The sermon discusses the perseverance of the saints and how believers may fall into sin due to temptation, remaining corruption, and neglect of means of preservation. It provides examples of believers in the Bible who committed grievous sins but repented. The sermon emphasizes that our sin grieves the Holy Spirit and brings God's displeasure, but true believers will repent and be preserved in their salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

This morning in the Baptist Confession we are in chapter 17, paragraph 3, of The Perseverance of the Saints. And though they may, through the temptation of Satan and of the world, the prevalence of corruption remaining in them, and the neglect of means of their preservation, fall into grievous sin, and for a time continue therein, whereby they incur God's displeasure and grieve His Holy Spirit, come to have their graces and comforts impaired, have their hearts hardened and their consciences wounded, hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves. Yet shall they renew their repentance and be preserved through faith in Christ Jesus to the end. This is the third and last paragraph of chapter 17 on the perseverance of the saints. It mentions things that cause us to fall into sin, goes over some of the effects and results of our sin and then finally reminds us that a child of God will repent of their sin and be preserved in their salvation.

In the beginning, some things that can cause us to fall into sin is temptation, remaining corruption, which would be our sin nature or our sinful desires that have not yet been rooted out or not been changed in our ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in us, and then the neglect of means of our preservation, which when I was reading this last week, I found that interesting and was thinking about what some of those means are, and I was reminded of the story of Peter. This is kind of a side note from the main point of this paragraph. But when they were in Matthew 14, the disciples were in the ship in the midst of the sea and Jesus had walked out to them through the storm. And then in starting in verse 28, it says, and Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come.

And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. So thinking about that with the neglect of the means of our preservation, Peter had his eyes on Christ, and then when he starts looking around it instead the storm and the sea, he took his eyes off Christ and he began to sink. And I think that's kind of a good picture of us falling into sin when we don't have the physical embodiment of Christ with us today to walk with, but we have His word and we have prayer, which are both means of our preservation that we, when we neglect those things, I think we put ourselves in danger of sinking or falling into sin. So the paragraph says that we may, and this is speaking of believers, fall into grievous sin.

And Some examples of that would be King David committing adultery with Bathsheba, then murdering her husband in an attempt to cover it up, which are both obviously pretty grievous sins. Yet, in 1 Samuel chapter 13, he's called a man after God's heart. And when you read the Psalms, he's obviously a man who loves the Lord. I wouldn't say he is an unregenerate person. We also have Peter, Mr.

Hopkins talked about a little bit last week, who Christ said in Matthew 16 verse 18, thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And yet we have Peter openly denying Christ three times. And then another example is the Israelites. In their whole journey through the wilderness, how many times did they sin against God, create false idols, and worship them? And how many times did God, was God angry with them, and yet they're his chosen people.

Our sin grieves the Holy Spirit. It brings God's displeasure on us. It causes our graces and comforts to be removed, it says in this paragraph. Talking about comforts being removed, I was reminded of Jonah. So after he goes through his whole journey of running from God, having been swallowed by a fish, and God ultimately brings him to do what he told him to do.

He still seems to think he's kind of the main character in that story. And he gets mad at God when God does not destroy Nineveh, because the Ninevites repented. And he's boasting at God saying, well, the whole reason I ran in the first place was because I knew you weren't going to do it. I knew you were just going to forgive them. And then, he's telling God, you might as well kill me because I'm so mad at you right now, which is ridiculous.

He's being super arrogant, has a pretty bad attitude, and he's saying these things to God, the one who created him, the one who put that fish there. And then God, in his grace, decides to give Jonah some shade. He caused the gourd to grow up and some time to change his attitude. Kind of like when as a kid you are playing with your siblings and there's some big injustice in your 10-year-old mind. Your siblings took your hot wheels or whatever it was and you go Storming into the living room mom mom mom.

It's not fair and I remember on a couple occasions my parents were like, okay, wait a minute go back out Come back in and do this the right way like change your attitude and then come back and try again. It's kind of like God did that for Jonah. He gave him all night to think about it. In the morning, Jonah obviously hasn't had a change of heart. God took away his shade, one of his comforts and grace.

And Jonah's still mad at God now. He's mad about the shade. And God confronts him with his sin and tells him what he's been doing wrong. And that kind of brings us to the last and main point of this paragraph, that a true believer will repent of their sin. So I was reading Jonah last night, and I went to the next chapter after God, you know, finally kind of an ultimatum to Jonah, and that was it.

It was the end. So it kind of got left hanging there. It doesn't really give us Jonah repenting or being destroyed or any of that. It just moves on to the book of Micah. But there's only two possible endings to that.

One is Jonah is not a child of God. He goes on in his ridiculously disrespectful attitude until God finally just destroys him and Jonah goes to hell for eternity. Or the second option is that Jonah is a child of God, that Jonah hears God's rebuke and he repents and he's preserved in his salvation. So when you read Psalms, like I mentioned, you see David's expression of sorrow for his sin. You see how accepting he was of God's judgment in, I guess, Samuel when God kills David's child because of the sin that he committed with Bathsheba and with murdering Uriah.

And David is repentant. David loves God's law and he's continually praying to God in the Psalms to please give me your law, make me know your law, make me follow your law. That's an example of a child of God who sins grievously and then repents. In Matthew 26, after Peter denies Christ for the third time, we see him going out and weeping bitterly. More to that story, it's not in the scriptures as far as I know, but according to other historical records that were written, I think the Catholic Church may use them more.

But Peter was later crucified and even asked not to be crucified in the same way as Christ. So, he was crucified upside down because he said he was not worthy to be crucified in the same way that Christ was. It's just an interesting—it's 180 degrees different from what you see when he's at one point denying Christ, saying, No, I don't even know that guy. Please don't associate with him. I don't want to be killed.

I don't want to be crucified. I don't want to be persecuted, prosecuted. And then later he's saying, no, I follow Christ. Christ is more than me. Don't even kill me the same way as him, kill me worse because I'm not worthy of dying like him." That's a change in behavior.

That's a good example, if those records are accurate, of what true repentance will look like. I think that there are three things we should take away from this paragraph, which is keep our eyes on Christ through His word and in prayer so we don't fall into sin. Examine ourselves and whether we're allowed to just continue in sin, if there's been no change since your childhood or since you came to know Christ, or whether God is working in your life and you're growing to hate your sin more, or to love Him more. And as you grow older, you become more aware of things that are sinful. Sometimes it's a big slap in the face, like getting thrown out in the ocean and having a fish swallow you.

And sometimes it's just a look. Christ made eye contact with Peter after Peter denied him and he broke down crying. Sometimes all you have to do is just remember why we're here, open the Bibles, and you're confronted with your sin. And if you are a child of God, the third thing, when you do, you know, you examine yourself and you find that you are a repentant, you are a believer. If you are a child of God, be encouraged because God will not allow you to remain in your sin, the sin that hopefully we all hate, that we could be dragged down by.

But God won't allow you to remain in it. He won't abandon you because of it. How many times did He forgive the Israelites? And then in Philippians 1,6, it says, Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.