Inheritance can be Earned and Lost. 1 Peter 1:3-4
“Father, help us to understand that inheritance has
two different aspects; and how You use inheritance to motivate us, encourage
us, and stimulate us to understand that there is a reason and a purpose for our
spiritual growth today. It is in preparation of how we will be used in
eternity. Father we pray that You will help us to
focus and concentrate this evening. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.”
Okay, we are studying actually in 1 Peter 3 but we are
not going to be there except just as a kick-off point because as we go through
the Scripture, what I like to do, especially on certain key terms, is explain
them. In 1 Peter the idea of inheritance goes all the way through this epistle
because it is related to suffering. Why must a believer overcome in suffering
by using the Word of God? Because it is preparing us
spiritually. It prepares our character. It builds in our souls spiritual
capacity for righteousness to prepare us to rule and reign with the Lord Jesus
Christ in eternity. That’s the focal point. We have been studying this in terms
of inheritance.
Tonight we are going to look at the fact that the
Bible clearly teaches that inheritance can be earned, and it can be lost as
well. There is always that warning against failure. The problem that we run
into is that many of these passages are taken out of context, especially within
the Calvinistic framework. Reformed theology, and especially
Reformed soteriology. The five points of
Calvinism come under the acronym TULIP. The “P” in TULIP stands for the idea of perseverance, the perseverance of the saints.
Under a lordship salvation view, perseverance does not mean that Christ
perseveres in keeping us. Now there are some Calvinists in history who have
taken it that way which means their understanding of perseverance is more along
the lines of eternal security. That was how Lewis Sperry Chafer, the founder
and first president of Dallas Seminary, understood the “P” in TULIP.
There is a much larger segment, especially today, due
to the influence of a number of prominent Calvinistic Bible teachers like R.C. Sproul, John McArthur, and others. They look at the
“P” to mean that if you as a believer do not persevere in obedience, if you
fail and you go into a backslidden state, and you do not repent and recover,
then that would not indicate that you lose your salvation, but that you didn’t
have the right kind of faith. In their view, saving faith is a gift, so you did
not have the right kind of faith and you were not ever truly saved. You had a
false faith in Christ. That is a view that they teach - that a person can have
a false faith in Jesus that’s not a saving faith.
They use some examples, primarily from John 2, where
many Jews believed on Him because they saw His miracles during the Passover
when He was in Jerusalem. Then it said that Jesus did not entrust Himself to
them. That does not have anything to do with whether or not they were saved. It
has to do with the fact that even though they had accepted Him as the Messiah,
they still thought that He was going to bring in a political kingdom. They were
still confused about the role of the Messiah. That doesn’t necessarily have
anything to do with personal justification. They take that and they extrapolate
it, and they say, “See, a faith that is based on signs
and wonders is an inadequate faith.”
The problem with that is that John writes his gospel
and he says at the end that “these are written…” These
what? Well, if you go back to the previous verse in John 20:30, John said that
Jesus did many other signs than these, but that these are written. These signs.
There are eight signs in the gospel of John. These signs are written that you
might believe. The Bible clearly states that faith based on signs can be
saving. It is not some kind of lesser, diluted, inadequate, non-saving faith.
There are a lot of problems with the Calvinistic, perseverance view of
salvation that we call lordship salvation. In lordship salvation, they believe
that all inheritance, all rewards, go to all believers and there is not a
distinction. They would also say that all believers are overcomers, not
understanding that there is a difference there - that overcomers are believers
who overcome the world. That is how the term is used in relation to Jesus in
John 16 when He says, “Don’t be afraid for I have overcome the world.”
It is a perfect tense verb there, which means that
before He went to the cross where He dealt with sin, He had already had victory
over, or overcome, the world. That had to do with how He lived His life. How He
lived His life is not part of what He did to pay the penalty for sin. There is
a difference between spiritual life and salvation or justification. There are
some critical issues here in how these things are understood.
A lot of believers are confused over these things. You
often hear this when you hear a person talking about someone who has committed
some sin or they’ve done something wrong. Sometimes it is a Hollywood star.
Sometimes it is the President of the United States. They say, “Well, that
person just cannot be saved. Just look at their life.” A lot of people said
that and still say that about President Clinton. “Look at what he has done. He
has lied and he has committed adultery and he has done all of these things.”
Well the pastor of First Baptist Church of Little Rock, when Bill Clinton was
governor of Arkansas, was a solid, doctrinal Bible teacher. He had several
conversations with President Clinton about his belief in Jesus Christ as his
Savior. I read about this in an article in Time
or Newsweek. It was very clear
according to Dr. W.O. Vaught that Bill Clinton was a believer. He clearly
understood that Jesus Christ died on the cross for his sins.
It does not matter regarding his sins or failures, or
how he may fail over the course of his spiritual life. Scripture says that if
you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior then you are saved because of your
possession of Christ’s imputed righteousness. You are not saved because of what
you do or what you do not do. Your salvation is not confirmed by what you do or
what you do not do. Our faith is not in our perseverance but in the promise of
God and the character of God and His ability to keep us. That is what Peter
talks about in this same passage.
Inheritance is the issue of the warning passages in
Hebrews and the issue in many other warning-type passages in the New Testament.
Inheritance can be lost. It does not mean we do not spend eternity in heaven
but it does mean that we do not receive rewards at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
We enter Heaven yet as through fire. This is what we are covering as we are
developing our doctrine on inheritance over the last couple of weeks.
The passage in 1 Peter is talking about the fact that
God has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead. The term “living hope” focuses on the future. Verse 4
says we have been born again to an inheritance. That inheritance is described
by three words in the Greek. It is incorruptible, it is undefiled, and it is
unfading and it is put on reserve in heaven for us.
That is going to bring in an important aspect of this
doctrine. “Who are kept?” This means all believers are kept by the power of God
through faith. We are not kept by our own power. We are kept by the power of
God. Once we trust in Christ as Savior, then we are justified and we can never
lose that salvation, which we’ll see is Phase 3 when it is revealed in the last
time.
We saw another connection to this in Titus 3:7, “That
having been justified by His grace we should become heirs…” There is a
potential for inheritance. It is not guaranteed here. “Should become heirs
according to the hope of eternal life.”
So we begin our study of the doctrine of inheritance.
We’ve gone through the first three or four points. We stopped last time under
point 4. This time we are going to take up at point number 5. Inheritance was
given positionally, or potentially, which is the idea of inheritance that we
realize only on the basis of obedience, on the basis of grace, but the
realization and enjoyment of the inheritance was a reward for obedience.
Salvation or justification is a gift, “for by grace you have been saved [Phase
1 salvation] through faith and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God.”
Salvation is a gift. It is not a reward. Reward is something that is given for
meritorious behavior so rewards are given on the basis of what we do. Salvation
is given on the basis of what Christ did on the cross. There is a distinction
between salvation or justification as a free gift, and
inheritance as something that comes on the basis of obedience, and on the basis
of our walk with the Lord.
We want to look at this like we have been doing, going
back to the Old Testament where the concepts of inheritance are laid out for us
and we will start there. Last time we looked at Abraham and
how he was justified by faith in Genesis 15:6. That verse is not talking
about his belief in context, his belief in the promise of God that he would
have numerous heirs that would come through himself and Sarah and not through Eleazar, his servant. Many people misunderstand that
because they do not look at the Hebrew.
Just this last week someone was asking me a question
about what someone else taught. They said, “Listen to this or go read what he
says about this.” It was about Genesis 15:6. This individual said that it was
Abraham’s belief in the promise that his seed would come, not through Eleazar but through Sarah. That misses the point as I
pointed out last time. There is a verb tense shift in verse 6. There is a break
in the narrative. It goes “and this happened and this
happened and this happened” which uses about four qal imperfects. Then
it shifts to a qal perfect in verse 6. That shows that it is shifting. The
author is telling us to remember something. When you look in your Bible,
everyone in this church ought to have parentheses around Genesis 15:6 because
it is a parenthetical note saying, “Now remember, Abraham had already been
justified by faith.” That is referring back to his original justification
which occurred prior to God’s promise in Genesis 15.
We focused on the inheritance that was promised to
Abraham but its realization, when it came to Genesis 22, came as result of his
obedience. That is part of the promise. In Genesis 15:1 God said to Abraham, “I
am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.” Reward is something that is
given on the basis of obedience.
Under this next point, we see that inheritance is
given on the basis of grace but it is not realized until we obey Him. There are
conditions placed on it. We are going to see that there are two categories of
inheritance that apply to every believer: one where God is our inheritance, and
one which is distinct, related to our spiritual growth and our spiritual maturity.
What we are going to see is there is this same kind of distinction in the Old
Testament. That is what I am laying the groundwork for under this particular
principle.
We want to look at a couple of examples to understand
that in the Old Testament, the promise of the land was given to Abraham as an
additional blessing beyond his salvation. The same thing is true for the Exodus
generation. Here is a generation of people, the majority of which were
justified and were believers. We are going to have to establish that fact,
because a lot of people think that because they failed to enter the land, they
were not saved. Maybe you have heard that. That too, comes out of the
allegorical interpretation of Reform theology.
In Reform theology, Canaan or the Promised Land
represented Heaven. How many times have you heard in Negro
spirituals or in other things this illusion to “crossing the Jordan” to enter
into Heaven. Crossing the Jordan is used for dying in an allegorical
sense. That is not how it is used in the Old Testament. Crossing the Jordan was
crossing the literal river to go into the land that God promised to give
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their descendants. It is not going into Heaven.
Entering into Canaan, or the Promised Land, is not used typologically or
allegorically to refer to going into Heaven. That is how it is used in numerous
Reform theologies, and it is used that way in some hymns
which, of course, we don’t sing in this church.
It was even part of the dying statement of Thomas
Jonathan Jackson, otherwise known as General Stonewall Jackson, when he was
shot accidentally by friendly fire at the Battle of Chancellorsville. His dying
words had to do with “crossing over the river and lying in the shade of the
tree.” He was a convinced and confirmed Presbyterian. He taught Sunday school
every Sunday afternoon to the slaves on his plantation. He was an evangelist
and he was a strong believer in Reform theology. When he is talking about
crossing over the river, he is using an allegorical sense because he knows he
is about to die.
We have to look at what the Bible teaches; that Canaan
is not heaven. Crossing the Jordan is not an allegory for crossing from this
life into Heaven. One of the things we have to understand, that the Bible makes
very clear, is that most of the Exodus generation were justified believers even
though they became disobedient, rebellious believers and they lost their
inheritance. They lost their inheritance. They jeopardized it by their
disobedience and they were not able to enter the land. It does not mean they
were all unsaved. How do you know that? Who were the only the two people who
were allowed to enter the land and realize their inheritance? Joshua and Caleb.
We will look at that in just a minute. Well, what about Moses? Did Moses lose
his salvation? Does that mean that Moses was not saved because he did not enter
the Promised Land? Not at all. See how their theology
just breaks down once you start looking at things. Aaron did not make it into
the Promised Land. Does that mean that Aaron does not make it into Heaven? No.
Miriam did not make it into the Promised Land. Many,
many others did not make it into the Promised Land. It does not mean they are
not going to make it into Heaven. It means they did not realize the blessings
of the inheritance because they failed to obey. The only two that were obedient
out of that whole generation and were therefore qualified to fully experience
their inheritance were Joshua and Caleb.
First of all, we want to establish this principle on this
slide that most of the Exodus generation were saved by
faith alone in the Messianic promise, not just in some vague promise that God
would save them. They had an understanding based upon promises from Genesis
3:15 up through Genesis 49, when Jacob is pronouncing prophecies over each of
his sons in the tribes, and he talks about the scepter that would not pass from
the tribe of the Lion of Judah. Judah would be the tribe from which this ruler
would come, the Lion of Judah. They had an understanding of this seed that
would come and provide redemption for people.
As you move through the Old Testament, from Genesis
all the way through Malachi, the promise became a little more
clear, a little more clear, and a little more clear. By the time you get
into the New Testament when Jesus is born, eight days later when He was
presented and dedicated at the Temple, there is this really, really old guy
named Simeon who has been hanging around because he read the Old Testament. He
understood that the Messiah was about to come and he had prayed for God to
allow him to see the Lord’s anointed, to see the Messiah. There clearly was
enough information to give him the time, and the time frame. He is waiting.
There were others as we have seen in our study of
Matthew. When Jesus would show up, people would see the miracles, and see Him
heal the blind and heal those who were cripples and they would say, “Could this
be the Messiah?” They understood that these were Messianic credentials
indicated by the Old Testament. There was not just a vague promise. It became
more and more specific as time went by.
The Exodus generation is saved because they understood
the Messianic implications of what was going on, especially in terms of the
Passover. Let’s just look at a couple of things that are said about this
generation. In Exodus 4:22–23, God is giving instructions to Moses on
what to say. “You will say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus saith the LORD, Israel
is my son, even my firstborn: and I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may
serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold I will slay thy son, even
thy firstborn.’ ” What He is saying here is that the nation corporately is His
firstborn. God is addressing them in terms of the fact that they are His
firstborn, not because every single individual was justified, although most of
them were.
Then we get into Exodus 4:31 just a few verses later
as Aaron and Moses have now gone to the Israelites and performed signs and
wonders, demonstrated their credentials, and what was the response of the people?
They said, “Aw, get out of here, Moses, we know you. You killed that Egyptian.
Go on.” Is that what they said? That is not what they said. Exodus 4:31, “And
the people believed.” They are believing the promise
of God to deliver them temporally because these people are already justified.
They believed. “When they heard that the Lord had visited the children of
Israel, and that He had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their
heads and worshipped.” We are going to see this again and again throughout
Exodus as to how the people worshipped. They also really rebelled, horribly
rebelled, went into idolatry and had Aaron build a golden calf for them. They
really were apostate at times and extremely rebellious. This is why they did
not realize their inheritance.
We get to Exodus 12:7-8 when we see the instructions
for the Passover, the tenth plague, that God would send death in Egypt to their
firstborn. The solution to survive was the application of the blood of the lamb
to the door posts. The instructions in verse 7, “And
they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the
upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it. And they shall eat
the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter
herbs they shall eat it.” This is a picture of trusting in God’s deliverance
from death and the application of the blood.
Then we go on from there and in Exodus 12:17 when God
passed over, what is the response at the end of verse 27? “The people bowed the
head and worshipped.” And then they went away and left Egypt.
In Exodus 14:31, we read, “And Israel saw that great work which the LORD did upon the Egyptians: and the people feared the LORD, and believed the LORD, and his servant, Moses.” Again and
again, it said they believed. That is the condition for salvation.
Then in Exodus 19:8, they are all before the Lord at
Mt. Sinai and they are given instructions as to what they must do before they
listen to the Lord give them the Law, the commandments. “And all the people
answered together and said, ‘All that the LORD hath
spoken we will do.’ ” They are going to be obedient, which indicates that they
understand the issues and they are already saved and already justified.
The New Testament treats them as saved and justified
also. We get into 1 Corinthians 10, a great passage, and at the beginning
talking about the Exodus generation, Paul writes, “They were all baptized unto
Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” The cloud is a reference to the shekinah
glory, the presence of God leading the people with a cloud by day and a pillar
by night. The sea is the mark of their departure from Egypt. They crossed the
Red Sea on dry land. “And they did all eat the same spiritual meat.” Note that
word “all”. That’s an important word. They all ate the same spiritual meat.
When did they do that? We just saw that in Exodus 12. They ate the lamb which represented the Lord Jesus Christ on that first
Passover. They did all eat the same spiritual meat. “And did all drink the same
spiritual drink for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them; and
that Rock was Christ.”
Now remember this verse. Today is Thursday night.
Sunday is coming. Guess what our passage is going to focus on Sunday morning.
It is that great passage in Matthew 16 when Jesus starts talking to Peter
about, “On this rock, I will build my Church.” There is a lot of debate over
whether He is talking about Peter and the word play with PETROS and PETRA. Is Jesus referring to Peter? Is
Jesus referring to Peter’s statement that He is the Messiah? Or is He referring
to something else? Remember we studied in Samuel how God is viewed as the Rock.
That was one of the alternate names for Yahweh. He is the Rock. Here this is
applied to Jesus, that Rock was Christ. Guess who Jesus is referring to when He
says, “On this Rock, I will build my Church?” I will let you know for sure on
Sunday morning. The last point there is that in 1 Corinthians 10:4, all are
baptized, all ate, all drank, but with many of them God was not pleased. There
is a contrast between the fact that they are all saved, but many of them
displeased the Lord; in fact, all but two.
Then in Hebrews 11:29–30, that great Hall of
Faith chapter, the writer of Hebrews treats them as justified, “By faith they
passed through the Red Sea as by dry land; which the Egyptians assaying to do
were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were
compassed about for seven days.” So they are a justified generation. The first
verse refers to the Exodus generation. The second verse refers to their
descendants, the conquest generation. So what we have seen is that both Exodus
and the New Testament passages treat that Exodus generation as justified
believers. The vast majority of them, if not all of them, were justified. But
they failed to realize their inheritance.
That is the pattern. There are many who are justified,
many church age believers who are justified, but they are not going to realize
their inheritance at the Judgment Seat of Christ. They can lose that because
they do not understand things like confession of sin. They live their lives
mostly in carnality, walking according to the flesh, not walking according to
the Spirit. They do not understand the importance of knowing the Word and
living the Word. They are just glad they are going to go to Heaven and they
have bought into this lie that as long as they are in Heaven, they do not care
whether they are in a hovel, or a ghetto, or whether they are in some mansion.
Our goal is to glorify God to the maximum. That is realized at the Judgment
Seat of Christ. It is not that we are trying to get anything, but that we want
to be prepared and properly motivated and developed in our spiritual life so we
can rule and reign with the Lord Jesus Christ in the kingdom and on in to
Heaven.
There were only two people who actually realized their
inheritance. Of the two or three million Jews who came out of Egypt, and that
is a pretty substantial number, there were only two. Not even Moses made it
into the Promised Land. The closest he got was on top of Mt. Nebo on Pisgah and
God supernaturally allowed him to see all of the land. It says he could see all
the way up to Galilee. This last year when we were there, even though it was
crystal clear and we had a remarkable view from Mt. Nebo across the Jordan and
we could see the high ridgeline where Jerusalem was. We could see those white
stone buildings reflecting the morning sun, which was at our back. You could
see the glint of the sun off the steeple on the Church of the Ascension on the
Mount of Olives. It was just magnificent but you could not see all the way to
Galilee. You could see towards Galilee. You could not see the Mediterranean but
God allowed Moses to see all of the Promised Land. “This is what you could have
had but you disobeyed Me. You violated My commandment when you struck the rock out of anger the
second time. Because of that disobedience you lost the right to enter the
land.” That does not mean that Moses did not get to go to Heaven, but he did
not realize an earthly part of his inheritance.
The only two who did were Caleb and Joshua. Now you
remember the story in Numbers when God gave them instructions to spy out the
land, He did not say [this is where literal hermeneutics is so important] to go
see if they could conquer the land. He told them to spy out the land that He
was going to give them. There is a promise there. He was going to give it to
them. Go check it out. Do a recon. The recon is not to see if you can do it.
The recon is to see how you are going to do it and what the issues are that you
are going to face once you invade the land. They went in and they saw these
fortified cities. They saw giants in the land and they saw a lot of different
things. Ten of them came back and said, “The circumstances are overwhelming. We
just cannot do it.” Two of them said, “It is not up to us. It is up to the
Lord. We can trust the Lord and God will give us the victory.” That was Caleb
and Joshua. Because of that, God said, “no one is going into the land except the
two, Caleb and Joshua.” It was forty years later when Caleb and Joshua were in their eighties that they finally realized that temporal part
of their inheritance and entered into the land.
In Numbers 14:24, God said, “But my servant Caleb,
because he has a different spirit in him and followed Me
fully, I will bring into the land where he went, and his descendants shall
inherit it.” Then Joshua also was distinguished. In Joshua 14:8–9,
“Nevertheless my brethren who went up with me [those ten wimpy spies who did
not have the spiritual courage to trust God to vanquish the enemy] made the
heart of the people melt with fear.” That is the trouble. When you have bad
leadership it causes people to fear. We saw a great example of this just
recently when the Senate Majority leader, a Republican, came out and said, “We
are just probably not going to win on this Iran nuclear treaty thing. We are
going to try hard but we are not going to do it.” That is not a leader. A
leader comes out saying, “It is going to be tough. We need to work harder.
Let’s overcome the obstacles. Let’s get better organized but we are going to
defeat this thing.” That is what a leader does. Joshua and Caleb were leaders
but the other ten were like Mitch McConnell and they caused the peoples’ hearts
to be discouraged and to melt with fear. We do not need those kinds of leaders.
We need leaders who are focused on winning the battle, not being ready to give
up and lose the battle.
That is exactly what happened with Joshua. He said, “I
followed the LORD my God fully.” Caleb in Numbers 14:24 followed the
Lord fully and Joshua followed the Lord fully. It goes on to say in Joshua 14:9
that “Moses swore in that day saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has
trodden shall be an inheritance to you and to your children forever [to Caleb
and Joshua] because you have followed the LORD my God
fully.’ ” That is the condition. The realization of inheritance is on the
condition of obedience. This takes us to a full understanding of why that
generation lost all inheritance including Miriam, Moses, and Aaron. Only Joshua
and Caleb followed the Lord fully.
We also have passages which
indicate a loss of blessing. One passage indicating that you can forfeit your
inheritance rights was the case of Reuben. Reuben was Jacob’s first born who
lost his inheritance rights according to 1 Chronicles 5:1, “now the sons of
Reuben the firstborn of Israel—he was indeed the firstborn, but because
he defiled his father’s bed, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph, the
son of Israel, so that the genealogy is not listed according to the
birthright.” So he lost his inheritance because of his disobedience, because of
his sin.
We learn from these passages that realization of
inheritance is based on obedience. Justification is a free gift by faith alone
in Christ alone but inheritance that goes beyond the inheritance common to
every believer, the rewards, are based on obedience. Deuteronomy 6:18, “And
thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the LORD: that it
may be well with thee.” The implication is that if you do not do right, it will
not go right with you. “Do right and good in the sight of the LORD: that it may
be well with thee, and you may go in and possess the good land which the LORD swore unto thy fathers.” What is this saying? [I just noticed that I
changed the text I was using to the King James Version. Wait a minute. That
sounds King James-ish, not New King James. That is
why some of these verses sound a little more antiquated.] Moses is talking to
the conquest generation. His last words to them before he goes up on Mt. Nebo,
and before they cross over the Jordan into the Land, are that you have to do
what is right and good in the sight of the Lord and then you will possess the
land. Possession of the land is based on obedience.
Deuteronomy 11:22, “For if you shall diligently keep
all these commandments which I command you to do them, to love the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways, and to cleave unto Him; then will
the LORD drive out all these nations from before you and you shall possess
greater nations and mightier than yourselves.” It is conditioned upon
obedience. If you are disobedient you will not dispossess these nations. Verse
24 says, “Every place where the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours:
from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto
the uttermost sea shall your coast be.” The potential was that they would
realize the full control of the Promised Land but they did not because of
disobedience. They conquered some areas, they partially conquered other areas,
and then if you are familiar with Joshua and Judges, they just completely
compromised, at least some of the tribes did. Like Dan – they never
possessed their inheritance down along the coast and several generations later
they had to send out a search team to find a place where they could move where
the Canaanites were not so strong. They found a place up in the north called Laish and the whole tribe moved up there and conquered Laish.
Deuteronomy 19:8–10, “And if the LORD thy God enlarge thy coast as he has sworn unto thy fathers.” Notice
this language “enlarge your coast”. He’s talking to them about expanding their
real estate rights. How many of y’all remember this garbagy
book that came out called “The Prayer of Jabez”? It
was about ten or twelve years ago and it was very popular. I remember a guy
named Gary Gilley wrote a little refutation of it and the title of it was, I Just Wanted
More Land. When you look at the prayer, that
is what Jabez wanted. He prayed to the Lord to
enlarge his inheritance. He wanted more land. He wanted to be able to exploit
what God had given him to the max. He was not looking for prosperity. He was
not asking for more money or more health and all these other things that came
across in that little book. It was so disappointing that Wilkinson wrote that
book. It was such a departure from everything else he had done before in his
ministry with “Walk through the Bible” ministries and his heritage from Dallas
Seminary.
Moses says if you obey, the Lord thy God will enlarge
thy coast. That is that idea, just
give you more land. “. . . as He has sworn unto
thy fathers, and give thee all the land which He promised to give unto thy
fathers. If you should shall keep all these commandments to do them…” See, it
is predicated upon obedience. Realization of our full inheritance means walking
in obedience to the Lord. That is not legalism. There are some people who think
that if you start talking about the fact that you need to obey the Lord to
realize His blessing, then that is legalism. It is biblical. It is not
legalism. It is recognizing the fact that if you do not develop the capacity to
enjoy and utilize the prosperity that God gives you, it will destroy you. God
is not going to give you those blessings unless you develop the capacity to
enjoy them and to use them correctly.
It is like you may have a lot of money and you are
extremely wealthy and you have a son who is the apple of your eye. You want to
give him a classic Corvette for his pleasure. So you buy it for him. You go out
and you buy a 1960 Corvette and you have it all set aside for him, but you do
not give him the keys when he is six years old. You may not even give him the
keys when he is 16 or 26 years old because he may not have the capacity to do
anything but wrap it around a tree. You wait until he has reached maturity so
he can use it responsibly. That is not legalism. That is just wisdom. God does
not distribute many of our temporal blessings unless we grow to maturity so we
can properly use them. If we do not, then like Moses we’re going to lose those
temporal blessings and maybe eternal blessings.
Now the sixth point [that was all point five] is the
possession of the land therefore, was conditioned on obedience – it was
merited. Therefore as a possession, it could be lost. Let’s go back, for
example, in Genesis 17:14, Abraham is warned that an uncircumcised male “Who is
not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from
his people; he has broken My covenant.” If they did
not follow the law of circumcision, which is related to the Abrahamic covenant,
not the Mosaic covenant, then they would be removed from the land and cut off
from their people.
Deuteronomy 28:1–2, “Now it shall come to pass,
if you diligently obey the voice of the LORD your
God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, then
the LORD your God will set you high above all nations of the earth. And all
these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the
voice of the LORD your God.” See, that is the first half of the
chapter. The rest of the chapter details all the ways God is going to judge
them if they are disobedient.
We often go to Leviticus 26 and the last half of
Leviticus 28 to talk about the five cycles of discipline. The flip side of the
five cycles of discipline is the blessings. In the five cycles of discipline
God says if you are disobedient, I am going to take you through this series of
different judgments on your nation. That is no more legalistic than the first
half, which says to “Obey Me and I will increase you in the land and give you
additional blessings.”
Another passage that indicates we can lose that
inheritance is a passage that comes at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem
and the defeat of Judah in 586 B.C. In Lamentations 5:2 Jeremiah says, “Our
inheritance has been turned over to aliens, and our homes to foreigners.” Inheritance
can be lost. They were removed from the land under the 5th cycle of
discipline because of their disobedience to God. So inheritance can be lost
again, just as we saw with Moses.
The seventh point states that though not all have an
inheritance in the land, all have God as their inheritance and possession. This
is related to the Mosaic Law. Everyone had some kind of inheritance, but not
everyone had a possession of land. So we see in Psalm 73:26, “My flesh and my
heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
That word for portion is heleq, which is like the word MEROS in the New Testament. It means “that share in your inheritance.” He is
saying that God is his inheritance forever.
Psalm 119:57, “The LORD is my
portion; [that’s that same word again] I have promised to keep Thy words.”
Psalm 142:5, “I cried out to Thee, O LORD; I said, ‘Thou art my refuge, my
portion [my inheritance] in the land of the living.’ ”. Then we have passages
such as Deuteronomy 18:2, which says that the priests and Levites, the whole
tribe, had no land possession in the Promised Land. All the other tribes were
given land, but not the priests and the Levites. Therefore, God says in
Deuteronomy 18:2, “Therefore they [priests and Levites] shall have no
inheritance among their brethren; the LORD is their inheritance.” That is that
one category of inheritance. It is the Lord as He said to them.
We have this emphasis on the fact that there are two
things going on under the Law in Israel. It is the precedent, the background,
for understanding what I am saying when I get to the New Testament. Everyone
has an inheritance, but not everyone enjoys ownership of the land, and land
rights, within the land. You have the inheritance of God, which we will see in
Romans 8 is called “heirs of God,” and then you have those who have additional
rights and ownership in the land, and that is what we will see under the
categories of “joint heirs with Christ for those who suffer with Him” in the
New Testament. But in point 8, let’s turn to Luke 15, and we are going to do
just a quick review of what happens with the prodigal son. This is where we
will wrap up.
I am not going to give you a full-bore exposition of
this. Chapter 15 is a great chapter. It has been misunderstood
by some people. Even among some Dallas Seminary professors there were
different views. Some people took the view that when you see these three
categories of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, they understood
the concept of loss in a soteriological sense; that
someone who was lost was someone who was not saved. But that is not true
because the shepherd who lost the sheep owned the sheep. It was already his.
The sheep just wandered off course and got lost; not unsaved, because he is
still owned by the shepherd. The lost coin owned by the woman is a coin that
the woman already owned. It was her possession. All of these, the shepherd, the
woman, all represent God. The lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son all
relate to what happens when a believer wanders off course and God’s care and
concern for the disobedient believer.
You have this parable that is told about a man who has
two sons. One son is very obedient and responsible. But the younger son comes
to his father and says, “Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to
me.” Now the word for portion there is the Greek word MEROS which
we’ve studied many times before. It is the same word that is used when Jesus is
talking to Peter and He says that if Peter does not let Him wash his feet, you
will have no MEROS, or portion, or inheritance with Me.
You will invalidate your inheritance if I don’t get to cleanse you on a regular
basis. That is related to 1 John 1:9 cleansing. That is the key word in 1 John
1:9; not to confess, but to be cleansed.
This man wants his inheritance. What does he do? He
takes all of his inheritance and cashes out at that point in his life. He takes
what is his, puts it in the bank, heads off, and he squanders it all. He loses
everything. He wastes it on wild living, wild women, and whatever his pleasures
are. He wakes up one day and he is living in a land where there is a famine and
he has no money or resources. He is down and the best job he can get is feeding
the pigs, and all he eats is what he feeds the pig. The point of what we are
saying is that he has lost his inheritance.
When he comes to his senses and thinks that his
father’s servants are fed better than he is, he decides to go home. He goes
home and we are all familiar with the story. As he comes, his father hears him
coming, and his father runs out of the house and wraps his arms around him. He
is so excited that the son he thought was lost has returned to him. He throws
just a huge party for him. He is welcomed back into the family. He is going to be
able to work with the family and all of these other things, but guess what? The
money that he spent, the money that he lost, is gone. He will never get it
back. He squandered his inheritance.
Is he still his father’s son? He sure is. Is he
forgiven? He sure is. But there has been a loss of what he could have had, and
what would have been his, if he had not squandered it. That is what we have
when we get down to Luke 15:18. That is when he has his turnaround. He says, “I
will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against
Heaven and before you.’ ” That is confession of sin. He turns back and there is
recovery, but he has lost opportunity. There is lost privilege, lost potential,
and lost opportunity. He has lost that.
Next time, we’re going to come back and wrap up
– well, I think I can go through this really fast. Ninth point:
Inheritance is related to rewards for what is earned for service, whereas
salvation is a free gift. The key passage for this is Colossians 3:24, “Knowing
that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you
serve the Lord Christ.” The reward of your inheritance is related to Christian
service. It is not related to trusting in Christ as Savior. That is a free
gift.
Tenth point: Our heirship is based on adoption and
sonship, therefore inheritance is related to positional truth. A key verse for
two different kinds of inheritance is Romans 8:16-17. It is important to
understand the punctuation there. “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our
spirit that we are children of God.” Every person who believes in Jesus Christ
is a child of God and has certain privileges. “And if children, heirs also.”
Then Paul lists two categories of heirship but the way it is punctuated with a
comma after “heirs also” and “heirs with Christ,” makes it look as if “heirs of
God” and “fellow heirs with Christ,” are synonymous. Now this is important. We
have to understand where the commas belong. There were not any commas in the
original Greek text.
We have to understand how to properly punctuate it
because if we punctuate it wrong, we’re going to have wrong doctrine. You have
the sentence: A woman without her man is nothing. Where do you put the commas? Well,
if you put your commas like the first example what you’re saying is, “A woman,
without her, man is nothing.” So basically what that sentence says is man is
nothing without a woman. If you move the commas where you only have one comma
after man, then it is saying a woman is nothing. So the commas change it from a
statement about man being nothing to a statement about a woman being nothing,
just depending on where you put your commas. So the whole meaning of the
sentence shifts on the basis of commas. Punctuation is important.
Punctuation is based upon how an interpreter
understands the meaning of the verse. It has just been tradition to punctuate
it the way we have it. It should be punctuated like this, “And if children,
heirs also, heirs of God.” That is the first category for every believer. “And
fellow heirs with Christ, if we suffer with him,” That is the second category.
“Fellow heirs” is conditioned upon “suffering with Him.”
Paul says in 1 Timothy 4 that all who desire to live godly will be persecuted. That is suffering.
That persecution may be just general persecution or difficulty because we are
in the devil’s world, the cosmic system. Or it may be more focused, more
targeted. The point is that if we are going to grow as believers, we are going
to encounter suffering, opposition, and difficulty. As we handle it by the Word
of God, we are going to grow and mature and develop our inheritance that we
will realize at the Judgment Seat of Christ. So two categories: one category
for every believer, and one category for those who are joint heirs if they suffer
with Christ.
Last point, heirship is related to hope. That is the
verse I pointed out at the beginning in Titus 3:7, “That having been justified
by His grace [something that has already occurred in the past] we should [or
might, potential] become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” So the
issue is: are we willing to live to develop our inheritance? Or are we just
living out of our own pleasure because we are glad we are going to spend
eternity in Heaven, or are we going to pursue realization of all the
inheritance rights that God has already set aside for us, potentially? If we
are not obedient, we do not realize those rights. We will come back and develop
this within the context of 1 Peter next time.
“Father, thank You for the fact that You have made these things so clear to us. Salvation is free
but You have incentives for us. You have incentivized
the Christian life through these various rewards and crowns and other things
that are ours conditioned upon obedience, conditioned upon walking in the
Spirit, walking by the truth, walking in the light, and glorifying the Lord
Jesus Christ. Challenge us that we need to live for You
and not just relax on what we have, but to press on to spiritual maturity that
we may fully glorify You in every aspect of our life. We pray this in Christ’s
name. Amen.”