Paul Washer | Hard Truth of Salvation

so let's look at first john chapter 5 verse 11. and the testimony is this that god has given us eternal life and this life is in his son he who has the son has the life he who does not have the son of god does not have the life these things i have written to you who believe in the name of the son of god so that you may know that you have eternal life tonight we're going to talk about salvation and the evidences of salvation now someone might say brother paul are you just out of touch with reality the whole world is coming apart but you see i'm not preaching to the whole world i was asked to preach to a local church tonight although my burden may be wide my burden tonight is you my burden are all the visitors and all the people who have just recently begun to come to this church the students that have come back to study you see we live in a day and age where evangelicalism is very very confused diffused where you can hear all sorts of things to the point where the name evangelical no longer has any meaning at all i have been privileged by the elders of of the church i attend to to teach on two university campuses each week and i it's my joy and many of the young students that will come to those universities many of them come from conservative homes they come from homes where they've been raised in the church and i'm absolutely astounded that when i talk to them and i say are you a christian now these are sincere young people are you a christian they'll say i'm trying to be they'll say i've you know i i my dad gave me a bible and i'm trying to read it and i'm trying to be more faithful and i'm trying to go to church and i'm trying to do this and i was raised in the church and i was baptized and i realized that the great majority of people who are so-called church today and evangelicalism does not they do not even begin to understand the most basic principles of salvation in christ so what i'm going to teach here tonight may be known to many of you but it may not be known to some of you and my desire is for you to have salvation and to know it biblically biblically now in first john we have this text in verse 13 these things i have written to you who believe in the name of the son of god so that you may know that you have eternal life this is an amazing thing whenever you're going to study a book you want to read through it several times and ask yourself why did the author write the book here we can see why he wrote the book that those who are professing faith in christ might know might know that they truly have faith in christ and they truly have eternal life now why was this necessary well many scholars believe that there was a group that later became known as the gnostics who were very very esoteric very very mystical in that they they taught that in many ways god was very very hidden and god's will was secret and only certain people could know it and so they came in to a church that had been apostolically planted and were causing confusion and people were in doubt you know we see these super spiritual people over here doing super spiritual things and we just have the simple gospel could it be that it's like they say we do not have eternal life look what john says in verse 11 and the testimony is this that god has given us eternal life and this life is in his son and again verse 12 he who has the son has the life he who does not have the son of god does not have the life do you see a pattern here our salvation is found in only one place the person and work of jesus christ that's christianity there is only one foundation of our salvation our vicarious substitute our atonement our savior jesus christ the lord and until you understand that until you abandoned all hope in self all hope and obedience all hope in the fulfillment your fulfillment of law or hope in your own spirituality all hope in your own mysticism until you abandon all of it and throw yourself on the one rock that is christ you are not christian just look very quickly with me just look over into philippians chapter 3 and we have here one of the most powerful and beautiful descriptions of genuine christianity verse 3 of chapter 3 of philippians for we are the true circumcision we are the true people of god he is saying now what are they like who worship in the spirit of god and glory in christ jesus and put no confidence in the flesh what is our what is the boast of a religious man what is the boast of a religious man i am good i am righteous i have labored he's making god is deader you owe me he's placed confidence in the flesh but through the work of the spirit through the inerrant scripture the christian has come to realize that they can glory in nothing of self if salvation was 99.99 jesus and .01 us we would all be damned if you were in the full course of your life to take only your finest second of piety and if only that your finest second of self-sacrifice your finest second of worship if you were to take only that and put it on the scale it would only earn you hell we have only boast one boast one boast we do boast but it's one boast it is jesus christ our lord there is none who understands there is none who seeks for god they have all turned aside together they have become useless there is none who does good there is not even one whenever i'm preaching on the streets or witnessing on the streets one of the one of the most frequent answers i hear is that i'm good i'm going to heaven because i'm good compared to hitler if hitler's your standard you may have a boast there but if the thrice holy god is the standard and he is your boast has been removed look what paul says in verse 19. now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law what's paul's purpose what's the law's purpose so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to god it is paul laboring with all his might as the great preacher the great apostle that he is he builds a wall in front of the center here and stops him in his righteousness his self-righteousness and then the sinner turns and paul builds another wall and then the center turns and paul builds another wall and then the center turns and paul builds another wall and then the sinner tries to dig under it and paul pours concrete and now the sinner has only one thing to do look up look up look up look up look up to the mercy of god but herein lies the great problem man's self-righteousness so first of all the greatest evidence that someone is truly christian is they have abandoned all hope in self all hope in their own righteousness if you and jesus got your own thing going you're going in the wrong direction without jesus because this is not about you and jesus this is about the perfect work of jesus christ on behalf of his people in this sense john is saying god has revealed to us who he is his character and god has shown us his will so anyone who says they're a christian and yet they walk in a manner that contradicts what god has revealed in the scriptures about his nature and about his specific will they cannot have assurance of having come to know christ now we need to look at the word walk it's very important here present tense peripateo to walk around it's talking about style of life because some of you may be sitting there right now going well you know sometimes i do not live in conformity i do not walk in conformity to what i know about god or what i know about his will i still sin so what you need to understand here is john is not talking about perfectionism he's talking about a style of life an inclination of life before before i was a believer i didn't care to know about god's nature i didn't care to know about god's will if i somehow discovered that i was doing something against god's nature and god's will it was no big deal to me the moment i became a christian i begin to want to know who is god i begin to want to know from the scriptures what does he require of me and the inclination of my life began to flow in that direction i wanted my life to conform to what the scriptures said about god's attributes and about god's will and when my life did not it left me unsettled it left me with a broken heart it left me mourning repentant and wanting to start again do you see that so let's let's say that you really didn't like me at all i don't know how that would be possible but let's just say that you really didn't like me at all and you wanted to prove to everyone that i wasn't a christian so you hid outside my house with a snapshot camera and one day it's late it's snowing i'm tired i haven't slept hardly that night and i walk out and the worst thing that could possibly happen there's a cat there i don't like cats and i kicked the cat and at that moment you take the picture bam and you publish it everywhere on the internet that's what people do right publish it everywhere on the internet look paul washer's not saved then some of you theologians will debate well he did kick a cat and not a dog so there is possibility [Applause] but that's not an accurate description is it of my life one photograph is not an accurate description of whether or not i'm a christian but if you come to my house and you live for a year and you have a video camera and 24 7 you're there now you're going to be able to see not one moment in my life but my style of life of seeking to be conformed to the nature of god the will of god and mourning and repenting when i fail you're going to see a different person you're going to set me beside an unbeliever and say there's really a difference here not perfection at all still needs to be greatly sanctified but something's happened to this man the inclination of his life has changed and it's obvious now let's go on to the second verse 8 if we say that we have no sin and we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us if we confess our sins he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness if we say that we have not sinned we make him a liar and his word is not in us what is one of the greatest evidences that a person is a christian it's not that they're sinless but that they have a new relationship with sin it's like before sin and the unbeliever is walking arm and arm hand in hand in the in the same direction at conversion there's a change they may lock arms every once in a while but opposing directions it's a struggle it's a fight so one of the greatest evidences is a new relationship with sin but also along with that the result of what happens when we discover that we are in sin when the holy spirit reveals to us that we are in sin how we react to that is one of the great evidences whether or not we're converted the true believer acknowledges the true believer the true christian is the only person in the world that's not self-righteous because he is seeing his sin and not only seeing it he's confessing it now confession doesn't mean you go to bed at night and right before you fall asleep you say lord if i've sinned forgive me that's not confession confession omologeo is to speak the same thing so if you're a believer you will be maybe reading the word or maybe some brother sister in christ may have to confront you but you begin to see your sin the closer you come to christ the more light of scripture you see the more you're going to see the real you let me give you an example let's say that i come home one day and my my my 13 year old daughter runs up to me and says hey dad can i do this can you talk to me can you go here can you take me here and i say look don't you understand i just got out of work and i am so tired why are you you know just give me a moment what's going to happen there's sin isn't it impatience self-centeredness selfishness what is confession it's not if i've sinned it's speaking the same thing all of a sudden through the word of god the spirit of god says you were impatient you hurt your daughter confession is lord i speak the same thing what you say about me at this moment is true i have sinned i was impatient with my daughter do you see forgive me and then go to your daughter oh and for you parents just so you know when you go to your child and say i was impatient with you and they look up at you and say oh don't worry about it dad stop them no no no no forgiveness is release i have sinned against you please forgive me to teach your child that so that your daughter looks at you and goes yes dad you were impatient with me and you sinned seriously but forgive i forgive you and i love you you see speaking the same thing blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted that one of the greatest greatest evidences that you are truly christian that you have been converted that your heart has been regenerated is that you want to be with other believers i remember hearing a guy one time he goes i don't have a problem with christ but man i have problem with the church i don't want to have anything to do with the church i'm sorry that doesn't work now there is a problem in the united states because much of what is called the church is not the church and much of what is called christianity is not christianity and even in the true church there's going to be people who depart from the faith and they're going to be deceivers there's no perfection on this side of glorification but when a person is converted truly converted those types of complexities don't even enter into their mind i can remember making fun of believers and then i can remember being converted and all i wanted to do was go to church and to to go with people after church and to talk to people about christ and to hang out with people who knew christ young person let me let me ask you a question what are your friends like if your friends love the world act of the world and have nothing to do with christ and those are the people you're drawn to you're drawn to them because you're like them do not be deceived now i have friends who are unbelievers and things like that but what i want you to see is the passion of my heart is god's people i want to know god's people be with god's people meet god's people and it's not just natural affection this is also a work of the holy spirit i remember i had been converted and our church was having some kind of citywide campaign and i got the privilege to be able to set up chairs and all kinds of stuff and i remember i'd never experienced anything like this before i'm setting up chairs and everything else and i had to go backstage to get something so i go backstage it's kind dark and i bumped into this guy and i could hear from his accent he was he was african and i didn't know he he was studying at the university and i was studying the university and he was helping out with another church and i bumped into him we were same age and everything we talked about two or three minutes i would have died for him i would have died for him and i was like goodness this is real everybody today is fighting for their people i'm fighting for mine i've been fighting for mine for 35 years spent much of my life working with conrad and bayway to get churches planted all over africa because that's my people i've been working with sue hellmuth chelan and the cubans and the peruvians and everything because that's my people we've been sending people into hell holes into papua and everywhere else in vietnam and cambodia and everything those people who are rotting in a jail cell in north korea that's my people the chinese pastors they're friends of mine that just got out of prison a few weeks ago they're my people i am so knit to them i am knit to them closer than anything that has to do with the flesh anything that's my people and that's the evidence the great evidence that i'm christian that i'm christian

Channel: Heart of Worship Channel

Views: 26,428

Rating: 4.8910675 out of 5

Keywords: christ, jesus, jesus christ, God, bible, scripture, worship, prayers, bible study, bible devotionals, christian, christian growth, heart of worship channel, heart of worship, heart of worship YT channel, john macarthur, john macarthur sermon, grace community church, evangelicals, new testament, old testament, preaching, worshipping, worship hymns, expository preaching, heart cry ministry, Paul washer, paul washer sermon, paul washer on salvation, paul washer 2020, paul washer 1 John

Id: BNN1pNPdkGc

Length: 22min 0sec (1320 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020