Full Assurance - Part Three

A FULL ASSURANCE - Part Three

 

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If you knew someone who simply couldn't tell a lie, you would always believe that persons word, wouldn’t you? You do know Someone like that—but there is only One like that in the universe. God cannot lie. He cannot even make a mistake (Read Titus 1:2).

Whether or not you have full assurance depends exactly upon what you think about God. Suppose that a boy wanted money to go on a vacation. He knew that his father and mother could not afford to send him, but he still wanted to go. He had an uncle who came to dinner one evening, saw the boy disappointed and asked him what was the matter. The boy told his uncle, who patted him on the back and said, “Come down to my office on Saturday morning, and I will give you a check for the full amount. I will be delighted to let you have that vacation as a gift from me.”

 

What do you think the boy would do? He telephones his chum a few minutes later. How is he going to speak to his chum? It all depends on what he thinks of his uncle and his uncles word. One of two conversations may take place. He may take the phone and say, “Oh, Bill, what do you think? My uncle is giving me the vacation trip. It is all settled. I am to go to his office on Saturday and get the money. Isn’t that wonderful?” Or else he might say to his friend, “Oh, I would like to go well enough, but there is no hope. My old bragging uncle was here at dinner and told me that he would give me a check for the full amount if I came to his office on Saturday, but if I went his clerk would tell me that the old fellow had to go to Timbuktu or somewhere else on a sudden trip, and that there was no check.”

 

Now we have a Heavenly Father Who cannot lie. His very name is truth. Christ said, “I am the truth” (John 14:6). That is why David is able to sing of Him, “According to Thy Name, O God, so is Thy praise unto the ends of the earth”(Psalm 48:10). Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, said, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe” (Proverb 18:10).

 

One of His best known promises is John 3:16. Once I was in a class where the teacher called one of us to the blackboard, gave us a text, made us write an outline for our talk, then turn around and give it to the class. A Chinese student was given John 3:16. He went to the board and apologized to the class that he did not know English very well, and that he would have to be sure of the grammar of the verse. So he said, “The subject is God. The verb is loved. The object is world.” Then after a moment he said, “Then there is God a second time, with another verb, gave. The object of this is Son.” He kept writing on the blackboard and it looked like this when he had finished the whole verse.

 

God                       Loved                 World 

God                       Gave                   Son 

Whosoever          Believeth           Him 

Whosoever          Shall have          Life

 

Then he drew a line between the first two and the second two, and said, “The first two are God’s part, and they are in the past tense. The second two are mans part and they are in the present tense. All God’s work is finished. His gift has been given. Our part remains to be done. We must believe. But if we believe we have everlasting life.” We saw that we were getting much more than a lesson in grammar. We were learning that when God promises, He puts it in the past tense, and that when we do what we are told to do, we may be sure that He keeps His Word. It all depends on Him. Ask yourself the following questions. Do I believe that God loved me? Did God give His Son to die for me? Have I believed in Him as best I know? Do I have, right now, what He says I have when I believe? Do I have life eternal?

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STUDY QUESTIONS