The Master‘s Class, LifeChange Church Wichita

WHAT WE HAVE IN JESUS (Ephesians 1:4-14)

WHAT WE HAVE IN JESUS (EPHESIANS 1:4-14)

The verses that we are going to review today are about you. This is your life. Here, the Lord is just giving your biography: from grace to glory; from eternity past to eternity future. Now, if you’re not interested in what you have in the Lord Jesus, and you’re not interested in your own personal spiritual welfare, then what on earth would you be interested in? What on earth could you be interested in?  

Did you know that God chose you, that God purposed your salvation, before He laid the foundations of the earth?  Now, you want to talk about some old-time religion, well you can’t get any older than this.  I mean, this was before there were any trees and mountains and birds and bees and fleas. Now, that’s before there was anything. God, way back in eternity past, chose you, and God chose me. 

You know, when we were kids playing football, or basketball, we would choose teams from among the group of kids.  And there is always somebody who wonders if he is going to be chosen at all. Now, isn’t it wonderful to know that God chose us so far back? You see, God is love, and what good is it to be a God of love if there’s no one to love? Love, by its very nature, cannot dwell by itself.  And so, since God’s nature is love, God created people like us, and chose us, that He might love us.

Listen, God does not love us because we are valuable, we are valuable because God loves us.  You are somebody because God chose you by His grace. And by His sovereign will, God chose to bestow His love upon you. I like what Charles Haddon Spurgeon had to say about it. He said this: “God certainly must have chosen me before I came into this world, or He never would have chosen me afterward.”  Now, isn’t it wonderful to know that even before we got here God looked down and said, “I see who he’s going to be, and I choose him”?

Most importantly, that means I can’t take any credit for my salvation. Because, it wasn’t, primarily, that I chose God.  He chose me first.  I love Him because He first loved me. 

Click on the play button below to hear a message on what we have in Jesus.  

This is a live recording of The Master’s Class Bible Study at LifeChange Church Wichita, KS.

Amen.

KNOWING THAT YOU ARE ETERNALLY SECURE (John 10:27-29)

Let me ask you a question. Is there something that could be better than knowing that you can be saved? Yes, there is. It is knowing that you can be certain that you're saved.

Well, is there anything more wonderful than knowing that you can be saved and knowing that you can be certain that you are saved. Yes, there is. It is knowing that you can be saved, knowing that you can be certain that you're saved, and knowing that once you're saved and certain you're saved, you can also know that you can never ever lose your salvation.

The title of today’s message is, “Knowing you are eternally secure.” If you don’t believe this can be true, I want you to listen to the scriptures that we are going to cover over the next 3-4 weeks. I want you to ignore for a little while, what makes logical sense to you, because God’s love and grace for you is beyond your ability to understand. I also want you to ignore what you have been taught before. I want your mind open, your heart open, and your ears open. No preconceived ideas or ideologies.

Instead of all of that stuff that man says, I want you to listen to what God has to say about this question. God wants you to know that you can be saved. He wants you to know that you can be certain of your salvation. But, most of all, God wants you to know, that once you are a child of God, an adopted member of His family, a joint-heir with Jesus Christ, saved to eternal life, that you can never ever lose that salvation. That father-child relationship can never be undone. You don’t drop in and out of God’s family. Once you are in, you are in for good. That is what the Bible says, and that is what we are going to talk about over the next few weeks. Jesus tells us this is true in the verses from the Gospel of John that are the focus of our lesson today.

John 10:27-29
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
29 My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.
KJV

Click on the link below to hear a message that is talking about something that is fundamental to our faith when we're talking about eternal security of the believer. How you can know that you are eternally secure.

Amen.

JESUS WAS SENT FROM HEAVEN (John 6:37-51)

When a person rejects Jesus Christ as their Savior, they are rejecting Him as the Son of God. They are rejecting Him being anything more than just a prophet, a teacher, or a good man. They are rejecting Christ as being sovereign. They are saying that He is nothing more than a man, that He was born as a baby, just like the rest of us. Therefore, He cannot be God, so He must be a man.

Yet, Jesus says “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me.” The Bible is clear that Jesus is the Son of God, and that His Father giveth Him people for salvation. There is no other path to salvation than through believing in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. He alone is the way, the truth, and the light.

John 6:47
47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.
KJV

Click on the link below to hear a message on how Jesus is the bread of everlasting life. Jesus tells us, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever.”

Amen.

HAVING SPIRITUAL STRENGTH (John 5:1-6)

Our physical bodies are ultimately going to fail. You could be the strongest person in the world, but if Jesus doesn't come beforehand, you are going to die as well, no matter how much strength you have.

Isa 40:30
30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:
KJV

Since we know our bodies are going to fail, our great problem is not what is going to happen to our bodies. It is, do we have that inner strength that God wants us to have in order that we might live our lives for Christ? Why would we need spiritual strength? Because, by our nature, we are spiritually paralyzed and without strength. Yet, in Christ, we have power for living. Why do we need power for living? Because God has a greater plan for us.

The Bible describes every person who is without Christ as being without strength. The primary source of that weakness is sin. When we are without strength, we are unable to be godly. We do not have the strength to be godly. We all have a need to be godly in our lives. Yet, we don't have the strength to be godly. I don't care how hard you try to be godly, you don't have what it takes to be godly. Yet, there is an answer for your weakness, and His name is Jesus Christ.

Rom 5:6
6 For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
KJV

If you wish to have spiritual strength, the strength to be godly, the strength to be holy, then Christ died and rose again for you. The longer a person is physically paralyzed, the weaker their body gets. It is the same for a person without Christ. The longer they live without Christ, the worse their spiritual condition gets. That is the reason that no man should put off giving his or her heart to Jesus Christ. If you need to be saved, then you ought to be saved today because tomorrow you will only have more sin to repent of and less time to repent in.

Click on the link below to learn how to have spiritual strength in this life, and life everlasting.

Amen.

BLESSED ASSURANCE (2 Peter 1:8-11)

There once was a blind lady by the name of Fanny Crosby who was one of the most prolific hymn writers to ever live.  A woman friend came to Fanny and said, Fanny would you listen to this melody and perhaps you could add the words to it.  So, Fanny listened to the melody for a while and then she said, oh that is easy, it says, Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine, oh what a foretaste of glory divine.  Do you have that blessed assurance that Jesus is yours?  I hope that you do. 

Over the last several weeks, we have been studying about the promises that God has given to us in order that we can live a victorious Christian life.  However, the very first thing that you must do is to make sure that you are truly saved, that your calling and election are sure.  A Christian should not be walking around like a question mark, he ought to be an exclamation point.  You shouldn’t be a doubting Christian, you should be a shouting Christian.  You shouldn’t be a hope-so Christian, you should be a know-so Christian.  You must make your calling and election sure.  

If you want to be sure that you are sure, then you must have a faith that knows, a faith that grows, and a faith that shows.  

To have a faith that knows, Peter has said that we are to have a faith that has a supernatural knowledge of Jesus Christ, this is a deep personal relationship with Christ.  When I get to heaven, I am not going to meet a stranger in the Lord, I am going to meet my best Friend.  I am not going to meet Someone I only know through reading a book, I am going to meet someone that I have a heart knowledge of.  Someone who I know better than anyone else in the world.  I am going to meet my Lord and Savior who has lived constantly within my heart from the day I was saved.  

Not only am I to have a supernatural knowledge of my Lord, I am to know what the Word of God says and how I can claim the promises of God for wisdom, courage, strength, and perseverance.  We don’t have to pray for these things to be added to our lives, for we already have all that we need that pertains to life and godliness.  They are in God, and God is in us, so we already have these things.  This type of knowledge is practical wisdom, knowledge that comes from the diligent study of the Word of God to show myself to be an approved workman for the Lord. 

Then I am to have a faith that grows.  Using both the supernatural and practical knowledge that I have gained, I am to give all diligence to add to my faith the seven graces of virtue, knowledge, self-control, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and agape love.  We are to grow our faith by making sure these things are added to our faith.  These graces come from the Holy Spirit that resides within us as we turn more and more of our lives over to Him.  They are the evidence of our faith.

When these graces are in our lives, then we will have A faith that shows.

2 Peter 1:8

8 For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

KJV

We are to have a faith that knows, a faith that grows, and a faith that shows.  When this is the type of faith that we have, then we will have A faith that is sure.  

TO BE ELECTED BY GOD (1 Peter 1:1b to 2a)

The Bible emphatically teaches the doctrine of election, and this is a doctrine that has caused endless debates and disputes throughout the ages.  People will either go off the deep end into hyper-Calvinism with this doctrine, or they avoid it like the plague because they don’t understand it.  When it really is quite simple to understand.  Man complicates it by assuming that God cannot know anything that man does not know.  That really is the heart of the problem for man in understanding this doctrine.  

However, the truth is that man’s mind is limited, and God’s mind is unlimited.  Man’s capacity to know things is finite, and God’s knowledge is infinite.  Man’s knowledge is bounded by the constraints of time, it encompasses what has happened in the past and what is happening right now.  Man can only guess at the future.  

God created the concept of time so His knowledge is unconstrained by time.  He knows all things from before time began until well past the day when eternity makes time irrelevant, and He knows it all at the same time.  God cannot learn anything, since by definition He already knows it all.  

In today’s lesson, Peter gives us his own inspired insight into the subject.  He bluntly declares that our election is based on God’s foreknowledge.  Without hesitation, or qualification, Peter says that God has elected a certain company to become members of the royal family of heaven.  However, God does this and never violates our own volition, or our own right to choose.  God woos, He does not ravage.  He does not endow His creations with wills of their own, with the power of choice and personal accountability for their behavior, and then act as though they had no such thing.  

God’s election of certain members of the human family to become members of the royal family takes into account the response of each individual when confronted by the Holy Spirit with the offer of salvation.  While this may sound difficult to understand, the simple truth of it is that if you want to be a part of the elect of God, then choose Christ when the Holy Spirit presents salvation to you.  

Salvation boils down to one question, will you accept or reject Jesus Christ as your Lord and Master.  

If you say yes, then you will become part of the elect of God, and you will spend eternity in heaven with Christ.  

If you say no, then you will not be part of the elect of God, and you will spend eternity burning in the fires of Hell, forever without the light of God.  

Listen to this powerful Biblical doctrine of God’s foreknowledge and how it can bless you because God knows who you are, where you are, what you are going through, and He has a plan for you.  If you are believer, then God will empower you to deal with any persecution or trial that you may be going through.  He knew about this before it ever occurred and He has prepared you for it, and He is with you every step of the way.  

THE UNSTOPPABLE WILL OF GOD (Romans 8:28-30)

If someone were to tell you that God already knew whether you would go to heaven or hell before you were even born, in fact He knew it before He formed the universe, your reaction may be one of saying “Well, that’s not fair, I should get to choose.”  You might also say that “If God already knows what’s going to happen, then we are just robots going about the things that God has already determined for us.”   

Predestination and election are two biblical concepts that have divided theologians, churches, and religions, for centuries.  How God can be sovereign with an unstoppable will, and man can have a free will is simply beyond our capacity to understand.  For it is a concept difficult for man to accept that everything that God planned from the dawn of time has happened, is happening, and will happen.  There have been no changes and no surprises.  There are no emergency meetings in heaven between the Holy Trinity to react to something man has done.  Man can try as hard as he wants, but nothing that man has done, is doing, or will do, can change the purposes, the plan, or the will of God.  If man could, then man would be sovereign and not God.  

Predestination is the biblical teaching that declares the sovereignty of God over man in such a way that the freedom of the human will is also preserved.  It is only when we accept this truth that we can begin to completely surrender our lives to God.  

Yet, it is important to emphasize that God's predestination of human events does not eliminate human choice.  We cannot bypass verses such as:

Romans 10:13

13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

A simple key to the concepts of predestination and election is that if you want to be a member of the called ones, or the elect, then accept God’s calling to be one of the whosoever ones that call upon the name of the Lord.  It really is that simple.

Listen to this podcast to learn what Paul really means when he tells us:

Romans 8:28

28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

KJV