To start on page 12, because repentance and faith go hand in
hand and you know, we're not we're not trying to this, this
is actually really it was it was this church there in Australia,
it's called Northside Baptist Church and Pastor Simeon Western
is the pastor there. I met them in Israel.
I say them because his brother was there as well.
And so got to spend some time with him and meet his wife.
And then I spent some time with his brother and met his wife.
And Pastor Simeon has eight kids and Pastor Dan has five.
I think there's a lot of, a lot of big families in the church.
It was great to see a bunch of kids and, and young people
running around. But, you know, they, they, I
think, have a very balanced approach to this as well,
because we're not trying to make it impossible for people to get
saved, which I think it can kind of turn into that sometimes
when, you know, the whole idea of repentance, you know, there's
got to be repentance and there does have to be repentance.
But I think sometimes, you know, there's a ditch on both sides of
the road where some people are so loose with it that there's no
mention of repentance at all. And then some people are so
strict with it that, you know, nobody can get saved unless
they've been through a, you know, 30 week course on how to
be saved and everything else. And so, you know, it kind of
takes out the idea that God could convict somebody and you
can sit down with them and go through the gospel with them for
an hour and they can get saved. It's possible, right?
So we're not, we're not just, we're not trying to make it so
hard to be saved that nobody can, but we're just trying to be
very careful and make sure that we go through these things and
make sure that people understand it.
What we're running into with a lot of people today, especially,
and Steven Anderson is not the one that started it, but he's
the one that really has propagated this idea a lot that
that salvation is just a change from unbelief to belief.
And, and that's part of it, but you're missing a huge part.
And they, they just, you know, the idea of biblical repentance
to them, they, they essentially just completely throw it out
because biblical repentance is works and it's not works.
But every time we see somebody get saved in the Bible, it, it
resulted in a change in their life.
And oh, well, the book of John doesn't mention the idea of
repentance at all. Well, I think it's a foolish
argument because when you say the book of John doesn't mention
repentance, OK, then let's just throw it out completely.
That's kind of their argument with it.
Well, you find it in the whole rest of the New Testament,
right? And it's, and in fact, it's
commanded repent. So you have to include
repentance and salvation or it's not salvation.
But in Acts chapter 20 and verse #21 this is the verse that we
looked at all the way through the idea of repentance,
testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance
towards God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
So both of them are necessary. You have to have repentance and
you have to have faith. So going back to what repentance
is, and we talked about what it was not, but to just kind of
summarize that again, that we're on page 12.
If you have your book, we'll only just do this for a second
to, to review. But repentance is admitting that
I've sinned against God and being sorry for that, right?
It's not, it's not reformation. It's it's not just a change.
That would be a work. And many people have turned
their lives around that never got saved.
That's not repentance. Repentance is recognizing that I
have sinned against God. I'm being sorry for that.
Repentance means to turn around or to change the direction.
It means to surrender to God's rule.
It means it's not a change of life if it's, it's a change of
mind about God and sin that results in a change of life.
It's and then we, we kind of looked at those ideas from a
couple quotes there on page 13. Repentance is an assassin laying
down his knife. Repentance is a thief returning
the stolen property. That's just those are things
that that are a result of understanding that you are a
Sinner, understanding that your sin is sending you to hell,
understanding that you need a Savior to save you from that
and, and wanting to not sin again, right.
There's a lot of people and you know, I think we're going to
talk a little bit about some of this tonight.
But you look even at even there on page 13 with the
Thessalonians, they turn to God from idols to serve the living
and true God, right. There's a there's a turning away
from the things that are putting that, that that put that, that
are things above making Christ Lord in your life and, and just
the idea of faith. So we talked a lot about that.
We spent a couple weeks on that. So I don't want to spend any
more time on if you have any questions about that, then
certainly ask and we'd, you know, be glad to go through some
of those things with you. But we turn now to faith then,
which is on page 17. And if you have a copy of it,
then this is this should be what you have there.
So in the first two lessons, in these first two lessons, we're
considering man's part in salvation, two things,
repentance and faith. So having examined repentance in
the first lesson, we will now examine faith.
And I want to turn over, We already read Acts 2021, but I
want to turn over to Acts chapter 16 and we'll look at
this a little bit. There's not so many verses that
I need a lot of you to read these necessarily tonight.
So I will probably just try to turn to a lot of these together.
But here in Acts, obviously, you know the story, the Philippian
jailer and he had heard Paul and Silas singing, praying.
We don't have a record of this, but there's a possibility that
they even they talked. And you know, this Philippian
jailer was obviously under conviction because as soon as he
found out that everybody was back in the jail and that Paul
and Silas had kind of done all of that and and had gotten them
together, of course he was glad to have his life.
But the first question that he said verse 29.
Well, go back to verse 28. But Paul cried with a loud
voice, saying, Do thyself no harm, for we are all here.
Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling,
and fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out and
said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
I don't know what Paul and Silas said.
I don't know what Paul and Silas were singing.
But whatever it was, it was enough to convict this
Philippian jailer that he needed to be saved.
And so he says, what must I do to be saved?
And we don't have any mention of repent here.
They said Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be
saved in thy house. And the reason why there's no
mention mention of repentance in this passage with the Philippian
jailer is because he was already under conviction.
He had already come to the recognize recognition that he
was a Sinner, right? And that's a lot of what the
idea of repentance is. He was ready to give up.
He was surrendering. And that's what that's what
repentance is. Repentance is surrendering to
God. And so as we saw in the first
lesson, and we, as we read already, Paul preached
repentance toward God, faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ.
And you have to have both of those.
We've offended God by our own self will and by our
disobedience. And so we must put our faith in
Jesus Christ because he's the one that died for our sins.
So there's three things that we need to consider here.
And we'll, we'll try to get through all of these tonight.
But number one, then what is saving faith?
And, and he points out here, and I think this is a great point,
that it's important to understand that it's not just
believing in some historical facts.
Oh, I believe that Jesus lived and that he did miracles and
that he died and that he rose from the from the dead and that,
you know, he went back to heaven.
I mean, that's, that's, that's just to believe historical facts
the same way that somebody believes that George Washington
lived or that Hitler lived. And you know that all of these
other thing happened. These these other things
happened. You know, Mahatma Gandhi lives
in India, but those beliefs don't change the lives of the
lives of those who believe that. So a lot of people believe that
Jesus lived, that he died, he did a lot of wonderful things,
but that belief is not changing their life.
And I think it's the difference between believing in and
believing on and I know it's a small difference, but that's
what we're going to talk about believing in something versus
believing on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation.
So a few things that he points out here that I think are worth
mentioning. In fact, let's turn over to John
chapter 14, John chapter 14, and verse number six.
And again, this is Thomas coming to Jesus and you know, we know
him as doubting Thomas for a reason.
Thomas verse number six saith unto him, Lord, we know not
whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?
Verse #6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth and the
life and the and the key is this no man cometh unto the Father,
but by me. So saving faith is an undivided
faith. That's that's the first point
there. And and what I'd recommend is
maybe you highlight underline, write a few notes in your there
in your notes, whatever you want to do.
But to be saved, I must believe that Jesus Christ alone is Lord
and Savior, just as the Bible says.
Now this is a little bit different than what we would
call Lordship salvation. And I don't have time to go
through Lordship salvation tonight, but Lordship salvation
really has a lot to do with the, the Calvinism idea.
And you know, really it, it, it ends up, I should say that it's
heavily influenced by Calvinism. But what ends up happening is
that people never have the assurance of their salvation
Calvinism. OK, so there's, there's a
difference between Calvinism and Arminianism.
And I don't agree with either one of them.
Calvinism actually has the idea that you have to persevere to
the end. And if you didn't persevere to
the end, it's not that you lost your salvation, it's that you
never had salvation in the 1st place, right?
That's the Calvinism idea. And that's essentially what
Lordship salvation is. Arminianism is, you know, the
opposite of Calvinism. Basically, you don't have to
persevere to the end, but you can lose your salvation.
And obviously I don't agree with either one of those.
So, you know, are you Calvinist or are you a minion?
I'm not either one of those. You know, I'm biblical.
I go with what the Bible says, and I don't have to fit into
anybody's camp, you know, as far as those things go.
But to say that you have to make Christ Lord and Savior is not a
lordship salvation. To say that you're making Christ
Lord and Savior is that we're not adding Jesus Christ to a
list of other gods. He is Lord, He is the Savior.
There is nobody else beside Christ that I am counting in or
counting on for my salvation. And I think an easy explanation
or an easy example of that would be Hinduism, right?
I spent time in India, and that's one of the things about
the Indians, of the Indian culture and Hinduism.
They have hundreds, I probably have thousands of gods.
And it's just a matter of, you know, pick which one or two or
three you feel like helped you the most.
And that's the one you worship and that's the one you pray to.
And sometimes the idea for Hindus is just add Jesus to the
list. Wow, I can see the value of, of,
of Jesus Christ. And I understand that man, he
died for my sins. Well, he'd be a great one to add
to the list of all these other gods that I'm already
worshipping, Right? This is then that's not what
we're saying. It's an undivided faith.
It is you have Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior alone or
you don't have salvation. And that's the that's the point
that that's being made there. So a lot of people want to
believe in Jesus while believing in other Lords as well.
And nobody can be saved that way.
And so that's why we say it's an undivided faith #2 saving faith
is a trusting faith. The word believe in the Bible
means to trust. It means to depend upon, to
commit oneself to. So to be saved, a person must
fully trust his soul and eternal destiny to the Lord Jesus
Christ. He must rely upon Jesus and
Jesus alone to forgive his sin and make him right with God and
carry him to heaven. And he uses the example here of
trusting a boat to carry you across the lake.
You can sit there and look at it and admire the boat and think,
wow, that's a beautiful boat. I think it's got all the ability
to take me across the lake. But until you get in the boat
and actually go across the lake, you don't prove that you have
faith in it, right? The illustration I've used a lot
when I'm giving the gospel is the idea of, you know, the
building's on fire and you're trying to jump across the street
to get to the other building. And and obviously it's no matter
how hard you try, you're not going to get to the other
building because it's impossible to jump across.
You know that distance, right? It's the same thing when it says
for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
We cannot get there on our own, no matter how hard we try.
And some people may get farther than other people because of,
you know, their good deeds or whatever else, but you still
can't get there on your own. You're always going to fall
short because we are all sinners.
So the idea then is somebody built the bridge from this
building to the other building. Well, I don't know if I can
trust that that bridge is going to hold me up.
I don't know who built it. I don't know when it was built.
I don't know if I can trust it. You're telling me to go across
the bridge, right? Well, at some point you just
have to exercise faith and say, I don't know how it's going to
hold me up. I don't know if it's going to
hold me up, but I trust that it will.
I'm taking that bridge and I'm going to use that to get across
the street. And that's exactly what we're
talking about when it comes to this saving faith, being
trusting faith. I've never been to heaven.
I've never seen God. I wasn't here when Jesus lived
on the earth. I didn't see him die in the
cross. I didn't see him rise from the
dead. I didn't see him ascend back to
heaven. I don't know if he's building
mansions for us. The only thing that I have to go
off of is what the Bible says that Jesus told us he was going
to do. So it's a trusting faith.
I have to trust that he's going to do what he said he's going to
do, right? And that's what we're talking
about. So the question then is, have
you trusted Jesus to take away your sins?
Some people say they believe in Jesus, but they continue to go
through their old religious rituals.
This proves they're not only trusting Jesus.
When we trust Jesus, we realize that we don't need any vain
religious rituals for salvation, right?
And that's why I say it's hard for me to believe that somebody
that that attends the Catholic Church is saved.
You know, if, if, if you are trusting in Christ alone, then
you have no necessity for the Catholic Church because you
don't need the, you know, the, the ordinances and all of those
things that they do to try to earn their way to heaven.
So you can say, well, yeah, I believe that Jesus Christ died
of the cross. And I'm, I'm trusting him and I
know that I'm saved because I've accepted him as my Savior.
And then you continue to do all these religious rituals.
You are proving that it's not trusting faith.
You are still doing all of these other things to try to help you
get to heaven. And so it's not, it's not
trusting faith. It's like, it's like saying,
yes, I believe that this chair can hold me up.
But then going and getting 2 stacks of Psalm books and
putting them underneath the chair so that when I sit down,
if the legs break, at least the Psalm books are going to hold me
up, right? You don't trust the chair if you
don't trust the chair, right? And that's exactly what
salvation is. If you don't trust Christ to do
what he said He's going to do and you have to add other things
to it, then it's not a trusting faith and it's not faith at all.
So it's an important part of it. So saving faith is an undivided
faith. It's a trusting faith.
It's a convinced faith. Let's go over to John chapter 6.
To be saved, I have to fully be convinced that Jesus is Lord and
Savior and that he will fulfill his promises to me.
True salvation is a know So salvation.
That's the kind of faith that Jesus disciples had.
It's, it's one of those things that if somebody comes and asks
me if I know for sure that I'm on my way to heaven, I can say,
yes, I know for sure that I'm on my way to heaven, right?
Most people, when you ask them that, they would say, well, I
hope so or I think so or maybe or probably that's not a, that's
not a convinced faith, right? Those who truly have put their
faith in Christ know based on everything that we find in God's
Word, that that we can be saved. So Peter's testimony in John
chapter 6 and verse #66 From that time many of his disciples
went back and walked no more with him.
Then said Jesus, unto the 12 Will ye also go away?
Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go?
Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe and are
sure that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Jesus answered Then haven't I not chosen you?
12 And one of you is the devil. He spake of Judas Iscariot, the
son of Simon, for he it was that should betray him, being one of
the 12 But you talk about a convinced faith in verse 69.
We believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the son of
the living God. That's a convinced faith and
that's that's what we have to have.
That's the kind of testimony of a genuinely saved person, and we
can be sure of God's promise. In fact, first John chapter 5
and verse 13 is typically one of the first places that I take
somebody to when I'm giving them the gospel, especially if
they're unfamiliar with it. First, John 5 and verse 13 says
that she may know that she have eternal life, right?
And if the Bible says that you may know that you have eternal
life, then there's got to be a way that we can get to that
know. So salvation, he said he met a
guy in Nepal that said he was 99%.
He had 99% faith in Jesus Christ.
Well, that 1% is what's going to keep you out of heaven because
it's a convinced faith. Saving faith then is unmixed.
And I think for this one, we'll turn over to Ephesians chapter
2. Ephesians chapter 2.
Saving faith cannot be mixed with human works.
You have to receive Christ's salvation as a free gift, not as
a reward for good works. And this is where baptism is
completely. And here you go blown out of the
water, right? There is no baptism as part of
salvation. But but so many today are having
their salvation experience because they got baptized,
right? And I mean, you were seeing that
all over the place, social media especially blowing up because of
all the Charlie Kirk stuff and so many people getting back to
Christianity and all of these other things.
But but what they're saying is, oh, it was a wonderful day at
church. We had 55 people baptized today.
Basically what they're saying is we had 55 people saved, but
those people were not saved. They just got wet.
That's it. Baptism is a work, right?
It it doesn't do anything for us.
It's not washing your sins away. Sure, it may be identifying with
Christ, but it can only come after repentance and faith.
Baptism is just a picture to show everybody else, hey, I've
accepted Christ as my Savior. I've repented.
I've put my faith in Christ, and I want everybody to know that.
So again, if I try to pay something for a gift, it's not a
gift. If you ask me to pay something
for a gift, it's not a gift. A gift is something that is
absolutely free. There is nothing that I can do
for it. There is nothing that I can do
to earn it. It's free.
So if you're trying to do anything to earn your salvation,
then you, you have a mixed faith.
And that's not salvation, that's not faith.
So Ephesians 2 verse 8 and 9 makes it very, very clear.
For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of
yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast, not of works, lest any
man should boast, Right. The only thing that we can do is
accept Christ, accept that free gift.
There's nothing else that we can add to salvation that makes it
any more valuable than what it was when Christ died in the
cross. And, and if I, if I do add
anything to it, then it's not salvation.
So saving faith is unmixed faith number.
What is that 5? I guess it's number 512345.
Saving faith is a receiving faith.
Let's turn over to Matthew Chapter 11.
Saving faith in receives Jesus as Lord and Savior.
And again, it's in contrast to a lordship salvation.
You don't have to. It's not, it's not that idea
that we just talked about, but it's it is making him the only
Lord and the only Savior. And again, kind of almost a
summary, but it's not just believing in Jesus as a
historical person, it's calling out to Him and asking Him for
salvation. Matthew Chapter 11, verse 28 and
29. Come unto me, all you that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly
in heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls.
Come unto me. It's a receiving faith.
I've just accepted what he said. Romans 10/13 is another one for
whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
So that is saving faith. But then what is the place of
works in the Christian life? All right, it's a good question
because I think what's happened often is in fact, let's go back
over to Ephesians chapter 2 should have had you keep your
finger there. But I think what happens often
is we've allowed this happens with several things, OK,
Pentecostals almost have made people scared of the work of the
Holy Spirit, right? Because they've taken it to such
a far extreme. And they say, you know, they're
talking about speaking in tongues and everything else.
And so we get scared of the work of the Holy Spirit because of
what the Pentecostals have done with it.
And I think the same thing happens when we start talking
about good works. The Catholics have so marred the
idea of good works, and they've used that for so long as a way
to get to heaven, that we get scared to talk about good works.
But there ought to be good works, that that's what proves
your salvation, right? There ought to be something that
that that gives an indication. So does believing in Christ mean
that I don't have to do any works in the Christian life?
What's the place of work? All right, well, here's what the
Bible says. Ephesians 2.
We already read verse 8 and then verse 9.
Not of works, lest any man should boast, but he says this.
For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto
good works, which God hath before ordained, that we should
walk in them. So for those who are saved, he
is ordained before time for us to walk and to do good works, to
walk in and to do good works. So God wants us to live
obedient, holy lives, right? But that comes only after
salvation. Good works are a product of
salvation, not the way of salvation.
And that's a very, very key difference.
But it has to be part of it. If there's no fruit, if there's
no fruit, then they're very obviously never was a tree
planted right? Or it's a if it, if it's a tree
that's not producing any fruit, then there is there's a serious
question about the salvation there, right?
There ought to be good works. Good works are produced in the
believer by the Holy Spirit. And I'm not going to take the
time. This is one of the things that
I'm going to skip over. If you want to do this as a
Bible study, I think it'd be a great study to do.
But in the Epistle of Ephesians, just in Ephesians, there are 90
commandments that the believer is to obey.
There's something, I, I, I counted it up one time and I, I
think there's, I think there's 1070 commands in the Bible or
something like that. There's a lot of commands in the
Bible, right? That's, that's a lot.
There's 90 just in the book of Ephesians and, and there's a
list of all of the different things, humble, long-suffering,
putting away lying, putting away anger, not stealing, not
speaking, any corrupt thing, being kind, forgiving, putting
away fornication and uncleanness.
And this just goes on and on and on.
So there are some of the works that God wants the believers to
obey, but we can't do those until we're first saved, right?
The natural man cannot understand the things of God,
neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.
So if you're unsaved, and this is where I go back to talking
about the idea of repentance, so many people have put the idea of
sanctification in front of justification.
They're trying to live as a Christian.
They're trying to do Christian things.
They've never been justified. And so they're just struggling
nonstop in their Christian life. They can't figure out why.
Why do I keep going back to the sin?
Why can't I obey God? Why am not?
Why am I not seeing victory in my Christian life?
The reason why is because you're putting sanctification in front
of justification. You're trying to do all of these
commands, you're trying to do all of these good works, but
you've never been saved. And so you're, you're doing it
all in your flesh. You're doing it all in the
natural man and the natural man cannot understand the things of
the Spirit of God, neither can he know them.
The Bible says because they're spiritually discerned.
You don't understand them. It's your eyes are still
darkened even though you know there and, and this is where it
where it's sad many times. I think there's people in
churches all throughout the country, good churches and, and,
and probably honestly, even in our church.
I'm not under any illusion that 100% of the people here are
saved. I would like to think that, but
the, the problem is, is that people have gotten so good at
blending in with Christianity because they've been in it their
entire life or they've been in church for a long time because
they, they decided that they needed to reform and change.
And so they started going to church.
And the more you go to church, the more you learn what those
changes need to be. So you implement those changes
and you start doing Christian things without actually being a
Christian. But you're always going to
struggle in your Christian life. You're never going to have that
victory because you're just doing Christian things.
You're not being a Christian because you're, you can't be if
you're not one, right? So all of these good works are
things that we should be doing, but it's the Holy Spirit that
gives us the power to do those good works.
It's the Holy Spirit that gives us the power to overcome the bad
works, right? And to and to to obey the
negative commandments. Don't do this, don't do this,
don't do this, right? But that's what happened so many
times is, is people have never been through the repentance in
the faith. They, they are trying to live
the justification side of things, sorry, the
sanctification side of things without the justification coming
1st and it and it can't happen. So we have to be reconciled to
God through Jesus Christ. We have to be forgiven of our
sins and indwelt with the Holy Spirit.
Only then can we serve God acceptably.
I've changed my, my approach when it comes to talking about
the gospel. I don't ask anybody anymore.
Are you 100% sure that you're going to go to heaven when you
die? Now, I don't think God would
have told us about heaven if he didn't want us to go there,
right? And I don't think he would have
told us about hell if he didn't want us to.
Not if he didn't want us to not want to go there, right?
He wouldn't have told us about those things.
So there is that that certainly can be some of the motivation
the same way that if he didn't want us to live for the crowns
that we can earn, he wouldn't have told us about the crowns
and the rewards and everything else, right?
We would just get to heaven and find out, oh wow, look what I
got right? He told us about those things
because I think, I think he wants us to be motivated to earn
some of those crowns and to live for him in that way, right?
So having said that, I think what what happens though, is we
started telling people, hey, do you want to go to heaven when
you die? Here's how you go to heaven,
right? And and again, nothing wrong
with that, but that's where you it, that's where it can very
easily move into this quick prayer ISM thing.
You want to go to heaven, right? Well, you're a Sinner and you
need to ask Christ to forgive you for the sins and he'll take
you to heaven. OK, well, I want to go to
heaven. Pray this prayer.
All right, I'll pray that prayer.
Now you're going to heaven. Nobody can convince you
otherwise, right? But I have changed my approach.
I don't ask that question. Are you 100% sure that you're
going to go to heaven when you die?
I do kind of include that, but usually when I'm talking to
somebody, I said, are you 100% sure that your sins are
forgiven, that Jesus Christ is your savior and you're on your
way to heaven, right? Because that's, that's
repentance, right? Just one thing to go to heaven,
Who, who's going to say no to that, right?
You want to go to heaven when you die?
Well, hey, what if I told you, you don't have to change
anything and you can go to heaven?
Pray this prayer, right? In fact, you know what I wasn't
even I wasn't even planning to do this, but I, I remembered
this just now. All right, this is this is this
is some of the here it is this is some of the salesman tactics
that have been used for years to try to get somebody to accept
Christ as their savior. OK, this is not salvation while
at a restaurant. This guy Carl Hatch was was very
well known as a bold soul winner and I think he was bold but I
don't know how many souls he won the Christ while at a
restaurant, a buffet, brother Hatch yelled loudly.
This is a guy giving his testimony.
He was in there with with several other people, yelled
loudly to me so that all the Golden Corral could hear.
Brother Phillips, why are you so happy?
My response was, well, because I got saved and I'm going to
heaven now. And they replied, do you want
all these fine people like Golden Corral to go to heaven
with you? I said yes.
He said, tell them how you know you're going to heaven.
I told them the gospel and he said if you want to go to heaven
with me and Brother Phillips bow your heads right now and let's
make heaven your home. He prayed and how many were not
ashamed to raise their hand to tell him that they had gotten
saved. He looked around and asked
people that didn't raise their hands and said did you get
saved? Did you get saved?
Everyone got saved because he embarrassed them publicly.
As we walked out the door a man was walking in.
He said Sir I don't have but 30 seconds to talk but if you would
shake my right hand you would be confessing your trusting Jesus
as your savior from hell. But if you shake my left hand,
you would be saying I don't want Jesus in heaven and will take my
chances with hell and the devil for eternity.
The man asked which hand was the heaven hand.
Then he shook it and we rushed to the midweek service where he
claimed 51 souls were saved just in the last hour by him.
I told my wife this was crazy. We quit the 123 program he was
teaching just days after he started teaching it.
It was all about the numbers and it was reported in the sort of
the Lord paper the next month. That is not salvation.
But that's what so many people have been doing for so many
years. That's not salvation, 30 seconds
or shake my right hand or shake my left hand.
If you want to go to heaven or hell.
I mean, what? That is not salvation.
That's not repentance, it's not faith.
It's putting some, it's a salesman tactic, right?
And they and they used to call it the Carl Hatch squeeze.
He talked about this when somebody was trying to, you
know, maybe understand it a little bit more, wiggle out of
it a little bit more, put your hand on your shoulder and just
squeeze his shoulder a little bit.
That usually gets him to make that decision.
Why are you trying to sneak salvation past somebody?
Right. And that's, that's why I'm
saying I'm not, we're not trying to make it impossible for
somebody to get saved, but we are trying to be careful to make
sure that they actually are getting saved.
There has to be repentance and there has to be faith.
And if there's not those, then there is no salvation.
So what place does works have in the Christian life?
Well, nothing for salvation, but everything for a Christian who
is saved. You ought to want to please the
Lord, and you have the power of the Holy Spirit to help you do
that. So not necessary for salvation,
but absolutely necessary to prove your salvation, if you
will. Now, is salvation a religious
process? Well, let's go over to Matthew
18, Matthew 18. And by the way, there are story
after story after story after story, just like that.
That's the 123 pray after me. That's what I'm talking about
when I say quick prayer ISM. It used to be called easy
believism. And I still, I think, I think a
lot of people still call it that.
I don't like to call it easy believism because it is easy to
believe. It's not hard to be saved,
right? But this quick prayer ISM idea.
Hey, all you people in Golden Corral, while you're sitting
there eating your meal, pray this prayer after me and you can
go to heaven. Well, who wouldn't do that,
right? But those people are not saved.
They did not repent. They had no mention of theirs,
of their sin being part of the reason why they're on their way
to hell. There's no individual talking
back and forth with somebody to make sure that they understand
what you're explaining to them from the word of God.
All right, and in, in, in whatever 5 minutes, 50 people
get saved and another one in 30 seconds walking out the door.
That's, that's what it all became about was the numbers.
I get up and I would say I got 51 people saved just in the last
hour. How many people did you get
saved in the last hour? Well, look at you slackers.
You're not even leading people to Christ, right?
And, and that's what it all became about.
So then now somebody's like, man, he's like 51 souls the
Christ in an hour. I better go get busy.
I can at least do that in a week.
And now they want to come back and say, well, yeah, I LED, I
LED 55 people this week. You know, they used to and, and,
and really a lot of this, a lot of this philosophy originated
out of, out of Hiles First Baptist Church in Hammond.
And I, and I don't think it started that way.
I think brother Hiles started off with the with the right goal
and with the right mindset and with the right motivation and
everything else. But it, it did become all about
the numbers. And when it becomes about the
numbers they used to have so winning contests and and brother
Hiles own daughter said, by the time I graduated from high
school, I had won thousands of people to Christ, thousands of
people to Christ by the time she graduated high school.
Because when you have a contest to see who can lead the most
people to Christ, do you think you're being careful with it?
No, that's why it's foolish to have a contest to see who can
lead the most people to Christ. You're not going to be thorough.
You're not going to make sure that somebody knows for sure
they're saved. You're going to walk up to a
group of kids on a basketball court and say, hey, hang on real
quick. How many of you would say that
you want to go to heaven when you die?
All right, what if I told you that in 30 seconds I could tell
you how that would happen? Would you want to?
Would you let me sit here and tell you how to be saved?
Well, absolutely. All right, here's how you'd be
saved. You know, blah, blah, blah.
All right, who wants to be saved?
Pray this prayer after me. How many of you prayed this
prayer? Everybody raises their hand, 10
people just got saved and you walk away with 10 more notches
in your belt. That's that's what it was all
about. And that's why we are being so
careful with it, because I believe there are thousands and
thousands and thousands, probably hundreds of thousands
of people sitting in churches across the country who are in
good churches, who have good standards of dress and music and
everything else. And probably a big majority of
the people in that church are not even saved.
And I know that's a bold statement, but what happens is
somebody who gets saved that way then goes off the Bible college,
trains for the ministry, learns that philosophy of ministry, and
then goes out and starts a church.
And now he's leading thousands more people to Christ in the
exact same way. Some of them are going to stick
and start coming to church because they, they realize the
necessity of reformation and they're going to start doing
Christian things because they were taught that this is what
they need to do now that they're saved and they never came to
Christ. They're just doing
sanctification things, but they've never been justified.
And I, it's sad, but I think there's probably thousands and
thousands and thousands of people across this country who
think they're saved because they had this quick prayer and they
have no idea. Now somebody comes along and
they ask him, hey, do you know for sure that your sins are
forgiven? You're on your way to heaven and
you know that Jesus Christ is your Savior.
Oh, yeah, I did that when, well, I, I accepted Christ as my
savior at such and such time and place.
And I'm like, oh, well, you wouldn't say that if you didn't
know what you were talking about, right?
But many of them, no evidence of salvation.
Many of them. You know, Brother Cloud
mentioned this one time. I heard him kind of talking
through this. And he said that he and his
wife, they had a huge campaign at, at, at some church that they
were attending for, for a time. And 150 people or something like
that got saved on a Sunday, on a special Sunday.
And the next, the next week, not one of those people came back,
not one. And so he said, Hey, do we have
all the cards of everybody that got saved?
I'd, I'd just like to go follow up with, with all of these
people and just kind of talk to them and make sure they got
saved, you know? And he said out of that 150
people, not one single person wanted to talk to them at all
about the gospel. Not one.
And I think I might be wrong. I don't think it was actually a
church service. I think it was some kind of
campaign that they did or something like that where they
were going out and they had 150 people saved in one night or one
evening or I forget exactly what it was.
But he wanted to follow up and just, you know, make sure that
they were saved. He said not one out of all of
those people, most of them didn't even come to the door,
heard him inside, didn't even come to the door.
Some of that came to the door were like, you know, I'm not
interested. Thank you.
I mean, somebody that genuinely got saved is going to want to
talk about it, right? He said not one out of all of
those people wanted to talk about what happened with them.
It's not salvation when you get saved.
There's a transformation in your life and it's and it's it's an
obvious transformation. And so is is salvation a
religious process? Well, it's not a process.
Now you remember when we went through the, the, the lesson
that I did or the message that I did on a Sunday night a few
weeks ago, maybe a month or two ago on the necessity of
separation, right? And I went through and I showed
you all the Bible verses in the ESV and how different they are
from what the King James Bible says, right?
One of those verses said there is now therefore no condemnation
to them who are being saved, right?
And it makes it sound like salvation is a process.
Salvation is not a process. It's a one time thing.
But here's what he says. A popular heresy today is the
teaching that salvation is a process.
And how do you blame people when you're using the wrong Bible?
You're going to come up with the wrong doctrines when you're
using the wrong version. And it says to them who are
being saved, it sure sounds like salvation is a process.
Why wouldn't they believe that? That's what the Bible says.
Well, it's not the Bible and that's where, that's where
there's a huge mistake. But the Bible says it's a
miraculous conversion experience.
This is what Jesus taught Matthew chapter 18 and verse #3.
And Jesus said, verily I say unto you, except you be
converted and become as little children, you shall not enter
into the Kingdom of God. Sorry, sorry, Kingdom of heaven.
Let's, let's go over and look at John chapter 3.
John chapter 3 and verse #3. Verse #3 Jesus answered and said
unto him, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except the man be
born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
Now let's, let's talk about this, all right, a second birth,
All right, is, is a birth a process, or is it something that
happens? Something that happens, right?
A birth is something that just happens.
Now to get to the birth, it could take a little bit of time,
right? Nine months, some more, some
less, right? But it's a process to get to the
birth. But the birth happens
instantaneously, right? The new birth conversion is not
a long process. It's a supernatural life
changing event. And when we say supernatural,
it's not, oh, I saw this big bright light one night and the
next thing you know, I knew I was saved.
You know, it's, that's not, it's not what we're talking about,
but it's a supernatural life changing event.
And this happens when the Sinner repents of his sin and puts his
faith in Jesus Christ as his only savior.
So coming to repentance and faith can be a process, but
salvation itself is a birth and a conversion experience.
And we see a lot of those things.
Let's just turn over to Acts chapter 2.
We'll end with this. Those who were saved in the book
of Acts were saved on the very day they received Christ, right?
It's not. Well, I got to wait around and
see if I persevere to the end to know if I'm saved or not.
When you come to Christ, what does he offer us?
When you accept Christ as your Savior, obviously he offers us
forgiveness of sins. Never.
It's not a trick question, but what do you get when you get
saved? Starts with an E Eternal life,
right? If you could lose it, is it
eternal? Kind of hard to be eternal if it
stops after two days, right? Eternal life is eternal life.
You either have it or you don't, right?
So those who were saved in the Bible, it was not some long
drawn out process where they had to go through this and do that
and do this and do that. No Acts chapter 2 and verse #41
Then they that glad they received His word were baptized
and the same day they were added unto them about 3000 souls,
right? The Ethiopian eunuch in Acts
chapter 8 verse 36 understand this what thou readest.
How can I accept some man guide me?
And he he started in the Gospels and and or no, it doesn't say he
started in the Gospels, but he, he preached unto him Jesus,
right and then what happened after that He said, hey, here's
water. What defended me from being
baptized? And he said, do you believe that
Jesus is the Christ the Son of God?
And he said, I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God. He says, I'm paraphrasing, but
that's what he said. And he went down in the water
and he baptized him. It was not some months long
process that it took the Philippi, I mean the Ethiopian
unit to get saved, right? He understood the Gospel, he
accepted it. He was baptized.
It was instant. Same thing with Cornelius in his
household. Same thing with Lydia.
We already read about the Philippian jailer in his
household. Acts 1631.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.
And he did. And his whole house believed in
Jesus Christ as their Savior. And he baptized him that same
night, right? It was instant.
It was not some long drawn out process.
It was not some, you know, long thing.
Now, I don't know how long the Philippian jailer had been
thinking about it. There's a good possibility that
he heard Paul and Silas preaching earlier in the day or
earlier in the week before they were beaten and put in prison,
right? Could have been that, that, that
he would had been convicted when they were preaching that.
And this is just the end of that conviction process, right?
The conviction process may take some time, but salvation is not
a long drawn out process. It's a momentary decision.
It's a salvation experience that happens instantaneously and
you're either saved or you're not, right?
So all of these, it happened the same way for all of them.
And it's it's, it's you're saved, you get baptized and you
know, Christ is shave. It's a new birthright.
It's the same way that it happens with with a physical
birthright. It's there, it's done.
That's it. So anyway, the whole idea here
then is faith is absolutely necessary for salvation.
Problem is that most people only emphasize the faith, right?
It's faith. It changed from unbelief to
belief. Well, it is.
That's part of it, right? Because you didn't believe that
he can get you to heaven. Now you do, or you're counting
in something else to get you to heaven.
Now, you're not, right? But repentance and faith are
both absolutely necessary for salvation.
And so when it comes to putting this into a practical step for
us, we've just got to make sure that we're very careful with it,
right? I think a kid can be saved, but
but I think a kid also has to understand the idea of
repentance. They have to understand that
they're a Sinner and they have to not want to sin anymore.
Doesn't mean that they're that they have to stop sinning, but
they have to want to stop sinning.
They have to understand that their sin is what is sending
them to hell. They have to understand that
their sin is what made Christ have to die on the cross.
So without a recognition of that, there cannot be any
salvation because repentance and faith are both necessary for
salvation. Acts 2021, right, repentance
toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 distinct
things that Paul talks about, and both of those things are,
are heavily, heavily talked about throughout the entire rest
of the New Testament. So very, very important for us
when it comes down to a practically for us, we just have
to be very, very, very careful about about leading somebody to
Christ. Not that somebody could not get
saved the first time they hear it, right?
It happened. It happened in in many different
places when Paul preached. So somebody can hear the gospel
and get saved on the first time. But we just have to be very
careful and make sure that we're being thorough and that people
understand what the gospel is before we just lead them in a
prayer and declare them saved. And they don't really have any
idea if they are or not. Right.
All right, well in there, let's pray.
We'll get into a new lesson next week.
Father, again, we thank you so much for your goodness to us.
Thank you for the opportunity that we have to to study these
things from your word. Pray that it would continue to
be a help to us and that we'd be able to use it to lead more
people to Christ. Pray that you would put people
in our pathway that we can share the gospel with, but also that
as you do, we take those opportunities to share the
gospel. Thank you again for all you do
for us in Jesus name, Amen.