Let's pray together before we
get started. Our Father, we come to you confidently
asking you to be with us this morning because we trust in your,
we do our best to trust in your promises. We pray, Lord, that
you'll be with us in a way that only you can, that you can bless
our spirits, that you can bless our souls. that you can somehow
make what words come out of my mouth have value. Only you can
do that. So we ask you to do that. And
we pray, Lord, that those words be your message and that message
be exactly what it is intended to be. Something that will pierce
the hearts of those that you love. We pray that same thing for all
the men preaching this morning, all the churches that are gathering
to worship you. We pray for all of our loved
ones here this morning and watching online and throughout the world.
Again, we always pray for the Terrell family. They are still
going through a lot. And we have special place in our hearts for
them. We love them. And we know you
do too. And we pray, Lord, that you will
give them comfort and strength and wisdom to get through a very
difficult time in their lives. Wisdom to know that it is simply
a difficult time in their lives. And what we heard this morning,
we can remember and trust that your love is greater than life.
And if we have your love, we have every blessing that matters. We thank you, Jesus, more than
anything for this, that you have given us every blessing that
you have earned, which is every blessing. Bless us this morning. We pray
this in your name, amen. So, this morning, again, I said
it was gonna be titled, What Is It to Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ? This came from listening to one of Joe's radio
messages. It's actually one of the last
few he made. And it's an incredibly important
aspect to take into consideration. We talk about believing in Christ
all the time. Well, what is that? What does that mean? What is
it to believe on the name of Christ? It's not an uncommon thing to
hear all over the world. There's no Christian church that
I doubt there's any denomination that has to do with Christianity
that would deny that salvation is obtained through faith in
Christ. They dare not deny that because
the scriptures make nothing more obvious. They are very clear
on that matter. And just to give you an idea,
just a couple samples. Found in Habakkuk, it says, the
just shall live by faith. And that is quoted three times
in the New Testament. Paul wrote in Ephesians 2, he
said, for it is by grace that you have been saved through faith. That is not from yourselves,
it is a gift from God. Not by works, so that no one
can boast. In Acts 16, Paul responds to
a question posed by a Philippian jailer, what must I do to be
saved? He says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will
be saved. And Paul had that jailer, who
was panicking at the moment, ask him the question, what do
I do to be saved? And Paul, who could speak and
write and go on, did not. He had one sentence, believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Paul wrote in Romans three, therefore
we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing
the law. There's nothing you can do. One
must simply believe. So no church or denomination
can deny and would never deny outright that salvation comes
to us through the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and still claim
to believe the Bible, because the Bible is too clear. But this
leaves the question, what is it to believe in Christ? And here's where the various
sects and denominations differ. They all must say that salvation
is received by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but if you ask
them to explain what that means, here is where you discover that
there is a remarkable difference among them as to what is meant
by faith, by what is meant by the phrase to believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ. Paul gives a, if you wanna turn
to 2 Timothy chapter one, He gives a very good answer as
to what it is, a positive, good definition of faith. 2 Timothy
chapter one, we'll start in verse 12. It's actually just verse
12. And I mean, they wrote songs about this verse. For I know
whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep which
I've committed against that day. what I've committed unto him
against that day. So there are three actions given in this description
of faith. One is to know Christ. I know who I believe in. I know
whom I have believed. Second point, to be persuaded
of his ability. I know who I believe in and I
know what he's capable of. I am persuaded that he is able
to keep. And then the third one is committing
the care of your soul into his hands. This is a very good description
of faith. But we're gonna go deeper, a little further, and
also describe the things that accompany faith. That is, the
things that must be present or else faith is not present. They're
implied in what Paul wrote to Timothy, but we're gonna go,
we're gonna express them a little bit more implicitly. So first,
to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ involves abandoning all
hope in yourself. When it comes to matters of character,
when it comes to matter of conduct, to know and believe that true
righteousness, true righteousness, which is demanded by God, can
never be attained by either who you are or what you've done. Matter of fact, it's the opposite.
Who you are and what you've done will only earn you death. But
that is not natural for us to believe that. That's natural
once you've been given eyes to see and a heart that is no longer
a stone. At that point, you are shown
who you are. But before that, you don't see
yourself in the light that is shed by the gospel, by the truth. You're still in darkness. So
you don't see yourself for who you really are. So you don't
believe that true righteousness can never be attained by who
I am or what I've done, unless the Spirit has moved you to believe
just that. Paul, if you wanna turn to Romans
3, verse 19 and 20, says, now we know that whatever the law
says It says to those who are under
the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole
world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law,
no man will be justified in his sight, since through the law
comes knowledge of sin. So the law speaks to those who
are under it. Who is under the law? Back a few chapters in Romans
6, Paul writes, for sin shall not be your master because you
are not under the law but under grace. So one is either under
grace or under the law. You cannot be under both. There
are two types of people in this world. Under the law or under
grace. God's people or not. So to whom does the law speaks?
It speaks to those who are not under grace. That is, the law
speaks to unbelievers. The purpose of the law's message,
and this I love, if you go back to Romans 19, which we just wrote,
it says, every mouth may be stopped and the whole world be held accountable.
Every mouth stopped because the law reveals the truth of who
we are. And when you see who you are,
your mouth is stopped because there is nothing to boast in. So, I mean, it is blatant about
that. Every mouth will be stopped. Nothing to boast in. Your mouth
is stopped, followed by accountability. It's a sinful truth revealed,
followers, by the Where is it, I missed it now.
So the whole world will be held accountable to God. So sinful
truth revealed followed by the what that means, that you must
be held accountable for who you are. You're not only shown who
you are, which stops you from boasting, you realize that there's
accountability involved. Oh my. This is what I am and
this is what I owe. I'm a filthy sinner who deserves
utter damnation. That truth is only revealed to
God's people because you can't believe that truth without turning
to Christ. The law cannot justify anything. The unbelievers cannot be justified
by the law. The law is like a mirror. It shows you who you are, but
can do nothing about what you see. It can show you how filthy you
are, but it certainly cannot clean you. It can show you as a dead body
because of your sins and transgressions, but a mirror cannot give you
life. If you look in a mirror, it will
reveal how you are dirty and need a bath, but the mirror has
zero power whatsoever to remove the filth. And so it is with
the law. It can reveal our sinful nature
and our transgressions, but it can do nothing to cleanse us
from them. Paul went on to say that nobody
will be justified by the works of the law. Some have acknowledged
that we cannot be justified by the works of the law, but invent
laws of their own. You see this a lot in a lot of
churches. They won't say that the law saves, but then they
create all these rules. And it is certain that if we
can't be justified by keeping the law that God gave, we certainly
aren't gonna be justified by keeping a law that we created. that we have made. So in order
to truly believe Christ, we must accept that God's law says about
us, what God's law says about us, and abandon any hope in who
we are and what we do, in our character or our conduct. In
fact, when the scriptures say that we are justified by faith,
the primary point is that we are not justified by works. In
Romans 4, verse 5, it says, however, to the man who does not work
but trusts God, who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited
as righteousness. The man who does not work but
trusts God, his faith is credited as righteousness. So you cannot
work for salvation and believe and believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. Christ must do it all, or Christ
has done nothing for you. In order to believe Christ, you
must simply give up on yourself. But what is work? We have to
figure that out then, right? Anything that a man can boast
in outside of Christ, And that expands it up quite a bit from
the usual definition of work. We think, you know, we see people
and we probably judge people. I know I'm not, I'm definitely
guilty of that. People that tend to put a lot
of effort into their Christianity and we scoff, which is a sin
in itself. But we do this stuff all the
time. You feel good about yourself
in any way, really. It becomes something to boast in. Anything
you can boast in, outside of Christ, becomes a work. And everyone
who has flesh is guilty of it. Ephesians says, For it is by
grace that you have been saved through faith, and it is not
from yourself, it is simply a gift of God. not by works so that
no man can boast. This says that we are saved by
grace through faith without works specifically so that no one can
boast about what he did to obtain salvation. So whatever a man
may boast in his own doings is a work. One cannot boast in his
faith because our faith is not our own. We've been given it
as a gift. We can boast in nothing. Faith
in God is what saves, and we can't even boast in our own faith. So saving faith is a gift of
God, and that faith only boasts in Christ. Now, we are far from perfect.
But the faith we've been given, on its own is perfect. We have
sin surrounding it constantly because that's who we are. He
says to the disciples all the time, ye of little faith, but
ye of faith. You have faith. And that faith
cannot be ruined or downgraded or denigrated or lessened at
all by who or what we are. because faith is not ours. Faith is created by God, gifted
by God. You have received it because
of Christ. You cannot do anything to make
it less or weak. So that's twofold. That's beautiful
because we would ruin it if we could. but then it also gives us absolutely
nothing to boast in. Nothing. Not even the faith we
have in our Savior. So secondly, so first, believing
in Christ is to completely give up on yourself. Secondly, believing
in Christ involves hearing the truth about Christ. Romans 10,
13, it says, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will
be saved. This promises that everyone who calls on the name
of the Lord will be saved. And Paul goes on to ask, in the
very next verse, how then can we call on the one we have not
believed in? How can we believe in the one
we have not heard about? How a person can call on the
one they haven't believed in and how they can believe in someone
they have not heard of. Then he says, it's down in 17,
consequently, faith comes from hearing the message. And the message is heard through
the word about Christ. Some of the old Greek manuscripts
say that the word of God is the word about Christ, but Peter
teaches us that the word of God that endures forever is preached
to us by the gospel, and the gospel is God's message concerning
Christ. So there can be no faith apart
from hearing God's truthful message concerning Christ. And we take that very strictly
and very seriously. Joe, all the men that we know
as faithful preachers of the truth, there is no give when it comes
to who Christ is, what he's done, and the power behind it. Theology can be tricky. There's
a lot of different things we can argue about. But the one
thing we will not bend on is who is Christ. The work he's done and the effectiveness
of it. There is no give there. And it's not It's probably normal for people
in the world to look at us and think that's pretty narrow-minded.
You think you're right and everyone's wrong. It's not that we want
to be right. We don't not give on that so
that we can be right and think everyone else should believe
the way we do. We don't bend on that because
God doesn't bend on that. It is the truth. And it is such an important truth
that if it is changed in the most minute way, it is no longer
the truth. And that's not because we say
so, it's because God, the creator of everything, says so. So we insist on a specific message
of Christ because God insists on a specific message about Christ. We are convinced that no one
will be saved apart from hearing and believing in the gospel of
Christ. In 1 John, we read earlier, we
accept human testimony, but God's testimony is greater because
it is the testimony of God. I mean, that can be a big old
period on the end of that sentence. It actually is a comma because
it says which he has given about the son, which is the absolute
truth. But really, you could stop there.
It is the testimony of God. There is no arguing with it.
There is no changing it. There is no tweaking it. It is
the testimony of God that Christ is all and all is under his name. and everyone he loves will be
saved. Everyone that he died for will
be saved because the blood of Christ's all-powerful and it
simply does not fail, period. It is the testimony of God. It says, it actually continues
in 1 John 5, and when you get into 10, it talks about whoever
believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does
not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they
have not believed in the testimony of God, or testimony that God
has given about his Son. That's why we hold hard to that
truth. It is the testimony of God, and
he is so blatant, and it continues. Listen to how blatant this is
if you don't hold hard to the truth of Christ. And this is
the testimony. God has given us eternal life,
and this life is his son. Whoever has the son has life. Whoever does not have the son
of God does not have life. That's why this truth is not
something we can give on. It is either you have the truth
of the Son of God, and you have life for eternity, or you don't,
and you don't. John gave a very brief summary
there of the testimony of God concerning his son, but actually
the entire Bible is God's testimony concerning his son. So it is
that testimony that we must hear and we must believe. In the first
chapter of Galatians, verses six through nine, Paul accused
the Galatians of believing another gospel, is what he said, which
in essence would be another message concerning Christ. It says, I
am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who
called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different
gospel. Which is really no gospel at
all. Now it's not like they were worshiping another god. They
had tweaked the gospel. And Paul says that's no gospel
at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion
and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ But even if
we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the
one we preach to you let him be Eternally condemned As we have already said, so now
I say it again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel other
than what you have accepted, let him be eternally condemned. He says it twice. The truth of the gospel is the
truth of the gospel. Nothing is more true. Truth gets
tossed around in English language like it's my truth and your truth. No, there is one truth and it
cannot be altered. And if it is altered, it is no
longer the truth. And if you believe in anything
beyond the truth, eternal condemnation. God's record concerning Christ
contains these four things. God has testified that Jesus
is the son, is his son, and he is pleased with him. He said
that twice while Christ was on earth. God testified that he
laid on Christ the iniquity of all of his people. God testified that he punished
Christ for all the sins of his people. and that he was satisfied
with the sacrifice of his son. And that resulted in all those
sins being forever gone. And he shall never bring them
up again. This is all shown through the
death and the burial and the resurrection and the ascension
of Christ to the right hand of God. And then God also testified
that through Christ and through faith in him, we are justified
from all things. We could never be justified through
the law. God testified that full forgiveness
of sins is given to all who trust in him because those sins are
already gone. The testimony of God must be
heard This testimony of God about Christ must be heard in order
for faith in Christ to exist. Thirdly, faith in Christ involves
calling on his name. Everyone who calls on the name
of the Lord will be saved. Calling upon the name of the
Lord doesn't earn us anything, but it certainly obtains salvation
for us. Salvation that has already been
paid for. We must not reason upon the sovereignty
of God to the point that where we think there is no necessity
for us to personally call upon his name. Because it's said here,
believe, be baptized. Those who call upon the name
of the Lord will be saved. We should never get to the point
where we think, well God is sovereign, I don't even have to call his
name. If he's gonna save me, he's gonna save me. It says in
this book, call on his name. So do it. I fear that many are born into
believing family and to think that by means of baby baptism
or the family that they're born into, they have some sort of
special relationship with God and never realize that they must
personally call upon the name of the Lord to be saved. Nothing
that men can do to us can bring salvation. We must personally
call upon the name of Christ. No one obtains salvation without
calling, and everyone who calls receives it. There's no true
faith apart from calling on the name of Christ. You must call
on Christ. And what is that? What is it
to call upon the name of the Lord? It is to call on him as
he is. Call on him as he is revealed
in scriptures. The names we give our children
do not have a whole lot of meaning anymore. But in Bible times,
the speak of someone's name meant to speak about their character
and their attributes. Their names often meant something
about who they were. So to call upon the name of the
Lord is to call him as he is revealed in the names that were
given to him. We call on Christ, we call on
him in multiple ways. We don't even know it. But he
is Jehovah, our righteousness. We recognize that we have none. We have no righteousness. So
we call on him as our righteousness. As it is written, God has made
him to be unto us righteousness. We call on Jehovah our salvation. This is the meaning of the name
Jesus. Jehovah is salvation. We call on Jehovah Jesus the
Lord. In Acts 2, Peter preached and
said to the people that this Jesus, whom you have crucified,
has been made to be Lord and Christ. So when we call on Christ, we
call on him for righteousness. We call on him for salvation.
We call on him because he is our Lord. Now, you don't have to understand
all of that, but when you are given sight to see who you are,
the situation that you are in, and you turn to Christ as your
only hope and say, I have nothing, lest you save me. In effect,
you are saying, Jesus, my righteousness, Jesus, my salvation, and Jesus,
my Lord, because that is who he is. Calling upon the name of the
Lord is to call on him to do what he came to do. To save his people. I think it's common to get into
like an earthly, worldly distress. And our move to call on God to
deliver them from that time. To deliver them from that circumstance. And that's fine. If you want
to pray to God to help you through life, that's fine. But when you
call on the name of the Lord, it is not about, Lord, save me
from right now. It is, Lord, save me. I have nothing. I have no hope. I have no future. I have nothing
to boast in. I can only come to you, and the
only way I can have anything is through you. And then the
amazing grace shown to God's people is that you are not just
given anything, you are given everything. When you call upon
his name, he came to deliver his people
from their sin and he will do exactly that. And if your sin
is not your concern when you're calling on him, then you have
not called upon Christ to save your soul. If you've been shown who you
are and the Spirit opens your eyes and softens your heart,
you will call to Christ. So that's the three points of
what it is to believe in Christ. And they all come from the Spirit
of God. You must hear it. And it's more
than just hearing, you must actually hear it in a spiritual way. And
God, we've seen that, I mean, God has his people everywhere.
And the sheep will hear his voice. And the goats will not. They
might stick around for a while, but eventually they will leave. Metaphorically or physically,
they will leave. But the sheep will hear his voice. And he will
show them who they are. And that they have nothing to
boast in. And that without him, they are
eternally condemned. And his people will turn to him
and call on his name. All of his perfect names. And
every one of them will be saved. He came to deliver His people.
His people will turn to Him, and He will do exactly that. And I pray every day that God
keeps that fresh in my mind. It makes it easier as you get
through world, the world time that we have. So I pray every day for myself,
for all of you, for all of us, we should pray. For those that
don't know the truth, We need to pray for them. You know, it's almost easy to
be flippant about that. Like, oh, if that person's not
a believer, that's awful. We should never want that. We should pray for everyone. None of us deserve it. None of
us deserve to be saved. To think that someone isn't,
and I am, is hard to swallow. So we should look to all, look
to Christ for everyone. I remember Joe saying multiple
times, we should look at it as we are watching people march
to their eternal death. Why aren't we doing everything
we can to tell them about Christ. It's easy to say that, it's hard
to do. I'm fully aware. But this is no joke. There is
nothing more serious. So the idea, the fact that you
have this truth in your life and you believe it and you have
these aspects of believing on the Lord Jesus Christ in your
heart and you hear these things this morning and it lifts up
your soul and you think I am so thankful for all these things.
We don't understand how truly blessed we are. Someday we might
get a good glimpse of it, but right now, if you are a believer
of the Lord Jesus Christ, you have every good thing that has
ever been given. Everything that Christ has earned,
that Christ deserves, is yours. You are among the most blessed
people that have ever existed. And I pray that God keeps that
from my mind as I go through this world. And I pray that he
continues to give me faith every day. And I pray that you and
I both have this sort of faith in Jesus Christ. And the amazing part is we will.
Because again, that faith is not ours. We would set it down
and walk away were it up to us. but it is not. It has been given
to us, forced upon us, really, in a way that it will never be
taken away and we can never put it down. One more reason to be utterly
grateful for what the Lord has done for His people. Our Father, We thank you Lord for what you've
done for us. We thank you for bringing the
truth into our lives. And for making it so that our
hearts were no longer hard as stone to reject any good thing. But you've made it so that it
was received. And you have made it so that
beyond our control, we will believe and trust in you. We will believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, which is a gift from you, and
we cannot thank you enough for that gift, Lord. We thank you
for holding on to us and for keeping us through this world
and into the next. We thank you, Lord, and we look
to you for everything. We pray this in your name. Amen. You can take out your hymnals
and turn them to number 217. Look, ye saints, the sight is
glorious. Number 217, and we'll stand as we sing.