The Key Steps to Becoming a Christian part 6. Theological Issues with Questions

[Music] in this final session together I want to raise theology everybody has a theology theology is what you would think about God but there are theological issues behind all that we've talked about so far - in particular the first is the question of responsibility who is responsible for these four steps happening or who do you blame if they don't happen which is another way of putting it there are three streams of theology through the last 2,000 years of church history and they all have a very different answer to the question of just portent first there are those who believe that God is responsible for all four things and he alone and that he is to blame if they don't happen the second stream says no man is responsible and we must blame human beings when they don't happen and the third which is my own answer is both it's both God and man responsible for people coming into the kingdom well now let me spell those out and mention some of the names of men in history who have been guilty of bringing these different views into the church first of all there are those who believe that God is responsible for everything he chooses us that when he's chosen us he leads us into repentance and faith and that the whole thing is God from start to finish this stream talks about the sovereign will of God that he is Almighty is in charge of everything and therefore when these four things happen he must make them happen and all the responsibilities is now let me give you some of the names of people who have held this view the first I want to mention is Augustine way back in the fourth century you must have heard of center Gaston I think and he has influenced Protestants and Catholics the second man I want to mention is Martin Luther who also have this view the third man is Calvin and the fourth man least known but most responsible for this view is theodore beza who was Calvin successor in Geneva now these four men together have deeply planted the idea into the church and it has been widely accepted by all who call themselves reformed theologians and ultimately bizu was the man who crystallized it funnily enough Martin Luther was a Calvinist and Calvin wasn't that's always confusing bizu is the man responsible for our turn out Calvinism and he propounded the five ideas corresponding to the word tulip tul IP and those five words came out of a Synod of dort in the Netherlands and the Netherlands really accepted this the five things are these tea total depravity that means a man can do nothing about his salvation he is totally depraved he's so far gone that only God can do anything about it second unconditional election that God has chosen us not because of anything at all in us it is entirely his decision to save us and we have no say in it whatever we are unconditionally chosen elected to be his people third L limited atonement that is the belief that Christ died not for everybody he died only for the sins of the elect the chosen because as they say how can someone be punished twice for sins and if Jesus has been punished for the sins of the elect he hasn't been punished for the sins of the end of others I is the most important one irresistible grace and this stream of Christians talks very freely about the grace of God as something that you cannot resist and if grace has touched your life you can do nothing about it but submit to it God is sovereign probably that's the key one of the five and the fifth P perseverance of the saints or in very simple English once saved always saved which is not a phrase in my Bible but these people talk as if it isn't mostly those who accept this stream of teaching that God Himself is responsible for all the salvation of people on the whole churches that believe that practice infant baptism because this for them is a supreme example of how God has chosen someone before they've even thought of him and so they practice infant baptism now that's stream number one and it's a very very common stream you'll encounter it in many questions in England the Church of England is officially monthly Calvinists in its thirty-nine articles it's not my position I cannot teach a God who does all that without any reference to me the second position is the opposite extreme and that salvation is all due to the will of men and what we do is the crucial thing we're trying to answer the question why isn't everybody saved why doesn't everybody go through these four steps and the first answer was well God didn't choose everybody and that's why so many are not saved the second stream would say the only reason why people are not saved is in them they have not decided and puts all the emphasis on human responsibility the men who made this popular was a British man a British monk called Pelagius pela ji-hye us and Pelagius and Augustin were daggers drawn they attacked each other now Pelagius was a British monk who went to live in Rome and was horrified by what he found there Rome was the headquarters of the church it was the center of Christianity in his name and he found such corruption among the other monks there and among the Christian leaders that he was horrified and he said the reason they're in such a state is their own fault you can't blame God for it it's their own fault they are undisciplined they are not in charge in control of themselves and so he developed a system of what I would call do-it-yourself salvation and he would put the whole responsibility on human beings for not being saved very congenial to the British people do-it-yourself salvation it keeps our pride intact we are responsible for ourselves and if you choose to go to church that's your choice if you want to be saved that's your taste and so this was a reaction to Augustine and to this emphasis on the sovereign will of God being the decisive factor so when we ask why isn't everybody saved the first answer was God decided that and he chose some to be saved and some not to me I find that a terrible picture of God as if God is taking names out of a hat as if it's arbitrary and very speculative so then there was this reaction of Pelagius against Augustine and even in their day there were people in the middle mainly in France Augustine was in North Africa Pelagius came from Britain to Rome but the French were halfway between and Augustine very Norton Lee called the French semi Pelagian and by using Pelagius name against them he towered them with the same brush and I think that's very unfortunate so the third stream in which I put myself all that both are responsible God and men together the divine takes the initiative but the human decides to respond it's not totally depraved we can respond to the gospel and we can refuse we can resist God's grace it's not irresistible and I believe it's both simply because both are mentioned in the New Testament we are commanded to repent God commands us us to repent and yet another verse will say he grants us repentance and it is this mixture of Tanks some of which say God gives us these things and some which say we produce them and the answer I believe lies in the fact that both are true and the man who mainly injected this thought into the stream of church life was a Dutchman called Jacob Hammonds own real Dutch name but when he was a student in college he changed his name to a Latin name that was the custom at that time and they each gave themselves a new identity in college and he gave himself the name Armenians and I'm sure that some of you at least have heard of him and of what he stood for and he stood for this cooperation between God and men though there are things we have to do to make salvation possible but there are things that God has done and is doing to make it possible it's a question of cooperation and that's where I basically stand though it's a minority position unless let me try and picture it for you I'm thinking of a man drowning at sea and there are three people seeing him drift out to sea in the water and one of them says there's nothing he can do he's drowned he's actually dead in the water and if he's to be saved someone has to dive in and pull him out and pump him dry that's the Calvinist view that's the view that God is in charge of our salvation he has sent his son to dive in and to pull us out and save us and there is nothing we can do about it we were dead in trespasses and sins we were drowned we were helpless and it needed God to send someone to fish out of the water and virtually give us the kiss of life and bring us back and thus save us at the opposite end is a man like Pelagians and he says the man is still alive but he will drown he's drifting out to sea and what he needs to do is just swim to the shore and so the second man on the shore is shouting to this man drowning pull harder swim harder stretched from the shore come this way but you can do it you can save yourself if you only set your mind to it that's not the truth either I want you to consider a third possibility the man is drowning and he's drifting out to sea but the third man on the shore throws a rope to him and says grab hold of this and I'll pull you to the shore and save you and there has therefore been a cooperation from the moon he has needed to do something he's needed to grab the rope and hold on until he's safely on the shore but nobody could say he saved himself he was saved by the man who threw the rope call the rope the gospel and you've got the third picture and I believe that as it were the gospel is being thrown out to drowning people on and they're told that grab hold of it and be pulled to the shore he doesn't do the pulling he didn't do the saving and a man has been pulled to the shore by grabbing hold of a rope will never say I saved myself he'd always saved the manners of the rope he saved me and all I did was grab the rope and hold on that's my picture of salvation we have been thrown a rope the gospel has given us the chance to be saved and we have grabbed hold of it and hung on until we got safely to the shore now I hope that simple picture has given you the three streams in a very perhaps anova simple way but those are the three main views of salvation that are being preached in the church today that first view is the strongest and yet it's being preached by children of the Protestant Reformation because Luther and Calvin both held it the left wing of the Reformation as it's called the Anabaptists they were of the third view not that first view they were of the cooperative's view that its cooperation between God and men that leads to salvation both together the big name in that third view of göran men cooperating was John Wesley and Charles Wesley and he had a magazine for the early Methodists which was called the Arminian and Wesley and his brother were both minions in theology and they therefore believed that the gospel was offered to people and if they grabbed hold of the gospel and hang on to it they would be pulled safely to the shore or in other words to heaven one day and that is why Wesley was one of the very few evangelists who saw it is vitally important to follow up a decision in their cuisine and he had developed a system called the class meeting and every convert then Wesley brought to the Lord he put into a class meeting to see that he went on George Whitfield was a contemporary evangelist with John Wesley but he was of the first view the Calvinist view and George Whitfield was a great evangelist particularly in America very good at getting people started but he said to Wesley your work will last longer than mine because you followed it up and you keep building people up Charles Wesley wrote a hymn and it goes like this a charge to keep I have a god to glorify a never dying soul to say save and fitted for the sky and it was fitting people for the sky that occupied both the Wesley brothers most of their time and while it probably saved England from the French Revolution historians seem agreed on that nevertheless it was because he didn't just get decisions he took them into a class meeting to see that they grew up and went on with the Lord well I think that's the first thing I wanted to say the word keep is interesting who does the keeping now for the first view that God does adore they all consistently teach one saved always saved and say it's God who keeps people up it's God who causes them to persevere pledges and say no it isn't it's men who persevere but minion minions and Wesley would all say it's a cooperation between men and God and that is why the word keep appears in two ways in the New Testament take the little letter of Jude grossly ignored but it's a wonderful letter and it finish up by saying two things number one keep yourselves in the love of God and two because he is able to keep you from falling keep yourselves in the love of God and he is able to keep you then the two sides God keeps but we have to keep it up both are needed and the result is that a person is kept when Paul came to the end of his ministry and his life he sent two things he is able to keep what I'm committed to him and I have kept the faith and this twofold emphasis goes all the way through the New Testament he can keep me I must keep in his love those will result in perseverance now the idea that he is able to keep his own your need for perseverance is wrong and the idea that all we need is our determination to keep to be kept it's both and it's this double emphasis on the work of God and the work of men in salvation that is so important I don't know if any of you will have any questions about that but I think if you listen carefully to the preaching in your church you'll find out which of those three views is being taught and I believe if you're going to be true to the whole Bible you will teach both that God can keep you and that you need to keep yourself and both go together I believe that to say it's all of God and he'll do it on is an insult to human beings we're made in the image of God we are made capable of resisting him of saying no to him and to me that's probably the crucial one of the five Calvinist beliefs that I find objectionable the irresistibility of grace grace I believe in grace I believe in the initiative initiative of grace I believe that without grace I can't be saved but I also believe I can say no to God's grace and resist it and go on resisting it for the rest of my life well now I've been dealing there with a major theological discussion which people have been discussing for centuries and will go on discovering there is a real revival of Calvinism today particularly in America and a swing back from the over emphasis on human activity to an over emphasis on the divine but if we preach the whole Bible we will find ourselves in a balance between the two now the other big theological issue that is reign oh but little diagram for you one if you can all see this very simple diagram and here's our four divisions our bbr repent believe be baptized and receive their own spirit that's what we've been talking about for the last four Saturday now what I've done is I've shaded this upper half as God's work in the four steps and this bottom half unshaded as men's work now the interesting thing is that in sheer number of texts on these four steps there are only a few texts which say God grants repentance there are many texts that say he commends repentance so which is it does he granted or as he commanded of us well the answer is as far as repentance the emphasis is on us in terms of number of texts when you get to believe there are more texts which say that God gives faith but equally there are a majority that say he commends faith and we are told we must produce him when we get to baptism there is more about what God does in Baptism and less about what we are doing and finally when it comes from receiving the Holy Spirit God is doing most of it and yet we are commanded commanded to receive but there are minority of Texas so there's a kind of growing emphasis on God doing the saving and a declining emphases on man doing it does that make sense to you that's purely the number of texts verses that talk about each of the four steps and so there's a gradual emphasis away from what men does and more no emphasis on what God does as we go through the four steps how does made a bit of sense which brings me to the second major theological issue and this I call the inevitability of the four steps in other words once you've started on the way of salvation is it inevitable that you will finish or could something go wrong to put it another way at what point are we safe from hell and one of the lists of questions I've been given is at what point in the four steps has something happened that can't be undone are we guaranteed a place in heaven or can we lose our salvation that's a huge issue now for the people who believe it's all of God there's no issue they believe the difficult has chosen us he will see it through and will get us into heaven that once you started being saved you will inevitably go on until it's all complete John Bunyan was not of that view and in pilgrims progress he has pilgrim and his friend on the shores of the River Jordan beyond which they can see the celestial city that they've been making form and pilgrims friend can't face the River Jordan and since I'm going to find another way and he turns off to the side and goes down the path along the riverbank and Bunyan writes and saw his saw in my dream that there is a road to heaven even from the gates of heaven and very few people have noticed that in his book it's a profound thought that you can get to the gates of heaven and still find another way off the road that leads you there now why do I believe therefore that you can lose your salvation you can lose what you've got mine you if you'd understood what I've said so far you haven't even got it at all yet but can you lose what you have got and my answer is clearly yes you can and I wish that more Christians were told this and warned that you can get off the way you can turn off the road that leads to heaven now why do I believe them well first because there are 80 passages in the New Testament which warn you not to lose what you've got and warn you about the other possibilities 18 passages by every writer of the New Testament in different places let's just go through some of them if I went serrated behavioral midnight but I'll pick out some to show you what there is first of all on the lips and Jesus the parable of the sower in mark form and then he says that some seed fell on the pathway and never germinated never got started but other seed fell on shallow ground and its sprang up and began to grow now that means a clear statement that the gospel has been received but it couldn't go on because the soul was too shallow others failed to grope for other reasons choked by weeds by the cares of this world gingili and the concerns that people shouldn't have and that can crush the new life of the kingdom only that which fell on good ground which germinates and grows up and becomes thirty sixty and a hundredfold that's ensuring a good harvest that's one thing Jesus saying then the seed which we soon the word of the kingdom isn't all going to grow and he will depend on the kind of soil in people's hearts whether it does and it can even grow for a time and then fail but let's look at something more direct in John 15 where Jesus says abide in me stay in me resigned and Minya he said branches don't have life in them sounds they only have life as they stay in the vine and therefore when we come to Christ we don't have a turtle life in a package and saying I've got eternal life but I have life as I stay in Christ he is the source of eternal life and as I abide in him that life flows into mine and he said if you don't abide in me you will be cut off you will become fruitless and you will be burned in the fire that's as strong as I remember Jesus speaking on this issue cut off burning the fire and that's a branch in the vine that happened to him let's move on to Romans chapter 11 which is the key chapter to the whole letter and there Paul talks about Jews who failed to go on believing they got out of Egypt believing in God and then they faced the wilderness and they stopped believing in God they could have been in the promised land in less than a fortnight but there were 40 years wandering around the desert because they didn't believe that God could get them in and so the New Testament says learn from them they all sent out from Egypt only two of them got into the Promised Land through lack of faith they believed to get out but they didn't believe to get in and he says that's a lesson to believers today not all who start off the journey they get to the end indeed it could only be it could only be a minority that make it to the end it's a hard road it's another road and few stay with it there's a broad road the world wants you to travel and it's easy to find out easy to drift into it and so there comes a very bit of straight talk Paulson's just as the Jews were cut off when they stopped believing you two will be cut off if you do not continue in God's kindness now that's a clear passage but I've never heard it read in church I've never heard it preached on and yet it's in Paul's letter to the room which is supposed to be so popular let's move on 1 Corinthians 15 Paul says I gave you the gospel that I believe a gospel that Jesus died for our sins that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scripture now he says that's what I told you that's what you received that's what you believed and it will save you and get you there if you won't go on believing it if you hold on to the truth I gave you you will get there and the little word if there is all-important if you hold on to the truth it's not a matter of grasping the truth is hanging in there holding on to it and then you know arrived Galatians 4 talks about falling from grace grace saves you yet but it not irresistible you can fall from great and it's no longer part of your life Hebrews chapter 6 where the writer says if you turn away from Christ there is no repentance possible you can't come back vey strong word and Hebrews chapter 10 is even stronger so strong that I want to read it to him very strong wind if we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth no sacrifice for sins is left but only a fearful expectation of judgment they will consume the enemies of God talks about those who trample the son of God underfoot read the passage for yourself it's clear that's Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 I don't even think I'm one or two of the AG I could have picked up 2 Peter 2 is one of the strongest and again I'll read it to you because it's the Word of God if they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome they are worse off at the end and there were in the beginning it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than to have known it and to turn back turn their backs on the sacred commandment that was passed on to them of them the Proverbs are true and dog returns to his vomit and the cell that is washed goes back to how wallowing in the mud strong language again I hope you've heard that preached because it's part of the Word of God then once you've escaped the corruption of the world through knowing the Savior and then find yourself entangled back in it it's like a dog going back to its vomit or Pig going back to the mud these are real possibilities the first letter of John talks about if a brother sins pray for him but he then ends there is a sin that leads to death do not pray for him and so there are some sins you can pray about and that some other sins that you cannot braver finally in the book of Revelation there's the book of life and the letter answers Sardis talks about having your name scrubbed out of the book of life now we say blotted out because we write in ink they wrote on vellum or parchment with a scratchy pen that made a mark on the paper and the ink fell into they mark their way of erasing that was to take a pen knife and scrape that bit of the parchment clean and the literal word there is that your name will not be scraped off the book of life now the book of life is mentioned four times in the Bible old and new Testament and of those four times three I'm talking about the possibility of your name being blotted out or scraped off three-quarters of the text mentioning the book of life our warning that your name can be removed from it and when we get to the day when books are open the damn final judgment we want our name in that book it must still be there and yet Jesus threatens with the removal of that name now the word confident is important here because a number of texts in the New Testament have been quoted as promises and you will make it take one text he who began a good work in you will continue and complete it against that day have you read that thing but I haven't quoted the whole text the first part of the text says Paul is writing I am confident that he who began a good work in you will continue and completed against that day he says I'm confident or taint Hebrew sinks having described that people who fall from Christ can't repent and found their way back the writer said I am confident that this will not happen to you now when Paul the writer of the Hebrew says I am confident he is not saying I am absolutely sure he is saying in your case I am confident this will not happen to you because it didn't happen to many some made shivering of their faith others backs in and so when Paul says I'm confident that in your case this won't happen he will complete what it began and when Hebrew says I am confident in your case that you will not fall away from Christ and deny him publicly there expressing confident of the kind that a teacher in a school parents meeting would say I'm confident your son is going to pass the exam it's not saying I'm certainly it's saying knowing your son I'm confident that he'll make it so these checks and there are many of them which express confidence that someone will make it are based on their knowledge of the person not on the knowledge of God I'm confident in your case you're gonna make it you are traveling so well you were doing so well I'm confident you'll get there so don't turn those confident texts into promises that apply to every Christian they don't and the last thing I want to say is this the four steps are not one of we need to continue repentance and 1 John says if we go on confessing our sins he is righteous and will forgive and we'll go on forgiving our sin and the blood of Christ will go on cleansing us from all unrighteousness and we need to go on believing not just believing once it's a life of faith that saves and says Paul the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God and it's not me who is living now it's Christ who is living living in me now baptism in water is never repeat that does not mean to go on I know that many people would love to go and being baptized they feel so clean and when they get dirty again they wanted to get cleaning in they want to keep on being better and buried it but no that is a one-off and likewise baptism in the spirit is never repeated but being filled with the spirit is so all these things have a continuing effect on the Christian life and if we stay faithful to these four things we're going to make it down I'm a bit near 11 you are I think what it afford to be king of them amen

Channel: David Pawson - Official

Views: 14,301

Rating: 4.7708335 out of 5

Keywords: David Pawson, Becoming a Christian, Key Steps, Theological Issues with Questions

Id: FzOiqG3BK4k

Length: 55min 23sec (3323 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 10 2018