Salvation Assured                        THE PERILS OF POSSESSIONS
 
        For a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.  Luke 12:15.
 
    Jesus talked on Matthew 19 about the rich man, and presented His disciples with an insurmountable problem.  They thought that a rich man must have been blessed by God in order to be rich, and that any rich man would be sure to make it into the kingdom of heaven.  But in verses 23 to 26, Jesus said to His disciples, "Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.  And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.  When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?"  If a rich man can't make it, who's going to make it?  But "Jesus beheld them"--He looked at them with kindness and patience--"and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."
 
    Who was Jesus talking about?  Only the rich who have the millions?  Or was He talking about anyone who has anything that he will depend upon in place of God?
 
    One time we discussed, with an academy group of young people, who would most likely be the best Christian on campus.  And they said, If you're going to decide whether it's a fellow or a girl, it would most likely be a girl.  Why?  Well, girls need God more than the fellows do.  Then we said, Suppose you take all the girls on campus, who would be the best Christian, the good-looking one or the not-so-good-looking one?  Well, the one that's not so good-looking.  And of all the not-so-good-looking girls, who would be the best Christian, the one with lots of talent and the 4.0 grade point average or the one with little talent and a 2.0 average?  They finally decided, on that basis, that the worst Christian on campus would be the the-best-looking fellow with the T-Bird and the trumpet and the beautiful voice and the expensive wardrobe and the 4.0 average.  Which said, actually, that as long as a person has something he can depend on instead of God, he tends to do just that.
 
    With men it is impossible, but not with God.  How thankful we can be for a God who is doing all He can to open our eyes as to where our real dependence lies, to show us our need of Him, regardless of our external success.

Salvation Assured                        DAILY DEATH TO SELF
 
        If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.  Luke 9:23.
 
    Jesus said, "If any man will come after me, let him deny..."  What?  "himself."  Sometimes we read other things in there.  Let him deny this or that or the other habit or practice or thing.  I used to think that the cross was making myself not do something I really liked to do.  I've heard other people say it too.  "My cross is giving up my dancing.  I can't dance anymore.  I sure wish I could, but that's my cross."  That is not what Jesus is talking about.  No, the cross is to deny self.  Let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.
 
    Surrender is the surrender of ourselves, the giving up of ourselves.  That's why the wrong understanding of surrender often leads to an escape, or substitute for the genuine.  If I am big enough and strong enough and have enough backbone and willpower to give up this or that or the other thing, I can trick myself into thinking that I have surrendered myself.  The truth is that I may have done just the opposite.  If I think I can surrender my smoking, and I succeed in quitting smoking by myself, without the power of God, I may have created the atmosphere in which I will find my own damnation.  Why?  I may live a little longer without lung cancer, but during the time I am living longer, I am going to be ascribing glory and honor and credit to myself for having accomplished and succeeded, and will invariably want merit for my own achievement.  Is this possible?  The truth is that apart from Jesus I can give up my smoking or drinking or dancing only externally, anyway.  Inside I'm still the same.  The cross is not refusing to do something we would like to do.  It's denying ourselves.
 
    This cross must be taken up how often?  Once, at the beginning of my Christian life?  No, daily.  Listen to this: "Genuine conversion is needed, not once in years, but daily.  This conversion brings man into a new relation with God.  Old things, his natural passions and hereditary and cultivated tendencies to wrong, pass away, and he is renewed and sanctified.  But this work must be continual....No renewed heart can be kept in a condition of sweetness without the daily application of the salt of the word.  Divine grace must be received daily, or no man will stay converted."--Ellen G. White in Review and Herald, Sept. 14, 1897.

Salvation Assured                        THE GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH
 
        Fight the good fight of faith.  1 Tim. 6:12.
 
    What is the fight of faith?  Faith is trust.  Whom do you trust?  The one you know.  So if you learn to know someone who is trustworthy, you will have faith.  To know God results in trusting Him.  When you get to know someone who is absolutely trustworthy, you can't help trusting him.  Faith, therefore, is never worked up; it comes as a result of knowing God.  And faith, comes not to those who seek it, but to those who seek it not, who seek only Jesus.  When we seek Jesus we learn to trust Him naturally, and when we learn to t rust Him, this allows Him to do the work in battling the enemy that so many of us have tried with ill success.  The fight of faith is nothing more than the effort required to come, every day, into close contact and personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
    The fight of faith involves your daily devotional life.  The fight involves momentary, hourly, contact with Jesus.  And if we will fight the faith of faith, He has promised that He will fight the fight of sin.  For a long time some of us became so involved in the fight of sin we had no time or energy left for the fight of faith.  Have you ever been in that trap?  One of the reasons that the Christian life is so deplorably hard is because we get involved in the wrong fight, the wrong battle, and we fight the battle where the battle isn't instead if where it is.  The Christian life, and salvation, is summed up in relationship only, if relationship is properly defined and understood.
 
    The promise of salvation through faith in Christ alone is that Christ is our total Saviour.  Faith in Jesus is how we are saved, and our works are the result, never the cause, of our salvation.  So God invited is to fight the right fight.  How long has it been, my friend, since you sat down and exercised your mind in meditation, in grappling with the things of salvation?  Or how long has it been since you watched four hours of TV and never knew where the time went?  Whatever we contemplate, whatever we meditate on, is going to be exactly what we are in the end.  "If the eye is kept fixed upon Christ, the work of the Spirit ceases not until the soul is conformed to His image."--The Desire of Ages, p. 302.

Salvation Assured                        IT'S HARD BUT IT'S EASY
 
        Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  Matt. 11:29.
 
    Another of the things that makes it hard to be saved is admitting that we need to be converted again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day after.  That is a cross to the human heart.  Even the apostle Paul had a struggle with that.  We are told that every day he found inclination at odds with God.  Some people think that this was his inclination to do wrong things.  Not so.  The inclination that Paul found at odds with God was the inclination to be independent of God and to live on his own steam again.  That was his constant struggle.  After all, he had done a pretty good job on his own, and could look back and say that touching matters of the law he was blameless.  He had been a very successful Pharisee.
 
    Through the converting power of God, our inclinations to do wrong things are transformed.  "When we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ, we shall have no relish for sin; for Christ will be working with us."--Ellen G. White, in Review and Herald, March 18, 1890.  But never, as long as life shall last here, will we lose the inclination to be independent of God.  This is the constant struggle.  To admit daily that we need God, to be crucified with Christ, is a painful work for the Christian.  To say that this is easy, to say that coming to Christ and accepting His rest, which is offered as a gift, to say that taking His yoke, which is easy, is easy, is not correct.  It is hard to come to Christ to rest.  It is hard to continue to take His yoke, which is easy.
 
    If only we could get it into our minds that everything valued by the world ends when Jesus comes again!  There will be nothing of it important then, absolutely nothing!  Houses, lands, cars, jobs, education, you name it.  None of it is important when Jesus comes again.  If only we could today think about that moment and say, Lord, help me to know what it means to come unto You and take Your yoke, which is easy.  Easy?  Yes.  Easy in comparison with anything else the world has to offer.  Hard for the stubborn human heart, but easy, considering eternity.  May we today accept Jesus' invitation to come and find rest for our souls.

Salvation Assured                        DON'T MEASURE YOURSELF
 
        But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.  Eph. 4:7.
 
    One of the proofs that we are hopelessly hooked on the do-it-yourself approach is that often when a person begins to seek a relationship with God, he still measures whether or not he has a relationship by his behavior.  Let's say that a person has been a victim of the disease of trying to work his way into heaven, and he discovers that we are saved by faith in Christ alone.  So he begins to turn his attention toward Jesus and fellowship with Him.  The first thing he tends to do is to look at himself the next day to see how much better a life he is living as a result of this relationship. Have you ever done this?
 
    I was talking to someone one day who was having a terrible time trying to live life even in this world, let alone hope for eternal life.  I tried to point him to Jesus, and gave him a few suggestions as to how he could become acquainted with Him, spending time with Him day by day.  And then I said, "Now watch out.  Because the first thing you are going to do if you spend time with God tomorrow is to try to decide whether you're succeeding by how life goes tomorrow.  Life might even go worse tomorrow.  It often does.
 
    Have you ever discovered yourself living a more difficult life when you prayer harder?  Have you ever discovered that when you make a determined effort to come into a closer relationship with Jesus, everything went wrong?  Have you ever in all sincerity surrendered everything you knew to the Lord Jesus, and the next week everything went bad?  Has that ever happened to you?  I had a student say to me, "I've discovered I do better without God."  And another student told me, "I quit being a Christian two weeks ago, and I haven't sinned since."
 
    We should never judge our relationship by our behavior.  That's God's business.  God will judge every man according to his works.  We are to judge no man, and if we are to judge no man, doesn't that include ourselves?  It is possible for the Christian life to become unbearably hard because we constantly measure ourselves by ourselves, and look away from Jesus.  We find it hard to look to Jesus, to accept that "there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

Salvation Assured                        THE DO-IT-YOURSELF NATURE
 
        For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.  Eph. 2:8.
 
    Man is an almost hopeless victim of do-it-yourself.  Do-it-yourself is the label for man's nature with which he is born.  Other labels would be self-centeredness and self-sufficiency.  Even while we are small children this very principle is ingrained in out systems.  I can remember trying to clean out our garage, and my 3-year-old wandering into the garage, wanting to help.  He started to do something, and he was doing it wrong.  I didn't intend for this thing to be placed there, or that to be picked up and put back from where I'd already moved it.  And so I tired to correct him.  What did he say?  "Do it myself, Daddy, do it myself."  Who taught that to him?  Well, I may have helped.  Mother may have helped.  But he was born with that in his system.  One of the most difficult things to tell a teen-ager who is just beginning to feel his wings and is leaving the nest is that he is a dependent creature and must depend upon God.  How can a person satisfy his desire to be independent and self-sufficient and still be dependent upon God?  Here is where we get into an extremely complex situation.  This is the dilemma that makes it so hard to be saved.  It is not only the dilemma of the child or the teen-ager but of everyone.  It's man's nature.
 
    Because we are born with this inherent do-it-yourself nature, and because we find it hard to surrender our independence, we have found that in religion a person often depends upon what he is able to do to earn and to merit his salvation.  This is the basis of all the heathen religions.  We easily become victims of works or of behaviorism as our hope of salvation.  But Ephesians 2:8 and 9 tells us that by grace are we saved, through faith, and that not of ourselves.  The grace is not of ourselves; neither is the faith of ourselves.  Romans 12:3 tells us that faith is a gift, given to every person.  And God has given us the Scriptures, by which faith grows.  So faith is a gift, grace is a gift.  We have to admit, if we are accepting God's Word, that we cannot look to ourselves for any hope of salvation whatsoever.  We can only accept His gifts.

Salvation Assured                        DEVILS DON'T TRUST
 
        Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.  James 2:19.
 
    Some people say you can't take the position that it would be hard to be saved when there are texts such as Acts 16:31 in the Scriptures, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."  Some people take the position that believing is all that's necessary.  They say that if sometime during my life I have come to a decision to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, then I am saved from then on--no problem, nothing to worry about, nothing to be concerned over, from that moment on.
 
    Yet the Bible says that the devils do that much.  They believe.  They believe even a step further than some people believe.  They believe that Jesus is the Son of God.  They would even qualify apparently for John in his First Epistle, when he says that if you believe that Christ is come into the world, and that He is the Son of God, you will be saved (chap. 4:2).  The devils in the days of Christ said, We know who You are.  You are the Holy One of God. (See Mark 1:24.)  That's even a step further than some people go today, right?  So there must be something more than simply believing in a surface understanding of the word.
 
    What about the people who confess with their mouth that Jesus is in their life, and someday will even say, Lord, Lord, we have cast out devils in thy name, and prophesied, and done many wonderful things (see Matt. 7:22).  And they still aren't known by God.  The person who will take Romans 10:9, 10, and say, All you have to do to be saved is believe in the resurrection and confess that Jesus is Lord, still has to consider other scriptures.
 
    Actually, the truth is that the deeper meaning of he word translated "faith" or "belief" is "trust."  The devils believe, but they don't trust.  And that's where the difference lies.  It is possible for me to believe that there is a God and believe many things about Him, just as the devils do, but not trust Him.  How wide can we open the strait and narrow gate?  How much room can we make?  Jesus says, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28).  It is the coming to Him, and continuing to come, that develops the trust in Him.  That is more than just a mental assent. 

Salvation Assured                        HARD TO BE SAVED
 
        Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.  Matt. 7:14.
 
    We have talked about the difficulty of being lost and how that the road downward is not a slippery, wide road with no obstructions.  We noticed that God, through certain mighty agencies, has made it just as hard as possible for a person to be lost.  But lest someone should get the impression that it is easy to be saved, we also need to consider how hard it is to be saved.  Our text today has focused on Jesus' words concerning this.  It is a narrow way, and a straight gate, that leads to life.  How could it possibly be hard to be saved, if God is working so intently for the salvation of each one of us?  How can it be true that only a few are going to find eternal life?
 
    There are several texts that suggests that God is interested in everyone's being saved.  John 3:17: "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."  It includes the whole world.  First Timothy 2:4 reminds us that God would have all men to be saved.  In Acts 2:21 there is a passage quoted from the Old Testament: "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."  And then, in the last book of the Bible, Revelation 22:17, it says that "whosoever will" may come.  God is not in the business of trying to see how many He can keep out of heaven; He is trying to see how many He can get into heaven.
 
    Now that doesn't sound as though it's going to be hard to be saved, unless it is hard to come to the Lord.  If we come, He will give us rest.  If we take His yoke, it's easy.  So is it easy to be saved?  Or is it hard to be saved?  We could swing back and forth for a long time on that question.  I would like to propose that if we come to Jesus, and continue coming to Jesus, it is easy.  What makes it hard to be saved is not coming to Jesus and not continuing to come to Jesus for salvation.  The thing that makes it so difficult and frustrating is that we continually find it hard to keep coming to Jesus.  It is a fight to do this.  But the Bible calls it a good fight, the good fight of faith.

Salvation Assured                        GOD IS ON OUR SIDE
 
        What shall we then say to these things?  If God be for us, who can be against us?  Rom. 8:31.
 
    It is hard to be lost.  God in heaven is not looking down with a spyglass, trying to find every spot or wrinkle that will give Him an excuse to exclude us from heaven.  All the intelligences of heaven are united in the common purpose of trying to make it as easy as possible for us to be saved.  "Jesus has made it as easy as He possibly can for His children."--Ellen G. White, in Review and Herald, April 29, 1890.
 
    He holds out every enticement, every attraction, to direct our attention and affection to Him.  He offers His love, communion with Him, peace, and a home with Him forever for all His children.
 
    And if we ignore all of these, He still follows after us, reminding us through His Word, through His servants, through our own minds, through our loved ones who are His, through conscience, through the troubles of life, through the Holy Spirit, and finally through the greatest mountain of all, Mount Calvary.  He reminds us that He is there, waiting, unwilling to lose any one of us, "not willing that any should perish" (2 Peter 3:9).
 
    Listen, my friends, please don't ever believe the idea that it is hard to be saved and easy to be lost.  If God is for us, who can be against us?  I'm thankful for the giant mountains He has put in my way.  Thankful that God has made every provision for everyone to be saved, eternally saved, to live with Him forever.
 
    The clinching argument is this: If I am going to be lost, I have to fight God, and that's a lot to fight; I have to fight Jesus; and I have to fight the Holy Spirit.  I have to resist the prayers and concerns of all my Christian friends who are praying for me.  I have to fight a a two-thirds majority of the angels in this universe.  If I choose to be saved, all I have against me is the devil and a one-third of angels, who screamed for mercy in the presence of Jesus when He was here, and who Jesus has promised He'll fight for me.  No wonder it is hard to be lost! 
 
    "Love of Christ so freely given, grace of God beyond degree;
    Mercy, higher that the heavens, deeper than the deepest sea."

Salvation Assured                        THE HOLY SPIRIT AND MOUNT CALVARY
 
        And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.  Isa. 30:21.
 
    As we look at the mountains, the barriers, that are in the way of choosing to be lost, another great mountain that looms up is called the Holy Spirit.  (See John 16:8-13.)  When He is come, He will reprove how many? Just the Adventists?  How many?  Reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.  The Holy Spirit is that still small voice.  The Holy Spirit is working while you are sleeping.  The Holy Spirit penetrated the body of a whale and talked to Jonah, who was down in the whale's stomach.  The Holy Spirit can cross all boundaries and all barriers.  The Holy Spirit can go to the darkest jungle, the remotest island.  He is constantly working to draw men to God.
 
    I've seen people who have shaken their fists at God and have said, "Leave me alone."  I've heard of people who have prayed that the Holy Spirit would leave them.  And once in a while that prayer seems to have been answered.  But then I've met people, young people, even 10-year-olds, who are absolutely certain that they have committed the unpardonable sin.
 
    I would like to take the position that the unpardonable sin is very difficult to commit.  This in no way leaves the door open for license and procrastination.  Not if we take a look at the next giant mountain that looms up.  It is a mountain that looks something like a skull.  It's outside the wall of Jerusalem.  It has three crosses, and the center cross has friendly arms that still extend to every person, saying, "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" (Rom. 8:32).
 
    How can you get past Mount Calvary?  Even the heathen have a dim comprehension of the fact that someone must die to take the place of the sinner.  God's Spirit is working to get through to every person.  The story of the cross of Calvary is a giant mountain that pushes its snowcapped peak up into the blue.  God cannot forgive sin, but because of the cross He can forgive sinners.  If a person once gets a glimpse of that, how can he go past that giant hurdle into perdition?