Blessed Assurance

Thank you, Murray and Bruce Inquirer. If you have your Bibles, would you turn with me to John? John, chapter six. And we've been looking at the signs that John has given us about how Christ. He saw Christ do some things that only Christ could do, and he began to realize who he was.

And sometimes God gives us that as a sudden revelation. Sometimes it takes a while for it to sink in. So John gives us those seven. He ends up giving us seven signs that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God. And in chapter six.

Well, first of all, let me introduce my family. Is that okay? Before we get to chapter six, at least I'm not standing you up. How about that while I introduce my family? Well, it's our family.

Susan reminds me she had the most pain in bringing this. There's Mike and then there's Susan, and there's Emily and there's Lawson and there's Jenny and there's Charlie. And Tommy is not here today. Tommy's the middle one, and he chose to go to a concert in Nashville rather than come hear his grandson, his grandfather, preach. So I've taken him out of the will and given the $10, $5 to Charlie and five charge.

So go and blow it out, guys. Blow it out. But also John's here, and John, too, we prayed for. And he still. The missing of his wife is a big, big, huge problem.

And so we're praying for God to just be with his heart and. And help him as he goes on to place that God that God has prepared for her and give him the strength as he starts his life without her. And that's so hard to do. So our prayers are with John. Now back to the Bible study.

You ready for that? In John, chapter six, John is that. That's the longest chapter in the Gospel of John, and it begins on a high note and ends kind of on a low note. And it's a parable as the miracle that is given by every single one of the gospel writers. It's in Matthew, it's in.

It's. Who do I forget? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So each one of them record this miracle. It's the only miracle that is given by all four of them together because it impacted the church at a time that they needed to be impacted.

And as we read this miracle that John shares about Christ, I pray that it will just help you to see it afresh because we've seen it since we were kids, maybe in church, but maybe it will make a fresh impact as God speaks to us through His Word. So in honor of God's word, would you stand as I read for us from John chapter 6?

John 6 · chapter mention

We'll start with verse 11. That's a good place to be. 11. And Jesus took the loaves. The little boy came to the meeting that day.

And he had his kind of either bucket or a sack or whatever he had. He had his loaves and his fish. And he never knew that he was going to feed 5,000. So says it in verse, I lost my place. And Jesus said, make the men sit down.

Now, there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down and numbered about 5,000. And Jesus took the loaves. And when he had given thanks. Hear that attitude of gratitude.

It makes a world of difference when you have that attitude of gratitude. He distributed it to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were sitting down. And likewise. And I want you to see how this was meant for the disciples. He was feeding the crowd, but he was giving a principle to those disciples.

And when they had filled, he said unto his disciples, you gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. Therefore they gathered them together and filled up 12 baskets. Each disciple had a basket with the fragments of the five barley loaves which remained over and above that which they had eaten. Then the men said, saw the miracles that Jesus did. This is of truth.

That prophet that should come into the world. May God bless the reading of his Word. And you may be seated.

And as you're seated. This week has been a hot week. I think I looked at my dashboard going to. On Tuesday morning as I was going to a funeral. And it was 99 degrees.

And I'm sure it was getting even hotter that day. I had a funeral on Tuesday for a man that I just thought the world of. I had been with him on Friday night when he had taken his last breath. And I put my hands on his shoulder and said, he has fought a good fight. He has kept the faith, and he's finished his course.

And on Tuesday, we celebrated him. It was at Spanish Fort, at the veterans cemetery, because he's a veteran. And it was a kind of blessing in disguise. And sometimes you have those kind of blessings in disguise. But was a blessing because he had blessed assurance.

Blessed assurance is something that will be the very center of your heart if you have that blessed assurance. And he had that blessed assurance. Now, it was a hot day. So in fact, that's the hottest I've seen it in a while. It's Spanish Fort.

That's where the service was. And so I said, as I Looked at the congregation. This is a good day to preach on hell. Amen. Because it's so hot.

And you may make sure that you have assurance before you leave this place so that you'll know that you have that kind of blessed assurance. Now, would you do something this morning, kind of humor me? Would you turn to somebody next to you and tell them what your favorite hymn is and what the favorite hymn of the CH church is? Would you turn to somebody, just tell them what your favorite hymn and the favorite hymn of the church?

How about it, choir? Do you guys know what. And last week they were shaking their heads and told me it looked like a deacons meeting. Do I. There's too many.

I know there's too many. Listen, he is backing out. He is just. He's saying in words that he doesn't know, but it is Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace is the favorite hymn of all people.

Blessed assurance comes in 10. But I'd put it up there right next to Amazing Grace, right next to Bead second in my life. Fanny Crosby was an amazing writer. She was blind from the time that she was born by a doctor who did the wrong kind of things and caused her blindness. But her mother or grandmother taught her scripture, Scripture, scripture, scripture.

And she grew up memorizing all that scripture. So whenever something came to her mind, she immediately brought scripture to that moment. And she had a friend who had a tune in her head, and she said, this tune just won't get out of my head. And so she played that tune and she looked at her Fanny and says, what do you think that reminds her of? And she said, reminds you of?

And she said, amazing grace how sweet to sound. No, she said, blessed assurance, Jesus is mine oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. Now, as I was saying the last words about my friend Bob, there were some things that he had. He was such a blessed man. And what he was, blessed man was that he had a good wife.

He was blessed because good wives are hard to find. Do I hear an amen from that? Can you? Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, and he couldn't find a good one among all the other group. But she was an attractive girl who he married.

Not only was she attractive on the outside, but she was even more attractive on the inside. And God gave them over 49 years together as they went all around the country to different places. He was a blessed man because he had a good wife. He was a blessed man also because he had made it through Vietnam. In fact, we had probably Been over there about the same time, even though we didn't know it.

And he was an advisor to the arvn, to the South Vietnamese, and they would set up ambushes, and then when the ambush started, they would all leave and leave him there by himself. So it's amazing that he made it through. And he would tell you that God helped him to make it through. But Bob grew up in a church that really emphasized judgment. And in that church, judgment came across more often than not.

And it was a lot of guilt that was thrown his way and a lot of guilt about this and about this and about, about this. And he struggled with that kind of thing about assurance of salvation. And so he came to see me. He and his wife came to join our church. And when they came to join our church, he told me about the difference that he needed.

He needed that kind of assurance. And so we talked about scripture. For by grace are you saved through faith. It is not of yourself. For those who receive God receive Christ as their Savior.

Then he has all these kind of promises there for you. But there is this receiving Christ. And then from revelation, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If you will open the door for me, I will come in and we will be together. And I said, bob, you understand that?

And he said, thank you, Dr. Henry. I need to be re baptized.

And he was a drill sergeant, so I had to baptize him much longer than anybody else.

I remember my drill sergeant, all he ever wanted to do was do push ups and scream at us.

But he came a different kind of man. And the difference was he had this blessed assurance that Jesus was mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. He became a different person in a lot of ways. And as he became a different person, he reached out and joined the Gideons, joined prayer groups.

Something happened to him on the inside that made a difference on the outside.

He had that assurance. And it's not just assurance. It's like Fanny Crosby say, it is blessed assurance. Now, there was a French philosopher who gave this kind of picture of how it happens to us on the inside. He said that there was a ship that was out in the sea.

And as this ship was out in the sea, all of a sudden this storm came up and it kind of battled the ship back and forth. On the inside was this cannon on the ship. And what happened on that cannon, the storm rose and the cannon went back and forth and beat the side of that ship.

And what he says this and what the principle he's trying to share is not the outside that you and I struggle with, it's the inside.

It's our attitude.

And the attitude means so much. And when Jesus came to save us, he saved us to do things. But before you do those kind of things, he brings us an attitude that only he could bring from the love of the Father.

Now, there was one time when I was being with this family on all night long. I had been with them and I had been with them at his bedside. And we had seen him kind of heart go bad. And they would bring his life supports in and kind of bring his heart to another level. And then they'd take the life support off and all of a sudden he'd go back to being in that way he was.

And it went on and on like this and kind of all night long. And I was standing at the bedside praying with his family and just encouraging. We're asking God to bring him through all this. But after a while, the doctor said this.

We're not going to do life support anymore. I don't think he could take it.

And that's a hurting place.

And that went on all night long as I was working with that family. As I came back to church the next day, I stopped by my office and a lady will just call her a name named Janie Lee. And I said, hey, Janie Lee, how you doing? Said Dr. Henry. My name was left out of the bulletin.

I thought, how am I going to handle this?

My name needs to be in the bulletin. So I said, Janie Lee. That's right. You're right. Your name should have been in that bulletin.

And I'm sorry about that. Our secretaries do a great job, but every now and then they miss things. But we'll make that correction next week. But now can I pray for you right now and thank you for serving on that fellowship committee?

Now, do you think I said that?

What do you think I said is this time when you get this and it comes at you in a kind of hard way and there's a decision you need to make and how am I going to handle it?

Because the flesh is real.

But let me tell you, Christ's principles are also real.

So how many of you think I said the right thing at that place? Would you raise your hand if you think I said the right thing? There are three of you. I appreciate that encouragement.

I'm not going to tell you what I said.

That's between me and the Lord and Janie Lee. Okay? But I knew the right thing to do. But so often we know the right thing to do and the flesh kicks in and we don't do it.

Now turn back, if you would, to John, chapter six. And as you're there, let's look at this situation that Jesus was in.

Again, it is a yesterday. As I. As Susan and I were coming here, the crowd was going to the beach and thou shalt worship the Lord today and go the beach. Because they were filled with that beach. We were kind of a lone car coming up here to Selma, Alabama.

Everybody else was going to Gulf Shores and Orange beach and all those places. So I'm glad you're here. The crowd was following Jesus. The crowd's always there, and the crowd will always be there because the only hope we have is Jesus Christ. And when the cancer comes or when the heart things come, the crowd will kind of search out Jesus.

But what's happening in chapter six is the disciples are leaving, even with the crowd still coming.

By the time you got to the end of chapter six, only the 12 disciples were left. And one of those was named Judas. What was happening in that situation? If you look at your Bible verse one, after these things, after these things, if you were to turn, and I'll invite you to turn to Matthew, would you do that to Matthew, chapter 14, verse 11. If you have your Bibles, turn to chapter 14, verse 11.

Matthew 14:11

Here's what happened in that time.

John the Baptist was killed.

He was murdered.

There was a why to this why?

Why is John murdered?

And sometimes you never hear an answer to that. Why?

John the Baptist was trapped by an evil woman. And she didn't like her name mentioned in church.

And she. Because she had left her first husband and married to her brother's husband. And John spoke her name in church.

And so it just irritated this lady, and she didn't like him speaking her name. And so she had John arrested and he was placed in prison. And as he was placed in prison, the time went on and time went on and nothing happened. And he was still there in prison. And so John went to send his disciples to talk to Jesus.

Are you the one? Or should we look for another?

And even with the best vision, sometimes it gets clouded when life comes in, in those hurting kind of moments.

On his birthday, Herod had the daughter of Herodias to dance. And when she danced, she danced and she said. He said, I'll give you anything you want. And he said, she said, went to talk to her mom, and she said, what do we need? And she said, the head of John the Baptist.

And then she added, put it on a platter. Put it on a platter. And the greatest prophet who ever lived was beheaded in a demoralizing kind of way. And sometimes you try to put those things together and you wonder why.

There were a lot of disciples that had come from the John the Baptist movement. And coming from the John the Baptist movement, they thought so much of John. In fact, John had said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It was John who said, I must decrease and he must increase.

But now John was had this tragic thing in his life. And there's no or little explanation about why it happened. Jesus sent him back Word. He had been doing all these miracles and miracles, but John never got a miracle. Not a single miracle is shown by John.

And this happened to him. If you look in verse 14 of chapter 14.

And Jesus went forth and saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion toward them. And he healed the sick. But if you look at 13, you say when Jesus heard of it, he found a solitary place.

Even though he was God and was divine, there was still this human part of him.

And so Jesus got to a solitary place, which is a good thing to deal with grief. And when he got to a solitary place, he and God got alone.

And then the next thing we do, he goes out, gets his life together again and goes out helping others. Compassion came from him. But while he was quick to deal with what happened with John, the disciples were not that quick. So if you turn back to chapter six, they are beginning to have an attitude as the crowd has moved and the people are there and he needs to feed all these people. So Jesus said, look in verse one of chapter six.

After these things, Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a great multitude followed him when they saw his miracles, which he did on those who were diseased. And Jesus went up into a mountain. And that's a beautiful place up there. It's probably the Golan Heights, where if you go to Israel today, it's full of tanks and shooting at each other and dropping all kind of rockets on each other.

But up there, Jesus is off by himself. Or the people are following him at an isolated place. And Jesus went up to the mountain and there he sat down with his disciples. The emphasis is going to be on the disciple. And he feels their kind of attitude.

And the Passover, a feast of the juice was near. Jews was near. And when Jesus lifted up his eyes, he looked to Philip. Philip had been one who had said at the first, when he. When the Lord touched his life Come and see.

Come and see. But after the death of John the Baptist, Philip was kind of. His attitude had sunk to a new low. And I think Jesus addressed him because he may have been the one in the group who had the lowest of attitude.

And this he said to test him. That is when Jesus then lifted up his eyes and saw a great company come unto him and said unto Philip, where shall we feed all these people? Where? Who do you think is going to feed all these people?

And Philip says, we don't have enough money. You see, a negative attitude comes up with a negative answer in so many places and so many times. And they don't see Jesus in the way he really is. And this he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. And Philip answered, 200 denarii worth of br.

Bread is not sufficient for them.

One of his disciples, who was Andrew, who's one of the first to follow John the Baptist, he found a boy, Simon Peter's brother. He was always mentioned as Simon Peter's brother. Verse nine. There's a lad here who has five barley loaves and two small fish. And he probably had them in some kind of lunch pail, maybe had them in a sack, maybe had them in a bucket.

Some people carried their lunch in a bucket. But the miracle here is the little boy hadn't eaten his lunch. Amen. That is a miracle. And he still had his lunch with him.

So Andrew said. And here Andrew's negative attitude. But what is these among so many?

So Jesus had them sit down. It was. Grass was green because it's Pentecost time. I mean, Passover time. And with the Passover, he had him sit down.

Now, 5,000 is a pretty good army, but his army is to reach the world, not to destroy the world. And so he had them sit down and he took that little boy's lunch. And all of a sudden, he began to thank God for them. He began to bless it, and he began to break it.

And all of a sudden, a little became a much.

All of a sudden, the attitude began to change as they watched Jesus do some things only Jesus could do.

And like. What happened with that? What happened with that was that he had the disciples get 12 baskets and go around and catch the leftovers. And as they got the leftovers, if they wanted to know that Jesus was still in control, that Jesus still had this moment, that Jesus had a mission for them to do as disciples. And he began to see.

All they had to do was look in their basket.

And it kind of brings back the Right kind of attitude to help us to see what Jesus can still do. I don't know if you've ever had to look in your basket. I can look in my basket and I remember times that I can see God's work as I look in the basket of my life. And I see how God has moved in so many different places. He brought me back from Vietnam.

He gave me a wife that loves me and cares for me, and he gave both of us a mission. As I was leaving the Army, I thought, how are we going to finance our ministry? At Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, I went from a captain salary to having a GI bill, which is like $100 a month. And I wondered how in the world, God, you couldn't do this.

While we were there at seminary, a lady who I'd never met before wrote us. And she and her husband. Her husband's not a Christian. Even when her taking the money to church. So she would send us.

I think it was $600 a month. I never met her, didn't know who she was, but I sure thanked her for that $600 a month. And she kept. Sent that money every month until the time that I'd finished my seminar, PhD seminar and left Southwestern and went to a church in Thomaston.

I look in my basket and I see miracles that only God could have done. And I thank God for that. Now I'd like to go around here if we could, but I'm not going to do it, so don't worry about it. I like to go around and you could look in your basket and see where God did something only God could have done. And you will find that blessing until you remember those blessings and you remember those blessings.

And after a while, God helps you to gather something back and remember that blessed assurance.

Now came to a church in Fairhope which had had two splits and they had had two pastors that had been there, and both those pastors had died, which is kind of awkward place to go to because God was blessing us in Elkdale. Beside that, our church burned down. Now, it really help you to know that, you know, they had never covered that course in seminary. What do you do when your church burns down? So we got together and said, what do we want to do?

We're going to go. We would go to the community center and worship there. We'd go to the high school and worship there. We went to the city gym, and I did short sermons because it smelled like a city gym.

But slowly and surely, God took a church and he put it back together. Again, I look in my basket and I see what God has done in the past, and he can still do it. Amen. You don't sound excited.

Whether we're excited or not, the Lord can do that.

There was a Scottish guy who had this castle, and in this castle, he wanted to fix his castle. It was kind of tearing down. It's kind of falling down. So he had a contractor, and he got a contractor. He said, would you kind of rebuild my castle?

And he said, okay, I'll do that, but you got to give me a year. So he said, okay, I'll do a year. Later he came back to that castle and it was a beautiful castle, had all the things that he always wanted to, But the walls were torn down.

And he said, what happened to the wall?

We tore down the walls to build a castle.

Tear down the walls to build a castle.

When you see God do that, that's an attitude of assurance what God can do in each of our lives.

Now, would you bow your heads with me for a moment?

Just you and the Lord.

And where some things that have happened, we can look in our basket and see some things that hurt and we can hold on to that, or we can look in our basket and find things that only God has done in our life. We can fall into the trap of wandering attitude, or we can look back and see the blessings of God and feel the assurance when we ask Christ into our lives that he's still with us and he's not left us and he's not forsaken us. Would you kind of say this to the Lord, Just you and the Lord.

Lord, help me to honor your in all that I do.

Lord, help me to honor you in all that I do.

And that's just you and the Lord. Like Jesus got along with God. Here you are in the service with just you and the Lord.

Lord, hear our prayer and do what only you can do in and through our lives and in and through this church and in and through this community.

In Jesus name I pray. Amen. Now, as you look at your hymnal, would you turn to the invitational hymn?

I've wandered far away from God, Now I'm coming home.