Pastor Steve Perez | October 3, 2023
The Fountain Apostolic Church
Learn more at tfachurch.com/plus
What is it? The belief that once saved always saved. That no matter how I live that the grace of God is still with me.
What does it mean? This means that once you repent the first time there is no need to continually repent. Your sin has been forgiven from your date of being saved to the time you die or the rapture.
Scripture used to defend this belief:
Grace means unmerited favor given from God. We could never earn our way into heaven.
The salvation that Christ brought to you was given freely and you can never lose it. Though this sounds good and exciting there has to be a deeper expectation from us to the Lord.
Why be prepared for the rapture?
Why pray without ceasing?
Why be in church on a consistent basis?
This doctrine could not be true. We must look to the Word of God for the truth. First of all, salvation was not given freely, it cost Christ his blood! Secondly, we must consider the commandment given by Paul to the church of Philippi:
Consider this - continue to work out your salvation…
This means to complete it! It is not finished with out our efforts.
Works alone do not save us but there must be an action to what we say we believe. So, this lets us know that our salvation needs to be worked out thus meaning salvation is progressive until the day we rapture away or die in the Lord. Jude felt compelled to write his epistle not to the lost or the world but to the body of Christ as a contender of faith. He felt that the church would contend with such false doctrines as this.
Jude wanted to look back into history to see Israel and relate Israel to our life. We understand we are spiritual Israelites, what happened in the natural to Israel is an inference to us in the spiritual. So, to understand we must go back to the Exodus of Israel out of the land of Egypt. Let us reflect on the similarities of our lives and that of the Israelites.
He saw their afflictions:
He saw the need and met that need by sending Moses to the rescue. He gave them a promise of land that they would not need to work hard for. What a promise!
What a people called out of bondage what a great story what and ending! But humanity would take control of these in grateful people. They were never thankful for what they had they always had the “bobble head” syndrome always looking back. Talking against God’s man.
We must understand that these people saw five miracles:
They were all under the cloud
All passed through the sea
They all drank the water from the rock
They were all baptized unto Moses
Though seeing all these things they never made into the promise land. When the twelve spies went out ten came back with a bad report. Two young men said its ours for the taking.
Only those who were nineteen years and under made it, Joshua and Caleb lead them into Canaan. We are given these examples in the word of god for our admonition. We have something to look out for.
What was the sin of the Israelites? Simply it was the sin of unbelief. Unbelief causes not to believe that God is in control or that the Lord can make away of escape.
So yes, no one can snatch us out of the masters hand but we can jump out of his hand. We can’t stolen by the enemy we can only give our heart to him.
