34 - The Father and Salvation, Part 2

The Father’s Role as Initiator in Salvation

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We're glad that you are with us for another lesson. We are continuing where we were last class. We'd like to welcome the new students that have joined us.

We are glad to have you with us, especially those who have enrolled, where you can do that down there at the website, enrolled at the website so that they can get the syllabus that you can get. If you're a paid student, that's one of the benefits of being a paid student.

You get to get a hold of the syllabus this way. Yeah, this way. Okay. I always forget which way the syllabus is on that little screen there. But you can grab the syllabus and follow along. The advantage of having a syllabus is you can have the notes there for you, and you'd be able to fill in the blanks that you hear me give you.

And also so that you have all the notes readily available for when you need them. You don't, you know, you're sitting in a discussion with someone, you can't go, oh, wait, let me go find that YouTube video.

I know some people do actually do do that. But the advantage of syllabus is you have a book that you can kind of grab and pull it out and have the lesson there with hopefully your own notes as well. If you are a good student and you have the syllabus, you realize that we give a whole lot more information than are in the notes.

And you'll also see that the notes sometimes have things we don't go over in class. So that's the advantage of having both. And so if you have that, you can take in, fill in some of your own notes, and that way you'll be able to follow along.

We are working on the next class, the next syllabus, which will be the systematic theology book number three that's coming up soon. Uh, sooner than I think, because I just got it to, got the copy for me to go through and give my final edits to it.

And I'm going, yeah, okay. But, uh, we'll get there. Um, oh, I'm being told I look like the Fonz. Okay, hold it. Is that better? All right. Well, I'm not cool enough. I'm not cool enough to be Fonzie.

Okay. That's a cultural reference for you guys that grew up in the 80s, knew what happy days was. Anyway, uh, but, but, uh, we are, we're here to study systematic theology. Why study systematic theology?

I mean, isn't that something for like seminary students? No. Um, if you're a Christian, you want to study theology, right? Um, you want to know God better. The better you know God, the better you're going to be able to follow him and, you know, practice what he desires for you.

Um, so the thing that we have, oh, wait, just for our, uh, one friend out there who raids my refrigerator. Mm, good. My iced tea. Someone out there likes my iced tea. So he raids my refrigerator for it.

Hmm. He wishes he could have some peach iced tea too. I know I'm bad. You know, hey, look, if you're going to raid my refrigerator, you deserve the abuse of knowing of seeing me drink the nice tasting iced tea and you can't have any.

All right. So, um, but, uh, we are in, as I said, we are in book number two of our syllabus. Uh, and we are studying flip that back. There we go. We are studying actually the, the doctrine, uh, or the book that we're calling it, uh, the gift to man.

Why the gift of man? Because we're studying, we studied man and we're studying in here. Now we're in, uh, the doctrine number or section number three. So we are, um, we are studying the doctrine of salvation.

And so in that we are in lesson number five and we're studying the father and salvation. Now, let me give you just a quick recap of where we were, uh, last lesson, because we didn't quite finish up last lesson.

And so we are, um, looking at the fact that we saw last week that the father planned it. Now that this is referring to salvation. This is important because if you remember, we had said, when we looked at the doctrine of sin, we kind of went through that and we said that God is not the initiator of sin.

Well, now we see an important thing because God is the initiator of something. And what is that? He is the initiator of salvation. So God didn't author or initiate sin into the universe, but he did initiate salvation.

Now with that, we, uh, we had looked into a couple of things that we saw last week. Uh, we saw the significance of the fact that God is the initiator with the fact that God, uh, seeks after man and man does not seek after God.

Now I know I'm getting dirty looks. Um, I understand that, you know, last week I kind of went off on a little bit of a tangent. If I mentioned seeker, because we have this whole genre of churches, you know what a genre is, right?

You were in the school of biblical harmonetics. You weren't. Then go take that class. Come on. It's on YouTube. Go, the site's down there. Go there, go to the YouTube and go take that class. You'll know what a genre is.

So the genre, uh, or type of church called a seeker sensitive church, there's a whole group of them that started up and is really sad because their whole model is based off something that's unbiblical.

The whole model of that church is to reach out to those who are seeking after God when there are none who are seeking after God. What they're trying to do is make church lost friendly or unsaved friendly, you know, make church something that an unsafe person would be, uh, enjoying and want to do and want to come out to and participate in.

And the reality, reality is church is not for the seekers. Well, because one, there are no seekers. Church is for the saved. We're going to look at that when we get into the study on the church, which will probably be in, I think it's book four.

It's either book three or book four. Not sure which. Um, one of them of our syllabus. So we will get there. Uh, but if you really wanted a little, I should give you a little hint. If you go out to the website down there, you'll actually see, we do have some articles.

God as Designer of Salvation

Um, we do have some articles on, uh, what? Oh, I'm being told that we lost connection, but we're still recording. All right. So we've been told that we lost connection, but we're still recording. So I will continue recording.

Uh, we were told all of our, uh, we were told from the, uh, internet provider that all of our internet problems are solved, not, uh, we've been dealing with this since December. Uh, which is now going on four months of arguing back and forth where they bring people out, tell us, Oh, everything's all fixed.

And then we find out everything's not quite fixed. So we're sorry if you're watching live and you just lost us for a little bit, but you can watch us on YouTube and say, Oh, we're back. Okay. So I was just told that I was rambling long enough to get us back.

I guess I'm good at the rambling. So, uh, we're sorry if that, uh, we are trying to get that, uh, fixed with the internet provider. Uh, we've actually been escalated and we've been bumped up and now we're dealing with some supervisors, supervisors, supervisor, or something like that.

But, uh, I don't know. Uh, so anyway, you think I don't, okay. I mean, someone thinks, I don't know where we are. I know exactly where I was before we lost the internet. Huh? We were right here sitting in the studio.

See, I know right where we were. Uh, we were looking at the fact that, uh, there's a whole genre of churches called seeker sensitive churches. When we have the fact that people don't seek after God, God seeks after them.

Now I know some people are going, Oh no, no, he's speaking like a Calvinist. Maybe. Um, but the reality is, is that we gotta be honest with what scripture says. And here's the interesting thing is I find many people that will argue against Calvinism.

They still agree with these points like that one. Okay. The real issue is when you start saying that you can seek after God, you got to cut out a whole lot of scripture verses. I mean, like all of Romans three, I think actually probably most of Romans.

Hmm. Probably a lot of Galatians too. Isaiah. Ooh, cutting too much out, huh? All right. This week, what we're going to look at is the fact that God is the designer. God is the designer. And so with that being said, that God is the designer, we want to take a look at the fact that, uh, and we're not, we're not getting into intelligent design here.

Okay. But the reality is that, um, we, we have to be aware that, you know, there is a debate over intelligent design or, you know, to, to, I guess, you know, to have it or not to have, you know, is it right?

Is it wrong? Is it Christian? Or is it just quasi Christian? Where is it? We're going to put all that aside. The fact is God is a designer, but we're not talking about His design in creation, which He did do.

Uh, but we're talking about His design specifically here in our salvation. Now, where do we get this idea from? Well, let's look at a little bit of a longer passage. And, uh, this actually, just so you know, I, the one reason I love this passage in Ephesians 1, 3 to 14 is because I was not really good in English.

See, I, I wasn't a great English student. I jokingly say that, you know, basic was my first language. And those of you who are computer geeks, you understand that one. Uh, I'm a computer programmer by trade.

So I was really good with computer languages, not so much with the English language. But I, the reason I love Ephesians 1, it's a long run on sentence. You know, if I was in a Christian school and taking grammar and English in a Christian school, and they were like, you know, can't have run on sentences, I'd be like, have you read Paul?

Yeah, this is one sentence. I mean, in our translations, they kind of break it up sometimes, but, um, this would have been one run on sentence. Let's read it. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who blessed us in, uh, in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Christ, Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with, with which he has blessed us, uh, in the beloved.

In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth, in him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined, according to the purpose of him who works all things, according to the counsel of his good will, so that we who are the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

In him, you also, uh, sorry. In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who was the guarantee inheritance until we acquire the possession of it.

Now, one of the things that I like about that is that you see all three members of the Trinity in that passage, but we're focused on one member of the Trinity, really God, the Father, and so where, what we see there is we see that, um, the Father predestined and planned this salvation.

God the Father was active in that. Let's look at one more verse and that's 1 Peter 1 -2. 1 Peter 1 -2, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. So, whose foreknowledge is it? Well, it says there it's God the Father, um, in the sanctification of the Spirit.

So, that's the Spirit's role. For the obedience of Jesus Christ, for the sprinkling of his blood, may the grace and peace be multiplied to you. So, what you see here is you see a case where we see, again, the Father provided this, okay?

The issue of God's election in salvation is going to be covered in more detail when we get to, uh, lesson number eight and we're going to deal with, uh, God's sovereignty and human responsibility. Notice I'm not using the terms Calvinism or Minianism that so many often think of because we're not going to deal with it in the way of saying Calvinism or Minianism.

Those are kind of heated terms that a lot of people don't even understand them. And let me, since I brought that up, uh, I was talking with somebody, oh wait, that reminded me, talking with someone this weekend, yeah, I was talking with him who stole my tea, um, and we were talking about different theological positions.

One of the things that we were talking is that what we often see, and maybe you've had an opportunity to see this with different, uh, professing believers, where what you see is people who will, um, go and, uh, study something out and they study one side of an issue.

And what they do is when they want to study the other side, they get a bunch of people that already agree with their position that are attacking the other position. And then they go, oh, I can't agree with that position because these guys I agree with say that's bad.

That is bad what you just did. If you want to understand someone's position, read what they actually say about it, okay? Because what you end up with is you end up with some people that don't fully understand another person's position and what they actually do is they go out and argue against a straw man and you don't realize that when you pick up their argument, you're making a straw man argument as well.

Straw man argument is when you use a different definition or a different way of explaining things so that, um, you're easy to knock it down, okay? So that's kind of the idea there. So with that, you don't want to do a straw man argument.

And how do you know if you have a straw man argument? If you believe in Calvinism and you're reading a bunch of Calvinists knocking off Arminianism or if you believe in Arminianism and you read a bunch of Arminians knocking off Calvinism, guess what?

You don't know if you really understand the positions that you're opposed to because they may not be properly explaining those positions. So what you want to do is study both sides of the issue from people that hold to that doctrinal belief, okay?

So you want to study what Calvinism is? Read a bunch of Calvinists. Now don't read a bunch of Calvinists that are arguing against Arminianism. Read a bunch of Calvinists defending Calvinism. Read a bunch of Arminians defending Arminianism.

You get a bunch of Arminians attacking Calvinism? Don't read that one. Read the one where they're defending it and trying to explain what they do believe. What you often find is that these people tend to agree more than they disagree, but they focus on those areas of disagreement way more than they probably should.

And that becomes the problem. So with that said, we're going to get into those issues and we'll try to see if we can get through that without anyone chopping off my head, calling me a heretic, because basically I've been told that I'm a heretic because I'm not a Calvinist.

I've been told I'm a heretic because I am a Calvinist. So I'm not sure which I really am. I guess it depends. See, and that's the whole thing. It depends on your definition of those terms and those labels.

That's why we're not going to use those labels when we get to that lesson. But we do want to let you realize that there are differing views that you need to study out and make sure you understand what it is you believe, why you believe it.

And don't criticize someone else's view unless you are willing to take the time to understand their view. So take the time to read both sides of the argument and make sure you understand what they actually say.

I was at a conference not too long ago where it was mentioned about someone who was a friend of mine who has chosen a topic in this area of Calvinism and Arminianism who has decided that everybody that holds to a certain view or is even friends of people that hold to a certain view is no longer saved.

And the reality is when I sat on the phone with him once, it was like a three, four hour conversation, and I started going through and I started saying, well, do you believe this? Do you believe this?

Do you believe this? I said, you know, brother, you actually hold to the view you attack. You just don't realize it because you have a wrong definition of what they actually hold to and what they actually believe.

We want to be careful of that, all right? So that's something we just need to be aware of. We can all be guilty of that. Now, does that make our study harder? Yes, it makes it a lot harder because now you have to study both sides.

I mean, if you've ever, I know this is a tangent, so if you ever read or heard of Martin Luther's book, Bondage of the Will, it's a great book, really is. And people go, oh, man, you know, he just hammered Erasmus.

I mean, he blew Erasmus away. I mean, he just totally destroyed Erasmus in the book. Oh, you know, and I hear that a lot from people. And I ask people, did you ever actually read Erasmus' book, Freedom of the Will?

No, never read it. Well, here's the reason I ask that. If you read Erasmus' Freedom of the Will, you realize that the first 75 pages, Erasmus sits there and destroys his own book. I mean, he served it up for Luther.

He's sitting there going, I don't even understand why I'm debating this. All my friends want me to challenge Luther, and I don't even understand what the big deal is. I don't get the issue. You know, it's like, duh.

I mean, this guy was the worst one to probably have right on. It was just he was a big name at the time, but he really did a horrible job of proving his own points. So, yeah, it made it easy for Luther.

I'm not saying that Luther didn't serve it up to him, maybe, but you got to understand that Erasmus didn't do the best job in proving the points that he was claiming to. Let's look at the promise, though.

Looking at God planned salvation. He actually promised it. How far back? Well, take a look at this. Genesis chapter 3. What happened in Genesis chapter 3? That's right. That was when we had the fall of Adam and Eve.

And just after the fall, when God is giving them the curse that is going to be on man and woman and creation, we read this. He's explaining to them. He says in verse 15, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

He will bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Now, what that's talking about is that is talking about this idea of that Satan would bruise the heel of Christ, but Christ would destroy the head of Satan.

In other words, he's going to conquer him. So, what we have there is the fact that we see that the promise came right after the fall. Almost as soon as Adam and Eve fell comes the promise of the Messiah.

So, it wasn't too long. Yes, Adam and Eve, you violated God's law and there is a curse that is now going to be on the whole universe. Think about that. Romans chapter 8, we don't have that on there. But Romans 8 talks about the whole universe is groaning.

It's groaning and yet we have that there and it's all because of sin. So, when we look at this, we see that God promised a Messiah, a salvation. Okay. Now, Genesis chapter 3 was about 4 ,000 years before Christ.

In other words, God has a long-term plan. You and I, we live like 70, 80 years. To us, that's like, you know, 20 years seems like a long time. Okay. I mean, to our kids, when we turn 40, we're over the hill.

I mean, we're old. But when you get 40, suddenly like 80 looks pretty old. But 40 is not so old anymore, is it? No, it's not as old as it looked when we were 15. Why is that? Because for us, we have these really what we think of long periods.

They're really short periods to God, right? And this is what is meant when it says in Peter that to God, a day is a thousand years and a thousand years is a day. The idea is that for God has long-term plans.

He's eternal. So, He can say, hey, a Messiah is coming and 4 ,000 years later, that's when the Messiah shows up. All right. So, we have this promise and in Genesis 3 .15, let's look at what you have in your syllabus, in your notes there.

The moment that sin entered the human race and corrupted all of mankind. Yeah, I know. There were only two people in mankind. I understand that. But you and I were corrupted if you remember those lessons on the doctrine of sin through Adam.

You see how these things become important and build upon each other. God promised to them a victory over sin and Satan. It would be in the future. That's your first blank there. It would be in the future.

So, your first blank is future and would be the seed of woman. That's your second blank seed. So, it would be in the future and it would be the seed of woman. This is a clear promise of the Messiah. Where does the seed of human beings come from?

So, He's spoken of as from the man. The woman has the egg, but the seed is from man. The seed of the woman is very special. It speaks of this one who is going to be virgin born, virgin conceived. So, there wasn't going to be a seed from the man, okay?

It was going to be without a human father. We talked about the importance of that in a previous lesson. But what we see there is that God promised to Adam and Eve that in the future there would be this one that comes without a human father that would come and destroy Satan, okay?

And also, later we see in Isaiah and in Jeremiah and others that this one who's going to come would be one that would destroy sin, that would conquer sin and give us, conquer the penalty of sin. So, first, when we look at God as the designer, the first thing we see is that He promised it.

God’s Grace as a Provision of Salvation

Second, we see that His provisions for that salvation, His provisions, and that's what we're going to look at now. Now, as we look at His provisions, we're going to look at several different things. First, we want to look at His grace.

God's grace is a provision of salvation. Let's define this first because I think some people have a definition of God's grace and it's usually a simple God's unmerited favor. But let's give you a definition here a little bit more.

In both the New Testament word, which is karyos, and the Old Testament word chen, both of them have the concept of a condescending favor. Now, I like that better. Is grace an unmerited favor? Yes, it is.

We don't deserve it. We're given it and we really don't deserve it. Totally agree. But I really like the idea of, and that's your blank there, a condescending favor. You see, the idea that that has, when we look at these Greek and Hebrew words for what we call grace, it is this favor that God condescends.

He comes down to our level to give to us. He has to bring this down to us because we're so beneath Him. I know that's hard for some people to accept, even some professing believers, because they think very highly of themselves.

And it's a real problem for them to think that God is so much higher that He's got to condescend to come to our level. Some churches, if you go to their church, yeah, those seeker-sensitive churches that we were talking about earlier, you go to those services and you'd be wondering if, you know, maybe it's us who condescends to God in those churches.

It sure seems that way, especially if you go to the prosperity gospel churches. We're going to be going to a, next weekend, you know, April 5th, we're going to be going out to Lancaster with Justin Peters, listen to him talk on his Discernment Conference.

But one of the things that you hear in those word of faith churches is they lift man up where man's a little God. And you listen to him and God has to obey what you pray for. Well, who's the superior in that?

The superior one is man and we condescend to God in that situation, right? That's the whole issue that we have a problem with. That's why I like this definition of a condescending favor, because it reminds us that God is the great one.

God is the holy one. God is the one up on high. We are the ones that are lowly. We are the ones that God has to condescend to. See, our pride lifts us up, puts us on the pedestal. Brothers and sisters, those of us that truly know Christ, we need to get off that pedestal.

I mean, seriously, get off that pedestal. You don't belong there. You think you belong on a pedestal lifting yourself up? You are robbing God of His glory. Think about that when you praise yourself and not God.

So, we see His provisions. Let me explain His grace. So, we had the definition. Both Old Testament and New Testament both have this concept of a condescending favor. And the explanation there, in relation to the salvation, in relation to salvation, grace may best be understood as God's favor to sinners who do four things.

Ready? Here's your blanks here. God's favor to sinners. Those are the sinners. Those are you and I who do not deserve it, cannot earn it, cannot repay it, and don't even want it. Let me say this again.

This is God's favor, this condescending favor that God gives to sinners like you and I who don't deserve it. We do not deserve the grace that God gives to us. That's why when people ask me, how are you doing?

I always say, better than I deserve. I keep being asked if I know some guy, David Ramsey. I don't even know who the dude is. I guess he says it on the radio. Sorry, don't know who you are, dude. But I just know he doesn't like open air preachers because he commented about that, is what I was told.

But we don't deserve this grace. We cannot earn this grace. This is a grace that we don't deserve it and we can't earn it. Our works can't make up for it. We can't repay it. We can't do enough good to outweigh the bad.

And this last one kind of throws people, but realistically, we don't even want it. We don't want it. When we're unbelieving, we don't want God's grace. We're enemies of God and we hate God. We want nothing to do with Him.

Okay, I'll move on. I'm being told if I don't move on, I won't finish this lesson again. And we're going to finish this lesson this week because we're going to get on to the next lesson next week. Just, we're going to.

No, we're not going to run long. I'm being told that he doesn't think I can do it. All right, we'll see. So, we see that God's provision. We saw His promise. We see His provisions. The first provision was God's grace.

Christ’s Sacrifice, Revelation, and the Holy Spirit

The second provision is His sacrifice. His sacrifice. Now, when was this sacrifice planned? Well, we saw that it was planned before creation. Now, we saw Genesis 3, the promise was right after the fall.

But what we have is that it was planned before creation. Before man fell into sin, God foreknew His plight. Because remember, this goes back to those attributes of God that we first studied in this class, right?

In this school. That God is omniscient. He knows everything. He didn't have to look down the tunnels of time because that would put Him in time and give Him a limited knowledge. That He had to see what would happen.

God knows everything. He just knows it. And He's outside of time. He didn't need to. So foreknowledge doesn't mean He looked down the tunnels of time to figure it out. God foreknew. In other words, in His way of knowing things, He knew everything.

Before time began, meaning that God being outside of time, knowing everything, everything that ever happened in history, in time, is the same eternal second to God. God supplied a provision for men to be reconciled to Himself.

Let's take a look at Ephesians 4. Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love. You know, one of the interesting things, I have to laugh at that, is I was told, someone told me I was a Calvinist.

That I was a hyper-Calvinist, actually. And I asked him where he got that because I don't often speak that way. I don't say I'm a Calvinist, unless someone's going to have the same definition of Calvinism that I do, I guess.

But what ends up happening is I don't use that term. I said, why do you say I'm a Calvinist? And he quoted that verse from our doctrinal statement. I said, because God foreknew before the foundation of time, that makes me a Calvinist?

He said, that's right. I said, Paul wrote that. God wrote that. I mean, if that's the case, then, if that's your definition, then guess what? God's a Calvinist. I mean, by that definition, right? God wrote that.

What does it mean is the question. All right, let's look at one more. What it means is this. It means that God is outside of time. That's the emphasis there. That God's outside of time, but that before there was a time.

In other words, that it has no, it is not based on you and I, because it was God making this decision before there was time, all right? Revelation 13, 8, and those who dwell on earth will worship it. Anyone whose name is not written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.

So, when was it written? Before the foundation of the world. That's when it was written. So, now, it was planned before creation. That was your blank there. Next thing is that it's pictured in the Old Testament sacrifice.

That's your blank there. Pictured in the Old Testament sacrifice. And here's how we're going to finish class up, because I'm not going to look up all the verses here. All right, the day of atonement, Leviticus 16.

We're definitely not going to read all that, but you can read Leviticus 16 and see what the day atonement was. The Passover lamb in Exodus 12 and verse 3. The daily sacrifices in Exodus 29 verses 39 to 42.

We see as we look through those that those were pictures of the sacrifice that Christ was going to make. Now, this gets us into the discussion that we're having this actually, I think, this weekend or this week.

What was the sacrifice? Did the sacrifice actually remove sin? No. Christ on the cross removed sin. The sacrifice looked forward, was a picture of what Christ would do. And so we had some that we were discussing in a Bible study this weekend with some where someone accidentally, I think, said that the high priest, if he was to be in sin, it'd be like bringing sin onto all the people.

So the issue there is we got into from that into a discussion of the high priest going in once a year on the day of atonement. Did that actually remove sin? It was a picture of a sacrifice that was to come.

And that picture was, if you look in your syllabus there, was provided in Christ. And so the idea was that in the Old Testament, they're doing these sacrifices. That it didn't remove the penalty of sin.

They had to look forward. So in a sense, some people think of it as a temporary removing, but it removed in a sense of picturing or leading to what Christ would do. And Christ was that perfect lamb that was the sacrifice for sin.

You can look in John 1 .29, John 1 .36, 1 Peter 1 .19, Revelation 5 .8, Hebrews 9 .14. You can look those up. In this topic, we're going to end up covering how Christ provided this in the following lesson.

So I'm going to kind of skip some of those things that we'd get into discussing how Christ actually provided that salvation when we look at lesson number six next class. So let's look at one more provision of Him.

We got two more to go. So we see His grace is one provision. We see His sacrifice is another provision. And now we see His revelation. His revelation. We can look at this in 2 Timothy 3 .14 -17. We're not going to have time to finish that or to read that, I should say.

But the scriptures which were, well, you know, that's an important one. I do want to put it up. But as for you, continue in what you've learned and have firmly believed knowing that from whom you learned it and how from your childhood you've been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ and Jesus.

So the scriptures which were inspired by God are able to make a person wise unto salvation. That's your blank there. Wise unto salvation. Why is this important? This is important for this reason. There are some who feel that when they share the gospel it is important to have their words really getting like flowery words or not mentioning things that people won't want to hear.

They focus all on the manner in which we convey the message. I was in church this week in Sunday school and this became a topic of discussion. You know, is it the way we, you know, someone said it is more important the way we communicate the gospel than anything else.

And I said I disagree because the manner in which you and I convey the gospel, though it's important, it doesn't make a person wise unto salvation. What does? The scriptures. You want to share the gospel?

You should be using a lot of scripture. Not your illustrations, not your really cool quips that you come up with and you have this great illustration that you use. That's fine. I'm not saying not to use them.