Biblical Anthropology - How is a Person Saved & What is Salvation?

Okay, so, our topic today, obviously, last week we discussed the Fall, this week we're discussing how is a person saved and what is Salvation. So, I chose for the subtitle here on the handout, Salvation, so what? Why is it worth studying Salvation? I mean, we're all saved here, right? We're all in Church. Why would it be even worthwhile to study Salvation? Understand God's purpose. How do we understand God's purpose by understanding salvation? Certainly, we understand the Lord's purpose by His word. By the way, today is going to be fairly to very interactive, so if you came in ready for a nap, it's a bad day for you. Please, definitely speak up. But seriously, I'm already saved, right? I know that I'm saved.

But seriously, salvation source, why is it so important to study our salvation? To know what the Word of God says? God's plan for our lives? What else? Not everybody is saved? Absolutely. It's really difficult to share the Gospel if you don't know what it is, right? Pretty simple.

What else? Why else is it so important to study salvation? If we don't understand our salvation, if we don't understand grace, how can we know God as He wants us to know Him? If we don't understand what He's done for us, then we're never going to be able to fully mature in Christ, right?

And that's huge. So what else? There's got to be more reasons. Honestly, I mean, it's great to... To understand who we are, who we're made to be, have a sense of identity. Not a sense of identity. Actually understand our absolute identity. What else?

If we don't understand the Gospel, how do we know that we're saved? I mean, don't you have to have some understanding of the Gospel just to be saved? I mean, this isn't... like, we're not Catholic. Just going through the rites and just showing up at church isn't going to get you anywhere with God, right? How many people have heard a story or known someone who's gone to church their entire lives and then just perks up one day and goes, wow, I'm not saved. I think I ought to take care of that. I mean, this happens, right? What is it?

Being in church doesn't make you a Christian, just like sitting in your garage doesn't make you a car? So we need to understand our salvation, first and foremost, to know that we're saved. First thing, we need to be looking at the Word to find out what is this salvation? What are we being saved from? What are the three phases of it? What is it all about? In order to realize that we're being saved.

So secondly, as we've already highlighted, I wanted to bring out that if we don't understand the Gospel, we will not understand our relationship to God. If we don't understand the Gospel, if we don't understand it as, I think it was downstairs, sometimes upstairs, but the grace class study, as we continue to study deeper and deeper and deeper into grace, we find out who we are, and who God is, and what our relationship to Him is, without that understanding, that ever deepening understanding, we're never going to really know God. We're never going to really be in the relationship that we're meant to be in, that He won for us. And finally, how can we share the gospel with others as the Lord intends us to? Does the Lord want us to share the gospel with others? Is that part of...

Yeah, exactly. I mean, honestly, if we weren't supposed to share the gospel with others, I would think that we'd go around, and you just need really one Christian going around, sharing the gospel, and then shooting people in the head. You're a believer. Great! Next. They're gone. There's no need to continue here, right?

Unless God has a purpose for us here. And part of that purpose is going to be sharing the gospel with others. Part of that purpose is going to be sharing Christ's love and sharing the good news. So if we don't understand that, how secure are we going to be in sharing that? Not too secure. I've never tried to teach a course on nuclear physics, and I'm not going to. I couldn't do it. I don't understand it.

Now that's really complex and the gospel is by contrast very simple and yet very deep. And yet at the same time, that's what we're going to get at today. That's what we're going to get at. One, I want to talk about nailing it down to the essence so that we understand what it is that we have to share, what it is that has to be believed and understood in order to be saved. And the Lord is so magnificent in that he did make it easy enough for a child to understand. A child of two or three can understand what the Lord did on the cross.

And yet, we're still not done writing books about how amazing our salvation is. There'll be another probably three, five thousand books written just this year just about salvation. Many of them in misunderstanding that salvation, but still. the reality of the matter is that we haven't exhausted being excited about this. We haven't gone, okay, that's enough.

And I hope that in our walk, in our personal journey with the Lord, as we dig deeper and grow to know him more and more with the word, that we can still come back to this, wow, he saved me. I hope there's still an element of that. So, as a matter of review, oh, so just as we go into this, to reiterate, Part of our purpose here on earth is at stake in understanding the gospel. Part of our purpose in knowing God and God's revelation of himself is important as we understand what is salvation and how is a person saved. And finally, our Christian maturity, which is God's plan for us and one of God's purposes for the church. is to bring us to maturity is also at stake. If we don't understand the gospel, you can pretty much flush all the rest of that stuff.

It's gone. So that's why what we're doing here is so exciting and so important. And the reality of it is that we have a tendency to overcomplicate so much just in life and culture. Well, it's about this, but it's also about these other 15 things. No, it's just about the Lord. It's just about Christ. So, as we'll find out, Alright, so, the need. It's a matter of review.

Why is there a need for salvation? Because we're not righteous. Because we're not righteous. And why aren't we righteous? We're separated from God's righteousness. Yeah, we're separated from God's righteousness. And how did that happen to us, corporately? How did we get in this fix?

Sin. Sin? Absolutely. Adam. There we go. Right back to last week. We talked about the fall, right? So, what did Adam do that put us in this fix? And we in him? Disobeyed. Disobeyed. And what did God say would happen when he disobeyed? When he ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? And exactly. And as Adam took a bite of that, I always imagined it as an apple, but I think it really should be... Huh? It was a fig. It was a fig.

And of course as Adam took that bite and it got halfway down and it got lodged right here and he choked and died, right? No, he didn't die. But God said, on the day you eat of it, you will die. So, from what we talked about last week, what in the world was God talking about? God was obviously mistaken, right? He meant, and 500 years later you'll die.

Right? Separation. So death is separation. Just like we saw. Not only is it a consistent pattern in scripture, but the context of that verse demands it. Death is separation. On the day that you eat of it, you will die. On the day he ate of it, He was spiritually separated from God. He was dead to God. So, okay. So, how does that make a need in us? How does that disobedience make a need in us? Why do we have need of a salvation? Why couldn't God just go... We're born, I mean, when we're born we see that in nature. Yeah. We all got it, I guess.

Brad, we can't blame it all on Adam, because we ourselves, because of Adam, had the inclination and we did sin ourselves. short of the glory of God, so that we never want to forget our own personal sin, so whatever our sins have been. Absolutely. Art just said, and very rightly so, it's not just about Adam's sin. Adam's sin has definitely imputed to all of us, and even if someone is so deluded that they can look you in the eye and say, yeah, I've never sinned. I don't need I don't need a savior. And even if they're absolutely that out of their mind, they have to realize that they take part in Adam's sin. And yet the reality is that I don't know if I've ever met a person so blind to themselves that they could say that they haven't departed from what God would want for their lives. They haven't sinned themselves.

So as Romans 3.23 points out, all have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God. So we've all personally got sin that we need to be saved from. What's the effect, what's the result of sin? Separation. Death. We have separation again. So we've got this almost double-layered salvation.

So we have this need, this inerrant built-in need for a Savior. We see the need. We see it as we read the newspaper. We see it as we look around and watch television. We see it as we watch movies. We see the need for our salvation as we lie alone in bed at night and realize, I'm just not enough. It's apparent. It's clear that we need a Savior and that sin is actually plaguing us.

And throughout the Old Testament we saw this as well. The need for a Savior is highlighted, reiterated, and alluded to. I do believe that Noah sat aboard the ark, tossed by the waves for all that time, thinking about man's need for a Savior. I mean, there's old extra-biblical accounts that say that as God closed the ark, that people were pounding on the door. Let us in, let us in, as the waters rose.

And Noah couldn't do a thing about it. Because it wasn't really Noah's ark. He's not the one who closed the door. It was all God's plan. And just as the ark alludes to Christ as the ark for our time in the coming judgment, when the rapture comes, we will not be able to say, oh, but he's such a nice guy. Take him, too. Hold on, I'm going up! There's none of that, right? When it's done, it's done.

There will be a chance, the last chance for salvation in the tribulation period, absolutely. Boy, it behooves us all to know Christ now. Anyway, so, also, Moses in his uncleanness clearly saw as he talked to God that he was a sinful man. He was not able. He just knew that about himself in sitting in the presence of holiness.

We also see in the Passover allusion towards the coming Christ. Allusion towards the coming Savior. God told them, hey, this is going to be the big one, the Passover. Celebrate the Passover and celebrate it every year because when He comes, I don't want you to miss it. that when the Lamb comes, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, I want you to have done this every year to remember that someone has to die.

So, surely all the Old Testament saints saw very clearly, I have no righteousness of my own, I can't do it myself, and the only way I can have fellowship with God is by His grace and His mercy. So now let's actually talk about our salvation. We've discussed why it's important to study our salvation. We've discussed the need. Let's talk about the salvation of the self. Without cheating, or with, if you like, who has a verse on salvation? Who has a verse that captures the gospel? Or who can think of something? Yes? First, John 5, 11 and 12. It says, directly, that God has given us eternal life. This life is to be saved. He who has this life has life. Fantastic. 1 John 5, 11 and 12. Absolutely. A great verse.

And that's not on there, so write it down if you like. Yes, Vern? The thing I really like about the verse that John just quoted, that he didn't know, there's no uncertainty. He says, I hope so, or I guess so, or it should be nice, but I don't. Yeah, fantastic. Yes? There's a little illustration of that, since Vern has brought up the passage He said that he had confronted someone about the need to be saved.

Sheriff Miller, I don't know, was a long-time pastor of the first Christian in England and ended up being an itinerant pastor afterwards to substitute for other pastors. that salvation isn't absolute, you don't have to guess at it. And so he said, you know, salvation should not be a matter of, I think I am saved, I hope I am saved, I guess I am saved, because Mr. Brain married, and then the guy said, well, yeah, and then the sheriff said, yeah, I noticed you said, yeah, you didn't say, I think I am married, I hope I'm married, I guess I'm married, No uncertainty there. How many of us have been exposed to thinking that goes along the lines of, essentially, well, you know, we all come to church, but we won't know if we're really saved until we get there. You'll not know if you're really saved until you get before the Lord. In churches, I've heard this. You can't really know, so you better make your salvation sure. You better get out there and usually maybe a plea for works or a plea for money coming after that. This is big, big, big stuff to know with certainty that we're saved. It's not a maybe. It could be or not anything else.

Who else has a verse that really easily... Romans 10, Matthew 10, that if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart, again you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and you are justified and it is with your mouth that you confess and you are saved. Fantastic. There it is. Can a kid, can a child understand that? Yes. Could you, if the Lord leads and if someone is in the ready, could you share that with someone?

Is that just absolutely impossible to get across? Do we need to be speaking in really fuzzy, uncertain terms when we share the gospel with people? I put forth that we really don't. I think we sometimes tap dance around it because we want it to sound more mystical, or more alluring, or more attractive, as if we could actually make the gospel of God more attractive. It's just silly. I think oftentimes, whether it's the flesh, the enemy, I don't know, wants to get it so confused and complicated in our minds that we feel like, well, I guess I could kind of share the gospel with them, but what about these five things that I couldn't share with them in five seconds?

Do we let ourselves get muddled, or am I the only one who lets myself get all mucked up? No, you're the only one. Alright, so, does anybody else have any other verses? These are absolutely fantastic, that are really helpful in sharing the gospel and understanding our salvation.

Greg, when you're sharing the gospel with someone, would you share John 3.16? Tell what the gospel is. It doesn't say that Christ died before our sins. That's really true. I would use it in conjunction with some of these other verses. I think it shows the heart and the intent of God. Because people are so often so confused as to, you know, is God angry? Is God? And I think they just realize inherently that because of their sin that God is angry. God is dissatisfied. God can't have fellowship with us.

And I think that this shows that really God absolutely so much loved all those creatures. But you're absolutely right, your point is very well made, that this doesn't exactly show what you have to believe for salvation. Brad, I can only speak for myself, but many of us would have not known when we were saved the truths that have been spoken here this morning and certainly every verse that was given to substantiate the scriptures that were cited. But I think each one of us have learned these things after we've been saved. And we haven't, some of us didn't know, and may not have, and some of us may know many of them. But at the beginning, we just began to grow in grace. And after we were born, we got bigger and we gained weight.

And I think that it's easy for us and expect that new person in Christ to know what we have. And they won't do that until they begin to get here. Absolutely. That's fantastic. I'm sure we could probably raise hands and split the room. I don't remember my exact moment. Lord, I don't have a turn on the dime moment.

But the reality is that, yeah, when someone comes to know the Lord, really, I'm not encouraging this, but really, you don't even need a Bible verse, do you? Oh, if I just memorized more Bible verses, then I could share my faith, then I could share the Gospel. Do you really need that? Is it possible to share the Gospel without using a verse?

Yeah. Of course. Absolutely. Is it more powerful with verses? Yes. Absolutely. Yes, Nancy? Well, I think because ultimately, you know, scripture says salvation comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So whether you're exactly quoting, you know, whether you say, well, you know, 1 Corinthians, blah, blah, blah, you know, it has to be the word. Yeah, most certainly. Absolutely. So there it is. Fantastic. So we looked at a couple of verses.

I think that we pretty well laid that out and here's the wild thing even though all these verses and there's a number of others we've demonstrated I'm sure I know we didn't exhaust all the ones that we could use and talk about but it wasn't even until the 11th century when Anselm was the guy's name finally put in writing that scripture taught that Christ and his death on the cross was taking our place substitution 11th century how many years is that between Christ dying on the cross and the New Testament being closed and that reality being lost.

For all those years, the reality is that people didn't understand Christ's substitutionary death for all that time. This maybe gets back to what Art was talking about, but the reality is that they had all sorts of wild ideas. I was going to bring in a chart, but I thought it might be overkill. The chart showed everything that was written over the years and was generally believed over the years as to what Christ's salvation was all about. One of the big standing theories was that Christ was paying the devil off. Paying the devil off to buy us back from him as if the devil had power over God to hold us. As silly as that seems to us now, because we're so educated. But the reality is, does that mean that nobody between the years of, say, 150 A.D. and 1000 A.D. was saved? Nobody ever knew the Lord? Nobody was ever saved between those years? Ridiculous. Right? Absolutely ridiculous. People knew Jesus. Even then.

Even though their doctrine was goofed up. even though they hadn't grown in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, once again it becomes very clear that our salvation is not one, not something that we can do for ourselves, as Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, and I'll refer you to our entire study on Galatians in the main service if you have any questions about that. And salvation can never be obtained by works. It is only by faith in Christ. As the above verses explained, as a person can be saved, and by no other means.

So, here's the big question. Faith plus what? Nothing. Oh my. Are you sure? What are some of the things that people try to add to faith to get to salvation? Money. Money. That's a big one, right? See that one on TV a lot? If you just believe enough to send me your life savings, Then you will be saved, right? What else? Works. What kind of works? Knocking on doors. Knocking on doors? Oh my. Bring some imagery up. Read someone with a black tie earning their way to heaven for you? Come to your front door? You've got to get wet with our water.

Oh my! Isn't that it? The holy squirt bottle? You're saved. I don't know why they don't just get a mister and do the whole congregation at once. Get it all over with. So, all of a sudden, then there's the baptism as a necessity for salvation. That's a big one, right? In the States. Well, if you're not baptized, how could you possibly be saved? Jesus was baptized. Confession. Boy, that's a big one.

And not just confession between you and God, as we talked about, same wording, but confession to someone else. Confession to a priest, confession to a some representative on God's behalf, as if somehow that's what takes away the sin. not a, boy if I don't say it to somebody, I'm not saved.

It's a question of do I agree with it? And whatever comes out of my mouth is a result of that agreement. It's not the, if you don't say it out of your mouth, then you're not saved. It's not a work. It's agreement of heart. You agree with God about sin and about salvation. That's what it comes to.

Absolutely. Has anybody heard I mean, I've been involved in youth outreach and evangelism for a number of years, and boy, every once in a while you catch someone who comes in and says, well, you know, you've got to give them a chance to publicly confess, publicly declare, because if they don't publicly declare it, then they're not saved. Huh? Wow. So that's absolutely out there. Are you saved? If you are, then you must have at least shared the gospel with 15 people. You must have all these notches on your belt. What else?

They won't say that you need works for salvation. They understand the Bible says it's by faith alone. But then they'll say, if you're not living a certain life, maybe it really didn't take or maybe you really need it saved. So they won't explicitly say you need works. But then they'll point to works and say, well, if it's not there, then you must not have been saved. In the end, it's the same old saying.

You need the works in order to have salvation. What Jeremy said is true, but only God knows that. If I don't see your works, I don't know whether you're saved or not. So if anybody wants to sign up on the board for Genitorial... And that's the reality of the matter though, isn't it?

How often in Scripture are we called to decide if someone else is saved? How many times in Scripture do you say, hey, and when you're in church, make sure that everybody has the special mark burned in their arm so that you know that they're saved? How much of our time are we supposed to spend figuring out if someone else is saved? I would propose none more time spent trying to figure out if someone else is saved. I've told this in the men's Bible study many, many times, but it kind of fits into this place.

It happened to us twice. We were living in a motor home at the time and having to steal somebody's car. And so we were traveling 16 states in the way. And we were, we and one other, one down in Utah, were the only ones in this campground. And I was out cooking all the things up one day. And This fellow walked all the way across what must have been, looked like probably a half a section of land. In fact, it was probably an old furnace, probably a block and a half that he walked over to.

And he said, you know, he didn't say, hello, welcome. And so he said, do you know what your problem is? And I said, huh? I said, no, do you know what your problem is? Do you know how you can't walk? And I said, you tell me. And he says, you don't believe strongly enough. So I let that one run. with new target McCamper and another fellow and he walked over the same distance and this time I had enough strength to I had enough study that the Lord had laid on Ellen and I, and that I was able to tell him that it had absolutely nothing to do with it, but I was exactly where the Lord wanted me to be. And when you back off... Your response is much better than mine. Did you tell him that you're an idiot? That'd be horrible. No, I didn't. No. Imagine that. Oh my. Excellent. I don't know what it was like preparing dinner and just laughing at it. I can't talk anymore. That's fantastic.

So, in addition to that, I don't think I've exhausted this whole faith plus what thing. What are some other plus what's? Any little subtle works or things that you do, about prayer or whatever. Anything you do that subtracts, takes away from the tenets on God. I mean, and as amazing as that is, the most subtly seductive pluses are the religious duties.

Someone said I had to be baptized to be saved, and baptism's in the Bible, and boy, they might even have a verse for you that they've misinterpreted from scripture to try to make it seem like You need to be baptized, or the sacraments, or communion, or confirmation, or some other religious duty. It's easier for us to see, at least hopefully it's easier for us to see, when someone asks for money, it's like, wow, there might be an ulterior motive here, if you're saying that I need to give you money in order to be saved. But the reality is, as we've noticed it a couple times, and the one that really irks me is baptism. indulge to share a personal story.

My wife and I spent a year and a half in Korea, and we were the only English church, and it was a great church. We were really ministered to there. But it was a Presbyterian church, and they were pretty hard-line on the traditional Presbyterian doctrine. So before they'd share the Lord's table, once a month, I believe, or once a quarter, they would read a passage in 1 Corinthians. Say, you know, if you are trying to take of this bread and this cup and you haven't been properly baptized through our church, you are drinking judgment on yourself. And you are ultimately not safe because you haven't been properly baptized, you haven't been through our rites and our sacraments.

This is a Presbyterian church. I was mindful when I grew up in the Presbyterian church. I've never heard anything so stupid as this in my entire life. And yet, there it was. There it was right in my face. So I met with the pastor. He and I were good friends, or came to be good friends, and on very good terms, and said, now look, just wait a minute.

You're telling me that if I'm not baptized, if I'm not specifically sprinkled, specifically by your church, that I can't partake of the Lord's table with you? That we can't have fellowship in the Lord? And furthermore, that you're at least implying that I'm not even saved? Your understanding of our salvation, is that goofed? Is that messed up? Is that something that happens out there in the world today? Has anybody ever heard this put forth?

So actually, for me, I had a number of talks with the guy, and I actually did want to get baptized, but I just didn't. grow up in any one specific church that ever really emphasized baptism. So I just kind of never did. It wasn't really that big a deal to me ever. But I did want to be baptized just out of sight, but I knew I couldn't do it there. Because if I got baptized there, then I would have been saying to them and everyone else in the congregation, yeah, you're right. I couldn't do it.

I couldn't allow them to see that the freedom that we have in Christ is crippled by the silly laws put forth by their stupid denomination. I'm not saying all Presbyterians are stupid for the sake of the tape, but the reality is that that is stupid. It shows immense lack of biblical knowledge, lack of biblical understanding, lack of understanding, one, just basically what the gospel is, but two, just having read a couple of verses, as you look down here, Acts 16.31 is quoted. And this is where the Philippian jailer comes to Paul and Silas and says, sirs, what must I do to be saved?

And he says, all right, first believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, then you'll get you baptized and then we'll see what works come out. Right. That's what he says, right? No. What does he say? Acts 16 31. Yeah. And then be baptized? No. Doesn't even mention it. Doesn't even think to mention it. Did you have a comment?

If you think about it, all the doctrinal issues can be summarized in salvation. How do we get it? How do we keep it? And ultimately, all the doctrinal wrangling centers around those two questions. Salvation. How do we get it? How do we keep it? It's the Lord that keeps us.

We don't go in to keep Him. And our believing is only believing on what He has done, who He is, and not about what He did. I take a good example of that as a thief on the cross. He didn't confess, he didn't do anything but believe. been nice enough to throw some water on him. Yeah.

I think a huge problem arises when you don't abide by the word of God, especially now, when you're not looking at what we have in the grace. You look back at what John the Baptist said, and you think, well, how do I, you know, how does that go along with what Paul said? When you look at all the prayers that David made in the Psalms, Which has encouraged me to say it can't be if you didn't have the grace that we do.

When you try to reconcile these different spirituals that God has placed on mankind, you have to come up with something to try and unify them. There's nothing that's good in unifying them other than God has dealt with these different people different ways. We do not recognize the Word of God, which so many people throughout the history of the Church have not done. Then you end up with so many problems, and salvation is based upon something else.

Yeah, that's fantastically true. Because then all of a sudden you're sitting here with this whole complete book between two leather covers, and you're going over here and you're going, OK, well, in Deuteronomy I'm promised land and money and da-da-da-da-da, and then over here I'm promised that I'm not under the law, and then over here I'm promised that if I don't do the law I'm cursed, and then you're just going to drive yourself stupid, right? It's the only place for you to wind up to be. You're an absolute intellectual anomaly. You believe yes and no. at some level, about yourself, if you're trying to apply the whole word of God directly to yourself. So absolutely, that is fantastic.

I think when dealing with, especially with people who are really adamant about the whole baptism issue, I love looking at 1 Corinthians 1.14, because if they're right, it's probably one of the most morbid verses in the Bible. This is where Paul, does someone want to open up to that and give it a read for us?

He's thanking God that he baptized a few of them. How morbid is that? If baptism is necessary for salvation, that would be probably one of the most morbid things in the world. Hey, I was really grateful not to see any of you saved. I was so glad that God's damning you all to an eternity in hell. It just did my heart good. Is that even possible? To me, that absolutely closes the book on it. How in the world could Paul make a statement like that if baptism was a necessity for salvation?

It's just ridiculous. look at other things, other religious duties, I hope we come to the same realization. Keeping the Sabbath, whatever, which is, teach a class on that, but whatever the little law, rule, addition, subtraction that people are saying it takes, I feel like is one of the biggest, no, it is a huge detriment to the Church. I feel like it's one of the biggest heresies that's going around circulating in America right now.

All these things happening under Christendom, and the reality is that if they understood even the smallest aspect of what our salvation by grace was, they couldn't swallow it for a second, right? It wouldn't be possible for them to understand. As we move into this bottom paragraph here, it says, more than anything else, it must be understood that if anything could be added to our salvation by faith as the free gift of God, it would no longer qualify to be called a gift. If there were one penny to repay, one little work, one little act to repay, it would no longer be grace. could not use the word grace to describe it. If there was just one more thing. If it's even one more thing you have to do, then that's not a gift, right?

We've used this illustration before, but if I send you a present and then three days later an invoice, how would you feel about that? And do you ever get these? Return address labels. Yeah, exactly, you get the address labels and then after a while, if you don't want them, send them back. But, you know, wait a minute, I'm going to throw these away, that's silly.

And this happens all the time, and the reality is that this is also one of our huge obstacles in sharing the Gospel with others, isn't it? Isn't the Gospel too good to be true? I mean, at one level, if we really understand it, how can we not share it? And at another level, we can't even be a little surprised at the world's incredulity, the inability to say, come on, God's that good to us? That's what grace is? I'm sorry, that's too good to be true.

Heck, you find a car or a gallon of milk on sale for two bucks below what it usually is, and you're already looking for the catch, right? When did it expire? We're always looking for the catch. Our society is all about promising what you deserve, what you should get, what you get, and then when you actually get there, it's not what it looked like. It's not what it appeared. I work at a car dealership. We put out an ad every Sunday.

Hey, you can come in and get this car for this unbelievably ridiculously low price, and then when you get there, either the car's already gone, or we can't get that car for you anymore, or it's in the most hideous color of yellow that no one would ever want ever, but if you want the next model up, there's always a catch in the world, right? There's always a catch. Everything in this life is jading people, and the flesh and the devil and the world are trying to make it impossible for people to believe that God could actually be this good. And yet, if we understand this, it should be really difficult for us to keep silent.

I read a book called Grace by Louis Perry Schaeffer, and it's fantastic. I believe it's called God's Marvelous Gift. Christian should read it. It's absolutely outstanding. But after reading it, I just couldn't help it. I had to go talk about Jesus to somebody because it's absolutely a free gift. Our salvation is absolutely free.

And after I've been a Christian for upwards of probably 10 years, it's still mind-blowing. It's still unbelievable. 15 years. I'm getting old. It's still mind-blowing, it's still unbelievable, it's still beyond comprehension and it's still so exciting that the only way we can ever keep it off our tongues is by forgetting about it. I believe.

I mean, as we deal with the people without hope and without life and without any reason really to continue on in the world as they fill their life with the empty things of this world, what is it that keeps us from talking to them about it. What does it keep us from sharing that incredible good news of the unbelievable and amazing grace of God? So, just put that forth. Does anyone have anything else to add on the faith plus what side?

I know we couldn't, like, as Vern mentioned. Yeah? When we came to the last Sunday School, the lesson on grace and sin, probably every week it seems, talking about how much the flesh wants to do something. And that's such an obstacle in fully understanding grace is that we like to have our griffins and our buttons. And we like to be able to say, we've done something with God throughout the New Testaments. And you don't have to do anything. I think a good analogy is the Old Testament story of Dan.

But for a student, the prophet Elijah came to him and said, you need to go to the river. He said, I'm not going to do that. But the servant said, if he told you to go to some mountain and draw these great deep, you would have done it. But he told you to do this simple task, and you won't even do it, because it's too easy. For us, it's even easier than that. We don't even have to go to a river to do anything. It's so easy. But because we don't get a claiming of credit, because we don't get to do anything to earn it, we almost think it's It's not worth it. Everyone rejects it.

Unless the old Adam wants to say, I had a part in it. When there's no, I mean, even if he, if he had it, like you said before, if he had a part in it, well then we're lost because it's not grace anymore. If we don't have grace, we have no chance at all. You know, as Ernest said before, it's like, you know, the Titanic going across the Atlantic. If you don't make it, you're sunk. If you don't start on a second chance, you're not coming close to it. It's either all or nothing. Our flesh can't understand what it's like. Yeah, isn't that fantastic?

I know they mentioned it downstairs in the grace class, as well as Chester McAuley mentioned it in his study on grace. But he said, you know, of all the schemes that man could make for his relationship to God, we never would have come up with grace. Get a think tank of the smartest or the five dumbest or the five whatever in the world. They'll come up with a million ways for God to relate to us.

Well, you can only eat blue Skittles on Tuesday. Whatever it is. But they'll never come to grace. We never would have conceived of it. It would have been absolutely impossible for us in our flesh. We're too darkened. It's an alien concept. Exactly. It's alien in nature.

I think one thing that makes it hard for people to not only appreciate grace, but desire grace for themselves is the fact that we don't want to be told we're sinners. And I don't believe a person can be saved until they truly understand how much they need a savior, because they are helpless. And I think our society today in this country is making everybody feel they're not helpless. Making them feel good about themselves. We're always trying to build everybody up from the time they're tiny. And no discipline, no correction. Even in the classroom, there's very little of that anymore.

And if you don't realize that you are bad and can be bad, even if you don't do something, you're thinking it. and realize that you've fallen short. You just can't make it on your own. You're not going to want a Savior. Why would you want a Savior who gives it to you freely if you don't know that you're a sinner?

And the wild thing about our society, our culture, is that as we continue to build people, kind of build up, you know, hey, you want to be self-starter, you want to be self-managed, you want to be self-built, you want to be all these, you know, self, self, self, self, self, you want to rely on yourself, all this stuff, and even TV, kind of all about the indomitable spirit of man and all this, it only increases the disparity in people's lives, and they realize, well, he seems to have it together, why don't I? And the sadness kind of goes deeper and deeper. Does anyone have anything else to add on that? I do. Okay. The alternative of not accepting saviors is to go to a psychologist. Oh, absolutely.

I had a friend who was a psychology major in college and she was just finishing her senior year. I don't know if this is a common sentiment, but she said, I feel like I just wasted four years. I said, what do you mean? She said, I spent four years studying, she didn't use this terminology, but studying the sin nature, studying the flesh, and essentially justifying away sin. Well, it's my parents' fault. It's my dad's fault. It's my mom's fault. It's this person. It's this kid in high school. It's this. It's that.

And then, if you go a moment past that, I'm not any worse than anybody else. And then if you go a step further, and she said, it's just a huge waste of my time because all they really needed was the Lord. To recognize that they are a sinner, that they are fallen, that's all we need. And the Lord. And I agree. Wouldn't it be the perfect plan of Satan to make us all think, I'm good enough. just as good as her, just as good as him, as if the person we're standing next to is our bar to jump over. So, absolutely.

We only have just a few short minutes left and I feel remiss if we talked about all this and didn't get to security, to eternal security. So, why in the world, we've obviously got a huge rift right down the middle of what we call Christendom. between those who think you can lose your salvation and those who think you can't lose your salvation, those who believe in eternal security. Where is the big misunderstanding? Where is the big divide? What's the reason? Works. Works. Yeah.

Isn't it an understanding of who keeps our salvation, who is responsible for our salvation? If we're called only to believe, then the rest of it's all in God's hands. If we think we can lose our salvation, then our salvation is dependent upon us, not upon God. Amen. So we're almost back to the faith plus what, at some level.

So really, once again, all these major doctrinal issues, all these major divides, all these major rifts that we have all the way across the church, it just comes from not understanding salvation. I mean, I think it was Lewis Barry Schaeffer that said some huge percentage of every church service should at least be dedicated to understanding the Gospel, to explaining the Gospel, making sure the Gospel is still clear in every church, because it doesn't take but 10 or 15 days to get something in on top of the Gospel, or something in with the Gospel. It doesn't take two Sundays for that to start to work its way in. place and things are changing, things are constantly falling apart and they require our constant maintenance. And if I don't take my car to the shop on a regular basis, if I'm not doing my part to keep my car up, then eventually it's going to fall apart.

And so we translate that temporal mode of life that we have on this planet and this to the Word of God, it's eternal, it's a part of time, it doesn't fall apart. But it's easy for our temporal lives to mock that up. Absolutely. That's so absolutely it. I mean, why is everything temporary?

Why does everything fall apart? Don't you believe this isn't the fall? Don't you think that, you know, maybe the fruit would never go bad if we hadn't fallen? If things had been as God originally designed it? It's just a projection, by the way. The reality is, though, that our salvation is not given to us out of the fall. God didn't gather together the dust from the fall and make our salvation. He took something totally otherworldly to give us grace, totally outside of this world, totally alien to us. And we don't need to do maintenance on it to secure it.

So that's fantastic. If you look at John 10.28, Berman put together this translation. It's kind of a more literal translation. It doesn't read quite as smoothly, but it really captures the essence of what Christ was really getting at in the Greek.

It says, and I am constantly giving the life eternal, and it is not even remotely possible for them to destroy themselves into eternity, nor for any to steal them by force out of the hand of me. And that's a lot of the non-eternal security fellows I've talked to. You can't work your way out of it, but you can unbelieve. You can destroy yourself. You can kind of, okay, I take it back God, and that's the only way to lose your salvation. So, in any event, let's go to Lord.

There are two handouts. There's one, the main one that you've been working to. Both of them. The appendix one is to go behind the yellow sheet, and if you don't have one of those, we have a yellow sheet underneath there. So you've got the whole package.

Yeah, and this is awesome. This appendix is the Believer's Unfathomable Riches in Christ, which I believe comes out of Schaeffer's Systematic Theology. Unreal. You want a shot of adrenaline to your soul, read this one today. I mean, it's wild stuff. It's good stuff. So, let's go to the Lord. I'm sorry, I've gone over.

Heavenly Father, we praise you for this wonderful salvation that you've given us, Lord. You have done it. We didn't do anything of it. We simply had faith in your Son, Lord, and we praise you. We praise you and praise you, Lord, and it is that grace that motivates us to go out and share that gospel, that good news with someone else, not as high and mighty, self-righteous jerks, Lord. but as those who were humble beggars, who found bread and want to tell others about the bread of life, your Son, Jesus Christ, and the wonderful salvation you've given us by grace alone, by faith alone. In Jesus' holy name, Amen.