The Earnest

Saved, Sealed, Secured, Settled.

Introduction

We move to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit for this next segment of the series and explaining that which we believe concerning him and that which the Bible teaches of him.

According to the doctrinal statement of the Church we have this written;

THE HOLY SPIRIT

We believe that the Holy Spirit is a divine Person; equal with God the Father and God the

Son and of the same nature and that he was active in creation. He convicts of sin, of

righteousness, and of judgement and bears witness to and exalts the Person of Christ.

He is the agent in the New birth through which the believer is spiritually baptised when

he believes. The Holy Spirit seals, empowers, guides, teaches, and sanctifies the

believer. We believe that the Holy Spirit enables every believer to serve God through the

ministry of spiritual gifts. However, we believe that the miraculous sign gifts such as

tongues and healings, as recorded in the New Testament, were Apostolic in nature and

have ceased to exist as distinct ministries of individuals. We believe that God can

intervene in human history in a miraculous way should he choose to do so, but we

believe that the occurrence of such interventions today are distinct from the

phenomena of the miraculous sign gifts evident in Apostolic times.

Mark 16:20 Matthew 28:19 Genesis 1:1-3 Luke 1:35 John 14:16-17 John 3:5-

6 John 1:33 John 14:26 Romans 8:14,16,26-27 1 Corinthians 13:8 John 16:8-

11 Hebrews 9:14 1 Corinthians 14:21-22 Ephesians 1:13-14 Hebrews 2:4

This morning we are going to be simply dealing with that first act of the Holy Spirit concerning those who have believed the Gospel and are born again; that is;

“The Holy Spirit Seals”

It is what we refer to as “Assurance”, or often also referred to Theologically as “The Doctrine of The Preservation Of The Saints”.

We are going to be concentrating on the passage of the text read this morning, but having our focus on verse 13 and 14 only.

Ephesians 1:13–14

13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, 14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

We will indeed be speaking of the Holy Spirit and his work, but there simply can be no talk of the Spirit of God that excludes the Gospel. 

Indeed, what we find even in the text before us this morning is a full presentation of the doctrine of salvation that can truly be sup-raised in four simple words that form the subheading of the Sermon Title this morning, each word also becoming the title of each of the four points I will expand on as we go through the message title first;

The Assurance of The Holy Spirit

Saved, Sealed, Secured, Settled.

Perhaps it’s because the Gospel is so simple it is made so unnecessarily complicated by many people who simply cannot accept the simplicity of how a person can KNOW he has eternal life.

Perhaps its because of our understanding of the eternal severity of Hell that makes us all think escaping it must be a complex labyrinth of twists and turns, tunnels and tortures that we need to be instructed in and follow before we can have any assurance whatsoever that heaven is our home when we die. 

Surely, if hell was not such a bad place and if it were not permanent, if it had even the darkest shade of light or the slightest rest of torment, or the heat of the flame could be turned down just a degree and time committed be limited to all the sands of all the beaches in all the world going through an hourglass, even at a year per grain, we might think being saved from it should not be too difficult to do ourselves.

But it seems that knowing of the eternal, conscious torment of damnation, that we begin to think escaping it must be difficult a