Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text today is John chapter 10. We’ll read the first 30 verses of the chapter. Our emphasis will be on the last few verses, but overall we have this text dealing with Jesus as the good shepherd. So let’s read the first 30 verses of chapter 10. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

John chapter 10, beginning at verse 1:

“Most assuredly I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.

Jesus used this illustration, but they did not understand the things which he spoke to them.

Then Jesus said to them again, Most assuredly I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come that they may have life and that they might have it more abundantly.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees. And the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and am known by my own. As the Father knows me, even so I know the Father and I lay down my life for the sheep.

And other sheep I have which are not of this fold. Them also I must bring, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd. Therefore my Father loves me because I lay down my life that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from my Father.

Therefore, there was a division again among the Jews because of these sayings. And many of them said, ‘He has a demon and is mad. Why do you listen to him?’ Others said, ‘These are not the words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?’

Now it was the feast of dedication in Jerusalem. And it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch. Then the Jews surrounded him and said to him, ‘How long do you keep us in doubt? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.’ Jesus answered them, ‘I told you and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness of me. But you do not believe because you are not of my sheep. As I said to you, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. Neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one.’”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you that indeed the Lord Jesus has spoken to each of us individually and to us corporately today. We have heard his voice. We have been irresistibly called and effectually called by the irresistible grace of the Holy Spirit to him. We thank you for bringing us to this place then and to bringing us to the shepherd. We thank you for the goodness of him.

And now we pray, Lord God, you would bless us as we consider these last few verses. The wondrous promise that we cannot be taken out of the hand of the Father and the Son by anyone including ourselves. Thank you, Lord God, for this great promise. May we see the responsibility that comes to those who have such great promises as well. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

I sweat bullets over this sermon. Well, not literally, but I sweat a lot over the sermon. And I mean literally—this last week I’ve been working on widening our driveway at our house. There are a couple of large old bushes with deep roots that Elijah and I have been taking out. He’s over in the Tri-Cities this weekend, so I was working myself yesterday morning. It was only, I don’t know, 70 degrees with a lot of humidity, and I was digging away at this bush.

Elder Shaw called me early in the week. I was digging away at the bush. I’ve been digging away at this bush for a week, a week and a half, persevering in trying to remove this bush from where it shouldn’t be for the sake of our driveway. And I kept thinking about my sermon and perseverance as I worked, persevering, trying to get this thing out of my driveway. The preparation that God puts me through for the sermons almost always seems to include something in my life that is not intended by me but is intended by him to help me to understand the importance of the text I’ll be speaking on and the doctrine.

Perseverance, being a finisher of tasks, is not just something that’s kind of nice for Christians. It’s really sort of required.

We’re going to talk today about the perseverance of the saints. The fifth head of doctrine from the Canons of Dort, the final P in the acronym TULIP—perseverance of the saints.

It’s a doctrine that’s frequently misunderstood. We hear people talk about “once saved, always saved.” And so if a person gets born again, you know, now they can’t die and go to hell forever and so they can just live their lives the way they want to the rest of their lives and they’re still going to heaven. This doctrine, as articulated and clearly taught in the scriptures and clearly articulated in the Canons of Dort, says that’s a perversion of perseverance of the saints.

There is truth to the fact that if you’re once really saved, if you’re a saint, you’ll persevere. You won’t lose your salvation. But that truth is perverted through this “once saved, always saved” stuff into some kind of cheap grace, easy believism, and some sort of view of Christianity that’s foreign to the scriptures. They don’t know that kind of thing. And we’ll talk about that today.

What we’re trying to do here is work out and talk about the implications of who God is. The sovereignty of God is the foundation for everything else. We’re to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And you can’t enjoy him forever unless you put him first and glorify him. I mean, you can’t glorify him if you treat him as anything less than the sovereign Lord that his scriptures declare from the opening pages of the Bible—his creation of all things—to be.

So the sovereignty of God is the foundation for everything else.

When our church first started up, you know, we talked about God’s law. Well, God’s law is the application of the sovereignty of God to ethics. God determines what our ethics should be. He declares what they are to be. We look at all 66 books of the Bible to determine how we’re to run our lives and how we should run civil society. The sovereignty of God applied to ethics leads to a theocratic or theonomic position.

The sovereignty of God applied to history leads to an optimistic view of the future: postmillennialism. If it was up to man as to whether or not how things go, instead of if man was sovereign and God wasn’t sovereign, we’d have no reason to hope for the future. But God again declares from the beginning of the Bible to the end that his plan is good and profitable and the whole world’s being redeemed. The redemption offered by Christ 2,000 years ago, effected by Christ, is being worked out in history. So postmillennialism really is just the application of the sovereignty of God in terms of history.

And Calvinism, which most people take in terms of its narrow definition of salvation by grace alone—a Calvinistic view of salvation, TULIP or the Canons of Dort—this is the application of the sovereignty of God in terms of man’s salvation.

So in each of these things we’re talking about the implications of it. We’re trying to lay the foundation with the ABCs. We started with the absolute sovereignty of God several months ago. We moved into an application in terms of salvation, and we’ll continue to build on this foundation by talking as we conclude the Canons of Dort by moving into things like ethics and history.

So it’s important for us that these doctrines that are fleshed out in the Canons of Dort—we’ve seen that they’re very practical doctrines. Limited atonement is an incredibly important doctrine. It means that the atonement is not just a theory of moral governance. It’s not an example of what God doesn’t like about us. It actually affected the redemption of those for whom it was offered, the saints. God’s sheep in terms of John 10 today. It affected their atonement. The atonement really did work. So it’s not some kind of you know illustration or example. The blood atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ paid the price definitively for all those whom he was sent to die for.

And again in the text we read that he dies for his sheep. So that’s important for us. It means that we don’t have to worry about that. We don’t have to make up for the atonement ourselves. Plus a reliance upon the atoning work of Jesus Christ keeps us from making other people pay or ourselves pay ultimately for our sins. It keeps us from masochism and sadism or various varieties of it.

It’s interesting: the text today shows that all other religions outside of Christianity, whether it’s Judaism or whatever else comes into play—Jesus describes as thieves who don’t really care for the people that they minister to. People are playing games with other people, and that’s the basis for most religions in the world today: power, politics, manipulation of other people, and ultimately false atonements being worked out.

Well, we don’t enter into that. We know that our atonement is secure through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it saves us from those things. We don’t have to worry about, you know, whether we’ve done the right thing. We know that God has irresistibly called us to himself. And so there’s a peace about that. And there’s a responsibility because effectual calling is comprehensive in terms of what we’re called to do.

It’s not just called to become Christians and wait around till we die and go to heaven. No, we’re called to exercise vocation. I think we’re going to try to do that in another month or so. Pray for Liz Prentice as she heads off to Africa. Pray for some maybe other people that are heading off to other vocations. Vocations and callings are all from the Lord God. And effectual calling is related to those truths.

So these doctrines are not sort of isolated little doctrines that don’t have important meaning in our lives.

And so perseverance—we’ll continue to talk about it in terms of this idea that I talked about at the beginning, sweating and working hard at difficult tasks. This is what Christians are. Perseverance isn’t just in terms of their eternal security—there’s that. But really, it’s a characteristic that’s to permeate the Christian life and set them apart increasingly from a world in which people just sort of give up on things if they’re not easy.

So the foundation of all these truths is the sovereignty of God. And we can say the perseverance, the fifth of the five points, is kind of the capstone, the beautiful capstone of all the other doctrines because what we find in the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is the great promise that God will preserve the saints.

If it’s left up to ourselves, the Canons say our perseverance will not occur. But we know we persevere because God is preserving us. As we just sang from that psalm and recited: “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, abides forever.”

And our text today says the same thing. This is a great capstone, a doctrine that we absolutely love, a doctrine that brings us great comfort and assurance.

You got that wonderful picture on the front of the orders of service today of saints gathered in heaven. That’s us. And today, what we’ll hear from various texts is the promise that’s us. That’s our eternal destiny—to be gathered with all those that we love in the Lord and other people as well. God will preserve us to the end. It’s the great capstone in terms of these great truths.

And this capstone, as we’ll see in a couple of minutes, acknowledges our sinfulness. It makes us not sinlessly perfect. In fact, the Canons say quite the opposite. It says that sin is inevitable until we leave this body of flesh, the old man as it were. And that inevitability of sin puts us kind of at rest about that too.

Why do we keep sinning? You know, it’s funny because the older you get, it seems like you’re not really getting sanctified. But the fact that you understand increasingly the depth of your sin means you are being sanctified. It’s kind of a catch-22 situation going on. You know, as you get older, you think, “Man, I’m not getting any better. I’m getting worse.”

Well, what’s really happening to the saint is God is maturing you in your understanding of sin and in awareness. When you’re young, you deceive yourselves. You can’t see your sin. We get upset with young people because they can’t see their sins. Well, that’s immaturity. And as you get older, you see them more and more clearly. So when you get to, you know, the last portion of your life, you really know your sins big time. Well, that’s not a bad thing. That’s a good thing. God is maturing you and sanctifying you.

And this doctrine, properly understood, ministers great comfort to us even in the midst of understanding how sinful we are and persist in sinfulness.

So this doctrine is a wonderful truth. I’ve given you a couple of pages there printed out—all of the Canons of Dort. If you turn to, I don’t know, probably the second or third page, maybe article 15, and follow along as we read article 15. This is the last statement of this head of doctrine. And so this is really the last positive statement before they’re going to reject errors, but the last positive statement that the Synod of Dort developed in this whole document that we’ve been looking at, applying the sovereignty of God to our salvation.

And it’s a beautiful couple of paragraphs. It’s a beautiful paragraph or two.

**Article 15: Contrasting reactions to the teaching of perseverance**

“This teaching about the perseverance of true believers and saints and about their assurance of it, a teaching which God has very richly revealed in his word for the glory of his name and for the comfort of the godly, so there it is—glorify God, enjoy him forever. This is a doctrine that’s for the glory of God’s name. But the end result of understanding it and bowing the knee to it and rejoicing in it is great comfort—the comfort of the godly.

And which he impresses on the hearts of believers is something which the flesh does not understand. Satan hates, the world ridicules, the ignorant and the hypocrites abuse, and the spirits of error attack.

Well, that’s been going on, you know, for 2,000 years since the coming of Christ, the completion of the Canon. Men have attacked this doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, saying it leads to laziness, or on the other hand, it means we got to save ourselves. And so, you know, but in actuality, the doctrine properly understood prevents us from veering off into legalism or into license, as we’ll see as we go through it. So it’s attacked, it’s misrepresented, it’s hated by Satan because it’s of such great comfort to the saints.

But the Bride of Christ, on the other hand, has always loved this teaching very tenderly and defends it steadfastly as a priceless treasure. And God, against whom no plan can avail and no strength can prevail, will ensure that she will continue to do this, that this God alone, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be honor and glory forever. Amen.”

This is the great capstone doctrine. That’s the great capstone statement: in spite of all the attacks on the church against this doctrine, God will preserve his church, will preserve this doctrine. And so within the very exposition of the perseverance of the saints and the preservation by God, they apply it then directly to the doctrine itself. And they assure us that we can have great comfort in knowing that each of us personally, that God has called to salvation, will persevere, will be preserved by him. The church will persevere as well, and we can say that confidently.

If it was left up to man, we’d have no such confidence. If our salvation ultimately was left up to us, we’d have no confidence. We wouldn’t have assurance. We wouldn’t have the ease. You know, Calvinism is a great understanding of the sovereignty of God that frees us to action. Men are afraid to act if what they do determines ultimately how things work out in the world. That’s a heavy responsibility. It’s too heavy because it’s not true. But when we think it’s true, then we can either fail to act or act, becoming prideful, thinking that we’re so important.

So this doctrine teaches us that, you know, we have the freedom to act, that the Lord God is preserving his people, preserving his saints individually and corporately, preserving the truth. And so our action has that undergirding it, freeing us up to do things.

All right, let’s summarize perseverance now by looking at this document a little bit. We’re just going to do an overview of this.

And first, Westminster Confession, on the head of the second page, I believe it says this: “They whom God has accepted in his beloved. So perseverance is perseverance of the saints. And by saints, they mean those who are eternally called to salvation in Jesus Christ. It’s not perseverance of all the baptized. It’s perseverance of the saints. Okay?

So it’s speaking specifically of those whom God has accepted in his beloved, effectually called, and sanctified by his spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away. So it’s not that they won’t fall away. It’s that they cannot ultimately fall away. They can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end and be eternally saved.

So, you know, it’s saying that we cannot fail because ultimately it’s not up to us. It’s up to the sovereign God. We will go to heaven, but we’ll persevere in this life.

See, the doctrine of “once saved, always saved” says, well, a guy prays the prayer and then never darkens the door of the church again and he’s going to heaven. No. That’s not true. We have no reason to believe that people, even though they’re baptized, who don’t partake of the sacrament of life, who don’t get together to worship God, who don’t convene with the saints as God tells us we’re supposed to do, we have no reason to believe they’re saved because they’re not persevering. You see? And true saints persevere because God is preserving them. The one who doesn’t come back after being baptized—God is not preserving them.

At least we don’t know till the end of their life, but if that’s the state in which they die, we got no reason to believe they’re Christians in the ultimate sense. This says that we will persevere. They have to persevere.

Two, this perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability—that’s the unchangeability—immutability of the decree of election, flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father; upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ; various scriptures; the abiding of the Spirit and of the seed of God within them; and the nature of the covenant of grace. From all which arises also the certainty and infallibility thereof.

We’ll talk more about this at the end, but the basis for perseverance has nothing to do with us and our will. It has to do with God’s decree, his effectual calling, et cetera.

“Nevertheless, they may through the temptations of Satan and of the world, the prevalency of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of the means of their preservation fall into grievous sins, and for a time continue therein, whereby they incur God’s displeasure, grieve his holy spirit, come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts, have their hearts hardened and their consciences wounded, hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves.”

So even though saints will persevere, God will preserve them, they may for a season commit sins—inadvertent sins, small sins, but as well as small sins, they may commit really grievous sins as well. And so wrapped into this doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is an understanding of sin, partly how it happens, and how we’re to avoid it. And we’ll talk about that in the next few weeks because the Canons do such a nice job of that.

So looking at the Canons themselves now, article one, following on after the Westminster Confession:

**The Regenerate Not Entirely Free From Sin**

“So they pick up where the Westminster Confession of Faith kind of ended. It said, well, true saints will persevere but they’ll also sin, and they’re actually starting with sin in their declaration. They say that these people whom God according to his purpose calls into fellowship with his son Jesus Christ our Lord and regenerates by the Holy Spirit—he’s using regeneration in the new life terminology. He also sets free from the reign and slavery of sin, though in this life not entirely from the flesh and from the body of sin.”

So they begin a discussion of the perseverance of the saints with the declaration that we’ll never be totally sinless. We’re not set free from all ability to sin.

And then the second article says that we all engage in weakness. Hence daily sins of weakness. “Daily sins of weakness arise and blemishes cling to even the best works of God’s people, giving them continual cause to humble themselves before God, to flee for refuge to Christ crucified, to put the flesh to death more and more by the spirit of supplication and by holy exercises of godliness and to strain toward the goal of perfection until they are freed from this body of death and reign with the Lamb of God in heaven.”

So what’s it saying? It’s saying that first of all, God didn’t free us totally from sin. And secondly, we will engage in daily sins of weakness. And worse than that, they say nothing we do is free from the taint of sin. And we’ll talk about this in the weeks to come. But no matter how good a work you do, there’s a tinge of the fallen nature residing with you in the commission of those actions.

Now, you know, it may be disappointing to you, but it should humble you before God and say, “Well, you know, I can live with this. By the grace of Jesus Christ, I understand I’m going to sin. I don’t despair because I find myself sinning.” They’re saying you’re going to persevere, but that perseverance is going to be in the context of regular sins on your part. That’s just the way it is. And you won’t be freed from it.

Now, the other important thing it says here—this is really important pastorally. What is the effect of this sin on you? Well, you’re going to flee for refuge to Christ crucified. You’re going to put the flesh to death more and more, and you’re going to engage in the holy exercises of godliness. They say that God uses your sin sinlessly to cause you to cleave more to Jesus, to do the right thing. Now, that’s counterintuitive to us.

But what they’re saying is the Lord God leaves sin in this life until you’re dead. Then you’ll be perfect. But he leaves sin with you now. And one reason is so that you will cling to Jesus Christ. You’ll grow in grace because you sin. Now, should we sin so that grace may abound? No. But the fact is the Canons correctly state that part of this doctrine of perseverance is saying we’re going to sin, but God is using that very sin to preserve you and to cause your further perseverance.

So you don’t despair of sins. You don’t try to lie to yourself and say, “I’m not sinning.” You recognize your shortcomings and you do what God says you’re supposed to do when you sin. You repent, and as you do that, you grow closer to Christ. You persevere, and God is preserving you.

Wondrous. God uses our sins sinlessly.

So in the Canons of Dort, perseverance is said in the context of ongoing daily sins. And then it says in article three that God will preserve us nonetheless. And they say: “Those who have been converted could not remain standing in this grace if left to their own resources. So if it’s left to us, like the Arminians said, nobody’s making it. If it’s up to us to avoid sin, if we can lose our salvation, we’re all going to lose it. Nobody could persevere apart from the preservation of God. But God is faithful, mercifully strengthening them in the grace once conferred on them and powerfully preserving them in the end.”

So perseverance is the result of God’s preserving us. We persevere because God preserves us.

And then article four says not only do we fall into these itty bitty little sins and the small sins of weakness and the sins that sort of cling to everything we do, but they say in this next article, toward the end, “and even serious and outrageous ones. But also by God’s just permission, they sometimes are so carried away. Witness the sad cases described in scripture of David, Peter, and other saints falling into sins.”

So they’re saying, not only do you engage in small sins, you can engage in really big sins. You could go shoot somebody. You could commit adultery and kill the person’s husband. That’s what David did. And that’s not evidence that you’re not a saint. How you end up when you’re brought up to your sin, when you’re made to confront your sin by God—that’s what’s evidence of whether you’re persevering or not.

Well, this is real important too, because some of us are going to sin in grievous ways. And the body of Christ has to know that there’s no unforgivable sin to us. We do this stuff like David did his stuff. It’s horrible. It’s bad. It doesn’t bring God glory. All that stuff. But the Canons correctly say that we can sin and we can sin badly, really badly. And yet God will use that as well to bring us back to himself.

So the Canons set the perseverance of the saints not in some kind of idealistic way, some perfectionist way in this life, but in a way that’s very earthy, deals very much with our practical experience of who we are, and gives us hope even in the midst of sins both small and great by us.

So then article five talks about the effects of these serious—they calling them monstrous—these monstrous sins. Then what happens? Well, sometimes you lose awareness of the grace of God. You’ll even come to doubt. And so doubt also is not necessarily an evidence of the lack of calling by God. In fact, it can be used by God to bring about more assurance.

So God, then, his saving intervention is talked about in article six. Article seven, renewal to repentance. God works with sinners, renewing them to repentance, and they end up more eagerly working out your own salvation. So again, God uses sin sinlessly.

Article eight talks about the certainty of this preservation by God. “It’s not by their own merits of strength, but by God’s undeserved mercy that they neither forfeit faith and grace totally, nor remain in their downfalls to the end and are lost. With respect to themselves, this not only easily could happen, but also undoubtedly would happen.” Again, if it’s up to us, we’re lost. “But with respect to God, it cannot possibly happen.”

And then article nine talks about the assurance of this preservation. “We can and do become assured in accordance with the measure of our faith, by which they firmly believe that they are and always will remain true and living members of the church.”

So as this process goes on in a Christian’s life, assurance is what we develop increasingly as we mature. You can know that God is preserving you, that you’re going to persevere to the end. You can know that. And that’s part of this doctrine as well—a firm hope and reliance upon that great truth. And the ground of this assurance is faith in the promises of God. So the promises of God are given as the ground of assurance to us that we can know we’re going to persevere.

Article eleven says, well, even in the midst of that, sometimes doubts can arise. That’s okay. In 1 Corinthians 10:13, “with the temptation he provides a means of escape and by the Holy Spirit reviving them the assurance of their perseverance.”

We’re going to talk in the weeks to come, you know, just because you can sin and still be a Christian, how do you get away from doubt and the sin and the doubt that comes from the sin? The Canons talk about proper use of the secondary means of this perseverance. And we’ll talk about that as well—that this doctrine is an incentive to godliness. It’s not an incentive to liberty.

And then article fourteen—we’ll talk about that in more detail: God’s use of means in preserving the saints.

So an overview of this doctrine is this: We’re talking about the perseverance of saints that are called to eternal salvation in Christ. Those people sin. They sin in small ways. They sin in great ways. And if it was left to them, they would not persevere. God must preserve us to the end so that we end up persevering in the faith. We can sin grievously. This is part of God’s preservation. He uses our own sin sinlessly to cause us to grow in grace. There can be an assurance of this preservation known to us. We’re to employ the proper means relative to doubt and sin.

And as I said at the end, the last thing it says is that we love this doctrine. We love this doctrine—the hope, the assurance, the wonderful truths of God that are contained in it.

So the P in TULIP stands for perseverance. To persevere means to keep going. It’s to keep digging. It’s like Pastor Tuuri persevering, getting that bush out, keeps digging deeper and deeper around it trying to get the thing out.

Persevere. And what it’s talking about with us is that we’re to persevere. We’re to be finishers of our faith. Having begun well, we’re to finish as well. We’re to persevere. You’re supposed to keep going to church, keep doing the right stuff. When you sin, you’re supposed to repent, fall back on the grace of Jesus, and keep walking down the road to the promised land.

Persevere. And in order for this to happen, in order for us to persevere, ultimately God must preserve us. Preserve. It’s his preserving of us that allows us to persevere. God is sovereign. True saints can indeed sin. And true saints can—yes, sir—yes, they can commit big sins like murder. David did. And yet he was a saint. God uses this very sin, what we do horribly to our own shame. God uses those sins sinlessly to drive us to an increasing devotion and appreciation of the grace of Jesus Christ.

We can be sure—this doctrine says—of God’s preservation of us. We can know that we can do, we can have, we can be sure that we’re going to heaven at the end of our lives. But we will also at times doubt God’s care for us. We can be sure, but we’re not always sure. Sometimes we doubt whether God is really caring for us or not.

But John 10 is an excellent place. We’ve tried to say there are these scriptures to remember in terms of the sovereignty of God, in terms of salvation. Ephesians 1 and Isaiah 53 for limited atonement and 1 Corinthians 1 for effectual calling, et cetera. Well, John 10 is a good one for a lot of these.

As we read through John 10, you know, we had assurances that the sheep hear the voice of Jesus and follow him. That’s effectual calling. Jesus’s voice is heard through human voice, through his Bible. Jesus calls people, uses the general invitation, and his sheep will hear that and are effectually called by him to follow Jesus. Right?

Jesus says that he lays down his life for these sheep, the ones that he’s called. And he says that these sheep—he owns these sheep. He owns these sheep. They’ve been given to him by the Father. So the Father has given you as one of the sheep to Jesus. Jesus then came in time and died for you as one of the sheep that he was saving. The Father gave you to him.

The Father calls you, not on any condition of who you are. You’re just no better than anybody else. Pride’s our root sin. And if we don’t remember unconditional election and total depravity, we’re going to mess up. We’re going to get prideful. We’re just like anybody else except for the grace of God that has come upon us. God has chosen you. He’s given you to Jesus. Jesus owns the sheep. Jesus dies for the sheep. He pays the price of their sins. And then he calls those sheep. He speaks his voice. Sheep hear his voice and follow him. And then the consummation.

So the planning of our salvation, the accomplishment of our salvation on the cross, the application of the salvation or redemption of Christ, and its consummation, is also talked about in this chapter in verses 27 and following.

So if you look there at verse 27: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them. They follow me. And I…” This statement and the verse that goes on builds up a series of proofs. That’s too abstract. A series of great statements as to Christ’s preservation of us, his sheep.

And here’s how it starts. First of all, we’re called his sheep. So you’re not your own. You’re Christ’s sheep. And he’s the good shepherd. And if you stray away, he’ll go after the one and leave the rest for a while. The point is he has individual care for each of his sheep. And it’s that care of the shepherd, the love of Jesus Christ for his sheep, that’s the basis for our assurance that we will persevere in the faith, that God will preserve us. We’re his sheep.

But more than that, he says he gives us eternal life. So you’re one of the lambs of God and he’s given you life, but it’s not temporary life. It’s eternal life. Now, that means it can’t ever stop. It means forever life. It’s a statement of the assurance of the perseverance of those sheep in life. They cannot fail to exercise perseverance because they’ve got not temporary life. They’ve got eternal life.

You see? God will preserve you. You will persevere because your life is characterized as eternal life.

Third, he says, “These shall never perish.” So just so we won’t miss the point—it would have been enough for just him to say, “You’re my sheep.” Okay, that’s it. We understand. We’ll persevere because we’re your sheep. But no, he goes out of his way to say, “You have eternal life.” And then he builds on that saying, “You can never perish. I’m going to preserve you.” He says, “You’ll never fall away. You can never ultimately, finally fall away. You’ll never perish.” That’s the third proof here that he lays out to us. The third assurance to us.

This is an important doctrine. And it’s an important one to get down into our souls. And Jesus, just like last week at the wedding feast, you know, he built up the wedding feast. Not just a feast, a wedding feast. Wedding feast put on by a king. A wedding feast put on by the king for his son. In the same way, hell—it wasn’t just a place of badness, a place where people were killed. No, they were bound up. They were confined. They were without hope. They’re in utter darkness. They were weeping and people were gnashing their teeth. So he builds this stuff up because it’s important for us to understand. And he’s doing the same thing here.

He’s using great statements, repeated statements to cause us to rest in his preservation of us and to know and have assurance that we will persevere so we can never perish.

And then he goes on to say, “Neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand.” So the coloring picture today is a shepherd, and he’s got a lamb in his hands. So you’re in the hand of Jesus Christ—in his grip, you know, in the grip of Jesus Christ. You’re not just sitting there. You can fall out, maybe jump out. Somebody can pluck you out. No, you’re in his grip. Nobody can pluck us out of the hand of Jesus Christ.

Now, are you nobody? No, man. Are you a man? Yeah. Dennis is a man. Dennis is in the hand of Jesus. Can Dennis pluck himself out of the hand of Jesus? No, he can’t.

See, if I had to rely upon Dennis staying in the hand, there’s no hope in that because I know Dennis all too well. I know Dennis sins. I know Dennis would jump out of the hand at various points in time. But Jesus says, “Nobody, including you, Dennis, can pluck you out of my hand.” So you’re my sheep. You’ve got not just life, but eternal life. You’re not going to perish. You’re not going to fall away. You’re going to persevere because I’m preserving you. And you can’t get out of my hand. I’ve got you in my hand.

But he piles up even more. “No one can pluck them out of my hand. My father has given them to me.” We’re the own. We’re owned by Christ because the Father gave us to him. So we got Father and Son now in this covenant, we could say, this arrangement where the Father gives particular people to Jesus. Father gives us to Jesus, puts us in his hand. We’re going to be preserved. We’re going to persevere in the faith.

And then finally, we find out that “my father’s given to me is greater than all. No one’s able to snatch them out of my father’s hand.”

It’s not just Jesus’s hand. It’s two hands. It’s the Father and the Son’s hand now that have us tightly grasped. You see how he’s building it up? You’re my sheep. I’ll preserve you. You have eternal life because I’ll preserve you. You’re going to persevere because I’m going to preserve you. You’re not going to perish because I’m preserving you. You’re not going to be able to get out of my hand. I’m preserving you. Not even you can get yourself out of my hand. The Father gave you to me. That’s why I’m preserving you. My Father’s hand—you’re in the grip of my Father’s hand as well. I’m preserving you.

And then the last thing he says is, “I and my Father are one.”

Now, that’s beautiful. That is a beautiful capstone to these series of phrases here that are meant to give us tremendous assurance, great comfort. We give God the glory for his sovereign preservation of his people. But we rejoice in such a firm salvation, such a firm foundation as it’s given to us. And he puts the capstone on it by saying that my Father and I are one.

And here’s why I think it’s a capstone. You know, we, this is a doctrine, right, of the unity of the Godhead. Jesus and the Father are one. They’re one in the Spirit. The three members of the Trinity are all one. God—three persons and one God. There’s the unity amongst them, and that’s the unity we’re headed for. We’re united to Christ and through Christ to the Father and the Spirit. So there’s this doctrine of the unity of the Father and the Son. They’re both God. And so it’s a doctrine. And we talk about doctrines and we put them in abstract formulations, but the Bible doesn’t do that. The Bible talks about it—you get doctrines like we take this doctrine out of here, but it’s stated in its context in a very personal, active way.

The unity of the Father and the Son is given to us here not as an abstract truth but as the capstone of knowing that you will be preserved through the unity of the Godhead by the persons of the Father and the Son and ultimately the Holy Spirit who brings the Son to us. So he says God is God, and the Father and the Son are one. And they’re one to the end that he’s going to preserve you. And you can know that you’re going to persevere in the faith because Father and Son are of a unity. You’re in their grip. You belong to Jesus. You belong to the Father. He’s died for you. And there’s this great emphasis in the text before us.

Wonderful text. Assurance of the preservation of God of his sheep and their resultant perseverance in the faith. John 10 is the story of the good shepherd. The good shepherd dies for his sheep, for his sheep. And the Father has given these sheep—the Father has given you to Jesus. And this text tells us about that. We will persevere in the faith because of the goodness of the good shepherd. You have been given eternal life—life that can’t end. Eternal life. You cannot be lost. You cannot be lost. The text tells us God will preserve you. You are held in the strong grip or hand of the Father and the Son.

That’s the great truth of John chapter 10.

Now let’s talk about a few summary texts. So we’ve kind of laid out what the doctrine is. It doesn’t deny sin, and in fact says sin is part of the way God is sinlessly preserving you by causing you to flee to Christ for grace when you come to an awareness of it. And it says in the context of ongoing sin, you can’t be sinlessly perfect in this life. Now, in the context of ongoing sin in our lives, the Lord God is preserving us. And those that God is preserving will persevere in this life.

So you can look and see if a guy’s persevering or not. I have a pretty good idea whether they’re part of God’s people. Now, they’ll fall away for a season, but the long line of their lives will be one of persevering in the faith because God is preserving them. And so this doctrine is all about that. And we’ve looked at John 10 as a specific demonstration of the assurance of God, the promise of God that you’ll be kept intact.

Now we ought to do some overview of a few scriptures to talk about this from other texts as well. And we’ll see that perseverance—we’ve talked primarily, I suppose, so far, in John 10, is a great promise to us, but perseverance is also a command. Perseverance requires of us covenant responsibility.

It’s interesting. I was listening to my sermon ten years ago on this. In 1996, I did Bible studies in my home going through the Canons of Dort, and in ’97 preached a series of sermons more in depth than the ones I’m doing now. But ten years ago, I talked about Norman Shepherd. I don’t—I’m not even sure where I got these texts, but the texts on these next two outline points are really from Norman Shepherd for the most part. I put in a few more, but they’re basically texts from Norman Shepherd, who now is an object of controversy. He wasn’t really ten years ago. And so this just comes from then. And we’ve been influenced by his wonderful treatment of the sovereignty of God and the great reformed doctrines of Dort.

And here we have verses from Norman Shepherd. And what Shepherd says is that perseverance is commanded as a covenantal responsibility on us. And basically, perseverance, Shepherd would say, is faithfulness. It’s faithfulness. We’re to be faithful. And in Acts 16:31, we read: “So they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

And in Matthew 24:13: “But he who endures to the end shall be saved.”

So exercise faith. Have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you’ll be saved. Persevere, endure to the end, and you’ll be saved. A equals B. C equals B. A equals C. Faithfulness, belief, is endurance. Endurance is founded upon faithfulness. And they’re equated by putting these two texts together.

So you know, we’re not saying you need to do works in terms of a command to persevere, but you’re to be faithful to Christ all of your lives. This will be the evidence of God’s preservation of you.

Let’s look at some more exhortations to perseverance, though. And you don’t have to turn here. Just listen.

In 1 Corinthians 15:58, we read: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abiding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” We’re commanded to perseverance and steadfastness.

Hebrews 12:1, “We’re surrounded by all these witnesses. Let us then run with perseverance. Let us run with endurance the race that’s set before us. I know it’s hard. He says, the bush doesn’t seem like it’s coming out of the ground. You’ve worked on it a week. You’ve sweat a lot over it. Keep digging. The bush will eventually yield. So we’re told, run the race. Run your race as a Christian, your life. Have endurance to the end of it.

1 Timothy 6:12: “Fight the good fight of faith. Lay hold on eternal life.” We’re commanded to persevere and fight the good fight.

Hebrews 10:36: “You have need of endurance so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. If you don’t endure, you don’t get the promise. If you’re not faithful to Christ, you don’t end up with the promise.”

So we’re commanded to exercise endurance, to be finishers of our faith, and not just starters.

James 1:3 says that the testing of our faith produces patience. So we’re commanded to be faithful in the testing of our faith. If our faith is tested and God is preserving us, it produces patience or endurance. If our faith is tested and it doesn’t produce that, then we’ve not fulfilled the command to endure and we’ve demonstrated our lack of regeneracy, our lack of calling by God in the long term.

James 1:12: “Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love him.” So endurance is equated to loving God. If you’re going to love Jesus, be faithful the rest of your lives. Run the race, endure. It’s a commandment, and it’s a commandment that is attached to it here again—after you’ve endured temptation, after you’ve been approved, you’ll receive the crown of life.

Life is contingent upon the perseverance of the saints. Now ultimately, God’s preserving us, but it’s a command.

Luke 21:19: “By your patience, possess your souls.”

Revelation 14:12: “Here is the endurance of the saints. Here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” He’s contrasting those that go to hell and those that go to heaven. And the ones that go to heaven are those who have endurance. And endurance is defined as keeping the commands. It’s defined earlier as the love of Jesus. So those are the ones. We’re commanded. Every time we come together in Lord’s Day worship, it’s kind of like Revelation 2 and 3, the letters of the seven churches: “He who overcomes, I will give these gifts.” He who overcomes. Now, Jesus says it’s his gift, but he calls on us to endure, to be persevering. It’s a commandment from God. We are absolutely commanded to perseverance and endurance.

But perseverance is also given as a promise to us. It’s a covenant grace.

In 1 Thessalonians 1:3, listen to this: “Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. Patience of hope.” And the idea is that assurance, the hope of God—not willy-nilly hope, but the sure knowledge that God is preserving us—is what our persevering is based upon. Assurance, hope ministers to perseverance.

See? So people say, “Well, if you really know you’re going to heaven, you’re not going to persevere.” That’s not true. The scriptures tell us that God promises things to us and on the basis of that, we then have patience of hope.

Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare his own son, delivering up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things. That includes perseverance. Perseverance is God’s gift to his people. It is a promise. It’s a blessing.

1 John 3:2 and 3: “Beloved, now we are children of God. It’s not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And everyone who has this hope in him—everyone that has this hope in him—purifies himself just as he is pure.” So assurance of God’s promises is what ministers to and encourages our persevering in the faith. God’s preserving us ministers to and affects our persevering in the faith.

1 Corinthians 1:8: “So you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end.” So he’s writing to sinning Christians—a guy sleeping with his mother-in-law. He’s going to write bad things to them—you’re doing worship wrong. Your Lord’s Supper is bad. But he tells them in the beginning that Jesus Christ will cause him to persevere to the end. It’s a promise. God will preserve us rather.

1 Corinthians 1:8: No, I just read that—he’ll confirm us to the end.

Philippians 1:6: “Being confident in this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ.” And so over and over again, we can look at other scriptures. I’ve listed more on your outlines, but we have this confidence.

2 Thessalonians 3:4: “We have confidence in the Lord concerning you both that you do and will do the things we command you.” So commandments are based upon the promise and preserving of God.

So perseverance of the saints is commanded, but God promises to preserve us, to cause us unto perseverance, and even as hope ministers to perseverance and endurance.

Romans 15:4 says that “through patience and comfort of the scriptures we might have hope.” So it’s a synergistic thing. The assurance that God gives us causes us to have the patience of hope. But as we engage in that patience of hope, as we have patience and endure, then the scriptures minister or God ministers hope to us. So perseverance ministers to assurance just as assurance ministers to perseverance.

Okay, so those are a general overview of some of the other scriptures. Perseverance is God’s promise. It’s commanded of us, but it’s God’s promise to us as well. If we didn’t persevere, we would end up in hell. But God has promised us that he will give us all things through Jesus Christ.

And then finally, the basis of this promise: as article 8 points out, the council of God cannot be changed. God has eternally determined that you, his saints, will be with him in eternity. His counsel cannot change. He gives us promises that we will be preserved by him. His promises cannot fail. His calling—the scriptures say according to his purpose—cannot be revoked. His merit or rather the merit, intercession, and preservation of Christ cannot be nullified, and the sealing of the Holy Spirit, it’s talked about in the Bible, can neither be frustrated nor destroyed.

Jesus prayed in John 17 to the Father. He prays to the Father: “Keep through your name those whom you have given to us.” Ultimately, our preservation is the sovereign act of God. Jesus has asked for it. The Father has granted his request.

Again in verse 15: “And I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one.”

Our preservation is founded in the eternal decrees of God, and it’s rooted in his very character. And as a result of that, we know that golden chain that we began this series with cannot be stopped. That golden chain says that whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called, effectually called. Those whom he called, these he justified. And whom he justified, these he also glorified. And that’s referring to our eternal glorification as well as ongoing glory. But eternal glorification. And it’s spoken of in the past tense in Romans 8.

God says this is the promise of God to us. He will freely give us all things. He will freely give us perseverance that’s required and commanded of us. This faithfulness will be given to us on the basis of Jesus Christ as well.

In Hebrews 6, God swears by two things so that we can be absolutely certain of his promises to us. Let me read that text in Hebrews 6:

“For when God made a promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, saying, ‘Surely blessing I will bless you, multiplying I will multiply you.’ And so after he had patiently endured, Abraham obtained the promise. So God promises him. He then on the basis of God’s sovereign promise endures and then he obtains what God had promised him. But it’s begun by the promise of God.

Men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end to all dispute. Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel—that’s the basis for our preservation—confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.”

So he promises this on the basis of his own person. He promises this so that we can have sure hope. And what are we supposed to do with that? The next verse says this hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the presence behind the veil. Our endurance is tied to the great hope that God has promised to us.

In Psalm 138, it concludes in this manner: “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you will revive me. You will stretch out your hand against the wrath of my enemies. God will preserve me. He says, your right hand will save me. The Lord will perfect that which concerns me. The Lord will bring to completion what he’s begun. The Lord will perfect it. Your mercy, oh Lord, endures forever.” And then the psalmist resorts to prayer that this happened. The promise is then prayed for. “Do not forsake the works of your own hands.”

We are the works of God’s hands. And we can pray confidently God’s promise that he’ll preserve us back to him. And we can say confidently that as we pray it, the Lord will indeed perfect that which concerns us. He’ll preserve us and he will cause us to persevere in the faith.

That’s the great hope.

Psalm 71:18 says this: “Also, when I am old and gray-headed, oh God, do not forsake me until I declare your strength to this generation, your power to everyone who is to come.” We’re called the works of God’s hands in both those two psalms. In the first case, don’t forsake the work of your hands. I know the Lord will preserve, will perfect that which concerns me, and I pray then that he does that for the work of his own hands.

Then in this psalm, our responsibility is our response. It starts with God’s sovereign work. But our responsibility is to persevere, to keep doing the tasks that God has called us to do until we’re old and gray-headed. When I am old and gray-headed, let me retire and let me just go away and enjoy life. No, when I’m old and gray-headed, don’t forsake me then. Cause me to persevere. To what end? Until I declare your strength, your sovereignty, to this generation, your power to everyone who is to come.

This is the power of God that preserves his saints. And we are to respond to that preservation through perseverance in using every last breath that we take on this earth—until God takes us away—to do his work, to show to those around us the sovereignty, power, and grace of God.

We are the work of God’s own hands. Therefore, even when we’re old, we should serve him. God calls us to be finishers. God says that he grants us the preservation of all things that we may persevere in all things. May the Lord God grant us today to finish this day well, to finish the task that God calls you to tomorrow well, to see a life ahead of you capable of perseverance in the faith. Yes, sin-filled doubts occasionally, but the sure knowledge that the Lord God is preserving you will cause you to persevere, to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to do the tasks that require much work. But the Lord God has equipped you. You’re the work of his hands.

May God grant us faithfulness to him until we die.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your preservation of your saints. We thank you for this wonderful doctrine and we thank you for the challenge it lays in front of us to persevere in the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ and obeying him and honoring and glorifying him in all that we are. Help us, Lord God, as we bring forward the symbolic reflection of what we did this last week, to be encouraged by the hope that you set before us, to the end that we’ll persevere in the work we’re called to this week as well. In Christ’s name we ask it and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

You know, our nation is, I think, increasingly becoming a nation of quitters. Seen in a lot of ways, and one of the saddest ways we can see this is in marriages and families. And hence the importance of things like the marriage seminar this fall—to encourage couples not to quit, not to give up, but to persevere through difficult times. So that’s kind of who we are, affected by the culture around us. And what the Lord God intends us to do is to be those that are taught perseverance, being assured of his great promise.

Every week he brings us to this table and assures us of the promises. The Canons say that part of the means of God’s preserving us is the secondary means of the word and sacraments, admonitions as well, which we’ll talk about in future weeks. But the sacraments—this is a means of assuring you of hope, that God has indeed called you as his sheep. He calls you here today to feed you at this table before us.

Children, you are in a highly privileged position at this church in comparison to many churches, particularly many Reformed churches. You get to take the Lord’s Supper as soon as you get old enough to drink and chew. You partake of the Lord’s Supper with us, and you partake of the promises that are found in this meal. Those are great promises to you. But those promises also bear and carry with them a response, your responsibility.

God promises he’s preserving you. By partaking of this bread and eating, drinking of the cup, God is promising to you that you’re one with Christ and being preserved in him. Your response to that is to persevere. So I’d urge all you children, particularly this week, finish chores, finish the task your parents give you to do. Finish whatever homework you’ve got to do. Finish the Bible reading mom wants you to do. Be a finisher today, resting in the work of Christ. Be a finisher tomorrow. Persevere.

And if you’re trained not to be a quitter in your homes as young people, then you’ll grow up and be like your mom and dad, those who make a difference in this world through not being quitters, but rather those who persevere based on the great promise of God.

Children, I want you today, as you eat and drink at this table, be assured of the promises of Jesus to you that he’s preserving you. But be aware too of your responsibility, your proper response to his blessing, to be those who are finishers of tasks this week. And parents, encourage them to that end. Don’t give up on them as they fail on occasion.

All right. We read in the scriptures that Paul wrote: “For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you that the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘Take, eat. This is my body which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me.’”

Let’s pray. Father, we do give you thanks for this bread. We thank you for assuring us that we’re partakers of the Lord Jesus Christ, that we’re part of the church, and we thank you for the great promises in the Bible about how you’re going to preserve your church. And we know that you’re preserving us as we’re part of it. So thank you for assuring us that we’re part of the corporate body of Jesus by getting a piece of this loaf. This loaf is a picture of the corporate body.

So thank you for assuring us that we’re part of that. And as a result, you’re going to preserve us as you’re preserving your church. Bless us now as we partake of this bread. Give us assurance and hope and give us the deep satisfaction that allows us today to rest in the assured promises of Jesus. In his name we ask it. Amen.