3 - Lesson 1: Salvation, Part 1

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April 8, 2021

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Discipleship This class is the Introduction to Discipleship. This lesson covered the need and way of salvation. If you are going to start to disciple someone then this introduction will help to provide a framework in which to function.

4 - Lesson 1: Salvation, Part 2

00:31: Well, welcome to our school of discipleship with the introduction to discipling.
00:37: We're glad to have you with us. We appreciate you paying attention in class and coming each week.
00:46: I hope if you have, if you grab your copy of Growing in Grace. That is the tool that we use here to disciple people when they first come into church or we first get to meet them.
01:01: They're maybe a new believer or maybe they've just come to Christ from someone from our ministry witnessing to them or maybe someone that you know what we're doing is going through that book.
01:12: And as we go through this book, we are going to be looking at each lesson. I'm going to give you the answers to the blanks.
01:20: And I'm going to give you some tips on how to teach this. Now, this is not me teaching.
01:27: It's so much in the sense of how I would actually disciple. But it's going to be me explaining to you how you could use this tool to disciple and throughout teach you some things to look for and things to do when you are discipling someone.
01:42: So these classes are going to be more practical in nature. But we're going to also be teaching some things.
01:49: And as we go through these lessons, you're going to see it. Some of you may say, well, they seem pretty basic.
01:55: We actually used to call this principles of Christian belief. And that was its original name because they were the basic principles and principles that we would think that every
02:07: Christian would know. One of the things we've discovered, though, is that not every
02:12: Christian does know some of these basics. And that's the thing. This book was actually developed when
02:19: I was at my first church, which unfortunately does not exist anymore, which is Gospel Light Baptist Church.
02:25: The leadership there developed this. We had, those of us who were in leadership, we had a base copy and we worked on it and added chapters, removed chapters, rewrote chapters.
02:36: And we've kind of gotten to a way that different ones of us like it. I say different ones of us because we all kind of use this book.
02:44: Some of us have changed it around. I know some people that like to put different lessons in different orders.
02:50: And this is the way we have it for you. And so we are going to go through it in the format that we have.
02:58: You can pick up a copy if you don't have a copy at our store at store .strivingforeternity
03:06: .org. And so you can pick that up if you want to, if you don't have a copy, if you are a enrolled student, which means you went to that website down there and enrolled, you should already have a copy, which
03:20: I hope. And if you'd open your copy, remember this, the way we explain for you guys to use this is, and I encourage you guys to do this as well, is that by now
03:31: I hope that you took lesson one and you did lesson one in pencil.
03:37: This is designed for you to be able to hand this book to someone and they should be able to get most of the fill in the blanks on their own.
03:46: All right. And then what you do is you would sit down with them and you would work with them for maybe,
03:56: I would set aside at least an hour and a half each week to go over the lessons.
04:01: The lesson itself, if you just teach straight through it, should take you maybe an hour at most.
04:07: But what I often encourage you to do is when you sit down with someone that you're discipling, you want to spend some time to answer any other questions that they may have.
04:17: Maybe they've been reading the Bible for the first time and they may have some really basic questions.
04:25: They may have some really hard questions. You never know. But you want to be able to work with them and help them grow.
04:34: Don't make this just on where, okay, we sit down for an hour and we teach this lesson, we get through the lesson, we're done and we leave. No, this is you pouring yourself into their life, learning from them, teaching them as well.
04:46: All right. So, we are in the class right now of an introduction to discipling.
04:53: And as I said, we're going to be using through this, this book called Growing in Grace. Now, I want to give you the introduction to each of the lessons that we're going to look at here.
05:03: This is basically the outline of the book, of the lessons that we have. We have 12 lessons in the book and you can see that they're kind of broken down into 12, sorry, in three different categories.
05:19: Receiving God's grace, living God's grace, and sharing God's grace. And you see how they've kind of been labeled there as the chapters.
05:28: And so, we are going to start with the first lesson in our book, the lesson of salvation, which is called reconciling with our
05:37: Lord. Reconciling with our Lord. And so, as we go through this,
05:44: I want to encourage you now, if you did your homework, meaning that you went through the book and you filled it in in pencil, now would be a time to get your pen out and get those answers ready.
06:00: So, what we're going to deal with now is we're going to look at the lessons that we have.
06:08: And if you see in your book, I'm going to just read through some of this and give you some of the fill in the blanks.
06:15: We're going to look up some of the verses that we have and hopefully we can even maybe learn some things or find some different verses or new verses that we can use when sharing what salvation is.
06:29: This is not so much a witnessing lesson, but let me explain to you why the first lesson is salvation.
06:35: First lesson, when we first had this written was the Bible. That was the first lesson in prayer.
06:41: And there was one lesson that was on the topic of salvation on witnessing, which was the last chapter.
06:52: And we discovered that oftentimes people would come into the church or someone would say they're a new believer and we'd sit down with them and realize that they're not a believer at all.
07:02: And so we had written up this first lesson and put it in the beginning basically so that if you go through this lesson and someone after this lesson doesn't have a clear understanding of the gospel, that becomes something you want to keep coming back to.
07:20: You don't want to assume then that they're a believer. Okay, so if you look here, we have an introduction paragraph here that says, what is your relationship to God?
07:33: Your answer to this question is a matter of spiritual life or death.
07:39: And we got to see it, is that important? When you're explaining this to someone, you need to communicate that it really is that important of a question.
07:52: All right, so these are the things I would end up emphasizing as I go through this with someone is to point out, this is an important question.
08:02: It's the most important question. Some think that they cannot, and I'll continue reading now, some think that they cannot know until they meet
08:11: God. At that point, I would ask the person, depending on who they are, how much I know of them, have you ever thought that?
08:18: Did you ever think or do you think that you can't know for sure where you'd spend eternity until after you die?
08:30: Some people may be new believers but still think that way and that helps you.
08:36: What you're doing in that is you're gathering information because you want to help disciple them. You want to help teach them.
08:42: And so you need to gather information. Remember, discipling is not preaching, it's not one directional, right?
08:53: You're communicating back and forth. So you want to ask questions and gather information. You want to use that information to help them grow spiritually.
09:03: So you can ask them that, looking back in our book now. However, God through His Word has told all of humanity the way to Him and through His Son provided that path.
09:19: This lesson, we will discuss the need, the way, the blessings, and the assurance of salvation.
09:27: Now, if you have someone that says that they really don't know if they can know for sure that they're going to heaven until they die, it could be that they're very immature if they just got saved.
09:40: And so you may want to then emphasize more at the end of this, on that last one, when we talk about the assurance, you may want to focus on that a little bit more.
09:48: Okay? So that's how we would go through that. So let us begin with the need, that is the
09:56: Roman numeral one in the book, the need for a relationship with God. Now, I understand that this term relationship, and sometimes
10:05: I like to explain this, that people talk about having a relationship with God.
10:12: And you sometimes hear people share the gospel in such a way that they make it sound as if God made you because He was missing something, like God had a human -shaped hole in His heart and just needed to make people to fill that void.
10:26: Not! God does not need us. He doesn't need a relationship with us.
10:32: He is relational, but He had a relationship within the Trinity. He did not need us.
10:40: We need Him. Important distinction to make, alright?
10:48: So, here's going to be the question that we ask here under the need. What is the spiritual nature of all men?
10:56: What is the spiritual nature of all men? Now, here are the verses, and when you do this study with someone, you want to make sure to look up the verses and have them read to you.
11:06: Why? Even though they've read these verses, we hope, to fill in the blanks, you want to get them to read the verses again, because the more they can read it, the more that you can end up being in a situation where they're retaining it.
11:26: Why have them read it versus you read it to them? The more senses that you use, the more you're going to retain something.
11:35: And so, what you want to do is you want to make sure that you are retaining as much as you can, alright?
11:41: Or that they are. And so, I encourage them to read. So, I ask them the questions,
11:47: I have them read the verses again, and then we look at their answers. So, let's look at this. The question again is, what is the spiritual nature of all men?
11:55: And our first verse that we have is Romans 3 .10. And it says, as it is written, none is righteous, no, not one.
12:10: Next we have Romans 3 .23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
12:21: And then we have Isaiah 53 .6, we all like sheep have gone astray, we all have turned to his own way, and the
12:32: Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. So, what is the spiritual state of all people?
12:44: Well, the spiritual state would be sinful. Now, there's several answers that you can have here in a sense.
12:51: You might have someone that would say sinful, that's the biblical terminology. They might say, not righteous.
12:58: That's true based on the text. They may have seen in Romans 3 .23,
13:04: all sin. So, they may get to sin. Sometimes they may say they fall short.
13:10: If they say something like that, well, they fall short, you may want to say, what does it mean to fall short? The term for sin means to fall short of God's glory.
13:18: To aim at a target, it's actually an archery term. You aim at a target, you aim at a location, and you miss the target, you miss the spot.
13:26: Two more passages that you can look with this. You can also see Ecclesiastes 7 .20.
13:32: Surely there is not a righteous man on the earth who does good and never sins.
13:39: And then you can also look in Isaiah 64, verse 6.
13:45: We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.
13:57: We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind take us away.
14:03: Now, I want to point out one thing here. Now, in the old
14:09: King James, this thing would say, speaking of this polluted garment, it would say, you know, it says that that is a filthy rag.
14:19: The polluted garment, I'm going to be a little graphic, but I want you to see how God views our righteous deeds, the things we think we do that are righteous.
14:28: He sees them as a menstrual rag. That is the terminology used there.
14:35: It's sometimes good when you look at that passage in Isaiah 64, verse 6, to mention that.
14:41: Now, why is that? And at this point, sometimes I would point that out, and I may ask them that, even though we haven't gotten to that point yet.
14:50: But I want to dialogue, remember? I also want to teach, why is it that God looks so down on our sin?
14:59: Why is it such, you know, these things we think are righteous, these things we think are good?
15:05: Why is it that God looks down on them in such a graphic way? Well, the answer is that what most human beings don't do, when they think they've done something good, they're comparing themselves to other people, not to God.
15:21: Think about this. If a person is trusting in their righteous works, their righteous acts to get them to heaven, they think they're going to do something good to earn heaven.
15:31: Compare that to God himself leaving heaven to become a man, and in doing so, dying on a cross, to be a slave unto death.
15:46: You see, when you compare those two things, me walking an old lady across the street, or opening a door, doing something nice for someone, something like that, compared,
15:58: I mean, whatever I might think is a righteous act, comparing that to what God did on the cross, my righteous act pales in comparison.
16:09: In fact, it is offensive because Christ God himself died in our place.
16:19: That is how serious it is. And for me to say, but God, I know you did that, look at what
16:24: I did, me, my works. You see, God's going to say, look at the work
16:30: I did. And when humans go, no, look at the work I did, God, in that comparison, we see the difference.
16:40: And so, I will sometimes explain that so that they understand how sinful sinful is.
16:45: What is sin is to miss the mark. It means to break God's law in any way, in word or thought and deed.
16:52: And so, you want to explain that to your student. They're unrighteous, as someone said was an answer.
16:59: That's a perfectly fine answer. The answer you want to give them is sinful, and you want to explain what sinful means, to miss the mark, to be a criminal on God's sight, to be unrighteous.
17:12: Now the question that we have now is in Ephesians 2 .5, what else does the
17:18: Bible say about the spiritual nature of all men?
17:25: It says this in Ephesians 2 .5, even when we were kind of sick in our trespasses, when we were weak, no that's not what it says, wait a minute, even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive in Christ by grace you have been saved.
17:56: So what does that tell us? Well another reality that we see is that all men have a nature of being spiritually dead.
18:06: Spiritually dead. You'll sometimes see people that'll fill in dead because that's what they see there and I would encourage them to add in the word spiritually dead because obviously they're not physically dead.
18:16: So what does death mean? This may be a good time for you to explain that. Death means to be separated.
18:24: We think of physical death, physical death is when our spirit, our soul is separated from our body.
18:33: That's physical death. Spiritual death is when we are spiritually separated from God and eternal death is when we're separated from God for eternity.
18:44: There's three levels of death, we're going to get to those maybe in a later lesson.
18:50: But we see that in this case what you want to do is you want to explain what spiritual deadness is.
18:57: Now why did I jokingly say it's not sick or weak? The Bible talks about us being spiritually dead.
19:05: In other words we can't revive ourselves. We are not God, we are not Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ can lift himself from the dead both physically, he can do that.
19:17: You and I cannot and you and I cannot do it spiritually either. They may not understand all the implications of that and maybe some of you who are teaching this understand in a greater way the depth of the arguments that are being made in that.
19:32: But even in this when you're teaching someone new you want to help them in their way of understanding, leading them to even a deeper theology.
19:40: Though they may not understand it you don't want to jump too deep. You don't jump into explaining how if you remember the lessons in our systematic theology class when we talked about total depravity and things like that.
19:56: You don't need to get into all of that. They can understand what it means to be spiritually dead that they are spiritually separated from God.
20:02: Let's look at the next question here, letter B and it says, how does
20:07: God respond to sinners? Now this may surprise some people but let's look at what the scripture says.
20:15: God is a righteous judge and a
20:21: God who feels indignation every day. Now this is a case it says
20:30: God feels indignation every day. Now this was I use this the
20:36: New King James Bible was what was used for this. So you may if you have a different translation this may be a time where you see some of that pop up in the
20:46: New King James it says God is angry with the wicked every day and so you can you can point that out and you can see if you know it says that God is a righteous judge and God feels indignation but it doesn't say there with the wicked.
21:06: But this is just one time where you can see us throughout a couple times where a translation may make it easier or harder for them to get the blanks filled in but the blank right now and we may end up updating this for the
21:20: ESV because more people use ESV now and so we may end up updating these but the answers will be pretty much similar but God is angry with the wicked every day and that's what we see from that passage.
21:36: And that's important to explain to them because most people are told that God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their life that God has this love that he would never do anything against their will and he would just tell them everything they want to hear.
21:50: That's against the thinking of the Bible. They don't think about God as an angry
21:56: God and he is. And notice the context there and I usually try to point this out to a student.
22:02: The context is it's because God is a just judge or a righteous judge that's why he feels the indignation.
22:09: That's why he's angry with the wicked every day. Because of the fact that he's a just judge.
22:16: So don't just argue that he's angry. Those that profess atheism argue that.
22:21: They think of him as just he's angry and punishing them because they're such wonderful people that what they do is they separate
22:29: God's justice from his anger and they just focus on his anger. You don't separate those two.
22:35: God is a just judge. That is why he feels the indignation with the wicked every day.
22:43: So let's look at letter C. What is the penalty that God has placed on sin?
22:50: What is the penalty of sin? Well, we see that the wages of sin is death.
23:00: But the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. Now it says here that the wages of sin is death.
23:10: But did you notice that it talked about eternal life? Therefore the wages of sin is the eternal death that is spoken of.
23:20: Not physical death. The reason that it's important is because now that we believe in Christ does not mean we're not going to suffer physical death.
23:30: But what we won't suffer any longer is eternal death. So we are in a state of deadness spiritually.
23:41: And if we remain in that state when we die we suffer an eternal death.
23:46: Now that may seem hard for some people to understand. So what you may want to do is explain a little analogy that I often use is that if someone was to threaten my life the police are going to tell them to stay away from me.
24:00: If they threaten the President of the United States life they're going to go to jail. Why? The difference was that the threat was the same.
24:06: The difference was who you threatened. The President of the United States is seen as more important than me. Therefore when you break a law against an infinitely holy just God it carries with it an infinite consequence.
24:24: And that is the death that is spoken of. We also see in Revelation 21,
24:32: Revelation 21 and verse 8.
24:39: But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for the murderers, the sexually immoral, the sorcerers.
24:51: And I would stop at that point and tell a student that a sorcerer comes from the
24:57: Greek word where we get an English word pharmacy. Pharmacia is the
25:03: Greek. It's the idea of dealing with drugs. That's what a sorcerer was.
25:11: Then let me continue. Idolaters. And notice that I would point out it says all liars. So all these long lists and it's all liars and what does it say?
25:19: Have their portion, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur which is the second death.
25:30: So the penalty not only is eternal death but it is the lake of fire.
25:36: The second death. The eternal death. Now why is it the second death? The second death because to get there you had to physically die once.
25:44: So you have the physical death, that's your first death. You then have the eternal death, the second death where you get tossed into the lake of fire.
25:53: Okay? So the penalty that God has placed upon sin is death and ultimately the lake of fire.
26:03: Alright? Now, look at this paragraph that I have here and this you may want to explain to a student.
26:10: Even though God is a loving God, He also is a holy God who hates sin.
26:18: We hope at this point they can fill that in, that they see that God hates sin.
26:25: Either a person's sins are covered by the sacrifice of Christ or they are exposed before God and He will judge them because God will have no sin in His presence.
26:42: And this is Psalm 5. For you are not a
26:48: God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you.
26:54: The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers.
27:04: God hates all evildoers. He does. But notice what it says there. There's a thing that people get confused with on this.
27:15: Some people share the gospel and they say that the reason we have to be cast out of heaven, we have to go to hell is because God can't be in the presence of evil and sin.
27:26: Let's be careful with that. If you read the book of Job, you'll see that Satan entered into God's presence.
27:35: That would be problem number one. Obviously, demons can have some access to heaven and can stand before God.
27:44: And so He can be in their presence. He's going to have evil people on the judgment day stand in their presence.
27:50: And therefore, God can be there, but this is a dwelling.
27:55: This is a, He's going to not keep them there. However, there's a little thing you've got to remember. Some people argue that because of this, they say, well see, what hell is, hell is a place where God's presence isn't, where God is not.
28:11: Well, let's stop and not use bad language. God is omnipresent. He's everywhere present.
28:17: Therefore, God is in hell. I hope that doesn't shock any of you.
28:22: It might, but you may want to explain that to a new believer so they understand. God's everywhere.
28:28: God is in hell. The difference is God's relational presence is not there with the individuals.
28:37: They are there feeling His wrath. And so there is that difference. Why? Because God hates sin.
28:46: Let us look, we're going to look here at letter
28:52: D. Is it possible to save ourselves? That's a question you want to ask them. The answer,
28:59: I think, will be clear for all of us that it's a no. And I hope those of you who are taking notes got that one right.
29:05: But let's look at the passages. Titus 3 .5, He has saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy and the washing and regeneration, washing of regeneration and renewal of the
29:26: Holy Spirit. And Ephesians 2 .8 -9 says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing.
29:36: It is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
29:43: And so in those you see that it is not possible to save ourselves.
29:49: We cannot do enough work. We can't earn it in any way. You want to emphasize that point, especially if you have someone who you're not sure if they're a believer.
29:58: You want to emphasize that. Make sure they comprehend that and understand why. Letter E.
30:06: Who has provided a way of salvation? You can turn to the most memorized passage in the world, and that's
30:14: John 3, verse 16. For God so loved the world that He gave
30:20: His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
30:32: Also you see Romans 5, verse 8, and it says,
30:38: But God shows His love for us, in that while we were still sinners,
30:44: Christ died for us. So who has provided a way of salvation?
30:51: God has. Now you may get the answer Christ, and that's perfectly fine as well. God and Christ are the same, right?
30:59: So God is the one who provided salvation, specifically through the Son. God planned it.
31:06: The Son provided it, okay? So you could see Jesus, Christ, or God as a legitimate answer there.
31:14: Now, who can be saved? Who can be saved? That is a question.
31:20: Look, we already saw this in Romans 5, but we see it here clearer in Romans 10.
31:29: We see it clearer. For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
31:37: Everyone. If we go back to the Romans 5, and, oh, okay, and then go back, sorry, go back to John 3, 16, yeah,
31:49: John 3, 16, it's whoever believes, so John 3, 16, whoever believes in Romans 10, put that one up, thank you, everyone who calls on the name of the
32:02: Lord, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord, one more is John 1, 12, but to all who did receive
32:14: Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become a child of God.
32:20: Now notice, not everyone is a child of God. Do you see that? Only those who receive
32:26: Christ have the right to be called a child of God. Those who receive Christ, those are the ones.
32:32: So the answer is, who can be saved? Whosoever. But whosoever what?
32:37: Whosoever receive Christ, whosoever believe on Christ, whoever puts faith in Jesus Christ, that's who.
32:45: Now, there becomes a debate, I don't think if you're speaking to a new believer that they're going to understand it, but there's a debate that some would have where they say, you know, who did
32:56: Christ die for? Did He die for only those who believe or did He die for all? If you're dealing with a new believer and they've heard that, you may not want to get into that discussion, you don't want to get sidetracked, especially if you don't think they're a believer, okay?
33:12: You want to make sure they understand what salvation is. You could say that's something for later, we could get into that more and discuss that at a later time if they're emphasizing it too much.
33:25: Chances are, if you're dealing with new believers, they don't understand those things. The other caution is you don't want to start getting into that either, too much, right?
33:35: You want to explain the text, but don't get them bogged down. You can easily get a new believer confused and in over their head where they start going,
33:46: I can't understand any of this. You don't want them to get discouraged. You want to keep it at a level that they're going to understand.
33:55: So, you need to know the person you're discipling, okay? Alright, so, we looked at the need, let us look at Roman numeral number two, the way to a relationship with God, the way to a relationship with God.
34:12: And letter A there says, repent, that's what John the Baptist was saying, repent and believe, and that's what
34:21: Jesus was saying. And so, we see this in 2
34:26: Peter, 2 Peter 3 .9, the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that anyone should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
34:48: And if you look at your book, you see it says, the Lord is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but all should come to, and the answer is repentance.
35:01: Now, you may want to explain what repentance is, but what we've done there is so that your student would know, we gave you a, some, a paragraph there in your book and it says, kind of defines it, repentance is simply turning away from whatever else you trusted in for salvation, as well as for your sin and trusting in God, and turning to trust in God.
35:26: So, it's a turning, it's a change of thinking is technically what the word means. You're changing your thinking from trusting in yourself as a good person, your good works, your heritage, being,
35:37: I trusted in the fact that I was born Jewish, and that's what I thought would get me to heaven. You're turning from trusting those things to trusting in Christ, okay?
35:49: It is a changing of your mind and a surrendering of your will.
35:56: In other words, you're willing, as it says in Galatians 2 .20, to die to Christ, to be crucified with Christ, to give up everything.
36:04: That's what this idea means. The Greek word for repentance is metanoia.
36:10: That's not important and you don't want to be teaching the students that, okay? But it has the idea of a change of thinking and what we understand from that is that that is where we begin to act out.
36:23: So, when you change your thinking, you change your behavior. So, it's a submitting to God as well. You cannot have a relationship with God if you do not see your sin as severe in God's eyes.
36:36: It is a turning from sin and self and turning to God. One cannot turn away from sin and self without replacing it with something to turn to.
36:49: This is why you often see people that will turn away from one addiction and just go to a different addiction.
36:55: There's something missing. You're putting something off. You have to put something on. And that's what we end up seeing.
37:02: We want to explain what repentance is. They have to understand, this is why you go through this slowly, you want the student to understand how serious sin is.
37:13: Sin is serious in God's sight. When they understand that, you need to explain why they must turn away from trusting themselves, trusting their heritage, trusting their works.
37:25: They need to trust in God. At this point, you want them to understand why it is only God that can save them.
37:32: Take your time through this. Explain through this. I'm giving you the pointers in how to teach through this.
37:38: Now, that means I'm teaching this longer than I would if I was working with a student possibly, which is why it may take us two lessons per lesson.
37:47: Because not only are we trying to fill in the blanks for you and look up the verses, but I'm trying to give you pointers in how you can disciple somebody.
37:55: Alright? So, the first way, the first step in a way of a relationship with God is to repent.
38:05: Coinciding with that is receive. Repent, receive. Repent, receive.
38:11: Notice they both start with R, kind of easy for you to remember. You get it? Repent, receive.
38:19: Okay, what must one do in order to be considered a child of God?
38:27: What did we read? They must receive Christ. Okay? In order to have the right to be called the child of God, they must receive
38:38: Christ. That's the answer there. Now, how does one receive
38:43: Christ? Good question and I'm glad you asked. Romans 10, 9 and 10 says this.
38:54: Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised
39:01: Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
39:21: For the Scriptures say, everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame.
39:30: For there is no distinction between Jew or Greek. For the same
39:35: Lord is Lord over all, bestowing His riches on all who call on Him. For everyone who calls on the name of the
39:41: Lord will be saved. Okay? So, how does one receive
39:48: Christ? Well, there's two things mentioned really in Romans 10, 9 and 10. It is confess and believe.
39:55: Confess and believe. Those are the two. Confess, believe.
40:00: All right? That's what we're going to do. We're going to confess that Jesus is God.
40:06: Why is that important? Because as God, He can pay the eternal fine. You may want to explain that. As God, we have to recognize that He is, that Jesus is
40:16: God, meaning that He can pay the eternal fine for us. We have to believe
40:22: He rose from the dead because that's what vindicates everything He said. That's what proves
40:28: He's God. It vindicates that He's God. And it vindicates that He has the authority to offer us the forgiveness of sin.
40:35: So, the resurrection becomes very important. Okay? So, at this point, you want to explain to them that they have to receive
40:43: Christ. They have to confess. Confession also could, would entail confessing your sin before a holy
40:50: God, asking forgiveness. And look at, if you look there,
40:56: I have a paragraph that says, If we see our need as a sinner and call upon God in prayer, believing that Christ died and rose for us, receiving
41:07: Christ as Lord and Savior of our life, He said that we shall be saved.
41:15: Now, saying that is this. Now, you get into a theological debate.
41:22: Andrew, you're saying that a person must do this. Yes, because the scriptures command a person to repent and receive
41:31: Christ. Can they do that apart from the work of Christ? No, the
41:37: Holy Spirit is going to do that through them. So, I don't discount that. But I also don't get into the debate with them either, unless they've got some handle on some of that.
41:48: Again, you're going to tailor this to your student. You're going to tailor this to how, what level your student is, how much they understand.
41:59: So, you're going to keep that tailored at that level. So, at this point, you would hope that a student understands they understand their sinfulness.
42:08: They understand they can't save themselves. They understand only God can save them. And they understand that they must repent and receive
42:17: Jesus Christ. A question then that would make sense is, when is the best time to receive
42:23: Christ? And let's look at two passages for this. First one is 2
42:29: Corinthians 6 -2, for he says, In a favorable time
42:35: I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.
42:42: Behold, now is the favorable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation.
42:50: You can also see in Isaiah 53, sorry 55,
42:57: Isaiah 55 verse 6. Seek the Lord while he may be found.
43:03: Call upon him while he is near. So, the answer to the question, when is the best time to receive
43:09: Christ? Well, if you haven't received Christ yet, now. Now is the favorable time.
43:15: Now is the time you should do that. So, the next question you ask them is, have you ever received
43:23: Christ as Lord and Savior? Now, if they say no, the question is, do you want to right now?
43:33: Now is the time. We just got done saying that now is the favorable time. Now is the time to come to repentance.
43:41: If they say, well, I'm not sure. You could follow up by asking, what's holding you back? Truthfully, there's only going to be a couple of things you can tell them that are going to hold them back.
43:50: One might be that they have some sin that they so love that they don't want to give up that sin and they know that repenting means giving up that sin and they are not willing to give that sin up.
44:02: That is one possibility. A second possibility is pride and works itself out in two ways.
44:11: One is a pride where they want so much control. They don't even want the
44:16: God of the universe that puts breath in their lungs to tell them what to do.
44:22: They want to control their own universe, though they can't and they have very little control over the universe, but they don't want the
44:28: God of the universe telling them what to do because they want to control things. That's another.
44:34: The third way, and this is the second way pride works itself out, is that they want to think that they're good.
44:41: They want to think so highly of themselves that they don't want to believe that they really would have to suffer that.
44:47: They understand that's what the Bible says, but they don't really believe they're all that bad or they're going to convince themselves that they have more time.
44:56: But any of those things, then you can try to answer each of those back to the scriptures.
45:02: You just go back to the lesson. I know one person that uses this study and if someone gets through to this point, he doesn't go on.
45:10: He goes back and says, let's go back to the beginning of this then and argue that, you know, work our way through this.
45:18: Okay, so someone in the chat room is saying, it just got flashed up, someone is saying unless they insist that there is no
45:23: God. Well, one of the things there is that they all know God exists. We can argue that with them because the fact that they know what sin is, they know that there's right and wrong is the evidence for God.
45:34: We can get into debating that with someone, but if you get someone that denies that God exists,
45:42: I would ask why they're doing the study with you, right? I mean, you're looking to disciple someone.
45:49: So, you're not going to go through time doing a Bible study with someone who openly denies or tries to openly deny that God exists, right?
46:01: So, I don't know why you would do a study with someone like that, but that would be one that their pride is such that they want to argue that God doesn't exist and that's a different sense of pride.
46:13: Now, they may say, yes, which is what I wrote in my book, have you ever received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?
46:18: What do those mean? In other words, God is Lord of your life. He is the God over your life. He is your Savior and your only
46:24: Savior. You couldn't save yourself. I answered, yes. If so, when did this happen?
46:29: Now, I put, I'm going to date myself, July 21 of 1984.
46:38: I understand some of you weren't even born back then. I understand. I've been a
46:44: Christian for a long time. I must have been born one then, right? Because I don't look like I'm that old.
46:50: No comments. But some people won't have a date.
46:56: You may be working with someone who grew up in a church and they prayed the prayer many times.
47:04: I know some, I have a friend of mine, Cy, who he really doesn't know when he got saved.
47:10: He says, you know, he doesn't have a time that he really remembers really being outward rebellious toward God, but he doesn't have an exact date.
47:19: Some people have an exact date. And so, that would be a thing that you can work through with someone.
47:31: There doesn't have to be a date. For some people, they don't have an exact date. Others, they do.
47:37: And if they have it, fill it in. Now, we only got through half of this lesson.
47:43: We got through the need for salvation, right? And the way to have a relationship with God.
47:50: Next class, we're going to look at the blessings of salvation and the assurance of salvation. I'm not in a rush to get through this with you, to teach you how to teach others in this.
48:00: And I don't want you to be in a rush when you teach others. If you need to carry over a lesson to the following week, take your time.
48:09: You want to get together weekly with your student, okay? If it's going to take more than an hour and a half, it's going to take two hours.
48:16: Spend the time. Make the commitment. It's actually good to try to finish up a lesson with a student within a week, only so that they'll get back into the scriptures the next week to finish answering all of the fill in the blanks.
48:31: And remember, you want to encourage your students to read the whole chapter for every verse that's mentioned here, so that they get into that habit as well.
48:40: And so what you end up having with that is you want to build those good habits into your student, okay?
48:55: And sometimes it means you and I have to build those same good habits into our own lives, right?
49:00: So let's do that. So if you have any questions about anything we've talked thus far, you can email us at academyatstrivingforattorney .org.
49:10: You can go onto our Facebook channel, our Facebook group, sorry, and see more about us there.
49:18: And so you can see that. If you want to get a copy of this for yourself or for others, maybe you want to have this in your church to have on hand.
49:29: I actually encourage churches to take this and write their own. Write it up on your own.
49:35: That's probably better because then it's something that your church has that, right?
49:41: It has your own church character to it. Maybe your church is going to have some differing beliefs when you get to the ordinances, okay?
49:48: So you could modify it a little and use it, okay?
49:53: But if you want to get copies, you just want them readily available, we try to have stacks of them so that we can hand them to each new visitor that comes into the church.
50:03: We want to immediately get them plugged in to being discipled with somebody. And so we try to keep a stack on hand.
50:10: Well, here you go. And you can have a stack of these. You can order them at the store at store .strivingforattorney
50:18: .org. So you could do that. I encourage you to do that and get a whole bunch.
50:23: We could probably give you, you get a discount in the shipping when you buy more. Uh, next weekend, if you're watching this live, uh, we are going to be out at NorCal Fire.
50:34: This is the last time I'm going to mention this, uh, until, well, next year, but NorCal Fire, uh, 2014 will be next weekend, which is, um, is the, gee, what is it?
50:47: Let me look. Uh, the 12th and 13th of, of September, September 12th and 14th.
50:54: We're going to have Greg Coco from Stand to Reason. Paul Taylor, who is just taking a new position as the director of the
51:02: Seven Wonders Museum up at Mount St. Helens. And so I encourage you to come out.
51:09: We will be giving a very special award and our awards are not just sheets of paper.
51:17: Uh, we're giving a very special book, kind of an expensive book to one individual.
51:24: Who will be the first person to make it to all three spreading the fire events in a single year.
51:33: Now, if you would like to get one of these books, they are a book that is very hard to come by. They're not printed anymore.
51:40: Uh, to me, I argue that this is one of the best books. Someone asks me, what is the book that influenced me more than any other outside of the
51:49: Bible? This book would be what it is. And I cannot tell you the title of that book.
51:55: So there, you'll have to make sure you make it to all three of the spreading the fire events to get it.
52:02: But we will be giving that away. Uh, we have that to give away. Uh, so, um, and that will be an exciting time.
52:12: Now we always try to end each one of our classes to encourage you to encourage someone else.
52:18: That is something that we like to, uh, to do. Um, and so that is something we do.
52:29: And the person of encouragement for this week that we want you to encourage, even if you're not watching this live, we want you to send an email.
52:37: We want you to contact that person on Facebook. Give them a call if you know their phone number. And that is
52:42: Brother Richard Story. I've given you his Facebook down there. He is, works as the manager at Cross Encounters Radio.
52:52: Brother Tony Miano, who is the host of that show. Richard Story is the manager.
52:59: And Richard Story is a man who, uh, serves in that ministry.
53:05: He is known as Wheels. Why? Because he is in a wheelchair. Uh, he was, uh, struck,
53:12: I believe by a truck, uh, and has been in a wheelchair since then. Um, and has had great struggles.
53:20: I mean, it has radically changed his life. He cannot work. And, and so he is an individual who is, um, uh, has times of, of discouragement, having some, you know, life -changing event like that.
53:34: Uh, having a wife who faithfully serves him, uh, but has to take on a greater burden and taking responsibility, uh, of his care.
53:45: And there's a lot that she has to do. And so it's, it becomes a lot for them.
53:50: And it's discouraging, uh, as a man sometimes to have to have your wife care for you.
53:56: Um, I've never heard of Suzanne ever complaining. And I've never heard of Richard ever complaining.
54:04: But I do know there's times that he gets discouraged and he could use encouragement. Uh, so try to go out of your way to encourage him today, tomorrow, and all week from the time that you have seen this.
54:19: All right? And so it's something that we want to encourage you guys to do is to encourage others.
54:27: And so next week we will finish up this lesson. But until then, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.