OPEN: While visiting the Oregon Caves National Monument, a couple had hoped to get some rock samples -until they heard the following introduction by a cave tour guide: "I hope you enjoy our trek through the caves. I must ask you not to destroy or take any of the rock formations. Actu-ally, we have had very little trouble with this. I don’t know if it’s because of our visitor’s great love for nature, their desire for the preservation of the caves, or their respect for the $500 fine."
On a sight-seeing trip on Florida’s west coast, another couple were visiting an old mansion. In the exquisitely furnished master bedroom, we were surprised to see signs on the bedspread and curtains reading: "WASH HANDS IMMEDIATELY AFTER TOUCHING."
Afterwards the wife noted: “ We admired the furnishings from a safe distance, but our curiosity was aroused, so, on leaving, I decided to ask the guard if the fabric had been treated with some harmful preserving chemical.”
The guide just grinned: "Oh, no, ma’am,” he said. "There’s nothing on ’em. We just never did have much luck with the ’Do not touch’ signs."
APPLY: Fear – it’s a powerful motivator. It’s often mentioned in Scripture. By my count, the phrase "fear God" (or some variation thereof) is commanded or commended at least 47 times.
“Oh…” someone might say, “that’s just in the Old Testament.”
Well, no. Peter writes that Christians should: "Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, FEAR GOD, honor the king." 1 Peter 2:17
Another might say “when the Bible uses the word ‘fear’ that means ‘respect.’”
Well, no. The word in I Peter for example is “phobeo” a word from which we get our term "phobia." It means to be "terrified."
Phobeo is found again here in Romans 11:20 “…Do not be arrogant, but be afraid.”
Afraid?… Afraid of what?
I. At the church at Rome there was a small problem.
The congregation there was made up of Jewish & Gentile believers and a certain tension existed between the two groups.
The Jewish believers at Rome apparently looked down their noses at the Gentiles, because the Gentiles were poor cousins. Johnny come latelys.
These non-Jews had not been part of God’s 1st covenant with Israel, and hadn’t taken part in the blessing and promises of the Old Testament.
Besides, for generations, there had been dislike and hatred of these outsiders. Gentiles were called "dogs" and contact with these undesirables was avoided whenever possible.
If a Jew were to buy goods from a Gentile, the purchased item was often taken home and washed to clean away the pagan filth before being used.
Jews grew up hating Gentiles, and it was a hard habit to break.
Paul spends the first 4 or 5 chapters of the book of Romans addressing this prejudice on their part.
For their part, the Gentiles apparently weren’t taking all of this sitting down. They seemed to have responded to Jewish prejudice by pointing out:
“Oh yeah??? …if you Jews were so smart why did they reject Jesus to begin with. How could you possibly maintain that God loves you more than us if you crucified his only Son?"
In Chapters 9, 10, and 11 of Romans, Paul focused on countering this attitude on their part. Paul said (in essence) God hadn’t rejected Israel. In fact He loved them.
It’s hard to tell how bad this finger pointing had gotten at Rome but it did merit Paul’s writing:
"Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy, as it is written: ’Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing hymns to your name.’" Romans 15:7-9
II. It’s here, in Chapter 11, that Paul sums up his rebuke of the Gentile believers in Rome.
He sets the record straight:
Yes, the Jews were cut off, because of unbelief.
AND yes, you Gentiles have been grafted in – in their place.
BUT don’t be so smug about this, you can be cut off too.
Or as Paul writes in Romans 11:19-21
“You will say then, ’Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.’ Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either."
III. There are people who have problems with this apparent teaching from Romans.
They complain that it is unbiblical for a person to fear losing their salvation. They maintain that “once a person is saved they will always be saved."
Illus: One author maintained: “God’s elect are unconditionally secure in Christ. It is impossible for a true believer to ever become an unbeliever, a saved sinner to ever become unsaved, a redeemed person to ever become unredeemed, or one of God’s elect to ever become non-elect. To teach otherwise, to teach the nonsense of ‘conditional grace’ and ‘conditional salvation’ is to teach salvation by works.”
ILLUS: Another writer (addressing the issue of people who have "given their lives to Jesus," gone to church for many years, but then left never to return) explained: "We have all seen it happen, and I would like to say that they have probably never been saved. If they left the faith and stayed away, then they were never saved. They didn’t lose their salvation, they simply never had it to begin with. The reason they fell away and stayed away is because they were never saved."
This type of teaching can be so intense that it causes some of these believers to question the salvation of others who might "doubt" their salvation once in a while.
ILLUS: I had a friend named Gary who was once visited by preacher doing “door to door” evangelism. This preacher questioned Gary about whether he was saved.
Gary responded that he’d been baptized just a year or so before.
Then the preacher asked if Gary ever doubted his salvation.
Gary had to admit – yes, he had.
The preacher then tried to convince Gary that – if he doubted his salvation – he wasn’t saved, and tried to lead Gary in a "prayer for salvation" on the spot.
IV. Well, now I have a problem. These authors and that preacher tell me I can’t be cut off from my salvation… but Romans says I can.
Are these people totally ignoring Scripture or something?
No. It’s just that the Scriptures they use to support the position (that people can’t walk away from their salvation), don’t totally say what these people believe they do.
One such scripture is John 10:27-29
"My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand."
What does that mean?
It means that once I’m saved, nobody can take my salvation away from me. You can steal my car, burn my home, kill my family, but you can’t take my salvation away from me. No army known to man, to terrorist with explosives can forcibly remove my salvation.
However, that doesn’t mean I can’t get up and walk away from God
The Bible tells me in Romans 11:22 "Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, PROVIDED THAT YOU CONTINUE in his kindness. otherwise, you also will be cut off."
In 1 Corinthians 15:2 we’re told: "By this gospel you are saved, IF YOU HOLD FIRMLY to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain."
And Jesus declared in John 15:6 "IF ANYONE DOES NOT REMAIN IN ME, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned."
As Hebrews warns: “How shall we escape IF WE NEGLECT so great a salvation?”
V. But those who believe in "once saved, always saved" do have a point.
How do I avoid living in abject fear all my life – afraid of losing my salvation when I’m not looking. Well let’s go over a few points:
1. You can’t lose your salvation. It’s not like misplacing your glasses or your car keys. You don’t someday wakeup and realize you’ve forgotten where you put it.
2. And no one can take your salvation away from you. Jesus won’t let that happen.
3. Salvation is something you have to DELIBERATELY WALK AWAY FROM.
ILLUS: A good way of explaining this is the story I once read in Reader’s Digest: A man was explaining that “during the Mortgage Closing on our summer house, my wife and I were asked to sign documents containing small print.
When I asked if I should read it, my attorney replied, "Legally, you should, but here’s the bottom line: If you pay your installments on time, there is nothing in there that could harm you. Should you stop paying, however, there is definitely nothing in the small print that can save you."
ILLUS: I own my own home now. I’m making payments on it – but it’s mine. NOBODY CAN TAKE IT AWAY FROM ME. Even if I die, we have mortgage insurance that will pay off the mortgage for my family. I am not afraid of losing my home, because I intend to be faithful in making my payments every month.
Now next door to me is a derelict home. The owners walked away from it. They didn’t pay their taxes, they didn’t pay their mortgage payments. THEY HAVE NOT BEEN FAITHFUL to their home in keeping it up and meeting their responsibilities. And now it is condemned.
That’s what Paul said about the Jews. They walked away from God’s gift for them. Do you remember WHY Paul said the Jews were cut off? (wait for the audience to find it…)
Romans 11:20 "(the Jews) were broken off BECAUSE OF UNBELIEF, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid."
NOTICE: They weren’t cut off because they slipped, and sinned. It wasn’t because they said a bad word or did a bad thing – NO!!! THEY REFUSED TO BELIEVE. That’s why they were cut off.
They didn’t want what God had to offer, so they proudly turned their back on all that God wanted to give them. So they were cut off.
But now, here’s the cool part: Look at Romans 11:23
"And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again."
While the bad news is that you can walk away from your salvation. The GOOD NEWS is this: If you return to Him, God will open the house back up for you. He’ll take the shutters off the doors and the bars off the windows and fix your life back up again – even if you’ve wandered so far away from Him you don’t think you’ll ever get back.
ILLUS: I once knew a woman who was always worried about her salvation. She had been a Christian as a teenager, but then she fell into a life of sinfulness.
Later, she repented and came back to Jesus, and back to the church. But she felt she had sinned so badly… well, God would never forgive her – never fully accept her back.
What was I to tell her? I hadn’t been preaching that long and I’d never run into that kind of emotional response from the people I’d known before. How could I comfort her and help her in her fear.
THEN I remembered a story Jesus told:
"There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ’Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.
"Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
"When he came to his senses, he said, ’How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’
So he got up and went to his father. "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. "The son said to him, ’Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. ’ "But the father said to his servants, ’Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate." (Luke 15:11-24)
I believe that Jesus told this story, in part, to deal with this very issue. Notice - a son walked away. The father did not pursue, but waited for the day his child would return. And when the son repented, the Father RAN TO HIM. The father didn’t even wait for the son to make it all the way back in his humiliation.
There is bad news. We can be cut off from God if we insist on living apart from him in a foreign land of selfishness and pride. But the GOOD NEWS is that God is able and MORE THAN WILLING to graft us back in again when we repent.
ADDENDUM:
Galatians 5:4 "You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you HAVE FALLEN AWAY FROM GRACE."
Heb 3:12-13 "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be HARDENED BY SIN’S deceitfulness."
1Corinthians 10:12 "So, if you think you are standing firm, BE CAREFUL THAT YOU DON’T FALL!"
1Timothy 4:1 "The Spirit clearly says that in later times SOME WILL ABANDON THE FAITH and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons."
1Timothy 5:15 "Some have in fact ALREADY TURNED AWAY to follow Satan."
2Timothy 4:10 "…for Demas, BECAUSE HE LOVED THIS WORLD, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia."
2 Peter 2:21 "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 than they were at the beginning."
2 Peter 3:17 "Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and FALL FROM YOUR SECURE POSITION."
Revelation 3:5 "He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I WILL NEVER BLOT OUT HIS NAME from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels."
Revelation 3:14-16 "To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm-- neither hot nor cold-- I AM ABOUT TO SPIT YOU OUT of my mouth."
SERMONS IN THE “RIGHT OR WRONG?” SERIES
Once saved, Always saved? – Romans 11:1-11:24
Do All Roads Lead To Heaven? - Acts 17:16-17:34
Do I Have To Get Baptized? - Acts 2:22-2:41
Do I Need To Speak In Tongues - Acts 2:1-2:21
