The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689) dedicates a whole chapter to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. It affirms the biblical truth that those whom God saves, He keeps, not merely out of hell and for heaven, but He keeps them in the way of faith. He keeps them repenting, believing, and following Christ.

Several years ago a fellow pastor who served with me at Grace Baptist Church told me how he came to study the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints as a new believer. Shortly after he was converted he became involved in his church’s evangelism efforts, eager to be a part of the work of making disciples.
Employing the methods that he had been taught, he noticed that a large percentage of the people who made professions of faith seemed to have no interest in the things of the Lord. Even most of those who agreed to be baptized drifted away from participation in church life after a few months.
When my friend asked his pastor about this phenomenon the answer that he received startled him. “Some Christians start backsliding as soon as they are converted.”
I was reminded of his story recently when I came across comments David Miller made years ago while preaching from Acts 2:42. That verse says, “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (KJV).
In his sermon, David explained what the phrase, “continued steadfastly,” meant for those new converts:
I don’t have any background in the biblical languages, and I’m not a scholar, but I do have a homespun definition of what that phrase means. I believe it means they did not backslide right off. They didn’t join the church one Sunday morning during the heat of the revival service and have company come in that afternoon and not be able to make it out to the evening worship service. You’ve encountered the person who comes to church one Sunday and, the next Sunday, they had to go out of town in their new car ten miles to visit with Granny out in the country and she needed help with the noon meal and they couldn’t attend church out there. You know the ones. They stay visiting much longer than they intended and by the time they got home late that Sunday afternoon, about 2:30, they were so worn and weary, they couldn’t make it back to the worship service that evening. And the following Wednesday, they had so looked forward to the mid-week Bible study and prayer time, but the little ten-year-old boy came home with a high temperature of 98.7 and they didn’t think he ought to be out in the night air. Brother, unlike these people, the folks converted in Acts just didn’t backslide right off.
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While the ministry of John the Baptist may not seem like it is important eschatologically, it contributes much to our understanding and to world history. First, his coming begins the cataclysmic and seismic shift from the old world of Judaism to the new world of the Kingdom of God. His coming signaled the end of the Old Covenant order and heralded the beginning of the Kingdom of God. What a monumental life and role that the Lord allowed this humble servant to have.

Hurry Up and Wait
It’s a rare occasion when only four words can summarize a major chapter of your life or the organization to which you belonged. But, “hurry up and wait” certainly fits that bill. From my earliest moments of hurrying up to wait at MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station); to the chaotic screams of drill sergeants prodding us urgently off busses, leaving us standing there for hours in an empty parking lot, leaving us wondering what was going to happen next and when would we get new orders; to the meticulous packing and shipping of all of our gear, thousands of miles away to Iraq, so we could sit in empty bedrooms waiting for the orders to come down. The military is a hurry up and wait kind of place.
Perhaps, this is how John the baptist felt as he was sitting in prison, soon to be executed. The LORD had called him to preach fiery, desperate, sermons to the apostate Jewish nation. Like the prophets of old, the Spirit of God had stirred up incendiary words within the vagabond prophet’s mouth, which did not make him any friends, but did bring him plenty of foes. To John, the warnings God told him to declare felt grave, pressing, and imminently dire and he certainly was urgent in speaking them. But now, sitting in a dank Jewish prison, John must have wondered when were all of these cascading judgments to come about.
Think about it this way. John was like a traveling geologist who was sent to warn a small mountain village of coming destruction. He had noticed that the rock structures above were unstable and that a deadly rockslide would soon destroy the town. So, he entered the city urgently, warning them, “flee from the disaster that is to come”, but few would listen to him. In fact, they became so annoyed by him, that they arrested him and threw him into the local prison. To add insult to injury, they viciously mocked the poor man, discrediting his “expert” opinion, leaving him to rot in the dampened cell alone. Before long they executed the man, believing his quackery had been disproven, as the city was lulled into a false sense of security and hope. For just a few months later, the deadly landslide consumed them all and there wasn’t a single survivor. This was the kind of ministry John the Baptist was called to. He was called to hurry up and wait.
John and the Prophet of Doom
As we learned last week, Malachi is often called the prophet of doom because of the calamitous prophecy he proclaimed against the belligerent people of God. He warned them that God was going to send a sudden devastation by fire that would overtake the nation (Malachi 3:3). This fire, according to Malachi, would coincide with the appearance of YHWH’s messenger, whom Malachi called “Elijah” (Malachi 3:1). That coming messenger, Jesus tells us, was none other than John the Baptist (Matthew 11:14). This means that John the Baptist would not only prepare the way for the Lord, who would save His people from their sins, but would also warn the rebels of the awful judgment that Christ was going to bring against them. John’s appearing as end-time prophet coincides with Malachi’s imminent eschatological judgment against the Jews.
Why is this so important? Because we tend to think of John the Baptist as Jesus’ eccentric first cousin, who shows up eating grasshoppers, dressed in camel skinned robes, with the role of introducing Jesus to the world. That is kind of true, but it misses the entire theme of imminent judgment that is so carefully woven into the narrative. When John steps onto the scene in Judea, his goal is to warn the people that the Christ has come. For those who repent, they will be saved. For those who resist, they will experience a kind of hell on earth.
John and the End of Apostate Judah
While we don’t have a panoply of quotations from John, we have more than enough information to validate what Malachi says about him, that he is the prophet who will precede imminent judgment. For instance, his father Zechariah (through the Holy Spirit) fully anticipated his boy would grow up to become “the messenger” of destruction foretold by Malachi (Luke 1:76-79). John, himself, believed he was the forerunner of the light-bearing Christ (Malachi 4:2; John 1:6-8, 23), who would bring healing to some and disaster unto others.
We know this was John’s focus, because the tone of his ministry is all about repentance (Luke 3:3; Matthew 3:1).
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Every form of government is fallen, but not in the same way or to the same extent. Constitutional democracy and a free market are rooted in many biblical principles, when rightly applied. Socialism (and its end-goal, communism) is rooted in envy, greed, and covetousness. It has bred all kinds of theft and trampling over private property rights (as enshrined in the eighth commandment against stealing), and discourages a biblical work ethic. As Margaret Thatcher famously said: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

You shall not covet” (Exod 20:17). How many Christians realise the political significance of those four words (only two words in Hebrew)? Consider with me for a moment the widespread implications of the tenth commandment. This awful sin and deadly vice of “coveting” includes all forms of greed, envy, and lust—any selfish desire for what is not ours. How different our world would be without coveting!
My Zambian friend and Christian author, Lennox Kalifungwa, recently summed up well the broader ramifications of the 10th commandment for our day:
Socialism is the politicized envy of wealth.Feminism is the politicized envy of patriarchy.Post-colonialism is the politicized envy of western civilization.Statism and globalism are the politicized envy of divinity.Envy produces great evil, and is inevitably never satisfied.
Biblical Summary
“The leech has two daughters: Give and Give!” (Prov 30:15). “The eyes of man are never satisfied” (Prov 27:20; cf. Eccl 1:8; 4:4). As our Lord Himself warned, “Beware of covetousness!” (Luke 12:15). Paul summed it up best: “covetousness . . . is idolatry” (Col 3:5; Eph 5:5), bringing us back full circle to the first commandment, showing how everything begins with right worship.
In recently catechising our youth in our home-school co-op, the tenth commandment has hit home to our hearts and our society with striking relevance:
Question 80: What is required in the tenth commandment?Answer: The tenth commandment requireth full contentment with our own condition, with a right and charitable frame of spirit toward our neighbor, and all that is his.
Question 81: What is forbidden in the tenth commandment?Answer: The tenth commandment forbiddeth all discontentment with our own estate, envying or grieving at the good of our neighbor, and all inordinate motions and affections to anything that is his.
Heart Diagnosis
Other ancient law codes cover the morals prescribed in the first nine of God’s commandments. But none have anything like the tenth commandment, climbing into the depths of my being, confronting my desires.
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