Rolling The Dice Series

Series: You Asked For it!

Thesis of Series: Today we are continuing with questions from the survey we passed out a few months back. You had the opportunity to ask questions. Our series is called “You Asked For It!” And you asked us to address these following questions: “Can a Christian Lose their salvation?” “Is a person once saved always saved?” “I understand that once I prayed a salvation prayer I now have a get out of Hell ticket for life no matter what I do.”

These are great questions to ask! I want to start off with stating that the best way to answer questions like these about our salvation is by getting into the Bible and doing our research and our own personal study!

My simple answer to this question is this: “Yes, you can walk away from God and a relationship with Him – Yes, you can be blotted out of the Lambs Book of Life. Now, I wish I could say this teaching was true – I like the idea behind it, “I am always saved no matter what I do – no matter how I live.” But it is not supported Biblically.

Illustration: I once attended a very sad funeral of a murdered woman killed by her husband who stabbed her like 10 times – His mom and dad interrupted the event – he bolted out the door and ran in front of a bus and was killed – he did this in front of their toddler by the way. It was a heart wrenching funeral but the statement made by the minister during the funeral shocked most of us and by his own parents at her funeral here is the just of what they all said using my summary, “Well he was saved and is now in Heaven set free from his demons.” Now, I did not agree with this minsters statement which by the way caused an out roar at this funeral by the parents and family of the murdered woman. As you could imagine! So let me ask you “Once saved always saved – no matter what you do?”

Sermon: Rolling the Dice

Introduction:

Our problem is we want to come up with our own ideas or beliefs when it comes to hard things in life and death so we roll the dice taking the chance that it will all work out. We do this it at funerals with certain people whose destination according to the Bible is very clear. So, we need to not come up with our own ideas and roll the dice of luck to what God says about a life and death situation.

Question: How do we do this? We do this by studying the Bible and learning it’s God given messages about life and death, blessings and cursing, right from wrong, what is good and what is evil. That is why He gave it to us!

Scripture: 2 Timothy 2:15 “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”

If we gamble with our life and salvation, with our relationship to God – we throw it away on luck – the rolling of the dice – on chance – we instead can know what to do and not do – we can have an intimate relationship with Jesus and we can hear and know God’ s voice about what is truth and what is deception.

We can learn from the Bible and have a majority of our questions answered in life from the Bible if we take the time to study it – because it addresses topics like: what is good and what is evil, psychology, sociology, marriage relationships, finances, time management, government structure, morality, economics, relationships, family, end times, prophecy, the importance of The Church, worship services, kids, parenting, youth, adults, seniors, wisdom, revelation, what is sin and what is not sin and a host of other topics like ours today which is the state of “Our salvation.” Salvation is an important topic which deals with our relationship with God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The Bible addresses clearly what this relationship looks like!

Listen please --- We don’t have to roll the dice with our salvation – we don’t have to gamble if we got it right or not we can know - we don’t have to address questions of life with the roll of the dice and hope we get it right. We can know the truth!

But the problem with some is they don’t like God’s answer to their question’s so they choose someone else’s wrong answer or they make up their own and they roll the dice hoping for good luck that it will all work out in the end.