Faith: the Consequence or Cause of Salvation?

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Oscar Wilde came through customs in New York and was asked this question,
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Mr. Wilde, do you have anything to declare? Nothing except my genius.
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I'm wondering if some of you on judgment day will stand before God and He would ask you, what do you declare that maybe you might say, nothing except my faith.
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I know you did everything God, you chose me in eternity past. Your son died for me at Calvary.
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But the switch that was flipped in order for you to be able to save me was that I exercised of my own volition, freely and without any of your grace.
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I am here because I exercise faith and that's all I have to declare. Is that true?
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Does that give God the glory He deserves? Nothing less is at stake with the issue of faith than the glory of God.
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Does God get the glory or is God sharing the glory in kind of a cooperative program?
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This morning I want to ask this question. Is faith achieving or is faith receiving?
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Is faith the cause of your salvation or is faith the consequence of your salvation?
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Is faith produced by man or is faith produced in man? And you say, well, as long as I got faith,
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I don't really care where it came from. If you want
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God to get the glory, if you are determined and jealous about God getting the glory in your life, then
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I think this should be a very important issue for you. Does God receive the glory even when
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I talk about Him? We like to hear testimonies from people about their salvation.
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And you know, I like to hear about what God did for the people, not about what our people did for God.
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That's why we always go around saying it's a testimony, not a testimony, when every word starts with I.
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Unless it was I was a sinner and God saved me by grace. We live in a culture today that somehow at the end of the day implies that you can make yourself a
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Christian and you cannot. On the first page of one of the most influential revival books of all time by Charles Finney, in his book
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Lectures on Revivals of Religion, it says this shocking statement, page one, quote, religion is the work of man.
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You might say religion is, but not a relationship with Christ. But are you saved because God saved you or are you saved because you of your own volition, apart from the grace of God, flipped the switch and allowed
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God to save you? Let's push the issue a little bit. Did you accept Jesus into your heart or should we talk this way instead?
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Did God accept you into His heart based on what Jesus did?
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Oh, it's all semantics you say. I think not. For the years I have left on earth,
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I want to preach the gospel that is by grace alone. To God alone be the glory.
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True or false, God said, I will not give my glory to another. We should be zealous and jealous that all the glory goes to God, even when it comes to our salvation.
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When you tell someone you're a Christian, how do you explain that? Is it a man -centered way or is it a way that is making sure you're pointing to God alone for all the glory?
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Upon a life, I did not live. Upon a death, I did not die. Another's life, another's death,
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I stake my whole eternity. We're not staking our eternity on our faith.
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We're going to learn today that faith is the consequence and not the cause of your salvation. I could ask you a question this way.
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What is it that accounts for the fact that one person is a Christian and another person is not?
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Why does one person hear a sermon and another person hear a sermon and this one responds differently with affirmation and this one responds negatively?
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Why is that? And this morning, I'm going to painstakingly try to drive home that faith, salvation, is a gift from God.
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You say, well, we're a long ways from Matthew chapter 5 and the Sermon on the Mount. Yes, I know, but this will be installment number six on the evangelism series.
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Why should we proclaim the gospel to others? I thought I was going to be out of town and in England on a sabbatical and I was trying to stall and do an evangelism series because we're going to get back into Matthew chapter 5 later.
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Well, now I'm not going to go on to a sabbatical until next year, so I'm trying to stall even more. And so this
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Sunday will be, we want to really dig deeply into the issue of faith that is a gift.
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Next week, we'll look at actually what the gospel is, a good way for you to memorize and understand the gospel that you proclaim with 12 words to describe that.
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Then I'll have two more weeks before I go on vacation and we will do a jet tour in two weeks on a book that we want to preach here because last time
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I checked, it is in the Bible and it's called The Song of Solomon. So this week, faith, next week, the 12 words, and then two weeks, a jet tour through Song of Solomon, an amazing, amazing book.
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How many people have ever heard a sermon on the Song of Solomon? It will either split the church in half or we're going to have overflowing issues.
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But today, I want to continue to talk about salvation so when we evangelize, we're understanding that it all comes from God, including faith.
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The way we'll work the outline this morning is this way. I'm going to ask you several questions. If you're dying to know,
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I have about eight, but we'll get through about five or six questions, I'm sure, that will test you to see if you really in your heart of hearts believe your salvation is by grace alone or you believe that somehow
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God has saved you because he did his part and then your part was faith. You cooperated maybe with what
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God did. God made it possible and then you did it the rest of the way or if God, in fact, did everything so that you might give him more glory and so that you might, knowing when you evangelize, if it's going to take an act of God to save that person, then why do we have to coerce them to somehow do what we want them to do?
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And then at the very end this morning, time -willing, we'll talk about what is commonly called the sinner's prayer.
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Question number one that should test you about your faith to see if there's any little smidgen or inkling or little iota of human goodness or works added in there to this great gift of God.
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Question number one. These are yes and no, right or wrong, no open -ended questions. They're either going to be man -centered answers or God -centered answers and I'm going to try to push you against the wall.
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You say, well, today's going to seem like a clash lecture. Maybe. One thing that will be different today is instead of going to one passage and just sticking there, we're going to be going everywhere in our
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Bibles and so you'll want to get the WD -40 out, spray it on the spines of your Bible because off we go today.
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We'll camp in Ephesians 2 for a while but then it's off we go. Last night, we went on a camping trip yesterday.
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It was a great camping trip and I was so exhausted when I got home I kind of took a nap. So when you take a nap at 7 o 'clock at night, you're usually awake until late.
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And so it was about 11 o 'clock at night and I'm in the garage and trying to lift a little bit and just break a sweat and then
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I thought, well, it's a good time for the oil change of the rider and so I was trying to change the oil and then
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I thought, you know, I'm not really that interested in fixing this thing but men, and you know this, when you really want to feel like you've accomplished a lot when you're fixing motor equipment, just get a can of WD -40 out and just spray it everywhere and when you're done, you really think you did some stuff.
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Boy, I did a lot. So I was spraying WD -40 all over that thing last night.
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Steering mechanism, spray it. Oh, it's not smoother. So today we're going to take that WD -40 and you better spray it all over your
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Bibles or you're going to be sitting there hot and going, where are we? I want you to be in the text and I dare you at the end of today's sermon for you to say,
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God, faith is less than gracious gift from you. I dare you because I'm going to try to put the whole corpus of the
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Bible on top of you where you'll go, you know what? If I'm saved, it's because God gave me faith. And if I want my sister, brother, husband, child, work friend to be saved, it's going to be
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God, you're going to have to save them because I've tried and I obviously can't. Question number one about faith.
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Do you believe saving faith is a gift from God or a gift of God?
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Do you really believe that it's a gift? Let's turn to Philippians 1, please. I want to show you several verses where the
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Bible teaches explicitly that faith is a gift. You say, well, isn't it a command?
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We'll get there. But for right now, faith is a gift. I want you to realize that when
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Jonah 2 says salvation is from or of the Lord, we're talking all of salvation.
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It's a gift from God. Philippians 1, verse 29, the verse that is there in Oxford, England, where the three martyrs were burned, this is the verse that's up there focusing on suffering.
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But interestingly, Paul says to the church at Philippi, for to you it has been granted for Christ's sake not only to believe in Him but also to suffer for His sake.
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Do you see that? Not only suffering is a gift that is granted by God from His hand, so is what?
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Belief is granted by God. It is a gift. If you'll take your
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Bibles and turn to Ephesians 2, we've been in this passage before, and I want to show you again that faith is not the active saving cause.
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Rather, it is a result. Ephesians 2, you know the passage. For by grace you have been saved through faith.
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That not of yourselves? It is the gift of God. Hey, Paul, didn't you just already say that in verse 5?
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Didn't you just say something like that about grace you've been saved? Look at Ephesians 2, 5. Even when we were dead in our transgressions,
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He made us alive together with Christ. There is that repetition, that emphatic repetition.
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By grace you have been saved. Did you know, Paul, when he wrote the epistles, used the word grace, charas, twice as often as other
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New Testament writers did. Why would Paul do that? We don't really know. Obviously, God wanted him to do that.
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But could it be that Paul was so wrapped up in a works righteousness, be good, debtor system of Pharisees and in the
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Sanhedrin, that Paul has been blown away by grace, and he says, you know, I am going to be avid proponent.
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It is by grace you are saved. And even when it comes to the word order, here is what the word order is in the original, to make sure it is front loaded, so no one missed it.
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He could have said, if you look at your Bible, you are saved by grace. No. By grace you are saved, so you will be reminded, grace is unmerited, demerited favor in action.
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It is generous. It is unselfish. It is something that princes give to paupers.
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Not the other way around. It is not saved by grace, but it is by grace you have been saved.
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When you work, you get a wage. When you compete, you get a prize. When you do something good, you get an award. But when you can't run, you can't work, you can't earn anything, and God still gives it to you anyway, that is what grace is called.
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And did you see all the passages here? In Ephesians 2, verse 8, all the words rather and phrases, you have been saved.
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It is passive. If we receive salvation, we don't co -sponsor it with God. God did it to you.
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True or false? Salvation is not do, do, do. Salvation is done, done, done.
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That is exactly right. It is
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His grace, His initiative, His energy, His mercy, His Son, His eternal decree that saves.
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And then do you notice, if those of you don't think we need words that are important, it says we are saved what?
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Because of faith or through faith. If you are saved because of faith, then you have something that you've earned.
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God saved you because you believed. I have a friend, his name is Scott, and Scott and I grew up together. Scott and I are the same age.
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Scott and I worked together. We rode motorcycles together. We went kayaking together. We did everything together.
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And Scott since shaved, but several years ago I saw Scott and he had a large beard down to about here, bald guy, struggling with alcohol, and he had kind of a
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WWF nickname and they called him the Anvil because he just looked like this rough and tough guy, child out of wedlock, etc.,
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etc., etc. What is the difference between my friend Scott and me? I'm better.
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I was smarter. I did things, I could understand things better, and I went to school.
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What's the difference between Scott and Mike? There's no difference except what? It's the absolute grace of God.
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I came up with my faith on judgment day. God, here's my faith. You're so lucky to have me believe in you.
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I just did you a favor. I know you did it for everybody else, and Scott said no to you and yes to sin, but I, oh,
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I just said yes, I believe. I had to believe, and we'll get to that in a minute, but I'm trying to force the issue here to say it is not faith that saves you as the causing agent.
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Do you see the text again in Ephesians? You're saved through faith. What's the cause? God and his grace.
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The instrument may be faith, but the instrument is not saving.
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Those of you that want to study the Greek instrumental of means, you will find out that this is not the procuring ground, our cause, or let's put it this way.
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God, let's just transfer ourselves back to the Red Sea. We're on the other side of the Red Sea. Remember on this side of the
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Red Sea, mountain here, mountain here, Pharaoh's chariots here, and the Red Sea there, and Moses says something brilliant.
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He says, start paddling, everybody. No. He said, you stand back.
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I've got news for you, Israel. Be quiet, and you watch God save.
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He opens it up, and it was not a little trickle kind of a line, single file, because it was in one night watch, and to go through single file on a night watch, they'd still be going through right now, two million people.
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It had to be at least a mile to three quarters to one mile wide so they could get everybody across in one night shift, and on the other side, everybody sang the song of redemption in Exodus 15.
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God, thank you for opening up the Red Sea. Thank you for stopping a
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Pharaoh. Thank you for drowning all these people. Thank you that it was dry land, but God, we are on the other side of the
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Red Sea because we walked. It sounds stupid to you?
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What is the difference? Peter just said, yeah, it does. What is the difference? God, the reason why
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I'm saved is because I believed in my own power, and they didn't. Faith is a gift.
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It is not a quality, virtue, or faculty that man can produce by himself.
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Robert Raymond, who preached here just weeks ago, said, Faith, quote, is a divinely effected human response to God's effectual summons.
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I like what the Westminster Shorter Catechism for children would teach. Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace.
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Faith is a grace that God gives. It's not the ground on which salvation is bestowed, says another.
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When God looks down the corridors of time to see who would believe, do you know what he sees? He sees
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Ephesians 2, verse 1, dead. Ephesians 2, verse 2, sons of disobedience.
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He sees Ephesians 2, verse 3, children of wrath. But then God does something incredible, amazingly, through the words of Charles Wesley.
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He describes salvation like this. Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night.
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Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke, the dungeon flamed with light.
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My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee.
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Do you believe this sentence? Two sentences. Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above.
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Coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. In the exercise of his will, he brought us forth by the word of truth so that we would be kind of a first fruits among his creatures.
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Do you believe those two verses? Do you believe those two sentences? I gave it away. You know what their verses are because Lewis read those.
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Does God bring us forth in such a gracious way that it includes faith?
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He has to. Let me read to you Acts chapter 18 verse 27.
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And when he wanted to go across to Achaia, the brethren encouraged him and wrote to his disciples to welcome him.
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And when he had arrived, he helped greatly those who had believed through grace.
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Did you get that? You believe through grace, you don't believe on your own. Let me prove it to you one other passage.
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2 Peter chapter 1 verse 1, please. If you'll turn there. You say, well, you're preaching to the choir.
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I know I am and I love it. Last week was the first week in 13 years on a weekly preaching basis.
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I didn't get to preach. So I've got two sermons boil up in me. 2
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Peter chapter 1 verse 1. Sometimes we race by these verses because after all it's only an introduction. But the grace of God found even in the introduction.
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2 Peter 1 verse 1. Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ. To those who have received, what?
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A faith of the same kind as ours. The people that have saving faith. The kind of faith that Peter says,
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Lord, my God, I believe in you. My Lord, my God. That is a faith that has been received.
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Faith is a gift. Charles Spurgeon said, it is not thy hold on Christ that saves thee.
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It is Christ. It is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee. It is Christ. It is not even thy faith, though that be the instrument.
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It is Christ's blood and merit. Do you believe faith is a gift?
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Question number 2. Do you believe that Christ primarily saves or that faith primarily saves?
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Question number 2. Do you believe that Christ primarily saves or your faith primarily saves?
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Let's go back to Ephesians chapter 2 for a minute. Maybe you're still there. Ephesians 2. What is the cause of our salvation?
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If it's not faith, if faith is a gift, then what is the cause? What is the causal force? Who is the causal force?
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And I love it that Paul in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 4 tells us. As Lloyd -Jones would call one of the great buts of all the
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Bible. If this word were and, we would be in big trouble. If this word were therefore, we'd be in bigger trouble.
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After chapter 2 verses 1, 2, and 3, the state of man without God. And in his justice and in his righteousness, he could say, therefore,
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I let them alone like Ephraim. Therefore, I punish them like Sodom. But for us, his children, it is absolutely amazing to me.
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It says there, not the first word but, and, therefore. I mean, it doesn't say and or therefore.
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It says, but God. Here comes God on his white charger, stallion, being rich in mercy.
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Do you want to know why anyone is ever saved? Here's the cause. This is not anything except the director, the causer, the actor.
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Because of his great love with which he loved us. The cause of your salvation is not your faith.
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It is God himself. And this is a different kind of construction to indicate cause.
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It is not faith per se that saves. It is Christ who saves. Faith is active.
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No, faith is passive. Where there is faith, you know the grace of God has already trod.
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Faith is not a saving work. The Puritan Thomas Hooker said,
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God justifies the believing man not for the worthiness of his belief, but for the worthiness of him in whom he believes.
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If you think that you can come up with your own faith, you believe in a different religion.
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It's very prominent in this area. Let's keep going. Let's keep building.
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Boy, I like these questions. By the way,
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I thought the other day, I thought I should send my resume. And now that I got my doctorate to Quinn Sigmund and Worcester State and Clark and some of these other schools and ask them if I could teach their comparative religions class.
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Are there Christianity as history or Christianity as literature class? And I could go in and just say,
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I'd love to do that. These are the different genres and everything else. And then I will have an agenda. And they won't even know it.
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And I can ask questions, true or false, yes or no. And then
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I was too sick to even get out of bed. So what do I do? I just kept laying there thinking. Richard Baxter, when he was dying, he said to him,
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How do you feel? He said, Almost well. Boy, we are frail creatures, aren't we?
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If I live to be 30 more years old or one more year old, I want to guard the glory of God.
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I want to get into the recesses of your brain where you think somehow, I know it's grace.
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I say grace. It's by grace I've been saved. But I think I'm the one that came up with my faith. You didn't.
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And I think if you think you did, you are giving less glory to God than you should. Question number three.
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Question number one is faith a gift of God. Do you think Christ saves or faith saves primarily?
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And number three, talked about a little bit already. Do you believe faith is the consequence or cause of salvation?
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Is faith the consequence or cause? Is it active or passive, in other words? Well, if you look at Ephesians 2 verse 8, you've been saved by grace, not because of faith, but through faith, and that not of yourselves.
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Now this gets very complicated, but I'll make it as easy as I can. Grace and faith.
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Do you see those two words there? Grace and faith are feminine. That or this is neuter.
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And you've got to have the neuter match up with something that's neuter. Our feminine match up with feminine, but the neuter and the feminine don't match up.
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Well, what do you do? What is this or what is that?
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You've been saved by grace through faith, and that, referring to grace, no. Referring to faith, no.
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But referring to all of salvation, everything, grace through faith, salvation, did not come from you.
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Whether it's faith, whether it's election, no matter what it is, it didn't come from you. How do I know that?
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Because it says right there, it's the gift of God. Why does God do it? Because He renders the glory for Him.
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Actually, it's very interesting there towards the end of verse 8. Literally, it says, of God, the gift.
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For force, for emphasis. Salvation through grace, faith. It's all of God.
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Your salvation is determined by God through the merits of Christ Jesus' life and death, confirmed by the resurrection, and God gives you the grace to believe.
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You say, well, I already get that. You've nailed that a lot of different ways. But don't you have to believe,
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Pastor? Question number four. By the way, if you're looking for answers, question number one, do you believe saving faith is a gift?
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Yes. Number two, do you believe Christ primarily saves or that faith primarily saves? Christ saves.
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I guess I said they were going to be yes or no questions, but right or wrong questions. Do you believe that faith is the consequence of salvation or the cause?
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It is the consequence. And number four, listen, do you believe that saving faith is commanded?
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Should you go around telling people to believe? By the way, if you just thought
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I was going to pass out right there, I wasn't. Long ago,
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I had surgery in both of my feet, and I don't have wide feet anymore, and so I very often can't balance very well.
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So I just was standing here like this. I started to lose my balance. I thought, Scott Ferris is going to rush up here to give me CPR. It was just my fifth metatarsal, pal.
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Do we tell people you have to believe? Let's think about it. If faith is a gift, then what are we going around doing?
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Believe, repent, believe the Lord Jesus Christ, thou shalt be saved. It is absolutely true.
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Saving faith is commanded. Man must fully and freely and obediently respond to salvation with saving faith.
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God doesn't believe for the person. I can make that easy. Does God repent for the person?
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Does God have anything to repent from? God does not believe for you. God does not repent for you.
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But He changes your nature, and that new nature says, I freely repent and believe.
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Try to take a lion, and you try to give that lion oatmeal. Give that lion
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Weight Watcher oatmeal that doesn't have much sugar in it. And pour some, like, brown sugar in there.
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Starve the lion or the tiger a few more days. You can do whatever you want. If you want to give that thing a salad, chef's salad.
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It might lick a few of those things off the top. But lions and tigers are what?
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Herbivores? No. They're carnivores. Carne.
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Meat. They eat meat. Why does a lion eat meat? Why won't it eat broccoli?
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It won't eat broccoli. Boy, now's about the time you should get me off of the pulpit. You can pour a bunch of cheese goo on the broccoli, too.
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It doesn't have it in its nature. Its nature doesn't like that. And so, unbelievers have a nature that are opposed to God.
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And God, as we learned two weeks ago, freely and sovereignly and graciously gives people a new nature.
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And He turns the lion into a lamb. That lamb then does what lambs do.
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If that lion was turned into something that would eat salads, turned into a human, it would freely eat it.
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God's not there taking that lion's face when He changes the lion into something else and forcing it into its food like you're going to eat or else.
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You train a dog and a dog does something bad and you go put the dog's face up into it. That's not what
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God's doing. God's not taking us around like the old caveman parodies where there's some kind of caveman og and og is going around with the long hair of his wife dragging her off someplace.
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One man said when Daryl Gates used to bust into the L .A. crack houses with these tank -like SWAT team devices and it would just knock the door down and they would take out the criminals, that that was like what
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God did in salvation. God doesn't need to do that because God says, I know your heart is a fortress, but I'm going to give you a new heart and new disposition and new affections and new likes and new dislikes and you're going to be a new person.
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And what does that new person do? God, I now love you. I believe in you.
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I'll follow you. Command to believe? Yes. And they must.
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And the spirit and the bride says, Revelation 22, 17, Come. Jesus said now on the last day, the great day of the feast, the
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Bible says Jesus stood and cried out saying, If any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. The examples are numerous.
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Now here comes one of the things that when I was taught, it so helped me. Faith is both a gift and faith is a command.
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Repentance is both a gift and a command. Did you get that? How can that be?
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How can Jesus be fully God and fully man? How can Paul write the Bible? Fully inspired?
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There's all kinds of questions, but I think this will help. Not only is faith a command, but it's a gift.
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Let me ask you this question. Before the fall, before sin, Adam was responsible to till the garden, to subdue the earth, to be fruitful and multiply, etc.
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Was Adam responsible? Yes. Before the fall, was Adam able to do all those things?
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Name animals, whatever he was given to do before the fall, he could do. Well, what happened after the fall?
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Was Adam able to do that anymore? Let me ask you this question. After the fall, was
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Adam still responsible to do the things that God commanded him to do? That seems kind of bad of God to do, isn't it?
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Change his program after somebody else sins? No. God says, here's my righteousness, here's my holiness, here's my will, here's my decree.
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You were responsible before the fall and you're responsible after the fall. But before the fall, you were able to do it.
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After the fall, you are no longer able to do it. Therefore, man is responsible to repent and believe it's a command.
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But men and women can't believe, therefore, it's a what? It's a gift.
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Saving faith is not only a command, but it's also a gift. And that is why we need the second
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Adam, isn't it? Who believes. Well, he didn't have to believe, but perfectly obeyed. If you can remember this, faith is a gift and faith is a command.
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Now you meet somebody on the street, you're preaching the gospel to them. What do you do? Do you do anything?
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Do you need to do anything? Do you need to say, well, I know my pastor just said it's a command, but it's a gift and...
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Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. I don't know. No, you just keep preaching. It's for you, the evangelist, to know,
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I know it is a command. Repent, turn, trust, follow, believe. We beg you, we beseech you.
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You must believe in the Savior. But knowing the whole time, unless God grants them the gift, they never will.
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Your job is to preach that salvation is a gift of God, including repentance and faith, but you are still to tell them, the king has a decree, worship him.
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You are telling dead people, spiritually dead people, to rise up and live. It's just like Lazarus.
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It doesn't make sense almost. There's Jesus, Lazarus rise forth. And what did he do? As one man said, good thing he said
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Lazarus rise forth or everybody who had ever died would rise forth at the power of God's command. He is unable, but he is still responsible.
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Faith is not only a gift, it's a command. You say, okay, I get that. We tell people to believe.
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All right, well, we need to keep going. We're running out of time. I'm gonna skip ahead. Question number five.
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Do you believe saving faith is more than just intellectual? Do you believe that saving faith is more than just intellectual?
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Let's turn our Bibles to John chapter one, please. We're gonna go through this kind of speed verse of John.
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And I wanna show you that faith is more than intellectual. Sometimes I call it intellectual, emotional, and volitional.
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Today we'll use what the reformers talked about, which is notitia, census, and fiducia.
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But you say, well, what are those? We'll learn as we go. I wanna just show you that saving faith is something so great that it would take
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God to do it in you for you to come up with this on your own. Notitia is basically knowledge, facts, creed, data, information.
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And there's a way in Greek to put this together. And I said John one, let's go to John chapter eight.
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I wanna show you lots of times that Jesus called people to believe in him, that he did something.
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And it's just a fact about Jesus. John chapter eight, verse 24.
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Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he, that I am the Messiah, you will die in your sins.
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Chapter 11 of John. Again, these are all constructions of the original language that show that there is a propositional truth, a right or wrong statement that has to be the content of saving faith, the data, the information.
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John 11, 42. I knew that you always hear me, because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that, every one of these is a believe that, that you may believe that you sent me.
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John 14, 11. Again, just quickly trying to show you these believe that's.
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John 14, 11. Believe me that I am in the Father, and in the Father is in me. Otherwise believe because of works themselves.
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The believe that's in the Greek, it's not here in the English. But these are statements, John 16, 27, that show there is a truth to be believed.
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It is a lie to think I just believe in belief. I have faith in faith. I'm very spiritual, you know.
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Well, what do you believe in? Spirituality? No, these are truths about God that you have to believe in. In other words, can you be saved not knowing that Jesus was a sacrificial substitute?
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No, that's just a truth. John 16, 27. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from the
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Father. There's a triune God. So there's an intellectual knowledge that needs to be believed in.
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And then there's almost something that they would call an assent to that. It's factually true, but that you would have a conviction that this is true.
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And there's a bunch of words in the Gospel of John for that. Let's go back to John 2, 22. This is a different construction.
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You say, well, why do I need all this Greek stuff? You don't really need to. I'm just trying to explain this, that there are some words in the
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Bible for believe that are believe in a truth, and then there's to believe in a truth that you assent to. And there's a bunch of these in John.
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John 2, 22. So when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he said this. And they believed the
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Scriptures. They assented to that. It wasn't, oh, we believe the Scripture is true, and it's a fact, and there's the
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Bible in front of me. No, they believed. They assented. It was a matter of more than just the mind and the word which
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Jesus had spoken. John 4, 21. There's another one.
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Jesus said to her, woman, believe me. Unbelievers can understand positions, data, content, but this is more than that.
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And when this kind of assent moves into trust, into confidence, into conviction, it's the third aspect.
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Not just knowledge, not just assent, but trust. We see all kinds of words for that.
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John 1, 12. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believed in His name.
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God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish.
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So there's intellectual, emotional, volitional. There's all kinds of ways to slice it up. But saving faith requires, you say, pastor, cut to the chase.
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When you're preaching the gospel to them, something more than this is needed. I believe that Jesus died on the cross.
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I believe He was raised from the dead. I believe that He's the only Savior. You can give them all those facts, but what you can't do when you evangelize is to make them really believe it in their heart, soul, mind, and strength.
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Assent to that, to know it in their mind, and then to believe it and to trust into it. You can't create someone's trust in a
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Savior. You can only preach the data to them. True? So you need God to do the work through you.
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You say, well, get to the part we really want to talk about today, and that's this whole idea of sinners' prayers.
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Question for the last. Do you believe your view of saving faith should affect the way you evangelize?
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Knowing what you know, that belief is a gift and it's a command, knowing that God has to do it, knowing that it's not really our faith that saves, it's
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God's grace through us, even granting us the faith that saves. What would we do regarding methodology?
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What we learned last time, we don't have to invite people to the altar, we invite people to Christ. We talked about that a little bit, but I now want to spend the rest of our time talking about the sinner's prayer.
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How many people know what a sinner's prayer is? Can sinners pray?
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Should sinners pray? You say, well, that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is this. You meet someone down at the common, maybe it's one of your own kids.
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Just three short weeks ago, I heard somebody crying in their room. I said, knock it off.
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Went in there. I said, what are you crying about?
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I don't know if I'm saved, Daddy. I so wish
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I would have believed in the sinner's prayer to make it all right. Son or daughter, just bow with me.
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Repeat after me. God, I know I'm a sinner. I know you're the Savior. I know there's no one else.
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I believe in you. I don't want to go to hell. In Jesus' name, amen. I wish it was that easy.
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Certainly, there's nothing wrong with praying with your children, having them even repeat prayers. That's not what
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I'm after. But if you know
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God does all the saving, and your kid says,
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I want to become a Christian, what do you do? Now you say, well,
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I did it, and my kid turned out to be a Christian. Let me ask you this question.
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If you believe what I've taught the last 43 minutes, that faith is a gift and not the cause of salvation, do you really think that prayer, that you pray with your son or daughter on your knees and on your face before a thrice holy
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God, will cause God to save your child? Do you think that?
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Do you think God must save your child because he said some words after you? I mean, this is really the question, isn't it?
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When people come to me and say, I am scared. I've had people come to my house, not from this church, back in Los Angeles at 4 in the morning, coming to my door.
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What I would do is I would get these young guys who would come to the Bible study, and I know what young guys struggle with, so these young guys would come, they're not saved, and I would say, you know what?
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Drunkards and fornicators will not inherit the kingdom. All of a sudden, guys at my door at 4 o 'clock in the morning going, you know what?
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I'm a drunkard and a fornicator, and I'm not going to heaven, and I'm going to hell, and I'm scared. Help me.
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Kim said, don't answer the door at 4 o 'clock in the morning. I said,
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I don't think he's got any gun or anything like that. He just troubled.
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I went outside. His name was Dave. Mike, thanks, and I thought, I'm just not going to let the guy in the house.
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I don't know what will happen. It was cold. I had my shorts on. We sit outside, 6132 Carpenter, and I said, are you a
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Christian, Dave? I don't think so. Why don't you think so? I prayed the sinner's prayer many times.
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I've walked the aisle many times, and I have no peace in my heart that I'm a Christian. I don't act like a
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Christian. I think I believe all these facts, but I don't know what to do. I want to be a
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Christian. I don't want to go to hell. Matter of fact, six days later, he jumped off the
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Holiday Inn through the pane glass window of the restaurant that circles around in Hollywood, California, and jumped out through and tried to kill himself and landed in the pool, but still was alive for a day.
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Is he in heaven? Should I have said to him, pray this prayer after me?
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Here's what I did instead. I said, Dave, you've prayed the sinner's prayer many times, haven't you?
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I said, the sinner's prayer doesn't save anyone. It doesn't cause God to therefore save you.
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Certainly, sinner's prayers are okay in terms of Luke, where the sinner cried out to God in the parable,
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Lord, have mercy on me, what? A sinner, and God can be pleased to save through that kind of contrition, but certainly
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God was working in the man's heart before he even knew he was a sinner. What do you do with somebody who's about ready to die, and they say,
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I want to become a Christian? What do you do if you're Ralph Bernard, the evangelist in the South who died in 1969, and has a sermon called this,
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Watching Men Die. Watching people die, week in and week out. He was the only person around to do all the funerals for many counties in the
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South. And he said, people would grab my hands, laying there, rough old 70 -year -old men, they would grab my hands and say,
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Pastor, I don't want to go to hell. And what would he do? What he did not do is said, bow your head, and you pray what
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I pray, and afterwards, you are a Christian. Anyway, you want to know what happened with the whole
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Dave story. Here's what I said. Dave, I firmly believe that the Scriptures teach that God saves people like you, sinners like you.
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He's very pleased to demonstrate His grace, and His kindness, and His mercy. You've tried all these other ways, how about this?
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Since God holds your salvation in the palm of His hand, could I please pray for you and ask
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God to save you? Could I please pray that God would grant you faith, and grant you repentance, and grant you a right mind?
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He hadn't slept for four days. He read in the Bible where it says, don't even pick up your coat and throw your wallet down. He said, I threw my wallet away.
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I mean, he had not slept, he had not ate, he was going crazy. I said, let's pray that God would give you a right mind, and to save you, and let's just bow our heads, and I will pray for you to be saved, after I had already preached it in the
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Gospel. And I have to tell you, I was kind of scared, so when I prayed, I didn't even close my eyes, because I thought, if the guy's going to hit me, this is the time he's going to hit me.
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He said, I've got my head bowed, and there he is ready to just clock me in the middle of the night. Because he was definitely out of it.
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So I thought, aren't you glad God can hear prayers when you have your eyes open? So I just was praying.
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And I mean praying, God, save this man. I'm not saying sinners' prayers are sinful.
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But what I am saying, lots of people have prayed the sinner's prayer and are not going to heaven, because sinner's prayers aren't the cause of your salvation.
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If you really believe these words that I'm saying, and you repeat after me, friends, you're already a
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Christian, and the sinner's prayer is a response to what God has done in your heart. No sinner says,
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God, you're my delight. God, be glorified. God, you're the Son, the Savior. God, I love you.
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God, I want to worship you. God, I want to save you. Unless they've already been affected by God and infected by God.
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Matthew 7, 21, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. People pray sinner's prayers and don't go.
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Here's my desire for you as a congregation. When somebody wants to get saved, your job is to preach the gospel to them and to beg them and to plead with them and to urge them.
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At the whole time, you should be praying for them, because it is God who grants it. Sinner's prayers don't save, God saves.
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If faith is not the cause but the consequence, do you think the sinner's prayer is the cause of anyone's salvation?
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Do you think the sinner's prayer is the light switch that switches it on to allow God to do something?
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Friends, prayer is not the switch that activates salvation.
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Has anybody been saved completely independent of the sinner's prayer? Was Paul saved when he said,
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God, you're really Jesus? No, he saved him and he responded that way. How about Peter?
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Was Peter saved by a sinner's prayer? John? John the Baptist?
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Ezekiel? Isaiah? Charles Spurgeon? William Carey?
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I almost said Mariah Carey, but she needs to be saved. You are not saved by the sinner's prayer.
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And if you really pray a sinner's prayer with all your heart, you bow down, when you hear a kid cries in the middle of the night,
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Daddy, I don't know if I'm a Christian, you go down there and you get on your knees and you say, God, you saved my daughter.
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God, please save my son. God, you've given me a heart for this little child and this child's under my care and God, would you be so merciful?
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You're the God of all grace. You're the God of all mercy. You've saved me and I didn't deserve it and I'm just going to keep preaching to my sons and daughters.
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And God, would you please save my children? And if the kids cry out and say, God, forgive my sins, that's not a bad thing.
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But that does not put God on the spot to say, well, the kid said it, I better do it. If the kid prays,
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God, save me from my sins and really means it, God is beginning either to draw the kid or God has already drawn him and he's responding with the words of faith.
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God, yes, I am a sinner. That's why in this whole issue, if you think that was a hand grenade, let me give you another one.
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It is not your job, responsibility, or command to give people assurance of their salvation.
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What you don't do, if you do want to pray the sinner's prayer with your children, what you don't do afterwards is you pat them on the back and say,
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Jimmy, Johnny, you're set. You're free. You're going to heaven. Spirit, it's your birthday party today.
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Way to go. What you do is when my kids say, I believe, I say, good. Keep believing.
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How can I tell? Where are the children in the New Testament that believe? Certainly children believe, but I don't have anything to go on except here's what adult saving faith is and it's not different for kids.
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They have somebody that they don't just assent to or believe the data or believe their parents. It is with their will and it is with their soul and they have a desire to love others and love their neighbors.
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We don't give people assurance of salvation. I never do. If you come to me and say, Pastor, I'm not saved. I need to meet with you.
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I'm going to have you come in my office and I'm going to say what I've said many, many times. They say, I don't know if I'm a Christian and I'm going to say this.
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I don't know if you are either because the assurances of salvation are many, but they aren't coming from me.
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They are, do you trust in the sacrificial death of Christ? Is the Spirit of God, Romans 8, witnessing to your spirit that you're a
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Christian? Are you by the grace of God, not in perfection, but in direction, matching up objectively to what the
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Bible says Christians do? 1 John, for instance. Christians confess their sins and confess Jesus as Lord.
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Christians don't love the world. They love their neighbor. They love God. Do you confess your sins?
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Do you confess Jesus as Savior? Do you love not the world? Do you love God? Do you love your neighbor? And on and on it goes, but it is not my job to assure anyone because do
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I know your heart? For the sake of oratory, the last time I checked,
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Samuel was told by the Lord, do not look at his appearance or the height of his stature because I've rejected him, but God sees not as a man sees, for a man looks on outward appearances, but the
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Lord looks on the what? Heart. Proverbs 16, 2, all the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, but the
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Lord weighs the motives. So what do I do? Here's what you do. You tell that little one of yours, if you truly repent and you truly believe, you truly will be saved.
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We can assure people that if they repent and follow Christ, Jesus will not cast them out. We can say to them,
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I know you're struggling with your assurance many times, but the fruit of the Spirit is in your life, and I see that too, and even though you struggle, the struggle's good.
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We can say pastoral things like that, but friends, to back up and to wrap up,
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I am after the glory of God and salvation, and there is nothing you can do to be saved apart from the grace of God, true?
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It is the grace of God that saves, and that banner of grace has eternal ramifications in eternity past, election, foreordination, and it has temporal things in time.
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Jesus dying on the cross is a substitutionary sin bearer even though he wasn't sinful. He died for sinners' sins.
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Raised from the dead, and then in time, God giving people new natures, and with those new natures, freely, willfully, honestly, wholeheartedly say,
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God, I believe in you, but if we somehow get this little deal, you come up to the front, you're saved, that's not going to happen because it is not in the
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Bible, and the onus is not on me to prove it, the onus is on you to find out in the Scripture. Sinners' prayers that are from the heart are a process of God drawing those little ones or old ones, or they're already saved.
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Faith is a cause of salvation. May it never be. Faith is the consequence, the glorious consequence.
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Harry Ironside talked about a new convert who gave a testimony in a church service.
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The person had a smile and joy. How I've been delivered from a life of sin. He gave
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God all the glory. He said nothing about his own merits, just about the redemption found in Christ Jesus.
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But somebody was in charge and they were very legalistic and they didn't like this whole faith alone, grace alone, salvation by Christ alone.
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So they said this to this young man. You seem to indicate that God did everything when
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He saved you. Didn't you do your part before God did His? He jumped to his feet, the new
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Christian did. Oh yes, I did. For more than 30 years
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I ran away from God as fast as my sins could carry me. That was my part. But God took out after me and ran me down.
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That was His part. We contribute our sins.
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God saves in spite of our sins. And doesn't that push any kind of boasting, any kind of merit, any kind of I did something, we are recipients, we are passive in salvation and God has done it all.
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And when God does it all, you can lay down on your deathbed and go, He is the one who has been faithful to the end.
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He is the one that when I preach the gospel in the common or to my kids or my friends, I better do twice of a teaching to God to save and half the preaching to these people because God must save through the preaching of the gospel.
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Faith is a gift, a glorious gift. And as God allows,
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I will try to guard that glory from the pulpit so He receives the praise.
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Let's pray. Lord, thanks for this day. You are an awesome God. We throw the word awesome around so often yet You are the one.
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We came as poor and You gave us riches in Christ. We came as needy and You supply all of our needs that we have.
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Lord, we came as impoverished and You have blessed us in the heavenly places with spiritual gifts only because of Christ.
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And Lord, we would ask, I would ask as a pastor, Lord, would You rivet it into the people's minds that salvation, when we say is by grace, that they really believe it in their hearts.
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Father, would You take away any kind of vestige of belief that we have in the congregation that faith is meritorious, faith is a work, faith is something that we do apart from Your grace.
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Father, it is robbing them of Your glory and I pray that You would excise that. And Lord, You are such a good physician.
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We would ask that You would do it with gentleness and goodness and kindness. And Lord, may our church be the kind of church that praises
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You in a way that is deeper, knowing what we know now. Lord, we are not learning this just to learn it.
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We want to learn this because You deserve all the praise and glory. And we would ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.