Well, it is nice to be with you here in Portlanone. Mr. Stewart has rather added to my age. It's not 50 years. I know I might look that old, but it's not quite 50 years. It was almost 45 years ago that I was placed here as student minister in the church. I remember the first time I preached in Portlanone, and I remember what I preached about, what my text was. And I had a dreadful meeting. I really had a dreadful meeting. I preached on Matthew 5, verse 6. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. I had a poor meeting in the morning. and I had a worse meeting at night. And I remember going home and I was on the phone, I was speaking to Reggie Cranston, now the Reverend Reggie Cranston, he and I were in the same year in the theological hall. And I said, if there's one place I don't want to be placed, It's Portland Owen. And I says, that's where I'll end up. And well, I came back a few months later. And I brought my wife and the children. We had three children at that time. And I think that's what turned the tide. It had nothing to do with my preaching. The folk liked the family. even if they didn't like me. That's how I ended up getting placed in Portlanone. We spent almost three years, very happy years, here in Portlanone. Our Stephanie, after Sunday school, used to travel with Willie Brown in his car. He went out to pick up his mum and aunt. She stood in the back of the car between the two front seats. You wouldn't get away with it nowadays. We have happy memories of Portlanone and it's nice to be back with you. I may say we have an ordination in Ardara. I'm looking after the church. We have an ordination on Friday night and we're just hoping that there's no further meltdown in the situation so that we can get the ordination and the installation over the lines. Would you remember that in prayer? for his pleas, Mr. Andrew Murray. The Reverend Thomas Murray's son has been chosen and has accepted the call, and we got a unanimous call for him. And there's a great spirit of anticipation in Ardara. I've been looking after it for just over three years. And it's almost felt as if I was there as pastor for those three years. It's been really good, been very helpful to me, I can say, after my wife's passing. It's really been... a great assistance to me. I think it's given me, in a sense, a new lease of life. I wouldn't have taken it on if I had known Ann was ill at the time, but before I had actually taken up the position, we got the diagnosis. It's been a great help to me to be there, so we are looking forward to the ordination and installation on Friday night. It's taking place in our Lurgan Church. I was about to say you can watch it, but you better not, because you have a service here. And I'd be in trouble with Mr. Stewart. I said to him, did you announce that? He says, no, I didn't. Then I realized why he didn't, or he told me. So better get to preaching. Otherwise, the time will have run away with us. So there's a clock there to keep me right. We're reading from Acts chapter 27. Acts chapter 27. and we'll commence reading at verse 20. I'm just going to read down to verse 32 of the Acts chapter 27, and commencing to read at the verse 20. We're in the Mediterranean Sea, we might say here, and there's been a most ferocious storm. So great is the storm that we read in verse 20, and when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away. But after long abstinence, Paul stood forth in the midst of them and said, Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me and not have loosed from Crete and to have gained this harm and loss. And now I exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of any man's life among you but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am and whom I serve, saying, fear not, Paul, thou must be brought before Caesar. And lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee. Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer, for I believe, God, that it shall be even as it was told me. Howbeit, we must be cast upon a certain island. But when the 14th night was come, as we were driven up and down in Adria, about midnight, the shipmen deemed that they drew near to some country and sounded and found it 20 fathoms. And when they had gone a little further, they sounded again and found it 15 fathoms. Then, fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern and wished for the day. And as the shipmen were about to flee out of the ship, when they had let down the boat into the sea, under colour as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship, Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. Then the soldiers cut off the ropes of the boat and let her fall off. We'll end our reading there, as I said, at verse 32, and we'll bow together in a word of prayer. Our heavenly Father, we pray that thou wilt draw near to us as we meditate upon thy word. Pour out thy gracious spirit, O Lord, we pray. Speak to us. Speak through me, Lord. Fill me with thy spirit. Bless the word. O God, that thou hast laid upon my heart. Remember all who are gathered. Remember all who listen, whether it be in the building or outside or at home. O Lord, speak to each one of us. May those who know not Christ be arrested by the word of God. May thy people be encouraged. May they be challenged. May they be fed. May the hand of God rest upon them. O hear our cry and be with us now, we pray, For we ask in Jesus' precious name, Amen. Now, I want us to look at verse 31 of Acts chapter 27. Just a part of the verse, the last part of the verse. Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. Except these abide in the ship, you cannot be saved. Now I know it's a strange text to take for this evening, but I believe it's a very important and a very relevant text. Now this statement is extraordinary and I'll tell you why. If you are following the reading, you will notice that in the midst of the storm, when all hope was gone, the apostle Paul stepped forth and he rebuked those who had insisted on traveling when it was dangerous to do so. He said, you should have listened to me. But they didn't listen to him. But then he brought them good news. He said, the angel of God has come to me. And the angel of God, come from God, has told me. Now fear not, Paul. Because God has given you not only your life, but all those who sail with you. There were 276 people on that vessel. And God said through the angel, all 276 of those on board will be brought safe and nobody will perish. So that's the statement and Paul believed it. He says, wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer. I believe God that it shall be even as it was told me. But then, when we go to our text, Paul makes what seems on the surface a contradictory statement. He says, except these. Abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. Some of the sailors were going to launch the lifeboats and they were going to sail away and leave everybody else to their fate. And Paul says, except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. That seems a contradiction of the promise that God has given to him and of his confidence in the promise. He says, I believe God. God told me through the angel, we're all going to be safe. I believe it. And now he says, except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. So isn't that strange that that should be said? And yet, as we'll see, I believe that Paul was speaking the truth on both occasions. And that's very similar, and this is why I choose this verse, very similar to what we find in the Word of God regarding salvation. In John chapter 10 and verse 27, Christ said, my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. Then he says, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. Yet in the scriptures we find the apostle Paul, for example, in Colossians chapter 1, and verses 21 to 23, speaking about the gospel and adhering to the gospel, and listen to what he says in that chapter. He says, and you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight. Could anything be more glorious? than that, you, you've been brought out of darkness, you've been brought into God's marvelous light, and God's going to present you holy and unblameable and unapprovable in his sight. And then he throws in the little word if. If, it says, if ye continue in the faith grounded and settled and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye have heard. It seems unconditional, you're saved, you have eternal life. And then Paul seems to say, if, if you don't, in a sense, if you don't abandon ship, if you don't give up the gospel. So that's something, there's a tension there that we need to tease out and we need to think about. Because what we've got to say is this, the gospel is not a license. to commit sin. It is not a license to commit sin. When you're saved, you don't have a license to do as you please. The apostle Paul in Romans says, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Talks about the grace of God. He says, shall we continue that grace may abound? For he's talked about the abounding grace of God. And what is his answer? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin? continue any longer therein. God forbid that the gospel should be seen as a license to commit sin. I'm saved, I've eternal life, I can do as I please. I can remember many years ago, and this is going back over 50 years, going to some brethren prayer meetings and I went with some friends I can remember their name, they were a great encouragement to me. An old couple, I suppose they weren't so old if I were to turn back the clock and think of my own age now. They were Mr. and Mrs. Pinkerton. I went with them to some brethren prayer meetings, and they were good prayer meetings. And I remember we were out for supper in one of the homes, and a man said, I can do anything except go to hell, anything. And he was really saying, I could commit adultery, I could lie, I could steal, I could murder, but when I'm saved, I can't go to hell. Now, thankfully, he put in this rider. He said, God forbid that I should. I think his heart was most certainly in the right place, but I cannot agree. with his theology, because when you're saved, you just cannot live as you please. You don't want to live that way, because you have a new nature. But I don't want to anticipate too much what I'm going to say. The promise was given, and the promise was, God has given you all them that sail with you. All 276 of you on board will be preserved. Not one of you will die. Paul says, I believe it. And we can see the promise was fulfilled to the letter. It was fulfilled to the letter. That's my first point. And if I take you right to the end of the chapter, you will see that. Because verse 44 says, and the rest some on boards and some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass that they escaped all, notice that, they escaped all safe to land. Now the promise of John chapter 10 is very clear. I give unto them eternal life. And the Bible says in John 13 in verse one concerning Christ, having loved his own, which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. And he could speak of all those that were given to him by his father. And he says, I've lost none of them. There's only one lost and he never was saved. And that's Judas Iscariot, because in John chapter six, Christ said, have not I chosen you, 12, and one of you is a devil. And it says, he spoke of Judas, and he knew from the beginning who should betray him. So Christ does not lose any of his people. He doesn't lose any of his sheep. And that's the most comforting thing. I've been reading lately the journal of John Wesley. And I love John Wesley. There are some people, and they're so reformed, they can hardly accept that John Wesley was a Christian even. Because he spoke against predestination, because he didn't believe in the eternal preservation of the saints of God, they don't think that he was saved. I like the way Spurgeon addressed the problem. Spurgeon said if he had to add two names to the 12 apostles, he would add the names of George Whitefield and John Wesley. John Wesley traveled a quarter of a million miles on horseback. He preached some 40,000 sermons. When he was riding on horseback, he didn't often guide the horse, and very rarely had he a fall from a horse. He was sitting on the horse, and he was reading, and he read, and he read, and he led thousands upon thousands of people to Christ, tens of thousands. On top of that, he organized his societies and they became a great movement both here in the United Kingdom and over in America. And the Lord blessed them and they sent missionaries out. He was a mighty man of God. But there's something depressing about John Wesley's journal. And that is the fact that he believed you could be genuinely saved truly saved and later on be lost. You could be saved for 20 years, for 40 years, for 60 years and then you could backslide, get away from the Lord and be lost. Isn't that depressing? Isn't it depressing when you think about it? I could be a child of God today, and I could be rejoicing. All my sins are washed away. I'm clean, I'm pure. God is my heavenly Father. Jesus Christ is my elder brother. He's my Savior. The Holy Spirit indwells me. And then suddenly, I do something I shouldn't have done. I fall from grace. And I die in that state, and I go to hell. I have to say, that's not the whole gospel. It's not the whole gospel. Now, John Wesley was a mighty man. He was a very brave man. But I feel a certain depression when I think about the flaw that there was in his theology. And it's a sad thing if you think that. If you think that God's salvation could end after 40 or 50 years, it wouldn't be eternal life if it did. Jesus said, I give on to them eternal life. How long is eternity? If I have eternal life, then I have it forever. If it only lasted 50 years, it wasn't eternal. We can think of the very fact that Christ added, and they shall never perish. We might say, oh, but we could fall away. We could abandon him. Read 1 Peter 1. We read of the inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you who are kept by self-will, by power, by man's determination, who are kept by the power of God onto salvation. Kept by the power of God through faith onto salvation, ready to be revealed at the last time. So we're not kept by our own wisdom, by our own greatness, we're kept by our own power. And it's the power of God that keeps us, not our own power. So that's the first thing I've got to say. The promise was fulfilled. You can set the text over against it. Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. That does not nullify the earlier promise. I believe God. shall be even as it was told me. You're all going to arrive safely out of that ship. The ship might be destroyed, the cargo might be lost, but all 276 people will be saved from drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. But then here's the second point that I want to make. If the sailors had been allowed to abandon the ship, all those on board could not I emphasize this, could not have been saved. That's what Paul says here in our text. He says, accept these, abide in the ship, ye cannot, ye cannot be saved. So you might say, where is the promise now? Where's the promise now? I believe God, shall it be even as it was told me? except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved." Well, let's put it this way. Paul had complete faith in both statements. He hadn't lost his faith in the promise, but the threat was just as real as the promise. Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. He was speaking the truth when he proclaimed the promise, And he was speaking the truth when he proclaimed the threats. He believed both things. And let's just tease this out a little bit. His warning was given, I might say, through God's help. I might say under God's inspiration. His warning was given to stop the sailors from leaving. This is how God used Paul to fulfill his promise. Paul had complete faith in both statements and he spoke both statements with complete authority. The threat was real and it was certain and it was the means of stopping the sailors from abandoning the ship And it was the means that God used to bring all 276 people safe to the land. It was real danger. It was real danger. And we're getting close to a very important thought here. And that is, if you abandon Christ, no matter what profession you have made, if you abandon Christ, then you will not get to heaven. You'll not get to heaven. The ship and its cargo here were lost, but not the people that God had promised to save. So let's see how God's promise regarding salvation is carried out to us with the threat that if you abandon Christ, you cannot get to heaven. The promise is absolute. But if a child of God, and I emphasize this word, if a child of God could abandon the faith, abandon the faith of the word of God completely, he or she could not get to heaven. If you could abandon the faith, you could not get to heaven. And let me just bring in something else here, because it's another of those conjectures those speculations, but it runs in a sense along parallel lines. If Christ could have failed at any point, none of us could have been saved. He could have failed at any point. If Christ had failed in his early life, you think of Christ as a little boy. growing up, and there's lots of other children, boys and girls running around, and they're doing wrong things. Because there's no such thing. If you take Christ out of the picture, there's no such thing as a perfect child. No such thing. I know people put princess on board. I think those are terrible things to put in your car. I've said this before, don't know if I've said it here, it's the way to get yourself lynched, because somebody might just have it in the back of their car. But there's no such thing as a perfect child. We have five of a family and now 11 grandchildren. And there's no such thing as a perfect child, really. One of my grandchildren asked me, Granda, did you ever get caned at school? I said to her, I'm not telling you. So her answer to me then was, I'll take it that you were. So I haven't disillusioned her or disagreed with her or corrected her. I just used it as an illustration probably to her great embarrassment. But she was about seven years old when she said that to me. There's no such thing as a perfect child. And when Christ was a little boy, remember he was God and man, and he went through all the stages, being a boy, being an infant, being a boy, being a teenager and so on. He was surrounded by temptations, yet never once was he tempted in his heart to sin. He had not one wrong thought, not one wrong word escaped his lips, and not one foul action was ever performed by Christ. He was perfect as a child, perfect as a teenager, perfect as a man. He was tempted by the devil, and yet he could say, the prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me, there's nothing in me that will respond to him. And then we might think of the enormous pressure that Christ was under in the Garden of Gethsemane, and particularly on Calvary's cross. If he had failed once, if he had failed once, then he could not have saved us from our sins. And that's a speculation on what might have happened, but Dr. Paisley was right. When he answered a little booklet that said, Jesus Christ able not to sin, and he wrote a reply to that, Jesus Christ not able to sin. He could not fail because he was God as well as man. He had a sinless nature, not a sinful nature. So that's one thing that runs parallel to this, because I'm saying if you and I could, if we're saved, if we could abandon Jesus Christ, then we would not be able to reach heaven, not be able to reach heaven. So that is something that is highly important to us. We can't reach heaven if we abandon Jesus Christ, but I will put it this way to you, I don't believe that any true child of God, person that's really born again, I don't believe he or she will ever abandon Christ. Yes, we may backslide. We may backslide and sometimes fall into terrible backsliding. You think of David. David fell into dreadful backsliding. You think of Lot, very greedy. looked at the well-watered plain, and he thought, that's the best place for my cattle. I have good animals and I want them fattened up, and when I take them to the marketplace, there'll be a great profit. I like that land. It's fertile land, it's the best land. And he chose it. He chose it without regard to the people that lived in the area. The Bible tells us that the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord, or sinners and wicked before the Lord exceedingly. And he moved in that direction. He ended up inside Sodom. He backslid. He did wrong. We can think of Peter. His was a much more short-term backsliding. He became overconfident. And Christ said, you're all going to forsake me. He says, it doesn't matter if everybody else does. I'll never forsake you. I'll never deny you, Lord. And he said, I'm ready to go with you to prison and to death. If they put you to death, I'll be at your side. If they send you to prison, I'll go there with you. Christ said to him, before the cock crows, Twice. You're going to deny me. Three times. And that's what Peter did. That's what Peter did. He said, I don't even know the man. I don't even know him. Within 12 hours, or 24 hours at most, probably well inside 12 hours, he had said, I don't even know the man. And he cursed and swore. Now that may have been vulgar language, or it may have been a solemn oath. Think of that. I'll take the Bible in my hand. He wouldn't have used the word Bible, but that's in essence what he said. I'll take the Bible in my hand, and I promise, with the Bible in my hand, I don't even know Jesus Christ. Is he backslided? Well, of course he's backslided. In the Song of Solomon, we have the bride, and in chapter four, We might say the love between the heavenly bridegroom and the heavenly bride is at its peak. And she said, let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits. And he says, I am coming to my garden. I'm here. And everything is beautiful. And almost literally everything in the garden is rosy. And then what do we see next? What do we read next? the voice of my beloved, he's coming, and she says, I sleep, but my heart waketh. It is the voice of my beloved. And he's coming and he's saying, open to me, my sister, my spouse, my undefiled, open to me. And she says, I've put off my shoes. I can't, I'm tired really, she's saying. I've washed my feet, don't want to get them dirty on the floor, put off my coat, put off my shoes. And then when she finally wakened, we might say, she opened the door, my beloved had withdrawn himself. And how sad that was. Yes, we can backslide. I've traced different degrees of backsliding there from The reluctance of the bride to get up, Peter's denial, and Lot's greed, right through, right through going in reverse order, right through to David. David lusted. David failed to go to the battle. David committed adultery. David caused the death, and it was murder, of Uriah, Bathsheba's husband. That's backsliding. Here is something to distinguish the mere professor from the true child of God. Because when the true child of God backslides and fails, the cost is very high. The cost is very high. You find David, God has rebuked him through Nathan, a broken man. And he gives us an insight into how he was feeling In Psalm 32, he tells us that his bones waxed old through his roaring all the day long. He was aging. He was in a state of internal collapse. People would have looked at David and they would have said, there's something wrong. There's something not right about David. Yes, he puts on a smile and he talks the same language, but there's something missing. Is David not well? Has David got some terminal illness? Is there something he's not telling us about his health? Because while he says he's okay, and while he puts on a brave face, there is definitely something missing about David. He's in a state of internal collapse. He's tormented. tormented by what he has done. His bones waxed old through his roaring, and it's not outward roaring, it's internal roaring. There's an internal cry all the day long. Day and night, thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Oh, I'm like a man in a drought. and all the good things I enjoyed. In times of blessing, they're over. And when he turns to the Lord, he says, restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. I've lost it. See, there's a price to pay. You think of Peter. What did Peter do? He went out and he wept bitterly. What happened was, He was behind Christ. Christ had his back to him at the time, and Christ heard, and Christ must have been hurt by the denial, the solemn oath that he didn't even know, that Peter didn't even know him. And when Peter had finished his denials, when he had uttered the third denial, what did Christ do? He turned round, or at least he turned his head round, and he just looked at Peter, and it broke Peter's heart. The Bible says, he went out and he wept bitterly. He was crushed. He was crushed. He wept bitterly. He was so broken that after the resurrection, Christ was sending a message to the disciples, and the women were told by the angels, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee. Christ sent that little special love token to Peter just to give him some comfort in the midst of all his great distress on account of his denial of the Savior. May we think of Lot. greedy lot, wanting the best of the land, the best pasture land, he got into Sodom. And the Bible says, and it comes actually strangely from Peter's writings, that that righteous man in seeing and hearing vexed his righteous soul. with the ungodly deeds of the wicked, and with their ungodly conversation or behavior. He was vexed, and the second time vexed is found in that passage, it's a word that's the same word as is found regarding the rich man and hen. I am tormented. I am tormented. Lot was tormented. tormented in Sodom. There is a price to pay. And that's how to tell the difference between a true but backslidden believer from a false professor. The false professor doesn't have that inner torment. You see, when you're saved, the Spirit of God dwells within. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, Romans 8 tells us, he is none of his. You have the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit is grieved. And when the Spirit is grieved, you're going to feel it. Maybe not immediately, but before too long, you'll feel it. You'll feel it in your heart. You'll not be a happy person. The Bible does tell us. in Hebrews 12 in verse 8, that if anyone is without chastisement, and it says, whereof all are partakers, if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye, and I use this word, it's in the Bible, and please let me explain it, then are ye bastards and not sons. That word wasn't always the horrible word that it is today. It simply means you're not legitimate. You're not a legitimate child of God. You're not truly born again. You don't belong to God's family. If you can sin and go on and sin without your conscience smiting you, without being chastened by God, you do not You do not belong to God's family. And you might say, this is a very solemn, threatening message. It's a very solemn, threatening message that Paul brought. Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. And that threat was used to stop the abandonment. And God sets forth those threats before us in order to stop us, in order to stop us from turning away from Christ. He sends misery into our hearts when we're not right with God, sends misery. And that's to make us to long after our seizure. to long for the old paths, to long for the word of God, to long for the throne of grace, to long after our savior. That's what happened to the bride in the song of Solomon. She says, my beloved put it in his hand by the hole of the door and my bowels were moved for him. Bowels in the scripture are used to describe the most intense and the tenderest of feelings. And she said, my bowels were moved for him. I was moved with tender affection. Now suddenly, the slothfulness had to go. The carelessness had to go. The slight that I placed upon him had to end. I wanted him. And she went out and she looked for him and looked for him. She was smitten, she suffered, but she kept looking. And when the daughters of Jerusalem said to her, what's your beloved more than any other beloved? What is so special about your beloved? She describes him in one of the most magnificent passages in the scriptures in Solomon chapter five. She says, my beloved is quite and ruddy, the chiefest among 10,000. He stands out in any group of 10,000. He's head and shoulders above them. And when she has described him in ways that we have to take spiritually, she comes to the climax, and she says, yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend. And what I'm saying to you is this. When you are, in a sense, threatened by the word of God, and you're troubled, because you're not doing right. When you're a true child of God and you're being chastened, you are being chastened in love. It's God's love that makes you fear, lest you should fall short. It's God's love that causes you to realize, I cannot go on like this. I cannot behave like this. So it leads us to self-examination. And that's what we all should engage in from time to time. Paul says it in 2 Corinthians 13 and verse 5. He says, examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith. Prove your own selves. You have to examine yourself. You might say, well, I don't like doing things like that. It depresses me. Yes, I was thinking of an illustration. As I walked along the road, I do a lot of walking nowadays, and I was thinking of an illustration. You're sitting on the plane, about to make a journey, and for some reason, the plane doesn't move. You've been sitting there, your take-off time has passed, An hour later, you're still there. Two hours later, captain says, we have a little hitch here, and so we need to sort out a little problem here. He says we have a warning light, and we need to get that sorted out, make sure everything's A-OK before we move. We cannot move. And you're maybe sitting thinking, oh, I'm fed up with this. How much longer are we going to sit here? You might sit there or maybe be moved into the terminal building and you might be held back by three or four hours before you're able to make your flight. You might even be moved to a different plane and you're sitting there frustrated and saying, I wish that I hadn't to do this. I hate this. I wish I'd gotten a different time and I wouldn't have been subject to this delay. It's terrible. It's a warning light, probably means nothing. He could have ignored it. Could he? You wouldn't say that if you're in the air and suddenly the plane starts to go down. and you're coming down onto a mountain and the plane is in a way, it's dropping from the sky. You're saying then, I wish he had stayed and checked that out. I wish he had made sure the plane was safe before he took it along the runway and took off. It's too late now. We're all going to perish on the plane. We're going to crash into that mountain. You see the point I'm making? Examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith. Prove your own selves. Know ye not that Christ be in you, except ye be reprobates? Yes, a reprobate's literally somebody who is rejected. You don't want to be rejected. So we do need to look at our lives. Am I the Lord's? If I'm the Lord's, I'm safe. But God sometimes pulls us up short, makes us think so that we might examine our hearts and our motives and whether we really love Christ, whether we're really trusting in him. So threats, and I finish with this, threats such as that used by Paul are only made when we're going astray and about to plunge deeper into wrongdoing. You see, if you come back to the situation in Acts 27, these people weren't threatened until they were about to do a very underhand thing. The sailors who were needed on board They were going to look out for themselves and they were leaving, leaving the passengers helpless, without a captain, without sailors, without men to bring that boat, if it had been possible to bring it in without it being smashed up, but they weren't even going to be there to help out with that. So the threat was made because Those men were going to do wrong. They were doing wrong, but they were going to do even more wrong. So let me ask you something. I'm almost finished, and I know time has run away. Are you fearful today? You could be fearful and still be walking with God. Some people are of a fearful disposition. But are you fearful because there's something not right in your life? And you know it's not right. In Psalm 66, this psalmist says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. So you'll be fearful. If there's something in your life that you know about, and you're not putting it right, you're prepared to tolerate it. You'll be fearful. And the closer you get to crossing the line between time and eternity, the more fearful you will become. except you repent, you'll become more fearful. If you're truly a child of God, are you careless today? Are you getting caught up in the world? Are you doing things that you shouldn't be doing? Things that are wrong, things that are sinful? Then stop. Then stop. Stop. Stop, repent, and turn with all your heart and all your soul to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Savior. He's a willing Savior. He's a loving Savior. He's a great Savior. There's none like Christ, none like the Son of God. And I say to you, come to Him. If you've got away from Him, get back to Him. Get back to Him. If you're beginning to drift, stop. Drift no more. And if you're not saved, and you know you're not saved, well, why are you so foolish? Why are you so mad? Come to the Savior. The hymn writer said, make no delay. Here in his word, he has shown us the way. Here in our midst, he's standing today, tenderly saying, come. And he tells us, All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. And when he says in no wise, it's in the Greek, a double negative. Now a double negative in English cancels itself out, but in Greek, a double negative makes the statement even stronger. There's not a chance. If you come to Christ, in true repentance, there's not a chance that he will refuse you. It brings glory to his name, to save sinners. It brings joy in the presence of God when sinners are saved. So why would you not come? Why would you not seek the Lord? He gives you eternal life. Yes, you may have times when you fail him, and you may be exercised by a fear, But when he gives you eternal life, you won't perish. He'll make sure of it. He might give you something like a threat, such as we have here, but he'll make sure you don't perish. Oh, come to the Savior. And if you have a false profession, have done with it. Have done with it and get right with God. Let's bow together in a word of prayer. Father in heaven, we thank you for thy word. We thank you that thy word has many glorious and gracious promises. But we thank you also that there are threats. We thank you that there are clear warnings, and these are given to us in love. They are given to halt us in a mad career and to pull us back. O Lord, may we heed the warnings. May we take heart from the promises. May we truly taste and see that the Lord is good. Hear our earnest cry and bless us richly. Forgive us our many sins. we ask in Jesus' name, amen.