Sunday Service

Good afternoon. We'll start with some psalm requests. If you have a psalm request you'd like to sing this afternoon, we can sing it. Naomi? 30A? 30A. Is there another one? All right, we'll do 58B. And is there another one?

17C. 17C. All right. All right, so we'll do 30A, 58B, and 17C. So just a reminder, too, that the Churro Outreach is this evening at 530, and we're having it at the Erskine ARP Church tonight. John, are you leading that one?

Okay, yeah. And anyway, so that's kind of nice. All right, that's all I have for, really, for announcements today. I'll ask you for to stand for silent prayer and preparation before the call to worship.

Hear the Lord call us to worship. O bless our God, you peoples, and make the voice of his praise to be heard, who keeps our soul among the living and does not allow our feet to be moved. For you, O God, have tested us, and you have refined us as silver is refined.

You have brought us into the net. You laid affliction on our backs. You have caused men to ride over our heads. We went through fire and water, but you brought us out to rich fulfillment. Let's pray. Father, thank you today for the voice that has called us to worship you.

Father, thank you that you have called us to worship you as your people, and we thank you that you have cleansed us and washed us through the blood of your Son, Jesus Christ. Thank you for the forgiveness of sins that we have in his name.

Thank you for the righteousness that we have in his name. And Lord, we gather together today before you with gladness and with hearts that are full of praise. Father, and where there lacking praise, we ask that you would even give us greater praise, that the meditation of Christ, the meditation of your love and mercy that you have revealed to us through Christ, the work of the Holy Spirit would increase our praise for you.

Lord, thank you again for the testing that you bring to us. Father, it's good for us to thank you for the various trials and afflictions that you bring to us. Father, we know that they are only temporal, they are fleeting, and that we have an eternity of where we will enter into your rest as your people.

And so, Father, I pray that you would help us to persevere through those trials and testings, through that refinement that you bring, even through your difficult and tough and hard providences. Providences.

And so, Lord, bless us through them. Again, may we be conformed into the image of Christ, which is absolutely the best thing for us. To be like Jesus is the best thing. And Father, we thank you again for your sovereign work in our lives to make us into the very best.

Father, we pray for your grace to be upon our worship now, and we pray for John, too, as he ministers the word to us. We pray that you would open our hearts to be able to receive from you, that we would be able to understand and to know the work of Christ in a greater way.

Father, please illuminate us, illuminate our hearts through the work of your Spirit now. We commit these things to you in the name of Christ our Lord. Our opening psalm today is Psalm 22h in the book of Psalms we're singing.

Psalm 22h. An interesting line there in verse 25 or 11. It says, within the congregation, great I offer praise you have supplied. So, you know, as we sing the psalms, we're singing the God's word, and that's the praise that he's given to us.

All right, so our Old Testament scripture reading today is taken from the book of Jeremiah. So, we'll be reading from the Old Testament, from Jeremiah chapter 31, beginning in verse 15 through to 40. So, if you wish to turn in your Bibles, you may.

Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 15, reading through to 40. Hear now the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord, a voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.

Thus says the Lord, refrain your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears. For your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope in your future, says the Lord, that your children shall come back to their own border.

I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself, you have chastised me, and I was chastised. Like an untrained bull, restore me, and I will return, for you are the Lord my God. Surely after my turning, I repented, and after I was instructed, I struck myself on the thigh, I was ashamed, yes, even humiliated, because I bore the reproach of my youth.

Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a pleasant child? For though I spoke against him, I earnestly remember him still, therefore my heart yearns for him. I will surely have mercy on him, says the Lord. Set up signposts, make landmarks, set your heart toward the highway, the way in which you went.

Turn back, O virgin Israel, turn back to these cities. How long will you gad about, O you backsliding daughter? For the Lord has created a new thing in the earth. A woman shall encompass a man, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel.

They shall again use this speech in the land of Judah and in its cities, when I bring back their captivity. The Lord bless you, O home of justice and mountain of holiness, and there shall dwell in Judah itself and in all the cities together, farmers and those going out with the flocks.

For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul. After this, I awoke and looked around, and my sleep was sweet to me. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of the beast.

And it shall come to pass that I have watched over them to pluck up, to break down, to throw down, to destroy, and to afflict. So I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord. In those days they shall say no more.

The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge. But everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in that day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke.

Though I was a husband to them, says the Lord, but this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel and write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin.

I will remember no more. Thus says the Lord who gives the sun for a light by day. The ordinances of the moon and the stars for light by night, who disturbs the sea and its ways roar, the Lord of hosts is his name.

If those ordinances depart from before me, says the Lord, then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before me, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath. I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, says the Lord.

Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, that the city shall be built for the Lord from the tower of Hanel to the corner gate. The surveyor's line shall extend straight forward over the hill of Gerab, and they shall turn toward Goath, and the whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes and all the fields as far as the brook Kidron to the corner of the horse gate towards the east shall be holy to the Lord.

It shall not be plucked up or thrown down anymore forever. So thus ends a reading of God's word from Jeremiah chapter 31, and now we're going to turn to Psalm 30a to sing and to worship the Lord with our first congregational selection, Psalm 30a.

Action is Psalm 58b. Let's look to the Lord our God in prayer.

Our gracious Heavenly Father, we come to you with thanksgiving to be your people and to be here gathered in this place to call upon your name. Please, Lord, hear us as we cry unto you. We pray, Lord, that you would look upon us with with your tender mercies and, you know, in a song, one of the songs that we sang there that we sang of you bringing mercies to us by your own hand, and we praise you, O Lord, that you are the one who who does bring us blessings even by a literal hand in the sense that the Lord Jesus Christ became flesh and dwelt among us and he brought blessings to us even as his hands and feet were pierced and he died on the cross in order to take away our sins.

But we thank you also for the way that this also refers to the fact that you personalize your messages to us as your people, that you are a God who knows each one of us and you know what we need and you tailor your answers to our prayers according to who we are and what we need and what is best and good for us.

And so we pray to you with that confidence, Lord, asking you by your own hand to bring to us those blessings that you have promised. We thank you, Lord, for the sure and certain blessing of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ that you do forgive us of our sins when we cry out to you and you promise to do so.

And we praise you that you also have assured us that you will work in us, that you have promised to do this if we call on you and ask you to work in our hearts and to help us to become more like Jesus.

Father, then we pray these prayers as prayers that we are very confident that that you will answer, that you will do what you have spoken. We pray that we would have a desire for these things for they are the important things.

They are very important. We also thank you that you will answer the prayer that your name would be glorified in all the earth. For, Lord, we know that this is what you have intended to do and that it will not fail.

And we desire to see the unfolding of that, Lord, as you fulfill your purposes and bring glory and honor to your great name among all the nations. We pray that the nations would call upon you, Lord, and that they would hear your voice.

We praise you that your kingdom also will indeed be established. And we pray that we might see that work go on and that we might be eager to participate in it. For it is a prayer that you will bring by your own hand.

You have already done so much, as we mentioned before, with Christ coming and doing the work that he did on the cross, but also now as you are going about in gathering saints into your church. And we thank you, Lord, for those that we have opportunity to minister to.

We pray for those who are in attendance at the church this morning here that that are coming because they want to get to know you and they do not know you yet. And we thank you that they are coming and they're hearing and they're listening.

We pray that you would open their hearts, Lord, that they might receive the gospel and trust in the Lord Jesus, that they might receive him and rest upon him for their salvation. We pray for those also that have had opportunities to testify to people in their neighborhood, their home, their school, wherever they might be.

Lord, we pray that you would bless them and that some of these ones would come also to know the Lord that do not know him now. We pray, O Lord, that we might see your blessing in all of the earth, that you would continue to provide for your people.

We thank you for the protection and care that you give us. We thank you, Lord, for the way that you preserve us from so many things that would destroy our lives, both the physically and spiritually. And we pray that you would continue, Lord, to look after us in that way.

We thank you, Lord, that you bring things that will stretch us in order that we might grow and that we might have to depend on you. We pray that we would receive those things with patience and that we would then serve you with eager zeal by your grace, your enabling grace.

Father, please do forgive us for even the times when we do not respond to you as we should and when we do grumble and complain or when we become even resentful. We pray, Father, that you would have mercy on us and that you would lead us in your way.

We praise you that you do lead your people, Lord, and that you have promised the outcome that we will be in glory one day with you. And we pray that we would have our hearts fixed on that glorious hope and that we would look forward to it with zeal.

Oh, Lord, thank you that it is a sure thing. And we pray that we would be preparing ourselves for we are your bride and you have betrothed us to yourself. And so we pray, Lord, that we would undergo those beauty treatments that you have for us as you wash us with the washing of regeneration, the renewing of the Holy Spirit, with the cleansing that comes from your word as we go on in your grace and the new life that you bring forth in us.

Father, help us to encourage one another to live in that new life and not to be beat down or to be discouraged and to walk away from you or to become cold toward you. Oh, Lord, I pray that among the group here, the congregation here, that you would renew our zeal for you, Lord, that you would give us a real hunger and thirst for you, Lord, and that we would burn in our desires to to know you and to honor you.

Oh, Father, transform the whole church across our land that that people would call upon you and the churches, Lord, that the churches would be revived and refreshed. We know, Lord, that there are many churches that have only that now only have one service because so few are interested in worshiping you on the Lord's day more than once.

And, Lord, we we have desired to have this in our congregation. We pray, Lord, that you would bless us as we do and that there would be a greater zeal, Lord, for your people in these things. And, Lord, we know that that this is a time of decline in our in our nation.

And we pray, Lord, as you are merciful that you would restore us again, turn us back to you, oh, Lord, shine your face on us and be gracious to us, Lord, help us to encourage one another in these things.

Perseverance in Grace as a Benefit of Redemption

We pray now that you'd bless us in your word as we spend time in that. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Well, for quite a few weeks now we've been looking at the benefits that we have in this life from our redemption and the ones that we're doing now are the ones that are in addition to the primary benefits, justification, adoption, and sanctification.

Justification, of course, is our complete acceptance as righteous in God's sight that includes both the full pardon of our sins by the work of Jesus, as well as the imputation of his righteousness that's credited to us so that God looks upon us in Christ in that way.

We're accepted through faith in him. And then adoption is where he calls us to or makes us his sons. He declares us to be his sons who have all the rights and privileges of the sons of God, and that includes an eternal inheritance with him.

We're looking at the benefits in this life, but one of the benefits that we have in this life is that we have that inheritance that is bequeathed to us, you know, that we have it now. It's something that we will have forever and ever.

We're going to actually live in his house fully in the days to come. And then sanctification that involves the transformation of our very nature and our life, our walk, and he changes our hearts. And then we're able to initially come to him.

That's the initial sanctification or definitive sanctification. And then after that we have progressive sanctification, which is what the catechism especially focuses on. And that progressive sanctification is where we become more and more like Christ.

We especially talked about that last week with the fourth benefit, where it speaks of the increase of God's grace. But there are these five additional benefits that are mentioned here, additional to those three primary ones, and they're listed in question 36.

And so today we're at the fifth one. So let's confess the answer to this question, question 36. What are the benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification?

The benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification are assurance of God's love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase of grace, and perseverance therein to the end.

So this last of the five benefits, the one that we said last there of course, is perseverance therein to the end. But perseverance in what? Perseverance therein in what? Well that goes back to the phrase that's just before that, that we did last week, the increase of grace.

So it's perseverance in grace until the end, that we will continue in God's grace. Now I need to remind you what grace is. Grace can be, and when it's taken in this particular way, of God's help that he gives to us.

Even though we don't deserve it, it's his gracious help. God's grace is God's help to us as desperate sinners, where he enables us by grace to please him. By grace he does all that needs to be done so that we can be pleasing children to him.

And I do mean all, grace is all encompassing. It includes the forgiveness of sins, it also includes the transformation of our lives. He justifies us through faith, and then he works in our lives by his power so we can please him, so that we can grow in our knowledge of him, and in the fruit of the spirit, and in service to him, so that we can thrive in our faith when it's tried in this world.

It's tried in order to make it stronger, enabling us to stand in temptation, to escape when we're fallen so that we don't stay in the snare of the devil, to keep us going when we're weary, to settle quarrels, to honor him in persecutions, to be faithful when we are sick, and to help us when we face death.

Those are some of the things I mentioned last week that grace enables us to do. We saw that this grace, the grace that does all of this, increases in this life. You don't just get a dose of grace when you were first saved and then you're stuck with only whatever that dose was.

He continues to give us more grace. We're not stuck with what we had at the beginning. But here is an important question. Can we be sure that this grace will continue to come to us? The catechism says that it will, but does the scripture support that?

Because there's a lot of things in the scripture that might be read to the contrary, and there are people that believe that a person can, yes, they'll increase his grace in grace as long as they continue in it, but they might not continue in it.

And then the grace would be cut off and there would be no more for them. So this is what we're going to consider today. Our reading about this is from the first epistle of John, chapter 2, where I think this is brought out very, very clearly because it brings out very clearly the problem of people going away from God that were once in the church and everything.

But it also talks about that God, that we do persevere in grace. It kind of includes all of that together, puts it all together, and shows how they fit together. Because it's not that you have these two passages that, you know, you could read this verse over here and say, well, that seems like it says this, and that one seems like it says that.

Well, this passage has it all together. So let's listen to the word of God. First John, chapter 2, and I'll begin in verse 18. Now, of course, John often refers to his disciples. He was an old man. He refers to them as little children very often.

He says, little children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many Antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us.

For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.

I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth. Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is the Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son.

Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either. He who acknowledges the Son has the Father also. Therefore, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father.

And this is the promise that He has promised us, eternal life. These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you. But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you.

But as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him. And now, little children, abide in Him that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.

If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him. May the Lord bless the reading of His holy word to us that we have now heard as we consider this word.

The Warnings and Reality of Falling Away

So here is the troubling reality described by John that we must face. People do fall from grace in a way. Let's look and see that. John speaks of many who have fallen from grace in verses 18 and 19. He refers particularly to false teachers that he calls antichrists.

Anti and antichrist can mean against Christ or it can mean in place of Christ. Like an antichrist is one that is put in place of Him. And I think here in 1 John that it probably is used in the first way of those who are against Christ.

When John says that their appearance is a sign that it is the last hour, he may be speaking of the end of the Jewish age when the temple would be destroyed. Or he may be speaking of the end that is yet future even to us.

And simply meaning that this we're now in the last period of redemptive history from the time that Christ came. That is called the last hour. We're in the last hour, the last age before Jesus comes. I think probably that I would favor the first interpretation a little bit more that it's because they were just coming up to that time when Jerusalem was going to be destroyed.

That was a huge thing in their lives right then. And many prophecies are in that way. But either way, it's true. And the most prophecies are like that, aren't they? They have a sometimes they're written about a certain time that's right in front of them.

But they obviously have implications that point to the very end. But here's the concerning point. John clearly refers to these false teachers as those who have been part of the Christian fellowship, the Christian church, and have fallen away.

It's no doubt that that's what he says. He describes them in verse 19 as those who have gone out from us. So in some way, they had been a part of the church, and now they have departed. According to verse 22, they were even denying Jesus as the Christ.

What a disturbing thing it is to see that kind of thing. Here were men that had served in the church, men that they had trusted, men that had been duly ordained even to the gospel ministry. How it must have broken the hearts of the congregation to see them denying the Lord who bought them, to use the language of Peter in 2 Peter 2.

How it must have unsettled them to see this. Can you imagine that? You know, you have people that are preaching to you, and that they're teaching you from the word of God, and then they go away. We ourselves have been troubled by such things.

We have been grieved by those who partook with us at the Lord's table, and who sang praises of God with us, and who confessed faith in Jesus Christ, and made vows of allegiance to him, and to the congregation.

Now rejecting it all, and departing from Jesus, and refusing to repent. It's very difficult for the elders when we have to suspend someone from the Lord's supper, and then sometimes even expel them from the church, knowing that they will be condemned if they do not repent, and turn to the Lord.

It is also disturbing when those who once taught the truth fall away. You know, we see sometimes even ones that were great leaders, that were known in the church as men that taught well, and that people benefited from their teaching.

Like Ravi Zacharias a few years ago. We have men in our presbytery that we've had to remove. We had to remove Steve Richardson, and then we had to remove more recently Robert Widdowson. But sometimes we see these ones repent.

Steve Richardson did repent, and I've had some conversation with him, and been able to talk to him, and it's so encouraging. He has a great infirmity now. He's a young man, but he's not really able to do very much at all.

He's very, very infirm, but he's trusting God, and calling on the name of the Lord, and you know, he's been restored in our presbytery. He asked forgiveness, and we granted him forgiveness. What a beautiful thing that is.

But it's disturbing when such ones fall away. It's troubling for the disciples of Jesus in his day, to see apostasy in Judas, their companion that they walked with. To see him betray the Lord with a kiss.

To see the one who ate bread with them, lift up his heel against their own Lord Jesus. How hard it was for the Samaritan converts to see this one Simon Magnus, who made a profession of faith right then and there.

And what a marvelous thing, this man who had been a sorcerer, and now he's calling on the name of the Lord. And then even before the day was out, then or soon thereafter, he was departing from the Lord.

It's very unsettling. How do you know that it will not happen to you? When it happens even to these ones that are leaders and teachers. How do you know that? The scripture warns us against falling away.

It warns about this often. Many of the parables of Jesus warn about this. It talks about what the kingdom of God is like, and it says that there are those seeds that are sown. Some of it falls on the pathway, and that never gets really planted.

But the ones that get planted, there are three types that actually get planted in the ground and begin to grow. And one kind is the one on the stony ground. And it dries up because it has no root. It looks good.

The plant grows, and then it dries up. And the other one is sown in the weeds, and it gets choked out. Again, it looks good. It grows up with these weeds. But then it's completely lost. And then there's the good soil.

In the parable of the dragnet, there are those who are swept up in the gospel net, into the church, into the calling of the church. And then at the last day, they're sorted out. And many are cast away.

In the parable of the ten virgins, you have five that enter in, and five that are excluded. Jesus gives direct warnings like the one in Luke 21, 34. Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come on you unexpectedly.

In Galatians 5, 4, Paul actually tells the Galatians, this church that he had labored in himself, that he had introduced to the gospel, that if they turn to legalism, he says, you have fallen from grace.

You have become estranged from Christ. You who attempt to be justified by the law, you have fallen from grace. And there is the book of Hebrews, which is sometimes called the epistle of warning. It has warnings like the one in Hebrews 3, 12.

It addresses the brethren in the church. I'm not talking to outsiders. Brethren, beware brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief and departing from a living God. But exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

This is not a warning to those who are outside. This is a warning to those who are inside and profess their faith. So also Hebrews 10, 28, where breaking the law of Moses is compared to rejecting Christ.

Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses of how much worse punishment, eternal punishment, in other words, do you suppose will he be thought worthy who has trampled the son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant note by which he was sanctified a common thing and insulted the spirit of grace.

This is a terrifying warning. Now, we could find many other warnings in Peter, in Revelation, and in the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy, Moses lays out whole chapters of these are the blessings for those that continue in the covenant.

And these are the curses that fall upon those who do not. It's not here are the blessings for you who are in the covenant. And here are the curses for those who are outside. It's blessings to those that are in and also blessings to, I mean, curses to those that are in blessings and curses.

So these warnings are terrifying. Hebrews 10, 31 says it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. How can we know that we will not fall from grace with all of these warnings and all of these examples?

What are they for? How can the catechism say that perseverance in grace is something that is one of the benefits that those who are effectually called have? How can it say this when there are clearly people who fall away from grace?

The Holy Spirit's Anointing and the Assurance of Perseverance

The Apostle John is a pastor and he is mindful of the trouble that these who are committing apostasy, the ones that are called Antichrist brings to the souls of believers. So he clearly addresses this matter and he does so with some very comforting words.

So let's look at that now. John shows us with certainty that those who are truly in Christ will not fall away from the faith. They will most certainly persevere in grace. John explains that the departing ones were never truly of us.

That's the key thing. They were of us in one way, in an outward way, as those who are appeared to be true believers, but they were never truly of us when it came to real saving faith, regeneration. You can see this in verse 19, where he says, they went out from us, but they were not of us.

In the original, interestingly, the words from us and the words of us are exactly the same words. So we could reflect that by translating it. They went out of us, but they were not of us. In other words, they were not of us, but they were of us at the same time.

Not of us, but of us. Of us in an outward way, not of us in a genuine saving way. You might say of such a person, he never really was one of us, even though they had all appearance of being so. None of the disciples expected Judas until he came to betray Jesus in the garden with that kiss.

And in case anyone missed the point, John stresses that their departing makes it clear that they were never really saved. He doesn't say that this just might be the case. Maybe they weren't. He says it makes it clear if they actually do go away and they might seem to go away and not actually still have a seat of faith, but the ones that actually depart from the Lord they were never.

It makes it clear that they were not. He uses the phrase of us two more times along with the words with us one time in explaining this in the rest of verse 19. For if they had been of us in a real way, they would have continued with us if they had been, but they went out that it might be made manifest, might be made clear that none of them were of us.

So do you see what John's saying here? He is saying that those who fall away were never really and truly in Christ. They were never really God's people. They had an unbelieving heart the whole time. They said they believed.

They conformed their life in certain ways to God's commandments and various things. But when it came to really receiving and resting upon Christ for their salvation, that they did not do. They were not actually affectionately called because those are affectionately called.

The end of that is that they receive and rest upon Christ alone for their salvation. So true believers are fundamentally different from those who fall away. What a relief it is to see that though they look the same, they are not the same.

As a true believer, you're different because you have an anointing of the Holy Spirit. This is what is different about you from those that end up departing from the faith. You can see John contrasts this with those who departed in verse 20.