John K. Jenkins Sr - Eternal Judgement - Part 2

Father, thank you for the privilege and the opportunity of being in a house of worship. I am grateful for every person today under the sound of my voice, be it in this building or around this nation and the world. I pray that you would take these next moments and let hearts be receptive and open to receiving truth. I pray that we can be your instrument and your conduit, Father, to communicate your message to the people of God. I pray that if there are persons who are unsaved, you will draw them; if they are backslidden, you will reclaim them; if they are unsure, that they would come and get assurance; if they are unchurched, uncommitted, or disconnected, if it is your will to plant them here, let them get planted. Put a hedge around this place and every place where this message is going and let hearts be receptive, in Jesus ' name, amen. All right, you can be seated. Thank the Lord, amen.

How are y’all doing? I want to find out-well, let me just say this: if you haven’t been here, if this is your first time here, let me rehearse for you something that everybody around you knows. I’ve been preaching about discipleship and being a discipler now for multiple weeks, right? I want to quickly rehearse what I’ve been covering over the last several weeks so that you can be up to speed with what we’re talking about, and you won’t be ignorant or left behind. I’ve been challenging our church to be discipled, to make sure that you’re being taught the Word, but also that you’re taking what you’re learning and teaching others. As part of that journey, I’ve gone through Hebrews chapter 6, and that’s where we’ll start today. The writer of Hebrews writes to some Jewish Christians who have contemplated going back to Judaism, telling them to stick with Jesus and not turn back. In chapter 5, he says in the latter part that by this time, they ought to be teachers. When he gets to chapter 6, he says, «Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection.» Let me explain what that means. Now that you know, we are moving forward; let’s go on to maturity. That 's what the word «perfection» means-maturity. Then he says, «Let 's not have to lay again the foundations.» He begins to list six key elementary doctrines. The first one is repentance from dead works. Somebody say «repentance from dead works.» That means to repent from doing things to try to work your way into heaven. You cannot earn your way to heaven; thus, repent from dead works. Any effort to earn your salvation is a dead work, and he says the first principle is to repent from dead works. The next principle is faith toward God; the second doctrine he mentions is faith toward God. We are called to be people of faith. Look at your neighbor and say, «We are people of faith.» We don’t make decisions or choices based on the philosophies of men; we are people of faith who believe in God. Tell your neighbor, «I believe God.» Now you didn’t say it right. I believe God! Can I take a little side note here? You can tell when you 're around church people because of the things they say. They say, «He’s a man of God,» or, «He’s not just any man of God; he’s the man of God.» You know you’re around church people when they talk about what day something happened and say, «We 're going to do this on Tuesday .» I just thought I’d throw that in there for free. And since I’m a man of God preaching today on Sunday, in verse 2 of chapter 6, he mentions «the doctrines of baptisms.» There are five baptisms; we focused on one, which is water baptism. That 's what we spent time discussing- water baptism. We are not saved by water baptism, but because we are saved, we do get water baptized. The purpose of that message was to clarify that if you got baptized before being saved, that’s a dead work, and you need to get re- baptized. We also emphasized that water baptism does not save you; we do not get baptized to be saved; we get baptized because we are saved. Regarding the laying on of hands, we talked about this as the fourth doctrine. We used a theme from the great theologian, MC Hammer: «You can’t touch this.» You have to be careful who you allow to lay hands on you. You can’t let just anyone influence you; you shouldn 't allow anybody to make deposits in you. By the way, how many of you think I shared this: a person doesn’t have to physically touch you to lay hands on you; it’s you…