The Danger of Deserting Community
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00:00:05.000 | Pastor John, what role does our church family play and our Christian friends
00:00:08.760 | play around us in the continuation of our faith and us preserving to the end?
00:00:14.000 | Tony, just yesterday I was reading in 1 John on my way through the Bible,
00:00:19.500 | and I've often said that eternal security is a community project
00:00:27.500 | rather than something that's individualistic, merely and automatic.
00:00:32.500 | God uses means to keep us eternally for himself.
00:00:37.500 | It's not like a vaccination against hell.
00:00:40.500 | It's more like a committed therapist who unfailingly--this is God unfailingly seeing to it--
00:00:48.500 | that we hold to the health regimen that brings us to everlasting glory.
00:00:53.500 | I totally believe in eternal security.
00:00:57.500 | Jesus said, "I give them eternal life. They will never perish.
00:01:01.500 | No one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father is great.
00:01:05.500 | No one can snatch them out of my Father's hand."
00:01:08.500 | But I've also said that this keeping, this divine keeping,
00:01:15.500 | is a community project in which God uses people.
00:01:20.500 | "Exhort one another every day as long as it is called today
00:01:24.500 | that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin,
00:01:28.500 | because we have come to share in Christ if we hold our original confidence firm to the end."
00:01:36.500 | So our exhorting one another every day is one of the instruments,
00:01:40.500 | one of the means by which God keeps us in Christ to the end of time.
00:01:46.500 | Yesterday in 1 John, here's what I read, and I saw that it's in a totally fresh way.
00:01:52.500 | 1 John 5:16, "If anyone sees his brother committing a sin, not leading to death,
00:02:00.500 | he shall ask, and God will give him life."
00:02:06.500 | So I had never paused to think, "You mean the life that we need to make it to the end,
00:02:13.500 | the eternal life, is given when I see a brother sinning,
00:02:19.500 | and I pause and I ask God, 'Oh God, bring him to repentance,
00:02:24.500 | bring him to the point of confession,'
00:02:27.500 | and God will use that prayer as a means of preserving that person's eternal life."
00:02:36.500 | So there is a kind of sinning that shows God has given a person over to depravity.
00:02:43.500 | John tells us that. There is sinning that is unto death.
00:02:46.500 | It's like Esau's sin in Hebrews 12, 17.
00:02:49.500 | He sought repentance and he couldn't find it, even though he sought it with tears,
00:02:54.500 | which is a fearful prospect that we could ever sin so long God would just give us up.
00:03:00.500 | But 1 John is mainly devoted to helping us see that there is sin that is not unto death.
00:03:08.500 | We write these things to you that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate.
00:03:17.500 | That's 2 John 2, or if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just and will forgive our sins.
00:03:23.500 | So John is so eager to help Christians not despair that if they sin,
00:03:28.500 | they are proving themselves to be unregenerate.
00:03:32.500 | And what I hadn't noticed before in 1 John is that God says one of the means
00:03:39.500 | by which he will preserve us in Christ is when we pray for each other.
00:03:45.500 | If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he'll ask and God will give him life.
00:03:54.500 | So eternal life is sure for the bride of Christ and for those who are called and justified.
00:04:02.500 | But it's not automatic like a vaccination.
00:04:05.500 | It involves exhortations from Hebrews 3 and it involves prayers like this one in 1 John 5, 16.
00:04:14.500 | And then just as I was pondering that, the Lord brought to mind James 5, 20,
00:04:20.500 | where it says, "Let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death."
00:04:31.500 | And I thought, "Okay, how do you bring back a sinner from wandering?"
00:04:36.500 | And you do it at least in those two ways, don't you?
00:04:39.500 | Hebrews 3, exhort him and 1 John 5, 16, pray for him and the Lord will give him life.
00:04:48.500 | So here's the personal impact it had on me.
00:04:51.500 | I'm out here in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee and that's a scary place to be, isn't it?
00:04:57.500 | Because this says, in essence, don't separate yourselves from the very people
00:05:04.500 | who could be the means of your life, be the means of your preservation.
00:05:09.500 | So I just hope that everyone who's listening to this won't leave the fellowship of believers.
00:05:16.500 | They'll keep themselves grafted into believers who can pray for them,
00:05:21.500 | that they won't lose their life, and who will exhort them to hold true to the end,
00:05:27.500 | and that they'll do that for others.
00:05:30.500 | And I hope people will pray for me, that God will reveal to me any sins that I may have in my family
00:05:37.500 | or in relationships that if I spot them, I could repent of them, get forgiveness for them,
00:05:44.500 | and thus be preserved.
00:05:47.500 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:05:50.500 | Email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:05:54.500 | You can visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons,
00:05:58.500 | and other resources from John Piper, all free of charge.
00:06:00.500 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.
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