Apostasy

, We'll work it out. 1 Timothy 4:1-5. However, the Spirit says expressly that in later time, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons. Through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require absence from foods, that God created to be received with thankfulness by those who believe and know the truth.

For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the Word of God and prayer. The title of this morning's message is simply apostasy. Some will depart from the faith. I'd like to take you back and just tell you a little bit of my testimony.

at 9 years old, I made a profession of faith. I had a live-in babysitter that came to live with our family that led me in a, a prayer, of confession to the Lord. And many times I made professions of faith asking Jesus to forgive me of my sins. I remember one particular day in my junior high school, a social studies class, hearing about the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism.

And as my social studies teacher was teaching us about these, faiths rather passionately, I just remember this warm feeling coming over me. And in my heart, the sense of this is true. This must be true, and I wanted it to be true. There was something in my heart that even though I've made a profession of faith, and even though I knew the gospel, I wanted Hinduism or Buddhism.

It really didn't matter. I wanted them to be true, so I didn't have to believe in the God of the Bible. And there was this warm feeling that came over me at that time. And I remember walking home from school, kicking a can along the street, trying to convince myself that the Christian God did not exist.

I had become An apostate. I had made a profession. I had actually tasted of the gifts of the Spirit from the standpoint that I remember being in church and being happy to be there. I remember being happy to sing the songs and hearing the pastor speak.

I remember reading verses from the Bible and thinking, yes, I like this. This is nice. This is true. And yet, I was suppressing the truth and unrighteousness at the time of my life.

But what is apostasy? There's a number of definitions we could look at. I just want to give you some ideas from some commentators that are basing their definitions on the text of Scripture. Weirsby says apostasy is a willful turning away from the truth of the Christian faith.

MacArthur says, not someone struggling to believe, but one who willfully abandons the biblical faith he had once professed. And Ebert says apostasy denotes not an unintentional fall but a deliberate withdrawal from the face once professed, and that was me. I had professed faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but I was deliberately and intentionally suppressing that faith I had once believed in. I was prone to wonder, as the hymn says, and as we look at this teaching this morning of apostasy, there may be those of you this morning that know of someone, a friend or a family, a mom, an uncle, a brother or sister who once professed but has turned away from Christ, and certainly the things we're going to talk about this morning pertain to those kinds of situations.

But I also want to challenge every one of us in this room to look in upon our own hearts. Because within each of our hearts, even if we are born again, there is still this disease that is attached to us that will not leave us until we're fully redeemed when we get into heaven. That's why the hymn writer can say prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Prone to leave the God I love?

Why would I want to leave this wonderful God? There's something in our hearts, every time I sin, every time I make a choice to not do what God's word says, I'm acting upon this propensity to move away from the God I love. And so even though the vast majority of us in this room may not be in the category of what you might call an apostate, all of us have tendencies to move away from Christ if it were not for His grace. Yet there may be people in this room this morning and statistically almost certainly people in this room.

who are flirting with apostasy and who perhaps have fallen from Christ. So Let him who has ears hear, let the Holy Spirit speak to each one of us this morning, where we sit. I want to speak of six truths from this text about apostasy. And the first truth is this, that apostasy is inevitable.

Verse one, however, Paul says, the Spirit says expressly in no uncertain terms, that in later times, some will depart from the faith. The Spirit prophesized perhaps in the Ephesian church situation, perhaps as Paul's writing this letter, perhaps Paul's referring back to previous prophecies in Acts 20 where he told the Ephesian elders that when he departed, savage wolves would come in among them, not sparing the flock, and even from among themselves people would rise up teaching false doctrines.

We don't know the exact thing that is being spoken of, but we know that the Spirit was continuously saying. to the Ephesian Church that in later times, some would depart from the faith.

They would move away from the gospel, move away from this sound teaching, this faith that had been distributed or, or passed out by the apostles. Notice that the Spirit says in no uncertain terms, that in later times, some will depart from the faith. This is not everyone departing from the faith. This is not necessarily talking about the very last times of the great apostasy, but at the time that Paul is writing and into the 2nd century, and 3rd century, 4th century and throughout church history we've seen that the Spirit's prophecy has come true that some have departed, have moved away, will distanced themselves from the faith.

These are not people who are outside the church. These are people who had come into the church and had made a profession of faith at one point, and in one place or another had decided to turn away from the Lord Jesus Christ. Not necessarily turn away as we'll see later in in very obvious terms, not necessarily a full out rejection of the existence of God or a full on rejection of the deity of Christ or the Trinity. But sometimes a posse happens in very subtle ways, as we'll see a little bit later.

We see examples of this type of thing where even the 12 disciples, Jesus chooses 12 and, and one of them turns out to be an apostate, Judas, who goes out and departs from Christ right after. The upper room situation right after having communion with the Lord Jesus Christ takes off to do His apostasy and to do his deeds of the devil. Paul had taken a companion named Demas. We see in 2 Timothy chapter 4.

Demas was actually a co-labor with the apostle Paul. So now, no doubt discipled by the apostle Paul. No, no doubt he'd gone and witnessed and ministered with the apostle Paul. And yet Paul says, having Demas, having loved this present world has deserted me and gone back to Thessalonica.

This can happen to ministers, people close to Christ. In this very book, we hear of Hymeneus and Alexander, who were delivered unto Satan by Paul. So this is a prophecy that involves people moving away from a faith that they had once possessed, and the Spirit says that it will happen in later times. What does that mean in later times?

We need to realize that in the biblical sense of the term later times, that the scripture writers, the apostles, believed they were in the last days. They weren't. Waiting for the last days. The last days began when Christ came and died and was resurrected.

That's why the writer of the book of Hebrews in chapter 9, verse 26 can say, but now once at the end of the ages, he has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and you can repeat the references where the apostles and the writers of the New Testament believe they're in the last days. Even in the time of Augustine, we see him as he's considering this passage. St. Augustine is around late 300s.

He says, Considering the signs mentioned by the gospel and prophecy which we see happening, would anyone deny that we ought to hope for the coming of the Lord? We seem to be in the last times, and the heretics seem to be a warning of the end of the world. Paul believed that he was near the end. Augustine believed he was near the end.

And biblically, we have every right to believe that we are near the end. The Lord is not slack concerning his promises, as some would consider him, as the, as First Peter says, A day in the mind or 1000 years is like a day and a day is like 1000 years. We don't know. It's a mystery to us the exact timing of Christ's return, but we know that apostasy is something that fills our ages.

It is inevitable. There will always be in the history of the church, those who profess faith, who walk away from that faith right here in, in our church, throughout the history of our church. Back to the time of Pastor Jim Brown, to the time of Pastor Milton, up to today, there have been people that have come to Cornerstone who have professed faith in Christ and have walked away. Statistically speaking, if we can believe the statistics, 90% of all young people, once they graduate from high school, of evangelical churches will walk away from Christ.

9 out of 10 kids will apostatize. That's astounding. And while it grieves our hearts, And it sobers us to think of people walking away from Christ. It should not be shocking because the Spirit has told us.

That some will depart from the faith. A second thing that we can see from this passage about apostasy is apostasy is volitional. It's volitional, it's inevitable, but it's also volitional. What does that mean?

It means apostasy is, is something that happens as an exercise of a person's will. It doesn't just happen to them, they make a choice. And we see this from the grammar in verse one. Some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to teachings.

The, the verb will depart carries with it the idea, it's a middle voice of they will themselves depart from the faith, and they will devote themselves as an act of their will to teachings. Apostasy doesn't just happen to people, they make a choice to suppress the truth and unrighteousness. That's why the writer of Hebrews can give out this warning to a whole group of Christians in chapter 3, verse 12, when he says, beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.

But exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened to the deceitfulness of sin.

There is a departing that takes place, a choice to move away. I had made a profession to believe in Christ. And I got some warm fuzzies after hearing about Hinduism. And there was something in my sinful heart that agreed with the warm fuzzies.

And I suppressed the truth and unrighteousness as an act of my will. Now, while apostasy may be volitional, that doesn't mean it's rational. It doesn't mean that I have rational reasons for suppressing the truth. Apostasy is never rational.

The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. It's the fool that moves away from the true God of the universe. People make choices, and they may concoct reasons, but apostasy is always irrational. A third thing that we can say about apostasy from this passage is that it is diabolical.

Which means it's demonic. The Spirit says expressly in later times, some will apart from the faith. Devoting themselves. To the deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.

This is not apostasy doesn't just happen. Because someone is having doubts and they happen to take a philosophy class and they find out that there's questions. In their Christian theology that they can't find answers to. And so they decide to just trash the faith.

That may be what's going on on the exterior and the visual, but the Holy Spirit is telling us this morning that apostasy involves the demonic. We do not battle against flesh and blood, but against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the high places. The demons have been concocting thought patterns and philosophies ever since the father of lies began it in the garden. When the Father of lies came to Adam and Eve and just suggested suddenly, has God really said his legions have been doing the same thing for thousands of years.

And they're very good at it. They're deceitful. They have well comprised systems. And they engineer those systems into this world.

To deceive many and cause them to fall from the faith. And we would be naive to think that there are not demons that are active in this local church, trying to get people to fall from the true faith in Christ. We would be naive to think that there is not something diabolical and something, there's a spiritual warfare that is going on all the time, to get true Christians to disbelieve the gospel, to get us to forget that we're forgiven, to get us to forget that the wrath has been appeased, to get us to forget that we can say no to sin because we're new in Christ.

There's always something going on behind the scenes.

There's the demonic trying to weasel their philosophies into the hearts of people in our congregation who have not yet embraced Christ. There's the demonic that is active in each of our homes, trying to seduce our children to doctrines of demons through many means. And sometimes not all that subtle. All you have to do is flip on the TV for a short period of time and you can see some severe spiritual warfare going on.

To the music, through the TV to the things that are, we invite into our homes, there is diabolical warfare for the souls of our children. Fourthly, apostasy. Aposta is inevitable, it's volitional, it's diabolical, but we also learned from this passage, and I'll give you a term I just learned last night. Apostasy is a genial.

I learned that term last night by looking it up on Webster's Miriam dictionary. That merely means apostasy. It has to do with agents. There are agents involved.

There is an agency. Demons don't just come and appear. They use agents. They use people.

They use false teachers. Apostasy is agential. It is operated through the means of agency. There are individuals verse 2.

stumbled apart from the faith by devoting themselves to teachings through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared. There are teachers, there are people that co-labor, as it were, with demonic forces, in order to discourage Christians, and to Cause apostasy in professors. These false teachers come. With hypocrisy.

insincerity to peddle their lies, peddle to be legend mongers. These are folks who have bludgeoned their conscience, their conscience has been cauterized to where they don't even really care about wrong, right and wrong anymore. They merely care about getting people to follow them. And their teachings.

culpable falsehood. These people are actually culpable for their teachings. Athanasius, when he was battling the Aryan heresy in the early church, he warned of the clothing of their phrases. And what he meant by that is the Aryans would take Orthodox terms, pack it with Aryan meaning, And then put it in hymns and nice little ditties and get people in the early church to start singing this stuff.

But then they would, but they had totally different meanings for the terms. So you would think that they were talking about Orthodox Christianity, but really, they were denying the deity of Christ. Hypocrisy, warmongers coming in and bringing in falsity. We see the same type of thing that's been going on throughout the ages, but in our age, ever since Vatican II, there's been a program to use terminology that the separated brethren would understand, that is evangelicals, as we pack Vatican II terminology into evangelical words, and we mean something totally different by it.

It's the same thing that goes on with the LDS, the modern LDS. Used to be about 20 years ago, if you asked them what is the gospel, they'd say the doctrines and covenants of the Mormon Church. Now if you ask them what is the gospel, they say it's salvation by grace through faith in the shed blood of Christ, but they mean something totally different by those terms. It's clothing of their phrases.

with orthodoxy. So apostasy, it is inevitable. It's a, it's something that is volitional. We make a choice.

It involves demons. It also involves human agents. But fifthly, apostasy is very subtle. The devil did not come to Adam and Eve and say, bow down and worship me.

That's not the way the devil approached Adam and Eve. It was a subtle twist on the truth. And here, what Paul with the spirit is prophesying through the apostle Paul, and perhaps what was already going on in bud form, and seed form in Ephesus, is they came along, and they were teaching ideas that weren't directly contrary to, the gospel, but they came along and just said, these, they were saying, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods. They're not necessarily denying the lordship of Christ and not necessarily denying that he came in the flesh and was raised from the dead, as we saw in the previous hymn.

They're just saying, what, in order to truly be holy, you need to realize that We're already in the last days. The resurrection's already occurred. This fleshly world is behind us. We know that the angels are not going to get married and in the future, we're not going to have wives and, and husbands.

So we need to live now the way we're going to live in heaven because heaven is now. So don't get married. Why bother yourself with the flesh? We're not going to be killing animals and eating them in heaven, and heaven is now, so don't eat meat.

Don't involve yourself in meat eating. Don't involve yourself in marriage. And very easily you can see how Christians in the Ephesians situation and we see in the first several centuries of the church could have looked at this and said, well, what, this is really a minor doctrine. And even the apostle Paul, when you track how he deals with food and people that are abstaining from foods early on in his ministry, he's somewhat lighter than he is when he gets to this point in his ministry.

Here in the pastoral epistles, he is much more severe than he's ever been about the issue of food and, and the abstinence from meat. And some commentators would argue that it was just a growing problem that was getting worse and worse and worse, and it was very subtle at first, and Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is seeing that this subtle departure is really poison to the gospel. It's a poison that needs to be rooted out. These folks, these teachers would have come in and, and forbid marriage, and they weren't getting married and they were living like John the Baptist, which is perfectly an acceptable option to live like John the Baptist, but they were saying it wasn't just John the Baptist.

All of us should live this way. They can be very impressive. They can seem very godly. when you watch one of those karate movies, you ever watch one of those, Japanese movies and, and, you go up into the, the high hill, and you find the priest, the master who knows all the special moves and stuff.

And, he, he just subsists on rice and he's not married, he's up there all by himself, and that just seems so high and holy. just to be up there by yourself on a cliff, you've got these special gifts and you need to go to the cliff to find this special talent, right? Which I, I like those movies, by the way, I'm not back in the movies, but. That's the idea here behind this heresy is here's these very holy people that are withholding themselves from these pleasures and boy, how can I, how can I get in on this gig and get closer with God.

And as we're going to see in a moment, Paul just, just slams this stuff, this what, this subtle type of departure. It doesn't have to be a bold move away from the Trinity or something like that to be categorized as apostasy. Now let me just give you a couple examples in church history, how this particular heresy and apostasy was flushing itself out, no pun intended. Hippolytus, Hippolytus in 170 AD, died in 236 AD, was dealing with a group called the Inretites, which they were, they had a form of this Gnostic type heresy, and these guys acknowledged some things concerning God and Christ consistently with the church.

They were teaching things where you could have said, well, let's not divide over doctrine. They believe in Jesus, they love Jesus, they love the Lord. And so let's not worry about it. These guys love the Lord, they love God.

However, they abstain from animal food and being water drinkers, forbid to marry, devoting themselves during the remainder of life to habits of asceticism. But persons of this description are viewed more as cynics than Christians in as much as they do not attend to the words spoken against them by the apostle Paul, and he's referring to this very verse. Later in the 4th and 5th century, there's an early church document called the Apostolic Canons that gives us a little picture into what was going on in the 4th and 5th century.

And here's what this document says in the 51st canon.

If any overseer, priest, or deacon abstains from marriage and flesh and wine through abhorrence of them as evil in themselves, Not just, hey, I want to abstain from these things, for me, my personal convictions so that I can exercise self-discipline. If these things are evil. forgetting that all things are very good and that God made man, male and female, but blaspheming and slandering the workmanship of God. Either let him amend or be deposed and cast out of the church.

Likewise, a layman also. So in the 4th and 5th century, if somebody came along and said, we want to abstain from, I want to live a celibate lifestyle and so on and so forth, but that's my personal conviction, and I'm doing this before me and the Lord, no problem. But if you began to go out and try to teach that and try to get everybody else to do that, you'd be excommunicated from the church. Barclay says that in every generation, men have arisen that try to be stricter than God.

And really what this amounts to, and I think what Paul is catching on is he's just talked about in this hymn in the previous chapter verse 16, he's made a big deal about Christ coming in the flesh and and and his full humanity, and these guys aren't directly denying the humanity of Christ, but they're coming along and saying, well, we really think that matter is evil and marriage is not really evil and meets evil, and really what they're doing is they're attacking. The goodness of God.

And they're attacking the material in a roundabout way. They're attacking the material nature of Jesus Christ.

And Paul picks up on this. And so he goes after it. And that leads us to our final point. is that apostasy, while it is inevitable because it's prophesized by the Spirit, apostasy is avertible.

It can be averted, it can be avoided. And that's why Paul is giving these instructions. Why is he? Why else would he give these instructions if not to help people in the church avoid apostasy?

And so he gives the contradiction. He gives the contradicting evidence. The false teachers have been spreading their diabolical lies about marriage and celibacy and not eating meat, and he comes along with the truth of the gospel. The gospel is what helps us avert apostasy.

He says, they're denying, they're teaching these things about marriage and food. That God created to be received with thanksgiving. God created food, particularly, but marriage can be implied here, to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and fully know the truth, the truth synonymous for the gospel. Those who believe and know the gospel can receive these things gratefully, can receive marriage, can receive meat.

And in thankfulness and worship. For everything created by God is good. He's gone back to creation. God's good.

God created stuff. That stuff is good. He pronounced it good in Genesis. And nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving with a Eucharist, with praise to God, for it is made holy or sanctified by the Word of God and prayer.

It's made sanctified. It's already been set aside as good by the Word of God in Genesis and in the Gospel. When Jesus Christ came, he set aside all the dietary regulations of the Old Testament. All the dietary regulations were wiped out with Christ.

As being necessary for today. Now, if people want to abstain from certain things for their own personal reasons, for diet, or, they have a problem with the way the Americans happen to treat chickens. They don't want to eat chicken, things like that. That's not what Paul's talking about.

What he's talking about is people that think that they cannot eat meat and find greater standing with God. That's what Paul's after here. The Word of God has obliterated that the gospel has obliterated that thinking. And we come to him with the Word of God and with prayer every time we have a meal and we worship God, and say, thank you, Lord, for giving me this meat to eat.

Thank you, Lord, for this family around my table. Thank you for marriage. Thanks for all of the many pleasures that you give me through the gospel. And we worship you.

And this is how apostasy is averted. It's averted by going back to what does the Bible say. The devil and the demons are always coming up with their lies that are against the gospel and against the word. What does Jesus do when he's talking to the devil?

He goes back to the word. Paul here goes back to Genesis. He goes back to the gospel to remind us of the truth, and that is the antidote. That's the antidote to apostasy.

And it's the grace that God has given us, the Eucharist that God has given us through His word to keep us from falling. Though, though there may be propensities in our hearts to move away, every one of us has these temptations in our hearts. Yet he gives us the grace of His word. And he calls upon us to be thankful for all of the things that he has given us in the gospel.

Let me just say an aside here, About just prayer during mealtime. This is one of the passages that we see in the Bible that has been the basis for the tradition of saying prayer before meals for 5000 years or longer. To, to come to God before every meal, and say, God, thank you for the food that you have provided on this table. We want to eat and drink to your glory, whether we eat or drink, let us do all of the glory of the Lord.

And you can look, I don't have time to give you these mealtime prayers, but you can look online. And throughout the history of the church, there's been this practice of saying grace before meals and making meal time a time of worship before God. And I believe that that time, that meal time is one of God's means of grace to the family in order to help us equip ourselves and train ourselves and, and help our children avoid the pitfalls of the devil. To have that time at breakfast.

And to have that time at lunch and to have that time at dinner where we can pray and thank God for the food that we've been given and worship Him, making our meal times worship and times for us to rally around the gospel. Just think if, if even just 2 times a day, you were able to spend time with your whole family just worshiping God and investing in eternal things and doing spiritual warfare in your home. Because, the devil is active throughout the whole day, right? Trying to damn your children to an eternity in hell.

And yet we've got these times around the table, where God has called us and said, we can come and eat, and, and, and do all of the glory of God and worship him and remind ourselves of the gospel. One of the things I've just been challenged with this week, this is for me, And I'm, sometimes there's too often where we say our prayer and sit down and have our hamburger and then just flip in a video. On the TV. And I'm not saying that that's necessarily wrong every time and don't want anybody to go home feeling guilty about watching a movie or eating a hamburger, but I'm just asking myself, can I, can I lead, properly lead my family in glorifying and worshiping God during meal time if we're just flipping on the TV and watching the angels while we're having dinner?

I don't know if that can truly be accomplished. And so that's, that's something an application that I'm taking away from this. Now, without God's grace, All of us would apostatize. Without God's grace, there is no one in this room that would not walk away from the Lord.

The devil is strong. Our flesh is strong. The world is strong. We are prone to wonder.

Jesus says, without me, you can do nothing. What hope is there? Well, the hope is, is that the Spirit has come. And he's warned us of these things, and by His grace, he's given us the antidote in the gospel.

In His grace, he's told us to be careful about apostasy, and he calls us to go back to the word, to go back to the truth. And what is the truth? The truth for every bloodb Christian in this room is this, that he who began a good work and you will complete it to the day of Christ Jesus. Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.

Beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you, things that accompany salvation. This coming after a warning passage. Hebrews 10, but we are not those who draw back to perdition, but those who believed in the saving of the soul. Matthew 24:23 is Jesus' warning of the final apostasy.

He says this, then if anyone says to you, look, here is the Christ, or there, do not believe it. For false Christ and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive. So what's our hope, Jesus? False Christ, demonic, diabolical plots to get me to believe falsehood.

To deceive, if possible, Jesus says, even the elect. What does that mean? For those of you in this room that know Christ, It's not possible. It's not possible.

He who began a good work, and you will complete it to the day of Christ Jesus. John 10:27, My sheep hear my voice. The Spirit's been speaking this morning through 1 Timothy 4:15, and his sheep hear his voice this morning. And Jesus says, I know them, and they follow me, and I give life to them, and they shall never perish.

And no one shall snatch them out of my hands. My Father who has given them to me, is greater than all. And no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one.

We are caught between the hands and the grip of the Father and the Son and the unity that is betwixt them. And he says, I will lose not one, but we'll raise it up at the last day. We look at the church through the, through human eyes, and we say, what's going on, Lord? We see many falling away, many running away from the faith.

And the Spirit brings us back to the gospel and says, the gates of hell shall not prevail. They went out from us because they were never of us. God will win. Christ's church will be victorious.

It is guaranteed. So why do we have such warnings as this passage that's given out to the whole church? that him who has ears Here, God has a mysterious purpose for every person. There are some in this room that truly know Christ, but you're doubting, and the Lord, the Spirit comes to you and says, Lord, you say through the Spirit, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

There are those of you in this room that have not truly embraced Christ and you need to know Christ. There are those children in this room who are merely depending upon the faith of their parents, and they need to come to know Christ for themselves. I want to end with this illustration from my favorite book other than the Bible. The Pilgrim's Progress.

In this book, the more I read it, the sweeter it becomes because it gives this realistic view of the Christian life. It's not one of these books where you read it, Christian gets saved, and then he's like running through daisies and roses to heaven. It's reality. He gets born again, and he's walking along these paths and he's slipping over here and he's falling over there and then he's in doubting Castle over here.

You're like, is he going to make it? And then he gets to the river and even at the very end before he dies, he's down in the river doubting and Christ has to pull him out on the other side of the celestial city. And you look at, they're in Doubting Castle with this Christian buddy talking about whether they should kill themselves or not. Things are so bad.

And yet Christ is faithful to keep them plugging and plugging and plugging along. Anyway, there's this scene at the beginning of the book, right after Pilgrim comes to the narrow gate, and he's brought to this house called the interpreter's house, where he's shown a number of different scenes that are meant to encourage him for his journey as he walks towards Christ. And I want to read you one of these scenes. Then I saw in my dream, this is the narrator of the story, if you haven't read it.

that the interpreter took Christian by the hand and led him into a place where it was a fire burning against a wall. And one standing by it, always casting much water upon it to quench it. Yet did the fire burn higher and hotter. Then Christian said, What does this mean?

The interpreter answered, This fire is the work of grace that is wrought in the heart. He that casts water upon it to extinguish and put it out is the devil. But in that thou seest the fire, notwithstanding brain higher and hotter, thou shalt also see the reason for that. So he had him about to the back side of the wall where he saw a man with a vessel of oil in his hand, of which he did also continually cast, but secretly into the fire.

Then said Christian, what does this mean? The interpreter answered, This is Christ, who continually with the oil of His grace maintains the work already begun in the heart, by the means of which, notwithstanding what the devil can do, the souls of his people prove gracious still. And in that thou sawest that the man stood behind the wall to maintain the fire. This is to teach thee that it is hard for the tempted to see how this work of grace is maintained in the soul.

That is an amazing picture of what is going on in the heart of true believers. The devil's doing his darndest with all of his doctrines of demons, and all of his temptations towards apostasy to quench the fire of salvation that was begun by Christ. And behind the scenes all along is Christ with the Holy Spirit, keeping that oil burning, keeping things going. Don't you see it in your own life?

when I, I turned away from Christ in junior high, but I was 14 years old. I go in to watch a sermon with the lady who had been living with us, our live-in babysitter. She was about ready to move out. She says, Do you want to come in and watch TV and watch Chuck Smith on television?

I didn't want to. I said, for her, she's going to be leaving. I'll go in and watch. And Chuck Smith is just preaching the gospel.

And the Holy Spirit got hold of my heart and opened up the blinds to my sin and all my suppression of the truth and unrighteousness. I went into my room and I got on my knees, I'd made professions. I don't know how many times, but I got on my knees and I became born again. of the Holy Spirit.

And that was the beginning of the journey. I'd love to tell you that, from that point on, I had never, no, no other problems. It was roses, the rest of the way from there on. But that's a lie.

It's, I've been walking this path that the Lord's put me on. And there's been times where I've fallen off to the left and fallen off to the right. There's been times in my life where I was sure God was just going to strike me with a lightning bolt. And then God gives me the passage of Scripture says, about the 99 and the one sheep, and he says, it's not the will of the Father that I should lose this sheep.

The Lord gives me that passage that he's going to hold on to me instead of strike me with his wrath. why, why have I persevered in the faith? It isn't because of me. I've done plenty for the Lord to say, forget that guy.

That guy's done enough. But Christ has wrapped me in his love, though I've been prone to wander, prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart. Oh, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.

That's our prayer. Let's pray, Lord, that's our prayer this morning. Lord, that you would comfort, that your spirit would do its work. These passages in your holy scripture, Lord, are mysterious to us, how you will speak out a warning.

To a A church, a group like in the book of Hebrews, And your spirit will go and comfort some and convict others and harden others. And we pray that your spirit would do its work this morning. We pray that you would Lord, those that need to be comforted, that are doubting, Lord, that you would help them say, With the brother in the book of John, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. We pray, Lord, for parents and uncles and family members that are grieving because of family and friends that have walked away from the faith that you would give them comfort.

Lord, there is hope for them to avert destruction. Lord, we pray for any in this room that may not know the Lord Jesus Christ is their Savior, Lord, that you'd pour out your grace upon them, open their eyes, Lord, that they could repent and believe the gospel, and see the foolishness of their ways and the irrationality. of their choices. Lord, we ask that you would do your work this morning in our midst, for your glory's sake, in Christ's name we pray.

Amen.