Assurance of Salvation: Knowing You're Saved Sermon by Evangelist Michael Kearns Text: John 5:24, "Verily, Verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come unto condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." By the way of introduction I want to say that the Bible declares two things to be the absolute will of God in regards to your salvation: 1. II Peter 3:9 says, "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-word, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." It is God's perfect will for you to be saved. You cannot save yourself but God permits you to excercise you freewill when His Spirit knocks at the door of your heart. You can open the door to Jesus or you can choose to close God out of your life forever. D. L. Moody put it this way, "The elect are the whosever wills and the nonelect are the whosoever won'ts". 2. I John 5:13 says, "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God." God syas if you are a believer in Christ that He wants you to know that you have eternal life! If you are trusting in Christ alone for your salvation, then God says you have eternal life right now and God wills for you to know that as a settled and absolute fact! So the Bible tells us that God wills you to be saved and Gos wants you to know that you are saced once you have believed on the name of Christ. Allow me to say also that you may doubt your salvation for being in one of three areas of life. Notice these three areas: 1. You may doubt your salvation because you are not actually saved. 2. You may doubt your salvation because while you are truly born of God you have backslidden and sin has placed the doubt there. 3. You may doubt your salvation becasue while you know you have trusted in Christ to save you, you are not fully leaning on the promises of God and make God's Word alone your foundation. Something has caused you to trust in some feeling, experience, or deed and take your eyes off the Bible alone as your single source of assurance. and while the devil want you to doubt, you cannot doubt while at the same time trusting in Godis Word. The last point leads us to the main point in our message: To have the absolute assurance of your salvation, you must absolutely trust in Christ and His Word alone. The songwriter put it this way: I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus' name! On Christ the Solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand! It is the Bible alone that is our inspired source of information concerning God and man. Where else do we read the Christ came into this world to suffer, bleed, and die on and old cross for wicked hell=bound sinners? God uses His Word to convict and convince, to comfort and console, to give help and hope, to eoncourage and exhort, to save and to sanctify, and God uses His Word to assure us of our salvation as we trust in His Word and depend on His Word. Do you need assurance? Stand on the promise, "That ye may know that ye have eternal life". Do you want assurance? Then believe in the threefold assurance of Jesus' words in John 5:24: 1. A Past Assurance- "is passed from death unto life" 2. A Present Assurance= "hath everlasting life". 3. A Future Assurance= "Shall not come into condemnation". There is the story of an aged preacher of the Gospel who when undergoing certain sufferings at times would experience great doubt. When talking about the matter to his wife she then drew his attention to John 5:24. He joyfully laughed and found fresh assurance. Later the old preacher’s wife came into the room and found her husband holding his open Bible beneath his bed. His wife asked him, “Whatever are you doing?” He answered, “Satan has been after me again and as he is the prince of darkness, I took it that he would be in the darkest place in the room, which is under the bed, and so I was just showing him John 5:24, and the moment he saw it he ceased to trouble me.” Again, it is God’s Word alone that is the root, source, and foundation for the assurance of our salvation. Thank God for good feelings and good emotions. I can be a very emotional person and God uses our emotions for His glory. But God’s Word and not our feelings is what we trust in! Our feelings are like the tide of the ocean sometimes. They go in and come out. They go up and they go down. But the Bible stands firm and solid always! Listen to this: For feelings come and feelings go, And feelings are deceiving. My warrant is the Word of God- Naught else is worth believing. Though all my soul should feel condemned, For want of some sweet token, There is One greater than my heart, Whose Word cannot be broken. I’ll stand on His unchanging Word, Till soul and body sever, For though all things should pass away His Word shall stand forever. John 5:24 tells us as believers that our past is settled, our present is settled, and that our future is settled. I John 5:13 tells as believers that we can know for sure that we are saved. If you will make Jesus Christ and the Bible alone your foundation for assurance, then you will enjoy that assurance when your feelings are low, your friends have forsaken you, your family doesn’t understand, and it seems that nobody else in the world understands. When you know that you know because the Bible says so then you really rejoice! Jesus said in Luke 10:20, “rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.” How can you rejoice if you have no assurance. But once you know you are saved, then rejoice in the Lord always and evermore because you’re saved, saved, saved! Home