Secure with God

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We will be in chapter 5, 2 Corinthians chapter 5 this morning. I’ve done quite a bit of reading over the last, goodness, I’d say 10 years on the subject. And folks, without sounding overly simplistic, I honestly believe that one of the biggest problems facing our society that’s at the root of so many others is the problem of fatherlessness.

It is the problem of children growing up in homes where the father is either not present physically or not present emotionally. Lots of people grow up in the home with their father, but he’s not really, he’s there, but he’s not really there. Not there for the kids.

And this is not just my opinion. You read through and there are all sorts of numbers. All sorts of numbers from government studies to private studies to things that they’ve been able to glean from the census numbers.

And the impact of fathers on children is unbelievable. The reason I say it’s unbelievable, it’s unbelievable to realize the impact that fathers can have on children in a society where we’re taught that fathers aren’t necessary. You realize we’re sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly being taught that fathers are unnecessary.

If you don’t believe that, turn on your television to any one of the popular shows that are on right now and see how fathers are portrayed. We look like complete buffoons. And usually it’s mom that takes care of the kids and dad.

That mom is almost treated, if there are two kids in the family, mom is almost treated like a single mother with three children. And you know what? There may be some basis for that in reality because we also live in a society where men are taught that they can and should be teenagers well into their 50s, which don’t get me started on that.

So no wonder a lot of women have had to pick up the slack. But you look at the numbers, especially for children who are growing up today in homes without a father present. And there’s no other characteristic that ties in so closely with things like imprisonment, membership in gangs, teenage pregnancy, poverty, dropping out of school.

The numbers are amazing, the way these things line up. And it’s not to say, ladies and gentlemen, this is not to put down single mothers and say, well, they’re doing a bad job, they just can’t do it. You know what?

God blessed these women for doing the job that God created man and woman both to do together. God blessed them for picking up the slack and doing things that God created to be the job of two people. But at the same time, I don’t think it’s an accident.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that God created the family to be a father and a mother in the home together, married and raising their children together, playing off each other’s strengths and weaknesses. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that God created that. And then when we see something else going on entirely, that the results are fallout that’s having to be picked up by the rest of society.

It’s just a simple fact. And I know some people, not in this room, but I know some people in our country don’t want to hear this fact, won’t like it, think it’s radical to say this, but it’s just a simple fact borne out by the numbers that when children grow up without a father, again, this is not every situation, but this is over all the statistics that are shown in our country, that when children grow up without a father in the home, they are more likely to live in poverty. They’re more likely to get involved in crime.

They’re more likely to be in prison, more likely to drop out of school. One number that I remember just off the top of my head is that 71% of high school dropouts in this country come from homes where there’s no father present. How can you argue with numbers like that?

More likely to be involved in teen pregnancy. The list just goes on and on. Fathers have a tremendous impact on their children.

And I don’t think that most men realize the impact that they have on their children because, again, we are coming up in a culture where we’re taught that men are worthless. And I don’t know if we’re taught that men are worthless because some of them act worthless or if they act worthless because they’re taught. I’m not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg.

But we do have this issue. And men don’t realize the influence they have on their kids. And I realize this is just anecdotal. This doesn’t go to any statistics or numbers, but I’ve seen it in my own ministry.

You win a woman to the Lord. And ladies, please don’t take any of this as minimizing your impact. Because as I said before, thank God for women who are willing to stand up and take on the extra job when nobody else will.

But when you win a woman to the Lord, or you invite her and get her involved in the church, you might get her kids. But I’ve noticed over time, again, I realize this is just anecdotal, but I’ve realized over time you reach the Father, you’re much more likely to get the wife and the children and to get them involved in church and in ministry and get them to stay and be discipled than if you just win the wife. That’s not to minimize the impact of the woman.

That’s just to say that men have influence that they don’t realize they have. And ladies and gentlemen, one reason, one reason why I believe this is so. Now this whole message this morning is not on fathers.

This is just a lead in that I thought was fitting with the message that we’re going to hear on the subject of eternal security. And with it being Father’s Day. But one reason why I think these things are so.

That children overall do better in homes where the Father is present. Is because that God designed men to provide the security and stability. of the family.

That’s not to say that women can’t do that or can’t contribute to that, but that’s what God designed the role of the husband of the father to be. Now, I know, I know, guys, I know we live in a culture, gender stereotypes, and everything’s fluid, and nobody knows who or what anybody is anymore. I realize that, but I’m old school, and I’m sure most of you are as well.

I go with what the Bible teaches. I go with what’s always been true for 6,000 years, And I know that overall, in general, the men are the security and the stability and the women are the nurturers. There’s some overlap there.

I nurture. I have little tea parties with my kids. But that side of it’s a little harder for me because God designed me as a man to be stability and security.

Children do best when they’ve got that security and stability. Families thrive. Children grow up more often than not.

children grow up to realize their full potential of who they are when they grow up in the environment and stability, excuse me, the environment of stability and security that a father provides, a father who is present, a father who does not leave, a father who is involved and invested in his children. Now, here’s the segue. Here’s where we’re going with this.

As believers, as Christians, we thrive in an environment of stability and security that is provided by the presence of our Heavenly Father. If there is no relationship with Him, hear me on this, if there’s no relationship with Him, there is no stability and security. There is no rock to which we anchor our ship.

We’re tossed to and fro in this life. I’m not saying that everybody who’s without God in this world has tremendous problems and their life is just totally chaos. But we all have chaos at some point or another.

There is some point in our lives when everything is turned upside down. And is there an anchor or is there not? If there is not a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, there is not the stability and not the security that enables us to thrive and enables us to grow spiritually and enables us to be everything that God created us to be.

and so I want to look this morning at 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 and I want to look at some things about this relationship that we have with God that is an eternal one that is a place that we have stability and security and we could look at all sort you know it was very difficult this week to go through and say which passage are we going to look at that talks about stability and security because they are endless they are endless we could have gone to Psalms and talked about how that He’s the rock. He’s the horn of our salvation. We could have talked about Him as a refuge.

We could have gone to the book of John. I believe it’s the book of John and how no man can pluck you out of my hand. For whatever reason, I feel like the Lord led me to 2 Corinthians today.

And we’re going to look at this eternal aspect of the relationship as we’re going through this series on eternal security. This is not a message, again, that is going to convince. .

. If somebody comes in this morning and they’re skeptical and say, well, I believe you can lose your salvation, I’m not sure this is the message to convince them. But what I’m saying is here we have a passage that talks about our relationship with God, that talks about the eternal nature of our relationship with God and the things that we know and can have confidence in.

The Bible uses in this passage the word confidence. It says the things that we can have confidence in, the things that we can trust in about our relationship with God. And I’m telling you, this is a passage that does not make sense outside of the idea that we are eternally secure in Jesus Christ. So we turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 1.

And it says, For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God and house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Now before we get too far into this, we want to stop and realize he’s not talking about a building. As is the case so many times in the Bible.

I believe we talked about this last week last Sunday night we talked about the building fitly framed on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ himself being the chief and cornerstone that was not talking about a church building that was talking about a church body here again we have the picture of God using the picture of a building to illustrate a spiritual truth a spiritual reality and he’s talking about this earthly house tabernacle, he’s talking about our body. He’s talking about our physical being. And so what he says here is that if our physical being, this body, if what we see here, what stands before us, this union of body and spirit and soul, whatever terms you want to use, this living being, if this were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

And the Bible teaches in several places that we will receive a new and incorruptible body when we are no longer present in this body, but we’re absent from this body and present with the Lord, as we’ll see later on in this passage. I can’t tell you exactly what that looks like. Will we look like ourselves here on earth?

I hope not. Not for your sake, y’all are fine, but for me, I hope not. But we get this glorified, incorruptible body.

And just in my imagination, just in how I see things, you know what, if we were here on earth and we couldn’t walk because we had one good leg and one not so good leg, I believe we have two good legs. I’m looking forward to no allergies. That’ll be nice.

I picture everybody’s young and fit and in good health and good looking. You know, I can’t tell you from the Bible exactly what this glorified body looks like, but I’m sure it’s a lot better than this earthly tabernacle. And it’s interesting to me here too that he uses the word tabernacle because the tabernacle in the Old Testament, as I understand it, was just a placeholder until they built the real thing, until they built the temple.

And so he says, if this earthly tabernacle is dissolved, We have a building with God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. We have another body. We have another presence.

We have another place to go and another vessel to dwell in. That building is of God. That building is with God because it’s a house not made with hands.

It’s a house made by God and it’s eternal, ladies and gentlemen. It lasts forever and it’s eternal in the heavens. In the heavens doesn’t mean we’re just floating around out there in space.

it means we are in the presence of the God who made us. We’re in the presence of that Father. And so he’s reminding them, he’s reminding them at the church at Corinth, and us by extension, that yes, eventually one day we are going to shed this earthly body, but fear not.

As he says so many other places, as Paul says so many other places in his letters, that there’s no need to fear, because when we shed this earthly body, we know that we’re going to go be with the Father. We know where we’re going, We know what our relationship and our standing is with Him. And there’s the security of knowing that when this life comes to an end, I know where I’m going.

Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t live in fear today of what’s going to happen. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ready to go yet. I feel like I’ve got some things still here to do.

But I don’t live in fear of that moment that I know will come one day unless the Lord comes first. Whether He comes for me or comes for all of us. I don’t live in fear of that moment when he comes for me because I know where I’m going. When I get out of this mortal body with the allergies and the achy legs from rock climbing and weeding the garden yesterday and every other ailment that I have, every other ailment that we have, I know where I’m going.

I have that confidence because of the relationship with the Father. And he says that we have this building with God, a house not made with hands, but a house that is eternal in the heavens. Now again, I go back, this passage doesn’t scream eternal security in the sense of the doctrine that you can’t lose your salvation.

But this passage makes no sense to me apart from that. Is this building that I have, does God have this other vessel, this other building for me? Does He have it there waiting for me unless I mess up, or is it eternal?

What does the word eternal mean? It means He’s built it and it stands the test of time. For in this we groan earnestly.

Now this word earnest is a great word that we don’t use a whole lot, but it’s used at least twice in this passage. For in this we groan earnestly, desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven. This word earnest means sincerely, forcefully.

The only reason I know this word is because of real estate transactions and earnest money, which I think I’ve shared with you they don’t do anymore. I almost got mad at a man who made the offer on my house in Arkansas because his offer didn’t include earnest money. And I said, what reason do I have for signing this contract?

He’s not investing anything here. He can walk away and lose nothing. But apparently they’re not doing that so much anymore, at least in Arkansas.

This idea of earnest money is proof that I’m sincere, that I’m not just messing with you and stringing you along. See, without earnest money on a real estate contract, I could go make an offer on your house, I mean, if you’re selling, I could make an offer on your house and on your house and on your house and then get to the closing date and see which mood strikes me and walk away from the other contracts and I haven’t lost a thing. Yet you’ve taken your house off the market for 30 days or 90 days or whatever it is and you’re still paying on it, at least paying the insurance and taxes, and meanwhile, you’ve lost a lot of potential total buyers.

So this earnest money goes into the contract where I’m putting up $500 or whatever and saying, I’m serious. Because this means if I walk away from the contract, I lose that money. For some people, that’s not a big deal. But for me, $500, it’s a big deal. For me, $100 is a big deal. I don’t spend $20 without thinking about it real hard.

This earnest money means I am serious. It means I have every intention of following through with this. So this word earnest, when it says, we groan earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven, it’s talking about there is a sincere desire.

It’s not just, yeah, that’d be nice to have that glorified body. No, I can’t wait. I cannot wait.

Have you ever had anything that you just couldn’t wait for? You woke up in the morning, you’re so excited, you’re planning, you’re thinking ahead. Maybe it’s a vacation.

Maybe it’s the birth of a grandchild. Maybe they’re just thinking, we can’t wait. I think we all have those moments at some point because we earnestly want it.

That’s what he’s talking about here. We groan earnestly. I don’t think of groaning as being mumbling and grumbling, but just, oh, I want this so bad.

I have this desire. And he’s talking about this desire that God’s children have to be with their father and be clothed with this new eternal body which is in the heavens. If so that being clothed, we shall not be found naked.

And I’m not going to say a whole lot about this except that’s a good thing. I mean it’s a good thing to not be naked. It’s a good thing to have clothes.

In this context it means we’re not going to be just floating in between here somewhere and wondering where we go. Okay, I’m out of this body, but I don’t. .

. Okay, where do I go now? Now, he clarifies it at the end of this passage in talking about being absent from the body as being present with the Lord.

We don’t wander around without a house. This picture of a house. We don’t wander around without a place to be.

No, we go straight from here to straight to being with God. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened. And we do feel burdened sometimes in this life.

I feel funny saying this because I’m one of the youngest people in the room. But I know that as we get older, and the reason I say, I feel funny saying this, as I say when we get older, I can almost anticipate some of you are going to laugh at me and say you don’t even know. But I know how I feel now.

I know how I felt 10 years ago. I wish I had some of that energy back. And I know it’s only going to get worse from here.

I know a little bit about this, that as we get older, we get tired. As we get older, we get more aches and pains. As we get older, we get more ailments.

As we get older, there are more separations from friends and loved ones who move off. I’ve talked about this a little bit, about being separated from people that I’ve gotten to know traveling around and living different places in ministry. And that being one of the things I look forward to about heaven is we’re all going to be together in the presence of the Lord and never have to say goodbye again.

But there are these separations from loved ones as we move off or they move off or they go on to be with the Lord. The further we go in this life, the stronger the anticipation gets. I think for most people, the more burdened we feel, the more overwhelmed sometimes we feel with the problems of this life.

You know what? If I went back 20 years, I didn’t have near the problems to deal with that I have today. And that’s not to say that any of the problems that I deal with today are all that significant.

But you know what? When I was nine years old, I didn’t have bills to pay. I didn’t have diapers to change.

You know what? As we go on, our burdens get greater. And so he says here, for we that are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed, not just to be released from this life.

There are some religions today that teach this idea that we just want to be released from life and be released from consciousness. I don’t know that this is what Paul’s talking about or speaking against, but it certainly lends itself to it. You hear in Hinduism, you hear in Buddhism, which is becoming more and more prevalent in our society, even if people aren’t adopting these religions, they’re adopting some of these ideas, That we just want to get done with life.

We want to get done with this cycle of life and reincarnation. And we just want to be absorbed into the universe and no longer be conscious. We just want to, we want nothingness.

You realize that a lot of this yoga and meditation that’s being taught today is about emptying your mind and just experiencing nothingness. I don’t know, that might be relaxing for a couple minutes, but then my mind’s going to start up again. We’re not, ladies and gentlemen, we are not looking, as he says here, to be unclothed.

What that means is just floating around out there in nothingness. But again, we know we go from one place to the other. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

We that are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened, not that we would be unclothed, not just that we would escape into nothingness away from the burdens, but clothed upon that mortality might be swallowed up of life. He says, what we long for is not just the end of life and consciousness and problems, but to be present with the Lord. For this mortality, for this mortal body, for this mortal existence to be swallowed up, not in death, but in life.

Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing. Now the one who made us, that word wrought is in older English, is the past participle, or not past participle, but the past tense of worked. What we would say today worked.

so in other words he that made us for the self-send thing he who made us for this purpose is how we might say this today referring to God God who made us for the purpose of one day being absent from this body and being present with him that’s what he made us for was to walk with him now he that wrought us hath wrought us for the self-send thing is God who also hath given us the earnest of the Spirit. He’s given us the earnest of the Spirit. What guarantee do I have that God is going to keep His Word?

First of all, if a question ever starts that way, what guarantee do I have that God’s going to keep His Word? He always has. His Word is gold.

Actually, that gold is too cheap. What guarantee do I have that God is going to follow through? What guarantee do I have that this is true?

What guarantee do I have that God really is going to take me to be with Him in His presence? Well, the guarantee is that He’s already left His presence with us in the form of the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit was left behind with us as an earnest. And where this ties into eternal security, the Scriptures say that it’s by the Spirit that we are sealed unto the day of redemption.

This Holy Spirit was left with us not until we mess up and God decides He’s ready to split. It’s not left with us until we mess up and drive Him off. No, the Holy Spirit is left with us as a sort of down payment and proof of our redemption.

Proof that God intends to finish the job. I want to be very clear about what I mean by finishing the job. I don’t mean that any, you know, I believe and I have preached routinely.

Jesus Christ did everything that was necessary for our salvation on the cross. He said, it’s finished. It was paid in full.

I am not one who believes, as is being popularly taught, and I’ve found out over time that some people, even in our Baptist churches, believe that he then went to hell and suffered for our sins. Now, there are some people, I’m sorry, there are some passages that talk about him going and releasing the captives. I don’t entirely understand that.

I think I know what it means. There are some solid Bible teachers who teach that Jesus Christ went to hell and set the captives free. I don’t so much have an issue with that teaching.

But the teaching that Jesus Christ went to hell and suffered for three days for our sins flies in the face of everything the Bible teaches. When he said it is finished, that’s exactly what he meant, that it was paid in full. The Bible talks about how He paid for our sins on the cross with His blood, not how He paid for our sins on the cross and in hell for three days before He rose again from the dead.

I don’t know exactly what happened in that three-day period, but I know He had already done everything that was necessary for our salvation. So, when I say God’s going to finish the job, I do not mean that there’s anything left for God to do in terms of purchasing our salvation or our sins being forgiven. when I say that God’s going to finish the job, I mean that God is going to bring about the full realization of everything He promised.

The salvation has already been paid for. The forgiveness of sins has already been paid for. The presence of His Holy Spirit is a promise that one day what He’s already declared true will be fulfilled.

He’s already said you’re mine. He’s already said you’re saved and your sins are forgiven. One day he’s going to take us to heaven for the full realization of what he’s already declared.

That’s what I mean when I say God’s going to finish the work. Not that there’s anything left to be earned, but that one day we’re going to see the fulfillment of his promises. And he’s given us this Holy Spirit as earnest. He’s given it as this down payment if we can use these words.

He’s given it as this guarantee. You’ve already got my presence. You’ve got a little taste of what it’s like to be in my presence.

And one day you’re going to be in my presence for all eternity. And that Holy Spirit is a seal on us until the day of redemption. It’s a seal. You’re mine.

You belong to me. And as Jesus said, no man can pluck them out of his hand. You’re mine and you’re not going anywhere.

I need to move along. Verse 6 says, therefore, we are always confident. You know what?

we may not always feel confident. Do you ever question, or have you ever, let me phrase it that way, have you ever questioned your salvation? Have you ever questioned whether it was true or not?

I think most Christians have. I know I’ve questioned, and I’ve told you before, it’s not so much that I didn’t believe God, but thought, did I believe hard enough? Did I believe the right way until I realized I was making faith into a work and needed to knock it off?

But he says if we look at God’s promises, if we look at everything God has taught, because of these things, Therefore, we are always confident. If we quit focusing on what I did or what I can do and just look at the promises of God, we can have all the confidence in the world that His promises are true. If we just look at the track record that He has of always keeping His promises, there’s not one, ladies and gentlemen, that has failed yet.

There are some promises and some prophecies that have not been fulfilled yet, but if God says something was going to happen on such and such date, it happened. Nothing has failed to be fulfilled. A number of things have been fulfilled.

And then there are still those that are yet to be fulfilled, but the fact that they haven’t been fulfilled yet doesn’t contradict what God says. If we look at God’s promises, we can have this confidence. He says in verse 6, Knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.

For we walk by faith, not by sight. If we’re looking for proof, if we’re looking for proof, if we’re looking for a signed contract from God, If we’re looking for video proof or scientific proof, we’re not going to find it. And that’s one thing.

To be honest about it, if we’re looking for proof, absolute 100% undeniable scientific proof of Christianity, you’re not going to find it. Now, I say that as someone who is deeply convicted and convinced that the Bible is true and that God is true, based on the evidence. But what I’m talking about, you’re not going to find proof.

When you start getting into the philosopher’s playground of, well, how do I know I exist? How do I know this? The question that I was asked in philosophy class, how do you know you’re really a person and not just a brain in a jar who’s being fed chemical signals to think that you’re a person and you’re.

. . Okay, at that point, nothing can be proven.

Let’s just close the book and go home. If you’re looking for absolute, incontrovertible, scientific proof that all this is true, you’re not going to find it because there’s no proof of anything at that point. But if you want to look at the evidence, if you want to look at the things that we can see and observe from history and from God’s interaction with mankind and know what’s true, maybe without a hundred percent proof, but know what’s true by observation.

We walk by faith, not by sight, because we don’t see the hundred percent proof. We have not yet experienced the fulfillment of God’s promises, but based on his past track record, we can have all the faith in the world that he’s going to out his promises. We are confident, he says in verse 8, we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

We are willing for that reason, not because it’s wishful thinking, not because we’re tired of this life, but because God has made promises that we have eternal life with him that no man can take away. And for this very reason and the willingness to be present with him, we are willing whenever God calls to be absent from the body, knowing that immediately we will be present with the Lord. Now again, I told you that this passage doesn’t scream eternal security as a doctrine.

It doesn’t scream that, hey, you, once you have salvation, you can never lose it. But reading what this passage says and what it teaches and what we’ve gone through already, this passage does not make sense apart from the idea that we are secure with God, because the whole thing talks about this eternal relationship with God. This confidence, this knowledge that no matter what happens, when this earthly tabernacle is dissolved, we have a home in heaven, an eternal home, not made with hands, but made by God.

I don’t care what doctrine or what opinion we hold to. God’s word teaches that we have this secure, eternal relationship with him. We have this knowledge and this confidence of his presence, His presence with us and our future in His presence.

Three things I want to share with you about us being secure with our Father. And again, going back to what I talked about at the very beginning of the message, being able to live in light of the security that we have are the conditions where we as believers thrive. I tell you, when I first started going to Southgate, just before I share these points, when I first started going to Southgate as a teenager, I started going to these Monday night Bible studies.

Some of you know Brother Mike, and