Can I Truly Know I'm Saved? - Mark Stripling

Hello, I'm Pastor Mark Stripling, and my wife Janet and I, we travel with Freedom in Jesus Ministries, and we have for several years, so it's a privilege to get to come and share the words of life. You know, the Bible says that Jesus made the statement, he said, the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. And so the words that we speak today are things that are going to hopefully minister to your spirit and minister life to you. I want to tell a story about a man and his wife, an elderly, and now when I tell jokes about the elderly, I realize that I am one. But anyway, an elderly man and his wife were going to drive about an hour away from their house to go see the wife's sister. The wife could see, but she couldn't hear, and the man could hear, but he couldn't see, so the wife always had to drive the car. So they take off to go visit the sister, and the husband said, you know, he said, your wife, your sister, she's meaner than a rattlesnake, and man, she's gotten cantankerous and contrarian in her old age. He said, he said, I really don't like to have to make this trip. He said, yeah, but she's my sister, and so we have to go see her. He said, all right. So she said, I got to get gasoline for our car before we go. So they pulled into a gas station, and the guy came out to pump their gas, and he said, how are y'all doing today? And the husband said, we're doing fine. And the wife said, what did he say? And the husband said, well, he said that he asked how we were doing, and I told him we were doing okay. And the guy said, where are y'all headed? And he said, oh, we're headed an hour north to visit my wife's sister, and the wife said, what did he say? And he asked where we were going, and I said, we're headed an hour north to visit your sister.

Okay, and so the guy said, you know, he said, that city y'all are going to, he said, I got an aunt that lives there, and man, she is meaner than a rattlesnake. She is cantankerous in her old age and hard to get along with, and he said, boy, when I think about that city, I think about my aunt, and the wife says, what did he say? He said, he knows your sister. And so, you know, what we want to know is how to know Jesus, and we also want to know the one who is opposing Jesus, because as surely as Jesus wants to save you and bring you to heaven, there is an adversary, the Bible says, whose name is the devil. He is the accuser of the brethren. He is at work 24 hours a day, seven days a week in the very courtrooms of heaven, trying to make accusations against the brothers, the sisters, the believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, he is always trying to gum up the works and get us distracted or even sidetracked from who and what we are in Christ. And so, I want to speak to you today about some things. I want to answer the question. I'm going to get right down to the nitty-gritty. I want to answer the question today, how can I know that I am saved? Can I really know that I am saved? Because there are some passages of Scripture that when I read them, these passages are kind of frightening. Because I'm a pastor, I have preached the gospel for half a century or so, and started when I was five, okay? But anyway, I've preached the gospel for about a half a century. And the longer I preach, the more I realize I really don't know. I mean, you can think you know a lot, but as time goes by, you realize maybe I don't know as much as what I think I know. And so, as I think about the passage of Scripture in Matthew 7, there's a very frightening, as one who preaches the gospel, this is a frightening passage to me, so I want to share it with you today.

In Matthew 7 and verse 21, Jesus says, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name? And he said, Then I will declare to them, I never knew you, depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. Now that's a scary thing to me to think about being a pastor who has preached, who has dealt with the demonic, who has spoken words and preached and declared Jesus, that Jesus said there'd be some that would stand before him someday, and Jesus is going to say, I never knew you. So I want to look at what we can do. How can I know that I'm saved? What are the characteristics of a person who is a Christian, a person who is saved? And so I want to read also from the gospel of John chapter 3, and I'm going to read some passages of scripture, and then we're going to begin to speak and to actually preach the word today. But in John chapter 3, I love John 3.16. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. But I made a determination that I would never read John 3.16 or quote it again without quoting John 3.17 because he goes on to say that God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that through Him that the world might be saved. So Jesus didn't come to condemn you today. He came to save you. He came to light the way. He came to show you the way out of darkness. The Bible said that if we don't know Jesus, that we're living in a kingdom of darkness. And Jesus came to carry us, to move us, to shift us from the control of a kingdom of darkness into a kingdom of light, the kingdom of God's Son. And so John 3.16, those are beautiful words, 3.17. But John 3.18, he goes on to say, he who believes in Him is not condemned,

but he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation that light has come. And I want you to remember this statement, light has come into the world. 1 John 1, John who says that, I am the closest of all the disciples to Jesus. John, he describes himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And John, in the epistle of 1 John 1, he said that his fellowship with Christ is a fellowship of the light and in the light. And he made the remark, he said that, our fellowship is with Jesus, our fellowship is with Him, the Father, it's a fellowship in the light. And he said that in Jesus is, now get this, there is no darkness at all in Jesus. And so I want to ask you about your own life, the deeds, the way you live, the way you think, the words you speak, your actions every day, are they actions and words and deeds of light, or are they more deeds of darkness? And so the Bible says we're to examine ourselves in, I believe it's 2 Corinthians 13, we're to examine ourselves and see whether or not we are in the faith. And I believe every person who says, I'm a believer in Jesus, I'm born again, I'm on the way to heaven, I think you need to question, do your words, your actions, your deeds, the way you live, does it reflect somebody that like Jesus in you, you're not dominated by darkness, but you're dominated by light? These are questions that are valid questions that we have to ask ourselves. And so verse number 19, this is the condemnation that light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God. And so Jesus is making the statement here that those that walk in the light, we don't have anything to hide. I'm going to ask you, are you hiding anything? Do you have stuff you want to hide, or the things you want to cover up? Lately, there's been a movie put out about a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. You may never have heard of him,

but he was a German pastor when Adolf Hitler rose to power. And Adolf Hitler began to come to the people in the church. He would send his officers into the church and he would begin to influence the pastors and say, as long as you say what I want you to say, you and I will be okay. Nazism and this Third Reich and me as the Fuhrer, we can coexist as long as you don't rock the boat. You don't criticize me, you don't criticize our government, you go along with everything we do. And don't say anything that puts a bad light on your government or on me and we can all get along. So Dietrich Bonhoeffer recognized that Hitler was asking them to compromise their faith. Other pastors began to talk to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and they said, you know, we got to go along with this guy, we got to do what he asked. And he said, I will not do that, I will never do that. And so Dietrich watched as one by one, the pastors began to back down from the faith. They said, we will do what he wants us to do instead of what God wants us to do. Do you remember in Acts 4 when the disciples kind of went through that? They said, what do you want us to do? You want to say what you want to say or do you want us to say what God told us to say? And they said, as for us, we're going to say what God says, no matter if it costs us our life, our freedom, whatever. And eventually, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested and he was executed only two weeks before the end of World War II. How sad that his life ended when who knows what this man may have accomplished. But I'm reading a book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And he said, you know, and he looked at these other pastors and he said, there's no doubt in my mind that people who are filled with darkness are in the church among us. They dress just like us, they look just like us, they can even talk and act just like us, and to the outward eye you don't see any difference. But he said the difference in these people is there's real sin and darkness, dark deeds, dark thoughts, dark actions, and these things are on the inside and they are experts at masquerading, they are experts at cover-up. I want to ask you today, it's a blunt question, but this question is very important because

Jesus said there's going to be some people someday that'll stand before him thinking they've done it all right, they went to church, they lifted their hands, they worshiped God, they did all these things, but Jesus is going to say, I never knew you. We talk about knowing Jesus, well the most important thing is, does Jesus know you? And there's going to be the dividing line someday. But here's what Jesus said, he said, I don't know you, why? Because you lived an evil lifestyle, the way you lived was evil, it was dark, it was sinful, you didn't do the things that I said to do, you did your own thing and lived life your own way, you created your own religion, you created your own grace, you created your own God, your own savior, with you as the middle instead of him being in the middle. And this is where the rubber meets the road, brothers and sisters, have you created your own gospel where you tell Jesus how he should react to you, or do you say, Jesus, whatever it takes, I want to do what it takes to know you, I want to surrender my life, I want to give my life to you, I want to trust you, Jesus, I don't have any way I can save myself or help myself, Lord, if I make heaven, I'm going to make it because you helped me to get there by your grace, by your mercy. You know, Ephesians 2 said, it's by grace that you're saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. It says that we are his workmanship, we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works that God has before ordained that we should walk in them. I mean, there's not a thing you can do to save yourself. You cannot come and present good works to God, you can't say, well, God, I've lived a good life, and I have literally spoken with people that said, I'm a good person, I've lived a good life, there's no way God would send me to hell. Well, God doesn't send anybody to hell, we end up in an eternity in hell because we didn't come to God God's way. Man cannot come to God and say, I'm a good person, so I'm giving you this good personhood of mine, God, and in exchange, I want to go to heaven. The Bible said, he that has the son has life. He that has not the son of God has not life.

It is that simple. Do you truly surrender, confess your sin, confess Jesus as your Savior and Lord? Have you surrendered your life, have you surrendered your daily conduct, have you surrendered your heart, your will, your mind, your words, your actions, your deeds, so that everything you do, you say, I want my life to bring glory and honor to Jesus. When people look at you, do they say, man, that dude is a hypocrite, that dude is one thing in church, that lady is one thing when we come and lift their hands and worship, and then the rest of the time, that's not the person you see every day in life. What Jesus does, the basic evidence of your salvation is in your daily life and your daily walk. Do you live differently now? If you don't, then you need to do what 2 Corinthians 13 says, you need to examine yourself and see whether or not you'd be in the faith. There's a passage of scripture in 2 Corinthians 12, verse 21, Paul was going to have to go before the Corinthian church. And he basically says in that letter, he said, I'm not looking forward to it because Paul said, here's what I'm afraid I'm going to find when I come and see you face to face. This is 2 Corinthians 12, starting in 21. He said, I'm afraid that I will be grieved because many of you have not given up your old sins. You have not repented of your impurity, your sexual immorality, your eagerness for lustful pleasure. In other words, he said, when I come, I think I'm going to find a people that said, I want to be in church, but I still want to do my own thing. I still want to do what I want to do. And so Paul made the remark to them in that. And he went on in the next chapter, 2 Corinthians 13. He said, examine yourselves, test to see if your faith is genuine. He said, test yourselves. Now, Paul, it's amazing when we think of the story of Paul, Saul, who became Paul.

Paul was a persecutor of the church. He hated those that were believers in Jesus. Now, folks, this is how Satan... You see, Satan is a master deceiver. He wants to deceive you. He wants you to believe you're something you're not. Satan knows what the will of God is, but he wants to distract you and detour you away from the will of God. Paul was a religious man. He'd grown up a Pharisee. He was from the best tribe of Israel. He had the best education. He studied under the best mentors. Paul said, I was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He said, I had it all. But he said, I consider that all to be done today in exchange for what I found in Christ. But Paul was on the road to Damascus, Syria. Why? Because a lot of the Christians had fled Jerusalem. They had gone to Damascus thinking they could escape the great persecution coming against the church in the New Testament days. So Paul now has got arrest warrants and he's headed over to Syria to arrest those that tried to make a run for it. He said, you can run, but you can't hide. If you know Jesus, he said, I'm coming for you. And on that road, a bright light struck Paul.

And he heard a voice say, why are you resisting me? Why are you kicking against the goads, Paul? He said, why are you doing? And he said, who is this? Who is this speaking to me? And he said, it is Jesus whom you persecute. Now, I don't know about you, but that'd been about the most terrifying word I could have heard. If I'm putting people to death for Jesus, and all of a sudden I hear a voice and I can't see a thing, I've been struck blind, I'm fat on my face. They say, who are you? I am the Jesus whom you are persecuting. Man, I would have fainted. I'd have been dead right there. I'd have been a dead duck right on the spot. And Jesus said, but Saul, regardless of who you are and what you have done, no matter how evil your deeds were, he said, I've got a call on your life. I want you to come and follow me. He went from a persecutor of the church to a preacher in the church and for the church. So Jesus changed Paul's life radically, but Paul never forgot because he said, I am the chief of all sinners. Do you think Paul ever had a moment where he thought about his past? Do you think Paul ever had a quiet moment with Jesus where he said, Lord, how could I have been so wrong?

How could I have been so stupid? How could I have been so deceived that I refused to believe? I studied about your coming all my life. How did I miss it, Jesus? How did I miss the Messiah? I could have spent all of these years with you. I believe Paul on the inside never forgot the deception that Satan brought into his life. He never forgot the years he could have spent with Jesus that were stolen from his life. And I believe Paul might've had a dream or two. He might've had a dream of a family, a husband, a wife, some daughters and sons that he brought to were tortured and put in prison, maybe executed. I believe Paul thought about these when he said, you know, I'm the chief of sinners. To me, that's one of the most important things you and I can realize if we're truly born again. We don't forget who we were and how bad Satan had duped us. We don't forget how badly we were deceived. We don't forget how we were drawn into a life that if we had not been rescued by the spirit of God, by Jesus himself, a life that would have spent an eternity in the fires of hell forever and forever. So one of the things I wanna talk about just a couple of things that we can do to test our faith. Now, Paul made the remark. The reason I brought all this out about Paul, he made the remark.

He said, oh, wretched man that I am in Romans chapter six. He said, or verse Romans seven, he said, who would deliver me from the body of this death? Paul said, there's a war going on inside me. He said, on the inside of me. He said, I know what's right. I know what the law says. I know to do right. But he said, there's a war on the inside of me. And he said, I feel this conflict between this old man that I used to be and the new man that I am in Jesus Christ. And Paul said, the only one who can deliver me from this conflict at the close of Romans seven, he said, it's only Jesus that can deliver me from this conflict. Okay, go back to Romans six one. Paul was evidently asked the question. He said, well, you know, if we have this grace now, if we're not obligated to the law, if we have this grace now, can we just go ahead and live in sin so that this grace may be abundant? If we're just forgiven by grace, then, man, we don't have to go through this purification process anymore from the law and all that. So, you know, do we just go ahead and live in sin that let this grace abound? And Paul's answer was, God forbid. And that is actually in the original language,

it was an exclamation. It was like he said. And are you kidding me? What do you mean? How shall we that died to sin want to live in sin any longer? He said, when we came to Jesus, the Bible says we are crucified with Christ. When you came to know him as Savior, you went by faith to the cross, and you were crucified with him. The old man you used to be was put to death on the cross. And the Bible says the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is the spirit that lives in us. And so this spirit that raised him, this spirit that empowered Jesus, is the same spirit that lives on the inside of us. And he said, you, when you came to Jesus, he said the old man you used to be was put to death. Why would you want to live in the old way? Why is it you don't want to live in the new way? Well, if you don't want to live in the new way, maybe it's because you really didn't put to death the old way that you used to live. If you're still drawn back to the old way, brothers, you need to go to the word of God. You need to read the word. You need to pray. You need to seek God, because if you're still drawn to want to go back to the old way, then just there's a passage of scripture.

The second shortest verse in the Bible is remember Lot's wife. When God delivered Lot and his family out of Sodom before his judgment fell, God said, when you leave that old, that place of horrible sin, he said, don't look back. And Lot's wife turned around to look. In other words, she couldn't accept the fact that God's taken her to a much better place than what she had before. And the Bible said she turned to look back and became a pillar of salt. So don't desire the old life you used to live. Don't see how much of the old life you can live and how much of the new life you can live and see if you can balance it in the middle. Because Jesus describes people like that. He said, you're not hot. You're not cold. He said, you're lukewarm. And he said, if you're lukewarm, he said, I will spew you out of my mouth. And brothers, let me tell you, I love to drink coffee in the morning, but I've got a cup of coffee sitting there and I'm studying the word and praying. And I'll reach over and take a sip out of that cup and that coffee has gone to room temperature. It's not hot anymore. I know about spewing that stuff out of your mouth. I hate lukewarm coffee.

I want it to be hot. And in fact, I had some guys I traveled with one time back when cold coffee first came out in a bottle. We were traveling on a tour of ministry and we came back out to my car and there was two guys that had flown in from some other state that were traveling with me. They had bottles of cold coffee. I was this close to throwing them out of my car. Man, you don't drink cold coffee. Coffee is meant to be done hot. And Jesus said, that's what we are supposed to be. We're not supposed to be cold. We're not supposed to be lukewarm. We're supposed to be on fire for him. That's one of the tests of whether or not you truly know Jesus. So I wanna look at a couple of things here. First, I wanna say your failures don't determine your salvation or your lack of salvation. You are human. You're gonna fail. You're gonna fall. I fail, I fall. Humans are prone to stumbling. That's just who we are. And that's why John made the statement in 1 John chapter number two in verse one. He said, my little children, these things right I unto you.

He's writing to the church. He said, my little children, that you sin not. But if any man does sin, what is it? John said, I know we're gonna fall. I know we're gonna stumble. I know we're prone to sin. So he said, if you do, he said, realize you have a heavenly lawyer pleading your case. You have an advocate with a father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sin, not for our sins only, but the sins of the whole world. He said, Jesus died for all of our sin. And so I wanna look at some things now. If you fall, if you stumble, if you are tempted and you fall headlong into some sin, the real test of your salvation is, do you take off and run from God or do you run to God? Run to him. 1 John 1 and 9 said, if we confess our sin, he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sin, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Okay, the evidence of our salvation. I'm gonna talk about a couple of things as we are preparing to come to a close here. First of all, what do you love? Where are your affections today? Do you really love the things of God? Do you love Jesus? Do you love the father?

Do you love the brothers and sisters in Christ? Do you love the church? Do you love to read the Bible? Do you love to sit and pray and have fellowship with God? Where are your affections today? What do you love? That's gonna determine a whole lot about where you're going because if you love your sin, if you love your filthy habits and you love the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the sins of the flesh and the sins of pleasure, then if you love those, it's gonna be very hard for you to really be in love with Jesus. So that's what new birth does. New birth changes us. The Bible says that in John three, Jesus said, you must be born again. And I preached this series of sermons in the church about this. idea that if you get everything else about God right, but if you don't get being born again right, everything is a waste. If you don't understand it, you don't come to Jesus by your religion. You don't come by your good deeds, your good conduct, your good works. You don't come and say, well, Lord, I've had communion. I've been baptized in water.

I joined the church, so I must be on the way to heaven. No, John said, he that has the Son has life. He that has not the Son of God has not life. Do you truly have Jesus in your heart as your Savior and Lord? Because there's nothing you can bring to God to substitute for the blood of Jesus. But the Bible said that when you are born again, that it's a confession made with your mouth. Paul said in Romans 10, if you believe that Jesus is God's Son, you believe he died on a cross, you believe he was raised from the dead. He said, if you believe those things, with the heart man believes unto righteousness, but then with the mouth confession is made to salvation. So your salvation is a twofold thing. It's what you believe in your heart, and then it's what you say with your mouth. Because if you believe Jesus, Jesus said the devils know who I am. The devils and the demons believe in me. So you can't say, well, I believe in Jesus. Yeah, I love Jesus. No, Jesus said, do you believe who I am? And then have you made a confession with your mouth? Did you confess your sin as 1 John 1, 9 said? And then did you confess him as your Savior and Lord? And the Bible said, if you will do those things, it says, all who call on the name of the Lord

shall be saved. But the Bible also says that there must be repentance. The word repentance means you've gotten fed up with who you are. You've gotten fed up with how your life is. You realize that sin is not the way to live, that it's not doing you any good. Being addicted to drugs, addicted to alcohol, addicted to the pleasures of this world, none of that is gonna do you any good long-term. And so the Bible tells us that we are born again. Romans 8 says that when we confess Jesus, it says in Romans 8 that then the Spirit of God comes to live in us. And it said we receive the spirit of adoption. When you confess Christ as your Savior and Lord, the Spirit comes to live in you. And you are born again. Jesus said you are born again by the Spirit of God. You're born again by the Holy Spirit. Romans 8 says how that happens. The Spirit comes to live in you and the Spirit declares that you are adopted into God's family. You become a member of God's family by a supernatural power of the Holy Spirit called adoption. And it says then you cry, Abba, Father. The word Abba means daddy. God said I wanna have an intimate relationship with you

as your father. Many of us, if you had a earthly father who was absent all the time or you had an earthly father that treated you badly, then you may not feel really good about talking about the father. Well, God is your father. He loves you with all of his heart. And so the Bible just simply says that if you wanna know you're saved, do you have your eyes open to the sinner you used to be? Do you say I don't want any more of this? I don't wanna live in sin any longer? Test number three is are you obedient? Do you have this idea that I wanna be obedient to God? I wanna do what God has asked me to do. Psalm 119 verse 11 said, "'Your word have I hid in my heart "'that I might not sin against you. "'Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths "'in your instructions.'" Verse 24 says, "'Your laws please me. "'They give me wise advice.'" Do you see that Satan had you deceived? Do you say I don't wanna live that way anymore? What happens when you come into a trial? Do you wanna run from God or do you wanna run to God? If you go through a trial, one of the ways I've seen a lot of people that have come out into the free world,

the first time they really get disappointed by something, they get mad at God and they wanna walk away from God. So when you go through a fiery trial, when your faith is tested, you're gonna be able to say, God, I trust you. I'm not gonna be angry. I'm not gonna get off track spiritually. And Lord, I wanna serve you. And so when you fall into some temptation, what do you do? You run to God. You don't run from him. You run, confess your sin. And he says, I'll forgive you of your sin. I will cleanse you from all of your righteousness. And I'll close with this, that the power to live for God is not your power. It's not in you. It doesn't come from you. The power to live for God comes from the outside and the spirit of God fills you with that power to live for God is the gift that comes from God. The God who was on the outside in the Old Testament and the New Testament has become the God who lives on the inside. And so these are the things I wanna leave with you today. If you'll stay broken over sin, if you'll, when you sin, you realize that you messed up, just go to God, deal with it. If you have these things in your life where you realize I'm not the same person I used to be,

when I asked Jesus to be my Savior and Lord, that is. the evidence of your salvation. The transformed life, to me, is the number one evidence of salvation. So are you radically changed today? Have you said, I don't want to live the lifestyle of sin, no matter what it costs me, I want to live for God, then I believe that you have truly been born again. So I want to pray with you now. Father, I pray for each one here. Lord, if there's any that don't know Jesus, again, your word said if we believe that Jesus is God's son, we believe he died on the cross for our sin, if we believe that God raised him from the dead, then we need to confess our sin. We confess Jesus is our savior and Lord. We repent of our sin, we turn around and say, I'm gonna live a different life, I'm gonna live a new life. Then Romans chapter 10 says, all who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Well, brothers and sisters, I don't want to discourage you today, I want to encourage you that you can know you're saved, but at the same time, it's what I told the people in our church here. I preached a three month series on being born again. And here's what I said when I got to the end of three months preaching about you must be born again.

I said, if you die and go to hell, I said, it's your own stinking fault, because I've done everything I can to tell you how to know Jesus and to know that you're saved and to know that you have eternal life. So I'll leave you with that today. If you die and go to hell, it's your own stinking fault, because I've told you everything you can do today to know that you know Jesus and to know that he knows you. God bless you. Amen and amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.