and their lawless deeds, I will remember no more." God's telling us here that when you and I embrace Jesus as our personal Savior, He enters into a covenant agreement with us. He enters into a legal agreement with us, a contract, if you will, a contract that, remember, John 524, is irreversible. And what are the terms of that contract that He enters into? I got nine to give you. You go nine, nine. Here we go. Number one, term number one, they're right here in their verse, their sins and their lawless deeds, I will remember no more, Hebrews 10, 17. Term number two of the contract, their names become inscribed in the Lamb's book of life, Philippians chapter four, Revelation chapter 21, check it out. Term number three of this contract is that there is therefore now no condemnation for those of us who are in Jesus Christ, fabulous verse, Romans chapter eight, verse one. Term number four, God says, "Michael chapter seven, verse 19, I will bury their sins in the depths of the sea." Michael chapter seven, verse 19, "I will bury their sins in the depths of the sea." Term number five is that we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit Himself. First Corinthians chapter six, verse 19, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you as a follower of Jesus Christ whom you have received from God?" Term number six, "We become children of God in a way that the rest of the world is not." Relations four, verse six, "Because we are now God's children," the Bible says, "God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts." Term number seven, "You didn't think I'd go this fast, did you?" Term number seven, "We are now God's elect, and as such we are inseparable from the love of God." Romans chapter eight, verse 33, "And following, who will bring a charge against God's elect the Bible says that's us, and who shall separate us from the love of God? I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present, nor the future, neither height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation." Well that pretty well covers it. We'll be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. Term number eight, "We are branded with God's personal seal of ownership, the indwelling Holy Spirit, for every angel, every demon that devil himself to know who we belong to." Ephesians chapter one, verse 13, "Having believed in Jesus Christ," the Bible says, "You were marked," the word literally means, "you were branded with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit," which is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance that God is going to give us what He said until the day of our final redemption till that takes place. Now this is an incredible piece of information that Ephesians 1 gives us. I don't know about you guys, but I love Old Westerns. John Wayne, oh man, Bonanza Hoss-Cott Wright is the coolest man that has ever lived. I love that man. And you know how about this, rolling, rolling, rolling, keep them doggies, rolling, rawhide, clack, clack, clack. Now some of you people too young to remember that, but us old folks, we remember that show. Now you know enough about Westerns to know that when you wanted to take an animal and brand that animal and put a mark, a message on that animal that that animal was yours today was going to be yours tomorrow and was going to be yours for the rest of the time that animal lived, you wanted an indelible mark on him, what'd you do to him? Well, you heated up this big old poker till it was red hot and then you branded him right into his hide and that mark never came out. Well this is exactly what this verse is telling us that God brands us so that every angel demon in the devil himself knows who we belong to except thank God he doesn't use a hot poker. He uses instead the spirit of God living inside of our lives and the spirit of God, look what it says in this verse, is a deposit, it is a down payment, the spirit of God is a pledge that God is going to redeem us just the way he promised, the indwelling Holy Spirit is like an engagement ring, friends, that God gives to every follower of Christ a solemn pledge that he's going to carry through on every promise he's made and the only difference is God never breaks an engagement. If God gives you an engagement ring, he's going to meet you at the altar, you can take that to the bank. Now when you get engaged to God, whatever God tells you is going to happen is going to happen. Finally number nine, the ninth term in this contract is that we become one of Jesus's personal sheep. I want you to flip over to John chapter 10, couple chapters in the Bible, to what I think is one of the greatest chapters anywhere at all in the scripture and here in John chapter 10 I want you to see what Jesus said, John chapter 10 verse 27, Jesus said my sheep listen to my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give them eternal life where we already saw that but look what he says next and they shall never perish. No one can snatch them out of my hand, they shall never perish. Now friends, the central word for our consideration today in that verse is the word never, the word never, if you could do something that would cause you to lose your salvation, Jesus couldn't say never. If anybody else could do anything to you that would cause you to lose your salvation, Jesus could not say never. If the God reserved the right to ever take your salvation away for any reason at all, Jesus couldn't say never, but Jesus said never. Now if any of those things were true, Jesus could have said, well, most of the time you won't perish, a lot of the time you won't perish, the odds are in your favor that you won't perish but he couldn't say never but that's what he said and by saying never what Jesus is trying to tell us is there is nothing you can do to ever cause your salvation to be lost, there is nothing anybody else can do to ever take it away from you and God has given you his promise that there is no circumstance in the universe for which God will ever revoke your place in heaven, you are eternally secure and I'll tell you, I'm going to go to my grave holding on to the word never, like maybe I'll just have the word never put on my tombstone but nobody will know what it means except you but if you ever visit my tombstone you'll know what I'm telling you, never perish, that's what the Bible says never perish, friends they don't get any better than that, what kind of better news could you be delivered than that? Now I got to tell you, I need this kind of a plan for getting to heaven, I need it because my ability to self destruct is legendary, it is, I'm not lying to you, it is, I can self destruct even when normal people don't self destruct, I just am wired that way and if you gave me a plan of salvation that I could do anything to mess up, I'm here to tell you without a doubt I'd mess it up, I know I would, that's why I'm so glad God made a way for me to get to heaven that I couldn't mess up even if I wanted to mess it up, I need that guess what, so do you, you need one just like that too because if you could mess it up you would too, man what a wonderful thing and if you're here and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way this is what God's offering you through Jesus Christ, a way to get to heaven, a way to have eternal life that you can't mess up, nobody can take away from you and God promises he won't ever revoke, I mean what in the world is keeping you back from getting the greatest deal the universe has ever been offered, huh? I don't know why anybody in their right mind wouldn't grab a deal like this and all you got to do to get it is transfer your trust off of everything you've ever done to get yourself into heaven and put it on what Jesus did for you instead, it's just that simple. So let's summarize, what have we learned today? We've learned that before you as a follower of Jesus Christ can lose eternal life before you can lose your place in heaven the following ten things have to happen. Number one, somebody has to cast the indwelling Holy Spirit out of your life. Number two, somebody has to pull God's engagement ring off your finger and eradicate his brand out of your hide. Number three, somebody has to cancel your adoption papers as a child of God and separate you from the love of God. Number four, somebody has to talk God into remembering your sins and your lawless deeds again after he's already told you he won't. Number five, somebody has to sneak up into heaven and erase your name out of the book of life. Number six, somebody's got to talk God into rewriting Romans 8-1 in the Bible so that it now reads there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Jesus Christ except in the following circumstances. Number eight, somebody has got to scoo- a number seven rather, somebody's got to scuba dive down and dredge your sins up from the depths of the sea and bring them up for God's attention again. Number eight, somebody's got to turn you from a sheep to a goat in the sight of Almighty God, number nine, somebody has to snatch us right out of the hand of Jesus himself and number ten, most important of all, somebody has to make a liar out of Almighty God because God has made you a covenant. God has made you a contract. God has given you a legal agreement. You say, "Where is it?" Friends, it's right here, the B-I-B-L-E. Here is your legal document and what that document says is if you will trust Jesus Christ and what He did for you on the cross, I'm going to give you eternal life and you will never perish. Friend, if you perish, God is a liar and that ain't never going to happen, friend. It ain't never going to happen. You say, "But, Lon, that's great news, but I got some questions. Like, what about a person who claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ and they come to the church on Sunday and then they live like the devil on Monday to Saturday? How does that work for them?" And second of all, does eternal security really mean that what I do in this life, it really doesn't matter. I can live any way I want to. I can be a serial killer and I'm still going to heaven. Is that what that means? And number three, whatever person wants claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ, he turned his back on Jesus, curses him to his face, says he doesn't want anything to do with God. Is he still going to heaven? And what about if I have eternal security like this and I wake up in the morning and I don't feel like I have eternal security, I don't feel like I'm going to heaven, what's wrong with me and when I sin against God and do things I know I shouldn't do, if my sins are buried in the depths of the sea, how come I feel so terrible? Those are all wonderful questions, important, and we're going to answer them next time. We are. No, we are because they're important, but I don't have enough time to answer them all today, but the reason I'm going to take a second week on this is because this is important. If you don't have this locked down, the whole rest of your Christian life is built on a shaky foundation, friend. This is important. We're going to come back to it. But we do have time to answer one question and you know what that question is, we got time to answer. Ready? One, two, three. So what? You got it. So what? Say, Lon, I understand this, but what difference does this really make for my Monday to Saturday life? If I come to church, I go praise God. This is wonderful. What difference does this make when I walk out of my house on Monday morning? Well, friends, I think it makes a huge difference. It changes the way we see everything. You know, my grandmother died a number of years ago and I went to her funeral. Now Jewish people do funerals different than y'all folks do. The Jewish people, the way we do funerals is we go to the graveside first, we have a service and then we all go back to a house for a reception. It's called Sitting Shivland. So we all went back to my aunt and uncle's house. I'm not really excited they are about my decision for Christ. 30 years later, we really don't talk much to each other, but that's where it was and we were all trying to be civil. You understand? Civil to each other because it was my grandmother, you know. So we're there at the house and we're all standing around and I didn't know this at the time, but they had invited over to the house a rabbi to deprogram me. I didn't know that. I found out later. So in this rabbi comes into the house, big old beard, little yomical, little short guy, comes into the house and he finds me and he strikes up this conversation with me. Of course, I'm clueless now. And you know, he says, "Oh," he says, "I understand that Ms. Levine was your grandmother. Yes, she was." And I understand that you were raised right here in Portsmouth, Virginia. Yes, it was. And did you live in Washington, D.C.? Yes, I do. And Oi said, "And I understand that you were Bar Mitzvaht and you went to this college." Yeah, yeah, yeah. And finally he said to me, "And I understand that you're a pastor of a church." And I said, "Well, that's correct." And he said, "A Christian church." I said, "Well, I don't think there are any other kind." And I said, "Yep, that's the kind I'm a pastor of." He said, "And did you believe in Jesus?" And I said, "That's true." As a Jew, I said, "That's true." He said, "How could you do that? How could you betray your people like that? How could you turn your back on your heritage like that? How could you sell out your race like that? His voice is starting to go up. And now nobody's talking at all. Everybody's listening to us." And he goes, "And the memory of your grandmother and your mother, how could you do this to your stomping on the grandmother of your grandmother and your traitor to your race?" And I'm like with my plate and my glass back up against the wall near the kitchen like this. And he says to me, "And I know, I believe," he said, "that you could find in Orthodox Judaism every single thing you say you found in Jesus. I know you can because I have." And I said, "Okay, okay, that's enough. I mean, I don't want to get in a fight with this guy, my uncle's house." So I said, "Okay, that's enough." I said, "Rabbi, I got one question to ask you. One question, that's it. Look me right here in the eyes because my wife had taught me. Look me right here in the eyes and answered this question." So he said, "Okay." I said, "Here's my question for you. If you leave here tonight and you get hit on the road in your car going home and you're out of here like that, can you tell me that?" That absolutely categorically without even the slightest sliver of a doubt, that the moment you leave here, you're going to be in heaven with God, absolutely sure of that. He said, "No, I can't. I appreciate it as honesty." I said, "Well, look right here, Rabbi, because I'm going to tell you that I can say if I were killed tonight, there is absolutely utterly, utterly no doubt, not a sliver of doubt. I know absolutely, utterly, certainly the next breath I take will be on the shores of heaven with Almighty God." I said, "So frankly, Rabbi, I don't think you have anything to offer me. I think I got something to offer you." Well that pretty much was the end of the talk. And that was good. That was okay. But friends, that's exactly the kind of confidence that God wants us entering every day, into every day with, if you go home from church today and some fool hits you and kills you on the beltway, if you go out to lunch today and you choke the death on your shrimp, if you watching the World Series at home today and you get so worked up while rooting for the mess that you have a heart attack and die, if you come home from the store ladies and your husband starts telling you how deeply he cares about you, how much he appreciates you, how you complete him and then he invites you to sit down and to please tell him how your day went and you have a stroke. And you're out of here. God wants you to know we are on any shadow of a doubt. The next breath you take is going to be on the shores of heaven. And let me tell you something friends, when you walk out the door Monday morning, Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning and every morning knowing that, if you're not afraid to die, friend, you're not afraid to live. Just the only way you're not afraid to live is if you know you're not afraid to die. Don't tell me this isn't important Monday to Saturday. This is the basis for building the entire Christian experiences that you know this. And friends, what I want to invite you to do is to just believe God. Why do you gum this thing up? With all your human logic and all your human objections, don't gum this up. This is an incredible truth that God's given us. God wants you to believe him and enjoy it. There's no wonderful piece of news that you may know that you have eternal life. So if you walked in here today and you couldn't say without a doubt, if I get killed today, I'm going right to be with God. I hope you can walk out of here and say, well, now I can say it, because I've heard Jesus say it five different ways from Saturday. And no matter how he says it, it always comes out the same. When I trusted Jesus as my personal Savior, I became eternally secure in my eternal life. And I can't even mess that up. Hey, the news don't get no better than that, folks. That's as good as it gets. So just believe God, would you? Just believe God. He runs heaven, not you. Just believe God and enjoy this wonderful news. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for creating a way for us to get to heaven, that we couldn't mess up if we tried, a way to get to heaven that even with all of the ups and downs of our human performance, that it never changes, because it isn't based on our human performance. It's based upon the covenant, the contract that we have from you and our assurance that you, as the holy God of the universe, never, ever violate a contract. And so God, may that affect our daily lives. May we go out every single morning knowing that we are absolutely destined for heaven if anything happens to us that day, and that there's no reason for us to fear anything. Lord Jesus, change our everyday life. Make us not afraid to live, because we have eternal security and we're not afraid to die. And I commit us to you, Lord, and pray that what we've learned here today would transform our lives. We ask these things, in Jesus' name, Amen. [ Silence ]