Salvation From the Penalty of Sin

We're to chapter 28. And if you notice, in looking at the summary of the chapters, this is the first of two chapters that talk about salvation. This chapter is labeled Salvation from the Penalty of Sin. And the next week Hal is going to do Salvation from the Power of Sin. And salvation is really a wonderful topic in scripture. It's more than a topic. It's God's wonderful and marvelous grace and what he's done for man. As we look at this, we're going to see just some incredible things.

These two chapters are really, for me, I've used the book over the years, and I've come back to these chapters at different time periods, and there's really some neat things in there. Chapter 28, if you look at it, had eight sections. And I called Hal yesterday and he was saying, are you going to do all eight sections? And I said, I can't possibly do all eight sections. It's just too much. So we're going to do four of the eight sections. And I kind of have combined a couple of things.

But hopefully you'll come away with the marvelousness of God's salvation and understand the... Actually, we're going to talk about salvation from the penalty of sin. from this power of sin and from the presence of sin. And you'll hopefully come away with at least how they fit and what they cover. So let's look at the next chart here, which further breaks it down. So under the salvation of the penalty of sin, It seemed to me that the understanding, the meaning of salvation, the scope of salvation was really very important.

To see the scope of what God has done through salvation. And then, in the center there, the three aspects of salvation. And then finally, the fact that salvation is conditioned upon faith alone. That it's not man doing something for God, it's God doing everything for man. And man trusting in what God has done. So we're going to go through these three sections.

The word for salvation in scripture is derived from the Greek word, actually the There's several words in the Greek. One of the words is to save, and that's s-o-z-o. My pronunciation is not probably right, but it's s-o-z-o or something like that. And then the word for savior is s-o-t-e-r, and the word for salvation is soteria. And you might have heard, if you look at books, you'll see soteriology, the study of the savior. the study of salvation. So the word salvation is derived, and in its base form it means deliverance or preservation. And if you think about it, it takes a deliverer to secure deliverance. So, as you see, it points to a deliverer. It points to our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we're going to see his riches on man's behalf.

And as we go through here, we're going to see that God has, and I like what our brother Hal's done over the years, and looking at we're saved from something to something. I think that's really important. We're saved from the penalty of sin, and we've satisfied God. So we're saved from something to something, and we'll get into that a little bit later on.

So I'd like to kind of go through and look at the bullet number two there. It talks about how's it used in the New Testament. And in some situations, the word soteria is just used to talk about deliverance from trouble or something that's happening in the immediate context.

And let's look at some of those. The first one, let's look at Acts, Acts chapter 7. There's a couple of Acts here I'd like to look at. Acts chapter 7. And if I could ask someone to volunteer to read maybe 22 through 25 in Acts chapter 7. Thank you. Yes, in Acts 7. Thank you. I'm sorry. Actually, I apologize. Okay, let's try 20 through 25. 22-25.

Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was careful to his feet and actions. When Moses was 40 years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites. He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to him and avenged him by killing the Egyptians. Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but Okay.

Now, in your translation, the word actually is not always translated salvation. It's translated, and yours was, tell me again. Rescue. That's interesting. Okay, rescue. In the New American Standard, it's deliverance. God was granting them deliverance through him. So we see that in this case, it's speaking of the deliverance that was accomplished through Moses. That's kind of the base idea, that it's the deliverance that's accomplished, and this is through a person, that God was using Moses to deliver Israel.

Okay, so that's one example. Another example is over in Acts 27. If you turn over to Acts 27, a very similar kind of example, but a little bit different idea of being delivered from something. So let's look at Acts 27. Could I get someone to read, this is kind of a long section, this is a shipwreck involved with the Apostle Paul, and if someone could read maybe 33 and 34, just those two verses. It's kind of in the middle of the thing, so I think we'll see what's going on here.

Marilyn, thank you. Okay, and actually Maryland has Survive. I have Preservation. I encourage you to take some food for this is for your preservation, for not a hair of your head and so on. So in this case it's used just in a very, you know, as I have the bullet, you know, material and temporal deliverance. In Paul's case, he needed to take food to stay alive.

In Moses' case, he was delivering the children of Israel from the Egyptians. So that's one set of verses. Another set talk about, which is made more to the point here, about spiritual and eternal deliverance. We have a lot of ones in Acts this morning. Acts chapter 4, if we go back to there. Actually, this is a pretty familiar verse. I'll just go ahead and read this one.

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved. So here, again, we see salvation pointing to a person, pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ. And then in Romans chapter 1, Can I get someone to read verse 16? Here's another verse that talks about deliverance, basically not being ashamed of the gospel. Is the power of God for salvation the good news about Jesus Christ?

Okay, so those are some examples of both the kind of material and temporal as well as the spiritual. And then the two categories in the middle there we're going to cover under the power of the penalty of salvation, the power of salvation. We're going to talk about those much more in the next sections. So we're going to skip over those for now.

And then there's other verses that talk about the deliverance of the nation of Israel in Luke. Luke chapter 1. And what I'm trying to do here is just basically give you an idea of the scope of salvation. And actually, this passage in Luke is It's somewhat characteristic of a lot of the Old Testament passages. It's a nation of Israel being preserved. God is going to preserve the nation of Israel, deliver the nation of Israel. I've got a lot of reading this morning here.

Can I ask someone to read... Maybe we can go back to 67. 67 to 71. Okay, thank you. Okay? So, and this one actually, there's a couple of things. In 69 it talks about this Horn of Salvation. Does someone have an idea what that's talking about? If you're like me, I have notes in my Bible that help. What I thought, it's looking toward the Savior, the horn of salvation. It focuses back to the Old Testament, speaking of the Lord Jesus. But then salvation is also used a little bit later in the passage, in 71, salvation or deliverance from our enemies. So in this passage we have both salvation used in a couple of different ways.

One, I think, speaking of the that God's going to raise up this horn of salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ, and then just being delivered from our enemies. And that's kind of what, you know, if you think about when the Lord Jesus came, that's what they kind of assumed, right?

That He was going to deliver them from their... They wanted the Romans to be taken care of. Let's get delivered from these Romans and get them taken care of. So... Right. And we have the same, as often said, we want the Lord, as Mike Doyle would say, to come down and fix my deal right now. Come down and fix my problems. Get busy with fixing my problems. The Lord has a bigger purpose and a bigger plan.

Okay, and then the last bullet is talking about the summing up of all the blessings for the believer, and that's what we're going to see as we go on to the next chart here. We're going to see that salvation is this all-encompassing term in Scripture that just brings together a whole bunch of just vital doctrines of Scripture. It's everything that God has done on the believer's behalf. I mean, it's just incredible. In fact, if you If you remember our Sunday school class, not our Sunday school class, but here at Holly Hills, there's a class that Mike Doyle did on the great themes of salvation, about 20 chapters. I mean, it's an all-inclusive topic of what God has done on man's behalf.

And that verse in 1 Peter talks about this idea, we have to turn to it, but this joy inexpressible, full of glory, the salvation of your soul, it's kind of extolling the wonderful God's wonderful plan and purpose in the saving of men and women's souls. And then in the Old Testament, we'll have to turn to these, basically there are several verses that talk about what's the source of salvation. And there's no other source of salvation than the Lord. Salvation belongs to the Lord, even though the context in both of those are a once from my enemy, But he realizes that salvation from my enemies is from the Lord too. In another case, for Jonah. What was Jonah? What was his problem? He was in the stomach of the fish there, and he wanted deliverance or salvation from his problem right then. And we all, I mean, like Marilyn says, we all have that, if there's a difficult, we want salvation or deliverance from that. temporal aspect to salvation and there's an eternal aspect. Okay.

Okay, so as I was talking about the scope of salvation, and I listed, you know, if you look at different You know, you look at the author, Dr. Schaeffer, he lists, this list kind of came from some of his other writings, but basically it includes substitution, redemption, reconciliation, propitiation, conviction, repentance, faith, regeneration, forgiveness, justification, sanctification, preservation, glorification. So it's a total process, if you think about it, from a person Actually, it's from eternity past. If you want to go back far enough, it's eternity past to when we're in glory with the Lord. That's God's plan in scope of His salvation. It's all-encompassing.

So to properly study salvation, you have to study all those wonderful doctrines. And actually, we have gone through some of these. Like, we're going to have a chapter coming up here in sanctification. And we've covered probably pieces of each of those.

Salvation is kind of the all-encompassing term that shows God's work on the behalf of man. And the author has this paragraph in the book that I just kind of copied out that talks about the word salvation represents the whole work of God by which he rescues man from eternal ruin and doom. I can't say ruin and doom. Of sin and bestows upon him the riches of his grace including eternal life now and eternal glory in heaven.

So it's an incredible, you know, we're not going to scratch the surface this morning, really. But we are going to see some key elements of God's salvation. And actually, Dr. Schaefer, I was thinking about trying to print it out, maybe I will later on.

He has the riches of God's grace, and he has 33 points, and he basically covers all those in 33 points, and there are sub-points, It's just marvelous. Actually, the bottom half of this chart maybe is a subset of that, that talk about what God has done in the salvation, His saving work. What has He done to save man? And each of these points are just, each one is like a jewel in what He's done.

So we're going to kind of start and go through these again. I apologize, we're going to be turning to a lot of verses, and this may not be as interactive. And the author used, I noticed if you look in the book, this is basically copied from one section of the book. He used the word made, and that's the translation in use of the King James Version. And in some cases, the word made isn't really in the text, but he is, I think he's trying to convey the point that God, this is God's saving work. So he has each of these statements, and most of the time they're the King James translation in that passage.

I want to kind of walk through some of these, maybe not through all of them, but I'd like to go through a few of them. And in some cases, the word made is really significant. It's a significant word in the original language. OK, the first one is in Colossians. Colossians chapter 1. And in this verse, depending upon your translation, it talks about the thankfulness to God.

In my version it says, thanks to the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. So he has qualified or he has made us to be partakers, it says, of the inheritance of the saints in light. That's something that we could not do on our own, that we have no ability to do. And actually, if you go back, it's even more wonderful in terms of talks about and all power according to his glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience and joy."

Joy, joyfulness. So that's the first aspect. The second aspect is that, you know, people are wondering, even believers, they're wondering, are they accepted? Can God accept me? I've done something, maybe as a believer I've done something. I think one of these points here, the second point in Ephesians chapter 1, you know, what is our acceptance before God?

In Ephesians chapter 1 verse 6, he says that we've been made accepted in the Beloved. And actually that word, in this case the word made is actually that word for grace, charis, And actually, some of the translations kind of picked up on that. Like in the New American Standard it says, "...to the praise of the glory of His grace which He freely bestowed upon us in the Beloved." So He has made us, He has made us accepted. By His grace we are accepted.

And then it goes down to the next one. And here's where we start at this point here. I'm going to take a little diversion for a second here. "...made the righteousness of God made near to God, made sons of God, those three passages with that phraseology, made the righteousness of God, it's this word that in the Greek is kinome, and it's this verb that is to come into a new state of being, So we have been made the righteousness of God.

If you think about it, we were never the righteousness of God before, but we have been made. We've come into a new state of being that never existed before. And we've been made near to God. We were separated from God, and now we're near to God. We've made sons of God.

So that particular Greek word in those three verses really shows what God has done. Man hasn't done it, God has done it. were made His righteousness, were made near to Him. Some people say, you know, God is not, you know, where is God in this situation? You've been made near.

And once again, we have to think about, you know, position and condition. You've got to think about, you know, you may, you know, may be a difficult situation and not be near to God in the sense that you have troubles in a sense, but you think, well, God's not looking out for me. But you can be no nearer, you can be no more secure, you can be no more righteous, because you're in his son, and you are a son. So as you step through each of these, each one is one to be pondered and thought about. It says, made citizens of heaven. Actually, some versions have, our citizenship is in heaven. That's where we look at this world. You know, we're seated at the right hand of God. So that's the position that we look at life from.

And that we're made a new creation. And this is another one of these, the made a new creation is another usage of that word, ginome, to come into a new state of being. So we're a new creation in Christ. And then the last two, made members of the family and household of God. and made complete in Christ. So that's just a sampling, if you will, of the riches of God's grace, what he's done on behalf of man.

So any thoughts about these? Alright, so let's move on here. Okay. So I thought, you know, looking at the chapter that we're looking at, I thought that one of the key sections of this chapter is the chapter on the tenses of salvation. And to see, we're looking at this wonderful plan of God, you know, from eternity past to on into eternal glory. And scripture, as you look through it, has verses that talk about the past aspect of salvation, salvation from the penalty of sin, the present aspect of salvation, salvation from the power of sin, and then our final salvation from the very presence of sin. So I have three charts that look much alike, and I try to go through and highlight in each of those sections what each of those aspects mean. The past tense of salvation talks about salvation as being wholly past.

In fact, many times it will use have been, as we're going to see, have been saved through faith. And it's completed and unchanging for the believer, for those who have believed. And the present tense is our walk our walk in Christ, if you will. Salvation from the reigning power of sin. And then the future one is that we're saved into conformity to Christ. And it is yet to be accomplished. But this is part of God's whole plan of salvation.

So in the first one, salvation from the penalty of sin, we've been saved from eternal death into eternal life. And I have a question for you. For the believer, when does eternal life begin? Does it begin in the by and by? Okay, that's good. Anybody think of a verse that might tell us that? Okay. For God to love the world? Okay. Alright.

How about in John 17? I think that's the one that kind of defines eternal life. John 17. So if someone asks you to define eternal life, this is the verse that always comes to my mind. Would somebody like to read John 17 in verse 3? Go ahead, thank you. Okay, so eternal life is knowing Jesus Christ, and this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, in Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. So eternal life, as Marilyn said, begins when we come to know Him.

Okay. That's a good question, honey. It's okay, it's okay. Oh, actually, I was supposed to repeat the question. The question is, Roy's been telling me, you've got to repeat the question. I've probably missed it 20 times before, but the comment was, does eternal life begin in the eternity past? Well, any other thoughts on that?

Can God's purposes be thwarted? Go ahead. That's a good point. The believer can't experience, he doesn't experience eternal life until he, as it says in John 17, But it says that we were chosen, you know, we're chosen in him before the foundation of the world. Wait till we get to the chapter on how did you have something you wanted to go. I know that's not fair. That's not fair.

This is your week off. Okay. Well, maybe we should move on here. So what I like to do is go through and look at these four verses that I have here that talk about salvation from the penalty of sin. And they talk about this as a completed action, a done deal in the vernacular of today. It's completed. It's immovable. It can't be changed.

This is one of these weeks I wish I had in the notes. I like to use the Wyss translation a lot because it has a lot of... it refers to the original language a lot. And there's just some real gems in Wyss' rendering of some of these verses. I like to read a couple of those.

Now, Ephesians 2.8, for by grace you've been saved through faith.

Let me just read you the... a little bit from Weister, it says, You have been saved in time past completely, through faith, with the result that your salvation persists through the present time. You have been saved in time past completely, through faith, with the result that your salvation persists through the present time. And actually Hal and I were talking about this verse, One rendering is, you are being saved, having been saved. It's a unique construction in the original language. You are being saved, having been saved. To me, this verse just shows the completeness of what God has done. God has saved us. and it's complete, and it's ongoing, and we can count upon it.

You know, a lot of times, and maybe this is a little bit diversion, people will, they've looked at these truths about salvation from the penalty of sin, and they said, well, you know, those are the truths that a person, when he comes to know the Lord Jesus Christ, and they've kind of labeled these truths as the truths, birth truths, that when we come to know Him, we're born again. They've labeled all these wonderful things. These are truths that we come to know about. And then as we walk in the Lord, there are truths of our identification with Christ, identification truths that we learn about Him and this wonderful union that we have in Christ.

That's a little bit of a diversion. Okay, let's look at John. Let's turn to John 5, 24. And John 5.24 says, Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but is passed out of death into life. I'll just read you a little section of what Wiest has on this verse.

In talking about this fact, how you've been being passed out of death into life, but have been permanently transferred out of the sphere of death into life. So the idea of passing out of death into life is a permanent thing, it's a permanent action that has happened on your behalf. It's unreversible, irreversible. And that's what you see as you go through these verses. You'll see that it's been completed, it's unreversible, and we can count upon it. And then in John 10, let's look over to John 10.

And starting in verse 28, I like to read 28 and 29, it says, and he's talking about my sheep hear my voice and so on, and he says, and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. And then he says, I and the Father are one. I mean, it's just incredible.

But kind of buried in there, there's a couple of little things from the original language that are good. Talking about not perishing. And it says, and they shall positively not perish. Never. I've noticed in, if you look at, sometimes in the Greek, and I'm not real, there'll be successive negatives, or whatever, and this is, not perish, and then, that's not strong enough, and they add never to it, so, and they shall positively not perish, comma, never.

And then it goes on to say, my father who gave them to me as a permanent gift. So we are a permanent gift from God the Father. from God the Father to God the Son. And that's repeated in John 17. If you look through there in John 17, that wonderful prayer, the Lord Jesus prays. He's thanking about the believers being a gift from God the Father to God the Son. It's a permanent gift, irreversible.

And then we come down to Romans chapter 1 and verse 8. I don't know, for me this has been one of these verses that, you know, As you walk in your Christian life, many times I'll come back to that verse and I'll remind myself that there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And we say as not even one bit. I thought that just really kind of nailed it down. There's no condemnation, not one bit. Not the smallest condemnation.

If you think about it, it's because we're in Christ. And He's perfectly satisfied the Father. And we're in union with Him. And that's never to change. So what you come away with from the salvation from the penalty of sin, that it's complete, it's irreversible, and we have eternal life the moment we believe. And that's a beginning point for every believer.

That they should have that settled in their mind. There are many believers that are uncertain about that. They're, well, I'm not sure that I have eternal life. Maybe I can lose it. Actually, we're going to have some chapters on that we're going to cover here coming up.

But that's just so important that you see the completeness of what God has done. And from that you can grow. You can walk in Him by faith. Any thoughts on that? Now we go on to the present tense of salvation. Salvation from the power of sin. I debated about what I was going to say about that. And there's a lot to be said. I mean, this is just... So I kind of shrunk it down to a couple of verses.

So once again, it's salvation from the power of sin. And as Hal's pointed out many times in the original, many times, especially in Romans, Romans 6, 7, 8, it'll say sin, sin singular. And there's really a definite article in many cases and it can be rendered the sin nature. So in the present tense of salvation, we're... It's salvation from sin or the sin nature and being made alive to God. And there's two aspects of that and that's why I have Romans 6-6 and Romans 6-11. And they're intricately intertwined. And it's back to our favorite set of things, position and condition. So let's turn to Romans chapter 6.

And I'll just tell you personally, I think, for me personally, when you come to understand these wonderful truths about salvation from the power of sin, it's like you've turned the corner in the road. It's like a light has gone on and you think, wow, I never realized this before.

It's not like this, I don't want to have a second blessing. It's none of that. It's just realizing what God has done for you and counting upon that. And when you don't see it, it doesn't click. But boy, it's just wonderful. So these verses here are just a small sampling of what this is about.

So let's look at Romans 6.6.

And it says, Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. So I'd like to, again, kind of fall back on the, on the weast here and read a couple of, do that verse from the weast translation. And a couple of things to kind of point out. If you, if you look in there, the, and there you can look at, and you can do this, you can look up like the word crucified, actually that word is co-crucified. There's just some critical things to see in this passage. Co-crucified with him, so that's talking about this wonderful identification with Christ. Let me just read a little bit of Wiest here. It says, our old self was co-crucified with him in order that the body dominated by the sinful nature might be rendered inoperative.

And this idea, this has done away with, which kind of leaves you to think, well, it's kind of, you know, it's been eradicated. And that's really not the idea at all. It's been rendered inoperative. It's been put in idle. It can't, it can't, there's a separation there. It can't affect you. If your car is in idle, you can rev the engine all you want and it's not going to go anywhere.

And then the second part of that, with the result, that no longer we are rending ourselves as slaves habitually to the sinful nature. I don't have the rest of that verse on there. Romans 6.6 is the wonderful place that the Lord has done for us and where we stand. We are separated from our sinful nature and that's the beginning point. Realizing that we are.

Because then in Romans 6.11 he's going to ask us to do something. If I remember correctly, and Hal, help me here, this is the first time in the Book of Romans that he tells us to do something, in Romans 6-11? Right. So all through 6-11 he tells all these wonderful truths, 5-6, and then in 6-11 he tells us to do something.

He tells us to consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. And it talks about reckoning. Consider is another word for reckoning. And the idea of reckoning is to put it down as true. And he says, and we surrender this, you be constantly counting upon the fact.

There are two facts he wants us to count upon. And there are kind of two facts there. You are those who have been separated from the sinful nature. That's the first fact we're to count upon. The second fact is that you are living ones with respect to God and Christ Jesus. So we're to count upon that we've been separated. In a way, we have a choice. When temptation comes, we don't have to give in to it. We can walk away from it. And that we're alive to God and Christ Jesus.

So there's a lot more that could be said about that. There's a lot more. We have a whole chapter that Hal's going to go through. I just kind of thought basically, Romans 6, 6 talking about what he has done and then basically our response. What is our response to be to that? And we're to consider ourselves to be separated and alive unto God. And that's how we walk by faith. It's a faith operation.

It's not, well, I have to do some more works for God. I'm going to do additional works for God and that's going to make me somehow more pleasing. No, you're already, from the past aspect of salvation, you've already, it's already been shown that you're totally pleasing to Him. It's totally done, complete.

Now we're to count upon what He's done, that we're separated from the sinful nature and we can walk. It says walk in the newness of life. Walk by faith. Walk in the Spirit. There's so many things. Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

Think of the words like abide, walk. reckon. All these words are encouragements for us and even commands for us to take God at his word and to walk in faith in what he's done for us. So that's a short encapsulation of And you can save your questions for Hal next week. He'll answer every single one.

Whoa, I'm setting myself up here. Okay, let's go on to the future. You know, what's interesting is that I don't, you know, as a believer, you talk to people and it seems like that they understand the past aspect of salvation, they understand the future, But the one in the middle, they're hazy on. They're really hazy on what that means. So, and that's why we want to come back and hit that some more. The future one, everybody, people would just jump, you know, I've been saved.

See you in glory. You know, there's going to be some problems along the way. I'll do my best job. God and I will help each other out. He'll help me out a little bit and I'll stumble around. It's sad. It's really sad. Because He has so much... He wants us to start heaven right now. We're seated in heaven. Why not live in heaven?

That's a little bit radical there, but anyway. Okay, the future tense will be saved into full conformity to Christ. And it's yet, and we won't have a sin nature. That's why I try to say it's from the presence of sin, sinful nature to the absence of sin. And once again, just wonderful verses here. Let me just quickly read you, I'll just read you a couple right here. 1 John 3, 2.

And not yet has it been made visible. It has not yet appeared. It has not been made visible as yet what you shall be. When he appears, we shall be like him. Or we shall be like to the one. See, we know absolutely that whenever it is made visible, like to him, we shall be. We shall be like him. We shall be with him. This wonderful promises.

And then in 1 Peter 1.5. Protected for salvation. Ready to be revealed in the last time. This is really neat. Has been laid up and is now kept guarded and safe deposit in heaven for you. Constantly being kept guard by the power of God. God is constantly keeping guard our salvation, the end result of our salvation.

And then lastly, Philippians 1.6.

And this is, He who has begun a good work in you will perfect it. And the idea of perfect is to bring to a successful conclusion. So He's going to bring to a successful conclusion what He started in you. He started in each believer. He's going to bring it to a successful conclusion. He started a good work in you, you were saved by grace through faith, and He's going to bring it to a successful conclusion. He's not going to leave you by the wayside. It will come to a successful conclusion, and you'll be in glory with Him. Other thoughts? Look at the last chart here. I think I'm going to get kind of radical here, probably, in this last chart. I don't know. It's being kind of funny. I thought it was important. This is the last section of Chapter 28.

And basically, salvation is conditioned upon faith alone. I thought it was kind of important to kind of look at the number of times And I know over the years I've looked at, like the Gospel of John, I think, has the word believe about 80 or 90 times. In fact, I remember doing it with maybe even Ryan and Davis I've done it with.

We've gone through and looked at the word Jesus would appear to people in his ministry. At the end it would say, and some believed. I mean, just kind of hidden down there. He'll go through, he'll go to a crowd here and preach and it says, and some believed. And later on, and some believed.

The Gospel of John, over and over again, there were a subset of the people in the Lord's presence that believed, put their faith and trust in Him. He just says, and some believed, and those believed, a few believed, or whatever it is. So, Dr. Schaeffer points out that 115 times in the New Testament, a lot in the Gospel of John, salvation is declared to be dependent upon only believing. And then in 35 passages, it's declared to be dependent upon faith. And the two words, believe and faith, are really synonyms of each other. Pistou and Pistis. My pronunciation is probably terrible, but anyway. I think it's pretty close. But they're virtually the same word.

So I think it's important that belief and faith are the same idea. God alone can save, and it's only through his Son. And man is to believe the message, God's message. And I think about the point that I thought Dr. Schaefer brought out really clearly was that believing is the opposite of doing anything.

Believing is not a work. We're not working to believe is to trust, but your faith. It's not a work. It's trusting another instead. I mean, that's just, I had that circled a couple times, a star on it. Believing is the opposite of doing anything. It's trusting another.

We're trusting God that has completed this good work. has provided his son on behalf. And then at the bottom he basically has kind of five things, five, you hear people say, well you have to believe and pray, you have to believe and confess sin, you have to believe and confess Christ, believe and repent, believe and make restitution. And maybe this is an overused example, but, you know, the thief on the cross, did he have, did he do any of those? The only thing I conceded was he believed, and the Lord accepted that.

And I think over and over again we see that believing is at the core. It doesn't say that you may not pray or confess or all those other things, but believing is the only requirement that God has. And there are just many, many passages that say, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.

I mean, just over and over again. So I think it's important that we don't get sidetracked and try to Tack on something else. Like today, I think there's another one you could add to the list. Believe. Believe and make Him Lord. Right? Isn't that kind of what you hear people say? You have to make Him Lord of your life? He is Lord of your life. There's no question about that.

But you may not realize that. You have to believe. So, I thought that was important. That we stay focused. And this is what you want to tell people that don't know the Lord. It's believing and faith in Him that is what He's asked us to do. If I can come forward, right? Sign a card, believe in, you know, right. Well, I'll tell you, you know, my, you know, when I met the Lord, I wasn't in any church.

I was driving my car. And I said, you know, I'm a sinner. I've fallen short of the Word. Hey, I got a problem. So, I mean, it's just, you know, anyway. Any last questions? There are treats downstairs because we brought them. And they're good. Oh, there's a lot more downstairs. Oh, there's a lot more downstairs. We've got double treats today. Okay, I just thought I'd give you a...

Okay, well let's close in prayer then. Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for this day, Father. Thank you for your word. Thank you that your salvation is complete and, Lord, that it is immovable. And thank you that you desire that we, Lord, that we experience this wonderful relationship with you right now as we walk by faith. We count upon what you've done, Lord, and that we can walk in newness of life, Lord. We thank you for that. We ask this in Christ's name.