God's Faithfulness: The Foundation of Our Assurance

Paul's confidence is based upon the fact that he knows that salvation is entirely of God. God is faithful. It's God who's at the back of it all. It is God's work. Indeed, you remember that he has already referred to these people as unto the Church of God which is at Corinth, not the Church of the Corinthians. [00:11:51]

He thanks God for what God has done to the Corinthians and in the Corinthians and amongst the Corinthians. It isn't the people that matter; it is the God who is the foundation of the church and who has purposed and planned it all. That is the only basis of his confidence. [00:13:49]

Salvation, I say, is entirely of God. Now listen to him expanding it. It is the grace of God that starts salvation. There wouldn't be any apart from the grace of God. Therefore, he opens out like this: I thank my God always on your behalf for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ. [00:16:14]

It is God who calls us, calls us into this life. This is the most important word. God is faithful by whom you were called. Again, it's the passive. It is God who called. Man was doing nothing. Suddenly the call of God comes to him and brings him out. You were called. [00:21:49]

The Christians are those who are called in the special sense. It means an effective call, an efficacious call. It means a call that not merely addresses the men but puts power into the men. Let me use a simple illustration, and I take it from the scripture itself. [00:25:36]

It is God alone who can and who will confirm us unto the end, that we may be blameless in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, God not only brings us into this life, he keeps us in it. Here is a glorious bit of confidence. [00:34:37]

God calls us, puts us into it. What if he left us to ourselves? Why, the story is we know perfectly well we would all collapse. Is there any one of us who has confidence in himself or in herself? The Apostle, as I've reminded you, had no confidence at all in these people in Corinth. [00:35:07]

God will keep you, he says. He'll confirm you, he'll sustain you, he'll keep you on your feet. You may be attacked by cults, by errors, by heresies, by false doctrine, and you may be shaken. And if you were left to yourself, you'd go down. [00:36:32]

The church was assailed by some of the most deadly errors and heresies, and they were only a handful of people and ignorant at times. And here was Greek philosophy and other things attacking. How did the church stand? There's only one answer: it was God who confirmed her, who held her, and who sustained her. [00:36:59]

God is faithful. He cannot deny himself, and this, I say, is the basis of our hope and our assurance. God does nothing hazily. God does nothing negligently. God, because he is God, always plans, and he planned salvation before the very foundation of the world. [00:40:09]

He never starts anything without completing it. You and I take things up with great excitement and enthusiasm, and then we forget. We make our resolutions, and we break them. We are ever beginning, but we never end. And oh, if the church depended upon men and upon men, she would have long since ceased to be. [00:41:52]

The work which his goodness began, the arm of his strength will complete. His promise is yea and amen and never was forfeited yet. Things future nor things that are now nor all things below nor above can make him his purpose forgo or sever my soul from his love. [00:44:18]