Well, just talk to the Lord and ask Him to bless the time of preaching. Dear Lord, thank you for this day, for this time that we can, again, come away from the world, Lord, and focus our minds and our thoughts on you. We pray, Lord, that you would open our understanding of what you would have for us tonight. Speak to us through Pastor Siegel. In Jesus' name, I pray. All right, so now while we're back in Galatians 5, we'll start there, and then we're going to jump off and continue on in our study here. We've been going through, you know, the fruit of the Spirit. We went through each individual work of the flesh, took that, you know, 15 weeks or whatever it was to go through each individual one of those. And now that we have an understanding of all of that, we're looking at The fruit of the Spirit in somewhat the same light. We examine that work of the flesh as being not a list of things that you're trying to cut out of your life and stuff you're trying to stop doing and all that, but what it is is it's there as a spotlight to show the dark corners of your heart where those works are residing, where all that is, to show you what you are on the inward parts. Okay? If God shows you that you are a fornicator and adulterer, then you are a fornicator and adulterer. If he shows you have idolatry in your heart, well, you are an idolater. Okay? And it isn't that, hey, I'm just trying to stop this stuff. No, that's who you are, and you need Christ to clean that up. He's the only one that can replace those things. And what he replaces that with is once you're born again, you then get the fruit of the Spirit. The Spirit of God comes and resides within you. And it is truly all three of the Godhead. It's God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Entirety of the Godhead takes up residence within you. And that will bring forth fruit. Okay, it'll bring forth fruit, it's a change to life. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new. And it's interesting, just as a sidebar note on that, as you look at that verse and it says behold, you know, Brother Mike Batt has brought this out quite a lot. The Lord's kind of fixated his mind on that from time to time. When you behold something, it's more than just glancing at it, it's more than just looking at it. It is looking at it with an absolute confidence. It's an understanding. It's a grabbing hold of, okay? John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus coming, he said, behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. John 3.14 and on says, and even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life. And it goes on from there. And in that account, back in Exodus, He had lifted up that... No, it wasn't numbers. It wasn't numbers, I apologize. At any rate, he had lifted up that serpent, and it was whoever beheld the serpent, that brazen serpent that was raised up, if they had been bitten by those fiery serpents that had been sung among the people, and they beheld the serpent, then they would not die from that bite. Okay? So there was an element of faith in there. There was an element of belief in there, involved in that. And so, beholding those things, and as it says, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. What that is, is it's an outward showing. I can't behold the things that are working on the inward parts of you. I can't see what God is doing in your heart. I can't see what musings you have in your heart. Sometimes people have a hard time hiding their thoughts, you know, because they'll show it on their face. And we have one friend that her son told her one time, Mom, your subtitles are showing. What she was thinking in her heart was really showing on her face, but other than that, you can't really see what's going on on the inside. And that's why it says, behold, all things are become new. The things that are become new on the inward parts are going to show out. It's going to be something that you can see on the outside. Okay? And that's what that behold is there. But now when we look at the fruit of the Spirit, what we've been doing is we've been examining them little by little and just kind of looking at this as not as far as like what we did with the works of the flesh and in defining each one and going through every place in the Bible where that is used and showing how God uses it. What we've been doing is showing how the Godhead and what aspect of the Godhead brings this forth. How does God give you love? How does God give you joy? How does God give you peace? Where does that come from? How does he work that in the believer, those that have been born of God? And as we've been examining these things, we've gone on down through and now we are at the end of verse 22. So I'm going to read verse 22. Galatians 5. It says, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, and now we're on to faith. And I'm hoping to be able to get through all of faith here tonight. I have quite a list of verses that I want to show because faith is a fruit of the Spirit. It is something that God produces in you. It isn't something that you work up. You have your own faith. And even if you had the faith, the grain of a mustard seed, you could move a mountain. But why have we never seen any mountains actually moved? Jesus talked about it, if you had the faith, the grain of the mustard seed, you could speak to that sycamine tree and say, be thou cast into the sea, and it would be. But we've never seen a sycamine tree cast into the sea. Why? It's because none of us have even the amount of faith it takes to do that. Our faith is so small. The faith that we can work up is so small. And it's so small that there is no way you could work up enough faith to be born again. You just can't. And even if you could, well then that would be salvation by works, wouldn't it? If you put your faith in Jesus, you know what's just happened? You worked up enough faith to put in Jesus. But Jesus, Paul wrote that it's not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy as he saved us. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. If you're working up enough faith to place in Jesus Christ so that he'll save you, that's a work, and you're not born of God. What you need is to be justified by the faith of Christ, as it says in the Bible, in Galatians 2.16. Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Christ. It doesn't say, but by faith in Christ. It does not say that. You are not justified by placing your faith in Jesus Christ. That's not how it works. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says that you are justified by the faith of Christ. That means Christ's faith has to come to you. Okay? Faith is something that is produced in you. All right? And we're going to build on that concept, lay the foundation. Now we're going to build on that concept as we look forward here through these things tonight. All right? Let's start then on this topic of faith. Let's go to Romans chapter 10. We're gonna go to Romans chapter 10, just a few pages back. Oh, and I guess let's start in... Let's start in verse 14. The only reason I'm going to start there is because I preached Sunday morning and it kind of ended on a verse that is quoted in here. Paul quotes the prophet that I had quoted there. So let's start in verse 14. Romans 10 and verse 14. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? And that was where the message ended on Sunday morning. It says this, So then, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Now there's two things that are going to come to a person. Number one, it says that faith cometh by hearing. That means it wasn't there and it came. Okay? Faith cometh by hearing. But there's something else that has to be in place first, is that you have to be able to have ears to hear. You have to be able to hear. And then I'm not talking necessarily about the vocal cords vibrating and making sounds and those sound waves going through the air and hitting your ears and going down into your brain and you're, you know, forming those syllables into words and understanding that. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about having ears to be able to hear the biblical truths that God is presenting. All right, many times Jesus would say, he that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Now, why did he say that? Well, because he had just spoken in a parable. And the parables were a very spiritual truth given in such a way that it was kind of clouded. It was dark speech, so to speak. And the purpose was so that those that could hear would hear that thing. And that those that did not have ears to hear would not hear. The main purpose of that was that the Jews had to have a veil put over their heart so that they would crucify Jesus Christ. They had to have that. They had to have their ears stopped so that they would actually crucify Jesus. There were others, though, that God opened their understanding. They had ears to hear. They were able to receive the messages that Jesus was giving and preaching and all of that. His disciples sometimes couldn't even get him, though, then he'd get alone with them and they'd say, what did you mean by that? And he says, are you also without understanding? And he'd go into the thing and explain it, you know. They were just having a hard time unraveling the things that they thought, and they were having a hard time receiving the Word of God as it was being given to them. One thing that we find out, and you look in Luke chapter 24, and you see very specifically that Jesus Christ opened the disciples' understanding so that they could understand the scriptures. You can't get understanding of the scriptures because I preach them to you. You just can't. You can't get understanding of the scriptures because you went to Bible college, or because you have a commentary, or you have a study book, or anything like that. That's not how you understand the scriptures. The Bible says that you understand the scriptures when Jesus Christ himself opens your understanding. And he does that by inspiration. Job 32.8 says, "...there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding." If you have any understanding from the Word of God, and it has come from God, God says He inspired that in you. Now, inspiration is this. It's breathing in. That's what inspiration is. Expiration is breathing out. You've expired your exhaling, okay? It's a big difference there. In order for God to breathe in inspiration, to breathe in understanding, he has to be in you. He has to be in there working on the inward parts. Now we know that Jesus Christ is that true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. We also know that the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord searching all the inward parts of the belly. And so with this, God is doing a work on the inside of every single person that is walking this earth. There is not a single person that is alive today that God wants to damn to hell. Not a single one. God does not have a list of people that he has decided they are going to die and go to hell, and there is nothing that they can do about it. And these ones over here are going to believe on my son, Jesus, and there is nothing they can do about it. That is not biblical. That is not biblical. Because Jesus Christ tasted death for every man, every individual man. That's none left out. For God so loved the world, It involves everyone, okay? I could go on all night to refute Calvinism in those points, okay? But it's not necessary for what we're looking at here tonight. But what I want you to understand, though, is that faith is something that has to come to you, all right? And it can only come to you through hearing. And hearing has to come to you by the word of God, all right? So that's why the Bible says, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. It's the foolishness of preaching. That's how God works in a lost man. That's how God works in somebody to bring them to the point where they can see their lost state before God. They can see the wretchedness, they can see the wickedness that they've done against the holy law of God, and they can see their condemnation. It's through preaching. And that hearing comes to them. And then they begin believing, first off, that they're wicked. And then God can begin showing them and laying the building blocks of faith within them, showing them Jesus Christ and His sufficiency for that sin. Showing them that sufficiency of His faith, His faith that was provided, that faith that is given. And so it says here in Romans 10, 17, summarizing all of this that we've just gone over, So then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God, all right? And remember, that's not your faith. Now, once God gives you that faith, then it becomes yours, okay? But it's not your faith that you're working up. Believe it or not, whether you're cognizant of it or not, you are placing faith and trust in the chair that you're sitting on. But that's not enough faith for you to stay out of hell, okay? That's not enough. for you to work up enough faith to be able to know that you would never go to hell, that would have to be a divine faith, okay? A confidence that can only be given by someone who was there and came out, okay? And so we're going to get into that as we progress on. So let's move on. Go to Galatians 3. Go over to Galatians chapter 3 now. We're going to bounce around here in the New Testament for a little bit. We'll just see where the Lord takes us tonight. All right, Galatians chapter 3, and we're going to look at verse 22. It says this, "...but the Scripture hath concluded all under sin." All right, the Scripture. The Word of God has made a conclusion. And that conclusion is that all are under sin. There's nobody exempt. There's nobody beyond it. All are under sin. That's the conclusion. And I just want to add in here, whatever the scripture has concluded about you, because it'll show you something different than it'll show them. It'll show my wife something different than it'll show my father-in-law. Okay? But it's concluded that all are under sin. And whatever the scripture has concluded about you on the inward parts, Jesus Christ is the remedy for that. He is that conclusion. He is the only thing that can take care of that. And it's only by His grace. That's why He says, My grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect in weakness. So just understand those things as we continue on, but the scripture has concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. Now, how does one receive the faith of Christ? Bible tells you right here, it's given to them that believe. That promise, what promise? The promise of everlasting life. The promise of eternal life. The promise of the forgiveness of sins. The promise that that conclusion that the law made about you is completely absolved and taken care of. That promise is by faith of Jesus Christ. That faith that comes of Jesus Christ, that is the promise and it's given to everyone that believes. So now we come into this thing here, belief is a choice that you make. Let me just prove that to you. You chose to believe that that chair was gonna hold you up tonight. You chose that. There's not a single person in here standing because they didn't believe that chair would hold them up. All right? Now, as you consider that, how does one believe? Well, I'm gonna turn to it. You don't have to, but I'm going to just so I quote it properly. But John chapter six and verse 29. How does one believe? How does one choose to believe? Like, how do you even get to that point? Well, listen to this. Jesus answered and said unto them, this is the work of God, that you believe on him whom he hath sent. You believing on the Lord Jesus Christ that God sent is a work of God. Is it a dangerous thing to say that salvation is of the Lord? I've been told it was. I've been called a Calvinist because I said that. And all I was doing was quoting Jonah chapter two, where it literally says, salvation is of the Lord. And then Jonah was spit out of the fish, vomited him up on the dry ground. And I was called a Calvinist because of that. Yeah, go ahead. Well, because I placed my faith and trust in Jesus when I decided I wanted to get saved. That's the concept. That's the mindset in Baptist preaching today. I decide according to my will when I want to get saved. Do you want to get saved tonight? All right, go ahead. Just pray and ask Jesus to save you then. But John 1.12 says, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. You're not born again just because you want to be. You get born again because God chooses to save you. Now, how does God choose to save you? Well, when you choose to believe His word, He chooses to save you. That's the condition. That's all it is. You choose to believe, God chooses to obey his own word, stick to his own word, and save you. Okay? But there might be something in your heart, holding out in your heart of unbelief that you can't see. And some slick-tongued preacher comes and lays out this really good message, and it's so stirring, and it's very emotional, and ends with a good invitation at the end, and challenges, hey, anybody that doesn't want to go to hell, you don't want to go to hell, do you, son? No, you don't. Why don't you just go ahead and ask Jesus to save you? Remember, Romans 10, 13 says, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And God would be a liar if he didn't save you because of that. But we started with the very next verse tonight. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Okay? Do you remember when Saul, King Saul, was told to kill all of the Amalekites? He was told him, he was instructed to destroy all of them. Kill every single one of them. Men, women, children, all of them. Their livestock, take nothing and just kill them all. Did he obey that explicitly? No. He saved the king, I think it was Agag, saved him alive. And he saved the best of the oxen and the sheep to sacrifice unto the Lord is what he said. And when Samuel came up to Saul, Saul said, everything that the Lord has told me, I did. I did it all. I did it exactly like you wanted to. And Samuel says, well, what meaneth the bleeding of the sheep in my ears? Why do I still hear sheep if you did everything exactly like what you were supposed to do? Because you were supposed to kill them all. Now, what does this have to do with belief? Well, if you believe with all your heart, you'll be born again. But why is there that voice of doubt still kind of nagging away at you? Belief is full, unreserved confidence that something is true with no competing voice. So if you believe with all your heart, why is there still that, oh, I don't know about that. I'm not too sure about that. That's not belief. You're getting there. Faith is being built in you by the word of God. God is giving you repentance on some things. He's showing you some things. He's opening your eyes to some spiritual truths, but you are far from ready to be born again. You may want to be born again, and God says, yeah, and I want you to repent. And he's not gonna save you until he's satisfied that you believe him. Okay, I believe Sunday we're gonna be preaching a little bit more on this, all right, about that candle of the Lord searching the inward parts of the belly. We're gonna dive into that. That was the extra. For those of you who were here last night, that's some of the extra that God gave me at the end of that message that I didn't get to, okay? I didn't think I would, but he's kind of just stirring all that up, so that's in there. So I'm not sure when it'll be Sunday morning, Sunday night, but it'll be sometime Sunday. But regardless of all that, as we look at this, God requires you to believe Him and to believe His Word with your whole heart. That's what He requires, okay? God does that work of belief in you. How? Through preaching. through His Word. He untangles the knotted mess of thoughts in your mind with His Word. He takes that sharper than any two-edged sword and He pierces where? Right to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit. He cuts you right open on the inward parts and He shows you and everything is naked and exposed to Him with whom we have to do. There's nothing hidden in His sight. But yet there's a corner of your heart that is holding on to bitterness, that's holding on to anger, that's holding on to wrath, that's holding on to lust, it's holding on to something. Maybe you're just holding on to your own identity, afraid to let go. That might be it. Whatever it is, God is trying to show that to you. And He's trying to get you to forsake you and turn to Him. It's what he's striving with you for Genesis 6 3 says that the For the Spirit of the Lord no, how's it? How's it go? I'm gonna turn to a good night. I apologize Speaking of the striving Alright, the Lord said, my spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh. Alright? It's a lowercase s spirit, signifying that that is the personal spirit of Jesus Christ. And you see that spirit striving with man throughout the Old Testament. You see that spirit striving with man throughout the New Testament. And we still see him striving with man today. Just as he wrestled Jacob all night, he wrestles men over their unbelief. Men will wrestle, and women, all right, children, I'm not just, I'm just saying that as mankind, all right? They'll wrestle with God in their unbelief. But God, I don't believe that. And you might not articulate those words, but that's in your heart, okay? And God is not gonna save you on your terms. He's gonna save you on his terms that he set forth in the word of God. And so it has to be his faith because you have to believe with your whole heart. And your heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things, who can know it? And what we're about to learn here in just a couple of seconds is that faith has to come from a pure heart, but that heart has to be purified by faith. If your wicked heart works up faith, is that faith gonna be good at all or is it gonna be wicked? It's gonna be wicked, all right? So a little more foundation there, a little more groundwork. Oh, let's continue on and look at Galatians chapter 2. We'll look at verse 16. I quoted this. Now we're gonna read it with our own eyes again, and of course we delved into this in quite some depth when we went through this in our study in Galatians, but looking at this, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. That does not say by your faith being placed in Jesus Christ. It says you are justified by the faith of Christ. It's his faith that justifies you. The thing is Romans 5-9, much more than being justified by faith, we shall be saved from wrath through him. Well, what wrath is that? Well, that's the time of Jacob's trouble. That's that time of great wrath that's going to be poured out on the world. That's that time of tribulation. That's how we know that we aren't going to spend one second in the tribulation period. Why? Because we are much more now, at present, being justified by faith, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. And really, that's the true doctrine of what's going on in Romans 10-13. Whosoever shall call upon the Lord shall be saved. Saved from what? In context? Saved from the wrath of God. Saved from that tribulation. You're gonna go in the rapture. You're gonna go in the resurrection. You're not gonna be a part of it. You've got your ticket punched and you're ready to go, all right? And it is that future thing that is coming. It's not the mechanics of how a person gets saved, it's showing that everyone, Jew, and you look at the context of Romans 10, Jew, Gentile alike, they that call upon the Lord aren't gonna be a part of that wrath, whosoever. And I love that it's a whosoever will. Whosoever will may come. Your will is the only thing that can hinder the will of God. Remember that God's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance? That sounds like God wants every single person to come to repentance. But do they? So there is proof, absolute proof, that God's will is not always accomplished. Because he's not willing that any should perish, but perish they do. And the only thing that hinders that is your stubborn will, refusing to bend your will to the will of God, refusing to do it His way, refusing to go along with His way, okay? And looking at this, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Christ. Even we have believed in Jesus Christ that we might be justified by the faith of Christ. And there it is, our responsibility is to believe. That's why he gave us the scriptures. Listen, in his foreknowledge, yes, God knows who's gonna believe and who is gonna deny and reject. With that concept, if we didn't have any part in that whatsoever, why did history play out at all? Why did we have Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy? Why do we have all of that? Why do we have the 6,000 years from Adam to here? Why do we have the 2,000 years from Jesus to this point? Why are we still alive? So that we would believe the scriptures. God could have made it so that as soon as he was cognizant, and he's always known, and that's God. The infinity of God is just beyond our grasping. We just can't get it. But just for the sake of saying so, as soon as he had your name and your face in mind, which was from eternity past, he could have automatically made it that as soon as you were born, you were born again, and you were gone. The problem is then, your mother would have never grown up to have you. And so it just doesn't, it's illogical, all right? You don't have to set aside any of your logic to believe this Bible. You don't have to set aside any reasoning in your mind to believe this Bible exactly as it's written. But what you will have to do is you'll have to set aside your religious mindset. You have a framework of religion. Everyone does. Some of it is good, some of it is bad. Some of it aligns with the Bible, some of it does not. It's just tradition of men, okay? What you have to do is you have to let the Bible sift out what you believe, okay? You don't have to believe Baptist doctrine to be born again, but you have to believe the Bible to be born again. Okay? Keep that in mind. And where Baptist doctrine veers away from the Word of God, it's wrong. Okay? Now... Go ahead, John. Yeah. Yep. Right. God giving it to you, right. And really, it goes back further than this, but it was really hammered home and became mainline under Charles Finney. We can have revival now was his motto. That was his mantra of all of the revivals that he led in all the cities. We can have revival now. And he figured out how to work a crowd with preaching, with music, with poem, with emotion, so that he could get thousands of people to flood the altar and claim to have gotten saved. But he lamented in his later years that every city he was in where those great revivals, 50,000 people in the city getting saved supposedly, nothing had changed in the city. And in fact, it had gotten worse. The church roles had never changed. The houses of prostitution were still open and booming. The liquor stores and the, well, they called them public houses back then, but the public houses, the bars, were still in full swing. Divorce courts, you know, full of clients. Nothing had changed. So what was that? It was just emotionalism. And that's what's really taken over mainline Baptist preaching today. And we say, oh no, you know, easy believism. We know that's wrong. You know, and the whole Jack Hiles thing and that First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana and the whole nine yards of that. We know that's wrong. You know, just a one, two, three, pray after me. And as long as you say that I believe Jesus is Christ, then you're born again and they'll mark you down on the roll. So much so that they'll put their foot in the door as it's being slammed in their face and just say, just say that you believe Jesus is Lord. And they'll call that a salvation. They'll write it down. And that's how they get Here's a statistic for you. There's a pastor down in Mocksville, North Carolina that keeps track of a certain bigger Baptist church down in that area, okay? Keeps track of their soul winning statistics. And in one year, in the county that they are in, they had enough people saved in that county in that year, it equaled up to three times the population of that county. Something doesn't fit. And the church isn't any bigger. And North Carolina still went blue. I'm not saying you can't be born again and be a Democrat. I'm not saying that whatsoever. But there's just some things. So then what is it? How do you start with this thing of, well, who then can be saved? Like the disciples said, well, who then can be saved? What did God say? What did Jesus say at that point? With man, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible. And I say to that, salvation is of the Lord. Seek the Lord. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. Repent and weep and mourn, yeah. The word came in 323 pretty much sums it up. In Galatians 323? Came to you the understanding that you didn't have it. Yes. And then you did. Right. But before faith came. we were kept under the law. Now what that is, it's interesting, it's what's called a double entendre. Okay, that's just a fancy word for it. There's two things going on in that verse, in that statement. But before faith came, all right, the main doctrine of that is that faith wasn't there and it had to come. Okay, that's the flat-out, plain doctrine of that thing. But what faith? It's Jesus Christ in context of what's being spoken of. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. That's speaking of the faith of Christ. So it is speaking of that time period, they were shut up under the law, waiting for that faith to come, waiting for the faith of Christ to come. But now, in our day, what this verse means to us is that there's a time in your life where you have no faith. All right, the Bible calls the froward, it calls them children of disobedience in whom is no faith. All right, and he talks and Jesus talks about all those that have no faith. And there's a time period where you have no faith, you do not have the faith of Christ. But after that faith came, after faith came, We're no longer under the law. Once you're born again, you're not under that schoolmaster anymore. The law is a schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, okay? So that we could be justified by faith, all right? We're digging a little deep tonight, all right? And so if your head is spinning, if you're swimming along, just grab hold of this basic truth here. We're talking about faith. We're talking about that faith is a fruit of the Spirit. It's an aspect of the fruit of the Spirit, okay? It's something that God gives you. Your faith is not enough to save you. But the Bible says that we're justified, we are declared righteous in the eyes of God. We are justified by the faith of Christ. Not your faith, the faith of Christ. All right, that's the basic baseline of what we're looking at, and we've delved deeper than that though, all right? But let's keep going. Let's go to Acts. Let's go to Acts chapter 15. We're going to start in verse 8. All right, so Acts 15, we'll get a little background of it. This is where Paul is dealing with Barnabas about these ones who have come down from Jerusalem and are starting to preach that you gotta be circumcised as well as believe on Jesus in order to be saved. And they're disputing with him over that fact and they end up eventually going up to Jerusalem and they have that council and they discuss these things and they decide, yeah, no, this circumcision is nothing now. Why? Because it's Jesus. And if you're looking to circumcision, then Jesus prophets you nothing. Again, showing you either believe entirely 100% upon the Lord Jesus Christ, or you're not saved. That's basically what it's saying. And verse 8 says this. All right, now we're talking about God. And God, which knoweth the hearts, bear them witness. Who? The Gentiles. The Gentiles that were born again while Peter was preaching, okay? He bore them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us, and put no difference between us and them. And look at this, purifying their hearts by faith. All right, the Holy Ghost purified their hearts by faith, and then they were born again. Why? Because faith came to them, purified their heart, they were then able to believe, they then believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, and God said, you're born again. Salvation was wrought in them by the Holy Ghost. And because of that, at that period of time, because it is a transition period, there are still Jews alive that were alive before Jesus died and rose again. And they're still there, all right? And so those signs of the Holy Ghost, of the tongues speaking in the other languages and all of that, that was a sign for unbelieving Jews to say, hey, there is credence to this thing. All right? And so the Holy Ghost would do that. He would show those signs immediately in those things. And those Gentiles that believed, believed during the preaching. Peter didn't give an invitation at the end of that sermon, and they came forward, and they asked Jesus into their heart, and got saved, and then all of a sudden showed signs of the Holy Ghost. No. It says, while he yet spake, they began speaking in other tongues. Okay? Why? Because God purified their hearts by faith, and they were born again in the middle of the preaching. Okay? I'm not against giving an invitation, but I am against muscling a person into a profession at an invitation, and I've seen it. Okay? I've seen it. Karleen? Oh, yes. Right. Yeah. Stephen, think about this one. I'll tell you what, right here in Acts. Let's look and see what Stephen says about it. Oh, Acts chapter 7. Yeah, verse 51. Thank you, Lord, for bringing that right to mind. Perfect question. Acts 7, verse 51. Stephen is preaching. The Holy Ghost filled Stephen. Alright, so this is Holy Ghost-fired preaching. Okay? And at the end of this thing, just before Stephen is killed, how about that for an invitation? Just before Stephen is stoned to death after he preaches, he says this in verse 51, ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and in ears. Now pause there for just one second. Uncircumcised in ears. You know why? Because the deadness of the flesh is still there. They did not have ears to hear. Okay? They were stiff-necked. Meaning, when your neck is stiff, you can't turn. They would not turn from their own way and turn unto God. They would not turn, in Proverbs it says, turn you at my reproof. They wouldn't do that. And they're uncircumcised in heart and ears. And it says this, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, as your fathers did, so do ye. So yes, absolutely. That's how people do not get born again in a service. They are resisting the Holy Ghost. They will not yield. And that's why I say salvation is more, when you're born again, it's more of a letting go than a grabbing hold of something. It's not a, like what you said, John, it's not a reaching out and obtaining something. Oh, you do obtain great riches through Jesus Christ, but that's not what it is. It is a full yielding to the mercy of God. knowing you are a wretch. John? Sure. Okay. Back to 15. Yep. Right. Yes. Yep. So, as far as receiving God as Savior, would you say that there is a progression, and everybody is different, and it's different for every person. It's not a mold. But there seems to be a progression that you Right, how shall they believe on him in whom they have not heard? Right, yep, this is where you can get exactly foolishness of preaching and learning. Yes, God's Word and getting a foundation to be able to believe. Yep. To believe that yes, yeah, that continuation. Yeah, for just saying yeah. I'm going to give it to you because I know that heart. Right. To release, you know. That unbelief. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, spot on. And you've got to remember, at that period of time, the Jews, and even today, they are so saturated with the word of God and the law of God from a child up, okay? Even much more so than we are. And, you know, even the Muslims put us to shame in that. The very first thing that a child hears when they are born into a Muslim family is a sahih out of the Qur'an. It's a verse out of the Qur'an. They read a specific verse to that child as soon as they are born, and it becomes such a part of their life. Now remember, the Qur'an is a very small book, all right? It's like from, like what we would know from Matthew to Hebrews, okay? It's about that. But they read it through time and time and time and time and time and time again throughout the year. They'll read it through a hundred times throughout a year. How many times have we done that from Matthew to Hebrew this year? And so these things are, now that is religion. There is absolutely no salvation in that. But I just bring that to light to say, those Jews, they knew the laws of God. It was a part of their life. They still went to the temple. They offered things. I mean, they did all of this. They followed that law explicitly. They had that foundation. And the Gentiles had the influence of the Jews around them. And with what we're at in America today, to kind of bring this full circle and full scope, We are no longer a nation that understands the foundational truths of the Word of God. We might know some Christianity lingo. We might know David and Goliath, and we might know Samson and his great strength, and we might know Adam and Eve, and we might know Noah. We might know the Beatitudes. We might know Paul and his journeys. There's a lot of things that we know, but we don't know Bible. We don't know the Bible doctrine. We just don't. We are a post-Christian nation. You know, and I even spoke to this thing last night, wherein, you know, here in America, back in, you know, if anybody would turn around and see the gray heads in the back, it's a crown of glory to you all, it is. And in that, there's great wisdom, if it be gotten in the way of righteousness, okay? There is a caveat there. A lot of people go gray because of foolishness in their life and stress, all right? But if it be gotten in the way of righteousness, that hoary head is a crown of glory, okay? But now consider this though. In their day, when they were in school, the Psalms were read to them in public school. They opened every morning with prayer. They read some scripture. They memorized scripture in public school. And that has been so far removed. Nobody has that understanding of the law of God anymore. Even in homes that would be offended if they were called Christian home, they understood that the Bible was the word of God. They knew it. Yeah. I think part of the problem today, too, is that even kids that go off to Christian homes, they memorize the verses. They go off to Christian homes, which is cool, they memorize the verses, and they memorize the verses, Right. Yep. Right. It is. Yeah. And in case anybody's wondering, she knows that from experience. OK, that's not just, oh, they, they, they know that's her. That was her. And so just because you grew up in a Christian home, just because you grew up listening to the Word of God, just because you grew up in a good home and it wasn't wicked and it wasn't vile and all of those things, does not mean that your life is automatically right with God. You've got to understand that there has to be a great foundation put in a person. There's a mighty working of the Holy Ghost in a life before salvation can be wrought. Okay? It takes time. These days, today, it takes more time than what it used to. Used to be a Romans Road presentation of the gospel, that was kind of like the icing on the cake that had already been built by God. But now today, you take Romans Road to somebody, all that is is a fire escape out of hell. They have no idea about the faith of Christ. They have no idea about the righteousness of God. They have no idea about the righteousness of the law of God. They don't care about the law of God. And until somebody finds themselves lost under the condemnation of the law of God, they can't be born again. That is Bible salvation, and it's in very short supply these days. All right? Going back to a statement that I started to make a little earlier about easy believism. For many years, we would condemn easy believism, but then when somebody would say, all right, I'm ready to get saved, okay, all you have to do is pray this prayer. It's easy believism. That's exactly what that is. Listen, somebody comes to you. You wanna know how to lead somebody to Christ. First, hand them a King James Bible. Okay? That's step one. Step two, get them under the preaching of the word of God. Step three, God saves them. That's it, okay? That's how you do it. That's how it's done. That's how it was done for years and years and years, generations past, okay? 150 years ago, Charles Spurgeon understood that. He hated, absolutely hated altar calls, hated them. He knew they were a work of the devil. But yet now this has to be a part of our service, why? Again, I'm not against giving a challenge and inviting somebody, hey, see Christ. But there's gotta be a lot of work done ahead of time. And so let's continue on. We got a few more minutes here. What we dealt with mainly here in Acts 15, though, good comments, good questions, it was good all along, all around, is the purifying of their hearts by faith. All right, an understanding, in Jeremiah 17, nine, it says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? All right, God knows the heart. He tries the rains. Okay, and so with that, that heart has to be purified by faith before it can ever believe. All right, there's a process that has to take place. This process is listed out in your Bible if you would just read it. You know, if you would just read it for exactly as it says. Take it when it looks, when it says these things doctrinally, you know, and all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine. All right, so this is a doctrinal verse. Every verse, you know, from Genesis 1-1 to the end of Revelation 22, those are doctrinal verses. All right, every bit of it. Even the genealogies. You can find doctrine in those genealogies. All right, so let's go to, as long as we're right here in Acts, let's go to Acts 20. We're gonna look at just a couple more places. And you know what, I just decided we're gonna take two weeks on faith. All right, we're gonna take two weeks on faith. This is important enough to go slowly enough that we're able to grasp it, okay? So we'll go through this again. It might reach out to three, I doubt it, but we'll just see how it works. All right, Acts chapter 20. Look at verse 21. All right, so here... Paul is speaking and he's speaking of all his working in all of this. I guess look at verse 19. Serving the Lord with all humility of mind and with many tears and temptations which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews. And how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you and have taught you publicly and from house to house. Testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. The two things that Paul preached, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. How does that work, being that it's the faith of Christ? Well, that inclines all faith to him. It inclines that it must be His faith. It is all Him. It's all upon Him. We're going to get into the faith of Christ next week. We're going to talk about that. We'll go into the Psalms, and we'll look at what the faith of Christ is. Because for two years, I believed that you are justified by the faith of Christ. I believed that because the Bible said it. But it was two years before I realized what the faith of Christ was. All right, it took me two years to figure that thing out. The Lord was gracious, and it came through a preacher. I heard it, and it's like, oh, that's what that is. Thank you, Lord. Okay, that makes so much sense now. And we'll look at those things. All right, yeah, sorry. Okay. Yes. Yep. Yes. Hath made thee whole. So what that shows you is you have faith. OK, what did her faith do for her? Well, think about this. It got to the point where she had heard enough about this Jesus to know that he was a miracle worker. And if she could just touch the hem of his garment, that issue of blood would be stanched and it would leave her, that he could help her. She wasted all her substance on it, and doctors and physicians, and for these 12 years she dealt with this thing. And according to the law, she couldn't touch anybody. She was unclean, she had to be completely separated because that blood made her unclean, okay? So consider this, it had been 12 years since anybody had touched her lawfully. And she was at the point of absolute desperation. But what she had heard of Jesus made her believe that if she touched Him, that He could do a work. It motivated her to seek out Jesus. That's what her faith did. And because of that, it got her to the feet of Jesus Christ. And at that moment, it says virtue. He knew that virtue had gone out of him. And it was that virtue that stanched that flow of blood. And so what her faith did was got her there, but it didn't heal her. Does that make sense? The distinguish between the two. It was motivation enough to get her to Jesus. Your faith will get you there, because you're believing what you're being told. I'm not necessarily just saying you in particular, but you in general. You're believing what you're told about Jesus, and it's going to get you to the feet of Jesus. And when Jesus Christ is satisfied with that belief, born again. What does that make, like, if it's faith, if it's Jesus' faith that everyone's saved? Exactly. And so there you have it, that our responsibility is to believe. And our responsibility to believe is connected perfectly in with our will. You remember what Carlene said about those, you know, resisting the Holy Ghost. That's in their will to resist that. Okay? People will resist the work of God in their will. They're not willing to believe. Even though God promised He'd be willing to save them if they would. They're holding back, okay? And so going to Jesus Christ, knowing that he's the only one that can help, that's your faith. But even there, how did she receive that faith? She had heard about Jesus. She'd heard about the miracles. Faith cometh by hearing. hearing by the word of God. Well, what word of God was being spoken? In those days, it was the Old Testament scriptures. And it would have been Isaiah in those places where it speaks of the one that heals the blind and raises those from the dead. Just like Jesus told the disciples of John the Baptist when they came and said, are you the one or are we looking for another? He said, go back and tell John that the dead are raised up, the poor have the gospel preached unto them, the blind can see, and all of that. What was that? He was fulfilling those scriptures. So this woman, a Jew, had heard the scriptures. She had heard that there was a prophet coming. She had heard that the Christ would come. And as she had heard about those things, and then she began hearing of the testimony of this man Jesus walking around the earth, walking around Judea and all around that area, doing these miracles, performing these miracles, that faith was built in her. to believe that if I just touch the hem of his garment, I'll be made whole, okay? And remember, when something is given to you, it becomes yours, okay? God gave you that man right there. He's yours now. Before that day, he was not yours. He was his own man. You were your own woman. Now you are one flesh. Your body doesn't belong to you anymore, it's his. His body doesn't belong to him anymore, it's yours. But there was a point in time where God gave that man to you. And now that he did, he's yours. And it's the same way with our faith. It has to be built in us. Because we'll have faith in anything, all right? We'll trust anything. We'll believe, and some of us are more gullible than others, okay? So we'll believe, you know, that, well, sadly, you know, that those that believe that when that Hale-Bopp comet came along, that that was Jesus coming on that comet, he was gonna rapture everybody up, and so they drank a bunch of poison Kool-Aid and killed themselves. They believed it fully. I know you're too young to remember that, but I'm not, okay? Those things happen. That's why it's so very important to be very careful with how you instruct children in the things of God. Because you can convince them of anything. You can convince a child of anything. And that's why Jesus said, unless you become as a little child, shall not inherit the kingdom of God. And what is that? You just believe what's been told to you from the Word of God, all right? And so faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. Once that faith came to her, it was her faith, and it made her whole because it got her to Jesus. Yes. It's God. God does that. And that's where we find that thing that I quoted in and we took at John 6 29. This is the work of God that you believe on him whom he hath sent. Okay. It's a work that God does. He is in there building that faith. All right. Block by block, piece by piece. Think of it like a puzzle, if you want, okay? It's a mess, it's a tangled mess. All the pieces are there, hopefully, you know, for the brand new puzzle, but all the pieces are there, and little bit by little bit, the master is putting that piece together, that puzzle together, and you're beginning to see more of the picture, and it's becoming more clear and more clear and more clear, and then it gets right down to the end, it's just a couple pieces, and when that final piece gets put in place, there's the full picture of it, and you're born of God, okay? And so it has to come bit by bit. That's why it's precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little, there a little. All right, those things have to build. Right? Yes. Yep, yep, that's right. Because we will look at something that the Bible is telling us, and God is trying to prove to us, that's you. Okay, God's saying, that is you, you are that murderer, because you have hatred in your heart. You know, 1 John, what is it, 315, I think it is. And so you look at that, and you say, but that's not me, I've never murdered anyone, and surely my hatred isn't that bad. But God says it is, and what that is, is it's resisting the Holy Ghost. And God's not gonna save a person that does that. Yep. But as you hear the preaching, as that preaching comes and the Word of God is worked in you, and salvation is then wrought in you by that, faith is wrought in you. What is that song you love to sing there, Theron, that, I know not how the Spirit moves, convincing men of sin, nor how believing in His Word created faith in them. And so it's that your part is to believe the Word of God. God's part is to do all the rest. And getting under the preaching of the Word of God, it not only builds faith unto salvation, but it strengthens that faith and it carries you through. It builds you up in the most holy faith. Right. It required faith. So here's the deal. Salvation for a person has always been believing the promises of God. Okay? It's always been believing the promises of God. But what you'll find in the Old Testament, Under the law, there was specific things that were required to be tagged along with that. Today, and that was the sacrifices, all right? We believe the laws of God, we believe the word of God, we believe the promises of God. Because of that belief, he's told us to do these sacrifices, okay? Today, we don't have those sacrifices, all right? Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth, all right? So it's done. But that law is a schoolmaster to bring you unto Christ. So if you've never been put under the law, you're not under Christ, basically. But as you look at that today, what's tagged with it is you believe the promises of God and you're born again. And now today, we have the spiritual sacrifices, I think there's five or maybe seven of them, that we're to offer daily, our thanksgiving, our praise, all of that. you know, forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is, and so much the more as you see the day approaching, those types of things, okay? So there, and in the tribulation period, it's still gonna be salvation, believing the promises of God, but what's gonna be required in the tribulation period is not taking the mark of the beast. That's what's required during that time, okay? So it's just a shift in that. But as people in the Old Testament were looking forward, they weren't looking forward to the cross. That's not what they were looking at. They weren't looking forward to that coming sacrifice, because they couldn't see that. What they were looking for was the Christ. They were looking for the Messiah to come and set up His kingdom, and they believed the promises of God regarding that. They had heard about another prophet that was going to come and that was going to preach and say the words of God, and they couldn't reconcile that that suffering prophet is the Christ. And so what they had to do, the Jews that were born before Christ died, they had to believe that Jesus is that Old Testament Christ. That's what Paul preached all throughout his ministry, that Jesus is Christ. And now we look back at that, and we say, okay, I believe that Jesus is Christ, but we don't know who the Christ of the Old Testament is. So really, all we have is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the summary of who Jesus is, but we need the entirety of the volume of the book to know who that Christ is, to really know who we're believing on, right? And that's why preaching Christ out of the Old Testament is so important, and just all the Messianic Psalms and the prophets and everything. Yeah, John? Yeah, just going back on a little kid, you can get them to believe anything. is the foolishness of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. However, there are millions and billions of adults that believe on less than that. And Satan will give you every single flavor of something to believe it to differ from God, whether it's Hinduism, or Buddhism, or Islam, yeah, anything. Yep, yep, trust in your guns, yeah. Or another Jesus that Paul preached against, yes. Yep, exactly. And honestly, this thought came to me back when we were up in a clavic, and we were just starting to see all these truths in the Word of God, and everything was crumbling in my hands that I thought I knew, and it's like, I don't know this Bible at all, and I still really don't know it today. that the easiest way to convince somebody of a lie is to have it so close to the truth that it stands in the same shadow. They both cast the same shadow. And so if you look at the shadow, it says, oh yeah, they're about the same, but really it's two totally different things, yeah. And that's in reference to the counterfeit. Counterfeit Jesus. And the Bibles. And the Bibles, yeah. And so close, so close, but Jesus' father was God, not Joseph. And then there's a lot more than that, but at any rate. Okay, I think that's good. I think we're going to close it up for now. Any more questions or anything? Did that help? Okay, kind of bring things into focus for you a little bit? It's just, you've got to step back and look at everything through the eyes of this. Look at faith through the eyes of the Bible, not necessarily through the eyes of what you know about faith, if that makes any sense. Anything else? We'll close it right up. John, do you want to close us in prayer? Father, thank you so much for the opportunity to study your Word, and not the Word of God. Amen.