We're gonna open our Bibles to Luke chapter nine, starting with verses 23 through 27. Then he said to them, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what profit is it if a man gains the whole world and is himself destroyed or lost? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his own glory, and in his father's, and of the holy angels. But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God. May the Lord bless the reading of his word. Let's bow our heads in a word of prayer. Our Father, as we come before you, we just wanna say thank you for all that you have given to us. Thank you for the opportunity to read from your word. Thank you for just the blessing of knowing you. And Father, as we conclude this time on scripture, Lord, I just ask that you would continue to help us to apply what we have learned and to think about it. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. I'm gonna start by asking Jim Ritzer, would you come up and pass one of these out to everybody? Got a handout. I think I got enough for everybody. And we'll get to this in a little bit. But we have been going through scripture, and how do we understand it? How do we understand it? And we looked at the foundational verses, there was Psalms 119, 160, the sum of God's word is truth. When you put all of God's word together and you haven't missed any, and it all agrees, you found truth. And this is, there's others in 1 Corinthians, Paul says, I've written this that you might learn not to go beyond what is written. And in 2 Corinthians 1.13, Paul says, I've written nothing other than what you clearly read and understand. And in 1 Peter 1.20, he says, no scriptures of any private interpretation. In other words, it's open to be understood, to be looked at, to be discussed between people. There are difficult sections, but we should be able to understand it. We should be able to harmonize it and get it to work together. We went from there and we looked at, last week, we looked at some of the different, there is several different levels of authority within scripture, and you'll hear me even differentiate about them when I'm teaching. And the one level is to say, what did God say? And when we can understand what God said correctly, it's got the authority of God behind it. And then we say, what did that mean? How do we, you know, what was the context it was used in? Where does it apply to? And that's got a little lesser authority. Some passages are so clear, there's multiple references, multiple places it's given. We know for a concrete fact, it's for the church, it's for us, it's meant to be applied to us today. And then there's the applications. And the application again drops down to another authority level. It's a third level authority. There is some authority when we're talking about clear and open sin. We speak with God's authority when we say, you know, you can't have an extramarital affair. You can't, you know, be caught in a lie. You can't be cheating like this on your taxes. You can't, you know, this is sin. And it's got to be clear, it's got to be, you know, easily seen. It's not something that, well, I don't like the attitude of this person. I think he's in sin. It's got to be clear. And those were the three kind of levels of authority. Application gets rather interesting because there are times that I will feel convicted about an application and there are times someone else will not feel convicted. And in fact, we have, Several examples of that in Romans and in 1 Corinthians, where some people were eating the meat that had been sacrificed to idols, and Paul said, we know there's no true other gods in the world. You know, whatever you eat, give thanks and eat with a clear conscience. But if you can't, then don't eat, because whatever is not of faith is of sin. And if you go and someone tells you, oh, this was offered to idols and they're struggling with it, don't eat it. And this is where application starts to come in. In our day and age, we have applications where people will say, you know, Disney has become supportive of the LGBT community and different forms of sin, and so we are going to boycott Disney. And, you know, or Hobby Lobby or not Hobby Lobby, Home Depot or some other place. But you know, there's a whole list. And there's other people that even go beyond that. And they said, we're gonna, you know, anyone who doesn't boycott them, then we're gonna boycott them as well because they don't do this. And all of these are matters of application. They are things that cannot be bound on you with the authority of God's word. They're about your conscience. And as we read from God's word, he will give us guidance. He will, you know, if you are feeling guilty, if you're gonna go shop at a place or go spend money on something, don't do it. But on the other term, if there's somebody, a new Christian that's out buying a window for his mother's house at Home Depot, and he's not feeling convicted about it, let him have the freedom to do the work of his hands. And this is where application comes in. And last week we looked at a couple of examples, and I told you this week we'd look at one more. This is the example between free grace, and this is also called easy believism, and lordship salvation. And I printed off both sides of it, and I'm going to only read you some of the free grace. I'm not gonna give this handout, it's 15 pages long. So it would take too many pages, and it didn't actually have anything written down. So we're gonna go through it just from here, and we'll look at it. And what I wanna do is I wanna give you a practical exercise and talk to you about how do you understand scripture. And this is something that, it's kind of a hot button to me. I don't react to it a lot. But I'm gonna be honest, if we're gonna discuss scripture, I wanna know what verses you're standing on. I wanna know what verses you're standing on. I will often draw either a line in the middle of a page or like a timeline and put verses, one positions on the right, one positions on the left, and then start listing out verses. to try to find out what the Bible says. And I might print out 15, 20, 30 verses on a side. This particular debate, the man claims he has 160 verses. 160 verses on the easy-believism side. And he said, so you can know, literally his words, you can be sure that this is truth. And this is a big church, well-known church down in Texas. And I'm just going to leave it at that. And I didn't give you this handout. Like I said, it's all verses. There's actually no writing on it. It's just verses. And we're going to just look at some of them, and I'm going to tell you what he did. But I would encourage you that when you start to study a subject that you honestly do this, get a sheet of paper, start making your lists. When I discuss something of theological importance, a disagreement of interpretation, you know, on whatever it is, I wanna know what verses you're standing on. And I listened to a friend of mine who was a preacher as well, and he said something that has always stuck with me. He said, you should study the other position to the point that you can give the other position better than they can. We are not here to win with technicalities in our words. We're here to seek truth. We're here to seek truth. So, no just quick, easy answers. We're looking to find out what is the sum of God's word when we put it all together. All right, let me give you the debate, and then I'll give you this paper, and then we'll get into the paper I passed out. First of all, the debate started in the 80s, at least officially in America, it really came in. This idea of free grace came out of Dallas Theological Seminary, to my knowledge, Schofield and Zane Hodges, and there's a whole list of names of people that got involved and really pushed this. And the belief is summed up in the fact that all you have to do is believe. If at any point in your life you say, Jesus is Lord, I believe he died for my sins, you're saved. No questions asked, God will remain faithful, even if you deny God, even if you turn against him, you will still end up in heaven. Now this is a very popular belief. One, because we all have loved ones that aren't living the way they should be living. And this belief can give us hope similar to the, I know of several older men that have given up on their belief in a literal hell because they have family members, I believe, because they have family members who have rejected God and they have said God wouldn't punish anyone for eternity regardless of what the Bible says. And that's quite the change. But they're doing it because of family members. Now, the other problem with this is, you know, most of the people who believe this want to see you live a holy life. They want to see you live a holy life. But this leaves the door open for sin. And in fact, on their website, their tagline at the end of every page is, imperfect people doing life with a perfect God. Now that kind of sums up to me this belief, imperfect people. If you got a little sin in your life, don't worry about it a lot. You know, only if you got real major, major sin, and even then, you know, it would be better for you to get rid of it, but you know, I don't, you know, and again, each church will define it a little different and do it a little different. All right, their belief is that if any time in your life you believe, you say Jesus is Lord, you're saved. So if you're six years old and you say a prayer and you go forward, you're saved. Now, this is missing the fact that God is the one who actually saves a soul. He has to do an internal work. It's not the prayer that saves us. And that when God does the work, there's going to be a change in the life. And this is the other side of the issue, and it's called Lordship Salvation, that when you accept Jesus Christ as Savior, you also accept Him as Lord. that there will be, he will become the authority in your life. It's not that you're not sinless, but that you will accept him as the authority in your life. You know, Jesus came to save his people from their sins, not just in the future in front of God's face, but here on this earth. to make a people that a holy nation, a called out people that are gonna be for the glory of his name, a city that is set on a hill. He did not save us to continue to live in sin. Now, again, I'm just gonna read you a couple of verses and I'm gonna, or a couple of what they wrote. And I want you to notice how they start this out. This is very good in the sense that it's a wise, logical debate, and it almost wins the argument before you even get there. There are many Bible verses that tell us salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Now, they define their position that they are the ones holding that position. And by saying that, starting off that way, we all would go, amen, right, amen. And that is not argued by either side. But they start off their argument as if they are the only side holding that it's by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And it's not true. It's simply not true. And then he says, yes, you can be sure. There are approximately 160 verses in the New Testament that clearly state that salvation is based upon a person's faith, trust, or belief in Jesus Christ as Savior. Yet even if there was even one, it would not be any less true, since the Bible is God's word and His word is truth. And again, that last statement, can any of us argue with that? God's word is true, his word is true, even if there was one verse, amen, amen. So, this author and the way they frame their argument, and I've read several blogs and articles and books on this, and it almost always starts out the same way. They frame their argument so that emotionally you're ready on their side. You notice he's not saying, I'm telling you, you can live in sin. He's not going to say that. But that's where the discussion is. What kind of sin is allowed? I mean, we're not arguing that a believer falls into sin occasionally. We have David as an example. Most of the patriarchs, Abraham. Yeah, I'm not going to go there. But, you know, most of them at some point fell into sin and God had to rebuke them. but they're not gonna bring that up. They're talking about salvation, and they're just saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no, salvation is only believe. And then they're gonna give us a list of verses, and it's just literally going through a concordance, putting in trust, believe, or faith. Any one of those three words, and then they list them in order, and they got 160 verses that are listed. And I've pulled out quite a few of them that is kind of interesting. I got to check my time to see how bad I'm doing. I still got a couple of minutes. So, we're not going to spend a lot of time on this. But if you go to John 1, John 1. Again, they're just looking for words with believe, with believe. And the real question in this debate becomes this. You have to define three terms. Repentance, belief, and faith. Repentance, belief, and faith. And you need to define them from the Bible. If you define them from the Bible, you know, all of these are God's word, correct? Every one of these 160 verses is God's word. Every one of them I say amen to, but I draw a totally different conclusion than they do. Oh, absolutely. They say that if you believe at any point in time, you are saved. I don't think these verses are telling us that. I don't believe these verses are telling us that. Let's go to John 3. There's a good one. We'll skip John 1 because time keeps getting away from me. John 3. There's quite a few verses he points out. Verses 14, 15, 16, which we know. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Now you look at those and it's very clear it says believe. If you believe, you will be saved. Correct? One of the other verses that he went, just go back to chapter 2, verse 23. I just want to point this out. Now, when he came into Jerusalem at the Passover during the feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs which he did. Now, they say, see, all you need to do is believe. Read verse 24. But Jesus did not commit himself to them because he knew all men and had no need that anyone should testify. man, for he knew what was in man." Does that sound like he's really seriously endorsing him? No, he doesn't. Even in James, there is a belief the demons believe and tremble. In John 3, Jesus wouldn't say, you must just believe. He said, you must be born again. John 3, 3. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And so what we want to do is we want to take all of the verses and we want to put them together. We don't want to be left out with just going, well, you know, In particular, let's think about Matthew 7, 13, which talks about the way being narrow and straight and few there be that find it. And let me just read it for you because I can't quite come up with the right words of it. Enter by the narrow gate for the wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction and there are many that go in by it. And again, what's the sign on that gate? heaven this way. This is not for sinners. This is for people in the church. People that are thinking they have found a road to eternal life. Broad is the gate, wide is the way that leads to destruction. But because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way that leads to life, and there are few who find it. So when we start to define this, when we start to look at it, we got to look at all the verses. We got to look at them in context of what they're saying. And let me just pick... Let's go to James. He's got one here in James. There's so many I could look. Okay, here's first one. Let me read you another one. I'm sorry, I'm jumping around, but even though I marked them, time's going too fast. Acts 26, 18. Acts 26, 18. And this is good enough. If you don't have it underlined in your Bible, I would encourage you to underline it and to memorize it. Now remember, all they're saying is, all you have to do is believe. Yet Acts 26.18 says this. Jesus is speaking to Paul. Paul is quoting his talk with the Lord. We'll start with verse 16. "'But rise and stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness, both of the things which you have seen and the things which I will yet reveal to you. I will deliver you from the Jewish people as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you, to open their eyes.'" Now read the rest of this. in order to turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in me." Now, he would look at that and say, all you got to do is believe. See, that's all you got to do is believe. And that verse tells me that the gospel comes and it turns people from what? Yeah, it opens their eyes, first of all, to show them their sin, to turn them from darkness to the light, where before you followed darkness, now you're what? You're following the light. And from the power of Satan to the power of God. This is a changed life. So I don't know how you can read this and think, well, this is only believe and you can live any way you want. See again, this is the problem of trying to win the debate just with words. He's not actually even discussed what the debate is. Even though this man at the beginning of the blog article talks about how important it is that we hold to the faith and we only, you know, just belief alone and can't add anything to belief alone and he goes on and on. But he never defines this. They change their definitions of everything. Believe is to give an intellectual assent that this is true. Okay, just an intellectual assent that this is true. And repentance is a change of mind only. Saying, well, I believe there is a God. That's what they're saying. That's what they're saying. And they're also stating very clearly that repentance is a secondary act, not a primary act, not a part of salvation. Not a part of salvation. You'll notice the verses that are missing in this whole pamphlet when Peter preaches to the Jews. He says, repent. They say they're cut to the heart in Acts chapter two. What shall we do? He says repent. Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't even think he says repent or believe. Acts chapter... to verse 37, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do? Peter said, repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Yeah, it doesn't say believe. So they're not gonna put that verse in. Now, when you take the sum of God's word, what do you have to do? You have to put that verse in. You have to say, that is there. That is there. You can't just throw it out. You can't say, well, that was only for the Jews. Only because they had crucified Christ. My sins put Christ on the cross. Your sins put Christ on the cross. Not really the Jews. He went to the cross voluntarily. They bear a responsibility and a guilt for that, yes. I don't want to absolve them of that, but you can't say this doesn't apply to us. You just can't say that. One other one. Let's just look this one up. This will be the last one we look up. James 2.23. James 2.23. That's right after the book of Hebrews. James is a short book. So let's just start with verse 23. It says, and the scripture was fulfilled which says, Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. And he was called the friend of God. Okay, if you take that verse, stop right there and you look up at me and you don't read any other scripture, you say, see, it just says believe. Go back to verse 17. And let's read from 17 to the end. Let's start before that, 14. What does it profit my brethren if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? Okay, now faith and belief are synonyms. He looked up trust, faith, and believe when he made this list of verses. He's not listing this one. Is this the question, though, that we are trying to answer? It is. Do you need works? Is there a, you know, does, it's not that we earn salvation by doing works, but does our salvation produce works? Is it required that our salvation produces works? And the answer is yes. James is very clear of it. He says, can faith save him apart from works? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says, depart in peace, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. It's not a living faith. It's a fake faith. It's a fake faith. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without your works and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God. Okay, here it is. We're talking about belief, right? You do well. Even the demons believe and tremble. Oh. But do you want to know, O foolish man, what faith without works is dead? Was not, here's our verse, Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you not see that faith was working together with works and by works faith was made perfect? And then the scripture was fulfilled which says Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. You see how that changes the whole picture of that verse? He says it's not just that Abraham believed. Abraham believed God. I think it was chapter 17 in Genesis when God said, I will give you descendants as the stars of the sky and as the sand of the sea. And he went outside and he counted them. He believed God and God said he was counted to him as righteousness. It's way back in Genesis 22, and I'm not positive on that, but somewhere back there that he offers Isaac his son. But the offering of Isaac, his son, shows that his trust and his belief in God was true. When God said, Abraham, I want you to go to a place that I'm gonna show you, you're gonna offer Isaac, your son, as a sacrifice, Abraham got up early in the morning and he went. Did not understand it, but he knew God had spoken and he was accountable, so he went. And James says this shows that Abraham's faith was true faith. It was not a false faith, it was a true faith. He obeyed and did, you know, it produced works. You see, verse 24, you see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith only. Okay, now, this is not justified in front of God, but he shows the fact that he has been justified by his works. Okay, when we say we believe, okay, let me give you, let's put this in another example. Let's say Angie and Joe are hurting. Let's say your house burns down. And I say, oh, Angie, we love you. We love you and Joe. And I stop. Are my words being justified? They're not being justified. But if I say, you know, I've got some savings, give me two or three needs, we'd like to help. You know, and others in the church start coming up and saying, we wanna help, we wanna help. And then you look at it and you go, you know, your words were justified. When you said, I believe in God, when you said, I love you, your words were justified, why? Because they showed the reality of them in the actions that came out. That declaration that, Abraham believed God and he was righteous was proved by the fact that his life changed and he worked it out. All right. All I'm gonna do is leave that here because so many of them talk about by faith or they believed and they totally ignore the context of the verse. Remember we talked about that also in understanding scripture. You can't understand a scripture just by taking one line of it. You must read it in the paragraph, in the section, even in the book to understand what it's talking about. You must know who the author is writing to. This was a perfect example. of where this man took a verse as a proof text without even considering the context that that is in. Because the context is completely the opposite of the conclusion that he drew, completely. Now, this comes from Grace Community Church. It's grace2u at John MacArthur, their blog. I'm giving it to you. We're going to just read over. We won't read all the verses, but we'll read over the five or six points. I want to start with Matthew 7. You can see that on the front page, Matthew 7, 13 through 20. We read that. Now let me stop there. Why did Christ teach that? Let's just be honest. What did it just say? It's difficult to get in the right way, right? There's many false prophets, many false ways. Therefore, beware. Be cautious. Be zealous. Understand this. They come to you in sheep's clothing. They come dressed as a shepherd. But inwardly, they are ravenous wolves. They're of a completely different breed. And then listen to what verse 16 says. You will know them by what? By their fruit. You will see the reality of their life by what they do. You know, it's, you remember there's a statement, I've read it somewhere, that your life is speaking so loudly, you know, this is talking to the guy who's got all those words, that I can't hear what you're saying out of your mouth. You know, I just, I can't hear it. You know, you got a guy who's, you know, I'm probably the most humble person you ever met. I just, you know, it takes a lot to get under my skin. I'm so humble, it just doesn't bother me at all. And I'm willing to do, you know, just about any job. I mean, I prefer the better ones, but I'm just so humble. You know, and you're like looking at him going, I don't think so. I don't think you know what that word means, you know? It doesn't mean what you think it means. This is it. God is giving a, and this is teaching from Jesus Christ. It's all, all the scripture is God's word. But these verses are on that timeline too. You can't just pick and choose. You can't throw out the verses you don't like. He says, you will know them by their fruits. Then he gives us this verse, which is the rest of this is really important. Do men gather grapes from a thorn bush or figs from thistles? Now, why does a fig tree bear figs? because of its nature, it's inside nature, right? Because of the genetics inside the fig tree, it's going to bear fruit and all the fruit that it bears will be figs. It might occasionally have some diseased figs, some sickly figs, some not mature figs, but it will bear figs. It can't bear anything else. Christ is telling us, look at the fruit of their life. 1 John will say the same thing. Don't be deceived. He that doeth righteousness is of God. He that practices righteousness is of God. He that continues in sin is of the devil. If you can continue in sin long term with no sense of conviction, it's because you don't have the Holy Spirit in you. You don't have the new nature. If you have the new nature, you have the new heart, you know there is a God, you know there is a just judge, you know he has loved you, you know he gave his son to save you from sin, how can you take pleasure in sin? Now I'm not gonna say that a Christian never sins. That would be unbiblical too. But when you do sin, you repent. And the repentance is more than a change of mind saying, what I thought was okay, let's talk about immorality. What I thought when I was unsaved of immorality was no big deal. You know, only adultery is, you know, because I'm not married. So I can have immorality all I want. I just don't want to do adultery. And, you know, as long as I haven't got permission or given a promise, then I'm okay. And then all of a sudden that person gets saved. And he starts to understand, this is destroying my life. And this is bringing me into sin. And you start to see repentance going on, and a fight against it. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. And that's the bottom line. If God has given you a new heart, He's put His love within you, Romans 5, 5. He's written His law in your heart, Ezekiel 36, 26 through 30. And He's given you the Holy Spirit to teach you. How can you be the same? You know, I've told you this before, but it's worth repeating one more time. Often, someone will come to know the Lord, genuinely come to know the Lord. Six months to a year later, they're back with me or with dad, it's happened to both of us, and they're pouring their heart out, and they said, I don't know if I'm even saved. And you go, why? What's going on? Tell me about what's going on in your life. What's causing these doubts? And they say, I don't want to sin and I find myself still sinning. I have words in my vocabulary I want to get rid of. I have a thought pattern that I got to get rid of. I've got, you know, an addiction in pornography. I've got an addiction to cigarettes, to this, to that, you know, whatever it is that's bothering them. I've got all these things I want to change. You know, I got mad at my wife. And I totally lost it and I yelled at her and we screamed and we had this drag out fight just the way we did, you know, 10 years ago when I was a non-Christian. I said, how long has it been since you've had a fight like that? A year and a half. When you were a non-Christian, how often did you fight like that, weekly? And now that you fought like that, what did you do? I apologized. And I'm just like looking at him and I'm going, and did you feel convicted of sin? Yeah. You know, I mean, every time he, you know, this conversation happens, it's because you're battling sin. And yes, the Christian has fallen. He's fallen back into an old rut, an old behavior, an old pattern, but he's battling sin. He wants to do better. You can't get better fruit than that, can you? I get that fruit and I go, that is a genuine Christian. I get the guy who says, I've been here for six weeks and there's no sin in my life. And I think, oh, you're so humble. It does not work. I want to see that you're battling. I want to see that you're aware of it. You know what the holiness of God is. You know what you've been called to do. Nobody's arguing, it gives us five points, bottom of page one, Christ's death purchased our eternal salvation. No one argues that. The saved are justified by grace through faith in Christ alone. Nobody's arguing that. Sinners cannot earn divine favor. Nobody's arguing that. Nobody's arguing that. God requires no preparatory work or no pre-salvation reformation. He doesn't. He came to save sinners. Eternal life is a gift of God. Nobody's arguing that. Believers are saved before their faith ever produces any righteous work. Nobody's arguing that. Christians can induce sin, sometimes horribly. Nobody's arguing that. Okay, what are you arguing? Well, it gives us several distinctives. I don't remember how many there was. Let me just read you the distinctives and we're gonna skip the verses. First of all, scripture teaches that the gospel's call to sinners to faith is joined in oneness with repentance. And then there's verses and I've printed them out so you can read them below. Repentance is a turning from sin that consists not of a human work, but of a divinely bestowed grace. And I just ask you to go down and look at Acts 11, 18 and 2 Timothy 2, 25, almost at the bottom of the page. Acts 11, 18, when they heard these things, they became silent and they glorified God, saying, then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life. Who gives us repentance? God does. 2 Timothy 2.25, in humility, correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance so that they may know the truth. Again, it's clear. We are called to repent, but unless God does the work of impressing on my heart the reality of sin and the danger of sin and the danger of the position that I'm in, I'm gonna flee from the light. I'm just gonna say I don't like the message or the messenger, go away. But when God shines into our heart with the light of the truth, we're cut to the heart and we're broken. And like the Jews, here Peter did not give them a comfortable message. You with your wicked hands have crucified the Son of God, your Messiah. And they were cut to the heart and what did they do? What can we do to be saved? What can we do to escape the condemnation of God? And Peter says, repent. Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. You know, give confession that He is Lord, that He is the Messiah. And that day, 3,000 were added to the church. 3,000. All right, continuing on to point two. The second one, this is on page three. Scripture teaches that salvation is all God's work. Those who believe are saved utterly apart from any effort on their own. Titus 3.5, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. Even faith is a gift of God, not of works. of man, not a work of man. Real faith, therefore, cannot be defective or short-lived, but endures forever, that he who has begun in a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ, Philippians 1.6. In contrast, easy beliefs or free grace teaches that faith might not last and that a true Christian can completely cease believing. It's never going to happen. Third, scripture teaches that the object of faith is Christ himself, not a creed or a promise like John 3.16. Faith involves a personal commitment to Christ. In other words, all true believers follow Jesus. Okay, now he did not have Luke 19, or Luke 9 that we read this morning. But that is so clear, if anyone desires to come after me, what? Let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me." It's very clear. And then he continues to emphasize this is not a second level of discipleship. What do you gain, what does a man gain if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? This is talking about salvation. There are no Christians that aren't disciples. This is another part of Easy Belies Them. They'd like to separate Christian from disciple. There are those that are saved and haven't yet reached discipleship stage. There is no such being, according to God. 2 Corinthians 5, 15, And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. How clear can you get? He died for all, why? So that we would no longer live for ourselves, but for God. And John 10, 27 is beautiful. My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. You want to know what the characteristic of a true believer is? He hears the word of God and he obeys. It's that simple. He hears the word of God and obeys. Fourth, scripture teaches that real faith inevitably produces a changed life. 2 Corinthians 5.17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Salvation includes a transformation of the inner man. The nature of the Christian is new and different. That's on the inside. Our nature has been changed. The unbroken pattern of sin and enmity with God will not continue when a person is born again. Doesn't mean you can't sin, but you will not see that continuing pattern of victorious sin in your life. I'm gonna skip to five because we're running out of time, so let me just skip to five. Salvation teaches that God's gift of eternal life includes all that pertains to life and godliness, not just a ticket to heaven. In contrast, according to Easy Believism, only the judicial aspect of salvation, justification, adoption, and personal sanctification are guaranteed for believers in this life. Practical sanctification and growth in grace requires And this is what they believe, a post-conversion act of dedication. You know, when you read their article and you say, by grace, through faith, in Christ alone, you go, amen, 160 verses, it's gotta be right. Then you start studying and you see where it's going. And you go, shame on you. Shame on you. 6. Scripture teaches that Jesus is Lord of all, and the faith He demands involves an unconditional surrender to Him. In other words, Christ does not bestow eternal life on those whose hearts remain set against Him. James 4.6. Surrender to Jesus' Lordship is not an addendum to the biblical terms of salvation. The summons to submission is at the heart of the Gospel. throughout scripture. In contrast, E-V-Z believes them, teaches that submission to Christ's supreme authority is not germane to the saving transaction. In other words, it's not important in the saving transaction. Seven, scripture teaches that those who truly believe will love Christ. Let's just stop with that. Go to the back page. You can read that last verse, 1 Corinthians 16.22. before the eighth point, it says, if anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed. Paul is not beating around the bush. If you do not have a love for your heart for God, if he is not the first priority in your heart and in your life, you're not saved. Now, we sometimes lift something else up for a brief period of time, and God has to call us back. Eighth, scripture teaches that behavior is an important test of faith. Obedience is evidence that one's faith is real. 1 John 2, 3 and 4, by this we know him. If we keep his commandments, he who says I know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. All these verses have to fit. They all have to go on that timeline. So when it talks about, we're gonna stop there, but when it talks about belief in the New Testament, that idea is a true belief, a belief that includes a repentance, a turning from sin, and a taking Jesus. You believe he is Lord, and you accept him as Lord, and you follow, not perfectly. None of us are perfect, but you're gonna follow him. I printed this out because I knew I would run out of time and I want you to read it. This was the best explanation I could find of it in the shortest form and I think it's worth understanding what the debate is. This is a debate that's been going on for 40 years now, 45 years now. And every time it gets knocked down and almost easy believes them, almost gets, is kicked out. And then it slips back in and it grows back up. Just believe. As long as you say you believe, and that's where the charismatic church is, right? They are very much there. You say you believe, you're in the kingdom. And then we don't worry about your life, we don't worry about your job, we don't worry about what you're doing. You're saved, don't worry about it. And you're not. You're not. Many will say to me, Lord, Lord, in that day, and Christ will deny, I never knew you. This is why we talk about this. Salvation is a turning to Christ. A following of Him. Not a claiming of a promise. A following of Him. Let's close in a word of prayer. Our Father, we thank you so much for this time tonight to talk about your word. And Lord, even though it was quick, I pray that you would help us to understand. And Lord, that our hearts would be open to it. And Lord, that we'd be encouraged that when we have a question, we come to your word and we look for the sum of God's word, all of it together. And we put it together till we know the truth. We ask this in Jesus' name we pray, amen.