Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. I'd like to welcome you to our
program today. I'm glad you could join us. And again, if you'd
like to follow along in your Bibles with the message, I'll
be preaching from Acts chapter 16. Now, I began this message
last week. This is a series of messages.
I believe there are going to be three. So this is part two on
what it means to believe. What it means to believe. And
I'm using Acts chapter 16 verses 30 and 31 as my base text for
these messages concerning issues of believing, believing in the
Lord Jesus Christ, issues of faith. And this is the story.
I urge you, if you didn't hear last week's, get a copy of last
week's. You can order it on our website
or call us or email us and we'll send you a copy of the first
part. But this is so important. because
the Bible tells us, just like here in this text, when Paul
and Silas, they'd been in jail in Philippi, and as you know,
they prayed and they praised God, and the Lord opened up the
jails and loosed the chains. They came out, and the Philippian
jailer met them, and he was so distraught he was gonna kill
himself because the penalty for allowing prisoners to escape
was death. But Paul told him, verse 28,
he said, do thyself no harm, we're all here. Paul and Silas
didn't leave. Apparently none of the other
prisoners left. Now I don't know all the details because this
is one of the historical books, the book of Acts, and we're not
given all the details, but Paul and Silas stayed. The jailer brought them out,
look at verse 30, he brought them out and said, sirs, what
must I do to be saved? In verse 31, Paul and Silas said,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved in thy
house. And so he's talking about believing.
Well, faith is necessary for salvation. And this is why this
is so important. And there's so many people who
are so confused and, sad to say, ignorant on the matter of faith,
what it is and what it's not. And I dealt with that last week
concerning faith being based on God's Word. Romans 10, 17,
faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. If you believe
something that is not fully revealed in the Word of God, in the Bible,
from Genesis to Revelation, then what you're believing as far
as salvation goes is false. There are people who have faith
in idols. There are idol gods, there are
counterfeit Christ. So what I need to do is to get
into the Bible and to find out what this book says about Christ. And somebody says, well, you
read the Bible your way, we read it our way. The thing about it
is, there are rules for interpreting the Bible. And I wrote a book
on this, and we offer it to you free of charge, called Rightly
Dividing the Word of Truth, Rightly Dividing the Word. And of course,
that comes from Paul's word to Timothy. Don't be one who's going
to be ashamed, be one who studies, be a student of the word. rightly
dividing the word of truth. And what that book is, it gives
you rules of interpreting the Bible. Somebody says, well, you
interpret it your way, I interpret it my way. There are rules of
interpretation and you need to know those. And so if you'd like
to get a copy of that book, then order it. It's rightly dividing
the word, rules for interpreting the Bible. And again, we send
it to you free of charge. Just go to our website, call
or write or Send us an email, and we'll send you that book.
We've got other books too concerning what is salvation, what is the
righteousness of God, the glory of God in the gospel. We'll send
them all to you if you want them, but I call them my self-examination
series. And it's good to start with rightly
dividing the Word because when you examine yourself as far as
salvation, you've got to go to the Word of God. And to go to
the Word of God, you've got to know the rules of interpretation.
Now, of course, It takes the Spirit of God to reveal these
things to us. You can read and study and memorize
until you're blue in the face, but if God is not pleased to
reveal it to you, then you're lost. And we pray that as you
seek the Lord, that he will reveal himself to you. And I believe
he will for those who sincerely seek him. He said, if you seek
me, you'll find me. So look at these things. But believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ. And what is this believing? Well,
look over at Romans chapter one with me. Got a couple of places
here in the book of Romans I want you to see. Verse 16. Now, the
apostle Paul writing to the church at Rome here, in verse 16 he
says, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Now, it's
the gospel, and it's good news, and it's the gospel of Christ.
And what does it say about him? He says, for it is the power
of God unto salvation. Now what he's talking about here
is the gospel, the word of the gospel, the good news to sinners
who need salvation by grace. They don't need just a jumpstart.
They don't need a little help. You know, people say God helps
those who help themselves. When salvation, that is not true.
And that's not even in the Bible. That's not the gospel. If given
our state of being sinful, born dead, fallen in Adam, ruined
by the fall, and dead in trespasses and sins, given that state, if
the gospel were God will help you, if you'll help yourself,
we'd all be doomed. If left to ourselves, we would
not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. If left to ourselves,
we would not repent. The Bible says repent or perish.
So thank God that it's the power of God unto salvation. And that's
the gospel in the power of the Spirit sent forth from the Father
and the Son to bring a sinner from death unto life. From unbelief
to belief. From lack of repentance to repentance. All of those things. So he says
it's the power of God, the dynamite of God unto salvation to everyone
that believeth. Now how do you know if the gospel
has been made the power of God unto your salvation? Do you believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ? And understand this now. I preached
on this last week now. Do you believe on the true Christ? We went over to 1 John 5. and
talked about how God has brought his people to know him that is
true. There are counterfeit Christ.
And let me tell you something. Let me give you something to
think about. There are false Christ being preached from the
pulpits in the world today. That is part of God's judgment
against the world and Satan's deception. Read 2 Thessalonians
2 on that. I'll preach on that one day.
I'll give you a verse by verse on that, talking about the great
falling away and the line wonders of Satan. And it's false religion. It's false Christianity. You
remember Christ told his disciples as we approach the days of his
second coming, he said, in those days, they'll come saying, here's
Christ, there's Christ, but don't follow him. There'll be some
who'll come saying they are Christ. Most people aren't fooled by
them. But what most people are fooled by is the false Christ
that are being preached from most of the pulpits in America
and in the world. A false Jesus. Paul spoke of
it in 2 Corinthians chapter 11. He said, if he that cometh to
you preach another Jesus, another gospel by another spirit, one
of a different kind, He says, don't bear with them, bear with
me, he said. Now how am I going to know the
difference between a counterfeit Christ and the true Christ? There's
only one true Christ, there are many counterfeits. But how am
I going to know the difference? What's the record, John said
in 1 John 5? The record is the Word of God,
the Scriptures here. So when Paul in Romans 1.16 here,
he says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, the
true Christ, it's the power of God unto salvation to everyone
that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek or the
Gentile. Now, what is it, as I said last week, the base word,
the Greek word for faith and believing is knowledge. It's
knowledge that God gives you through his word by the power
of the Spirit of which you're convinced. You're convinced this
is true. And you cannot be unconvinced. That's the nature of God-given
faith. You can't lose it. You still have issues of unbelief
within yourself that you have to battle. But if you're saved
by God's grace, you'll stay saved. He'll keep you. Faith perseveres.
If you claim to have faith and you fall away, what does the
Bible say? It says you didn't have real
faith, God-given faith, the power of God unto salvation to begin
with. That's what it says. I don't care how long you claimed
it, but what is it about this that tells us that we believe
in the true Christ. Well, look at verse 17 of Romans
1. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to
faith, as it is written, the just or the justified shall live
by faith. Now the gospel of Christ, now
listen to it, the gospel of Christ is the revelation of the righteousness
of God. from faith, revealed from God,
from faith to faith. What do you mean from faith to
faith? Now think about faith and believing as virtually the
same thing. If you believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ, as Paul told the Philippian jailer, you have faith in Christ. If you have faith in Christ,
if you believe in Christ, you have knowledge given by God You've
been taught of God, it's been revealed. See, it's the righteousness
of God revealed. From faith, now what is that?
To faith, what is he talking about there? Well, commentators
will give you different answers on this. Some say that means
from one degree of faith to another. We know faith grows. The Bible,
in 2 Peter 3, 18, talks about growth in grace and knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We learn more of his word. But
what this phrase, from faith to faith, means is from faith. Now faith sometimes refers to
the knowledge, the doctrine, the body of truth that is preached,
the gospel. Sometimes it's called the faith. What faith are you? You say,
well, I believe this part or that part, or I'm in this denomination. You see, well, from faith means
the body of doctrine, the body of truth, the word of God. To
faith is the gift of faith whereby God brings us to believe his
word. And he says here, as it is written,
the just or the justified shall live by faith. Now, what does
it mean to be justified? Well, to be justified means that
I'm forgiven completely, 100% of all my sins. And it means that God will not
and cannot charge me with the debt of my sin. He cannot impute
sin to me. The Bible says, blessed is the
man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. It says, who shall
lay anything to the charge of God's elect? God cannot charge
a believer with sin, a true believer. A believer is one whom God chose
before the foundation of the world. It's one who is justified. It's one who is redeemed by the
blood of Christ. A believer's sins were charged
to Christ and Christ died for those sins to redeem him. Therefore
God cannot justly charge me with my sin. My sins were charged
to Christ. He was made sin, the scripture
says. And I'm justified, I'm free,
I'm cleared of all guilt. And I'm made righteous in Him.
His righteousness, this is the righteousness of God here in
Romans 117. His righteousness is laid to
my charge, given to me, imputed to me. I'm made the righteousness
of God in Him. So therefore he tells us right
here that the preaching of the gospel is the revelation of the
righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. So if I'm
gonna believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or believe him or believe
on him, I must know and submit to the righteousness of God.
Well, what is that? What is the righteousness of
God? Well, if you look over at verse one of Romans 1, Now, listen
to this. It says, Paul, a servant of Jesus
Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of
God, verse two, which he had promised afore or before by his
prophets in the Holy Scriptures. You see, he makes sure that they
understand that this is from the Bible. What Bible he had,
he's talking about the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is all
about Christ, full of Christ. And he says, verse three, concerning
his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Now you know what that talks
about? The deity of Christ. Concerning God's son, Jesus Christ,
our Lord. Christ is God. The second person of the Trinity.
The son of God, who has no beginning and no end. He is God. So, in other words, if I believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ, I believe in his deity, I believe he's
God. I talked about over in Matthew 1 and 23, his name shall be called
Emmanuel, God with us. And then it says, which was made,
verse three now, Romans one, which was made of the seed of
David according to the flesh, that's his humanity. His perfectly
sinless humanity. Just like I, I'm a man, and there
are men out there, human beings, Christ was a man. The difference
was, I'm a sinful man. He's a sinless man. He's God-man. He has two natures, God, deity,
and humanity without sin. And it says in verse four, and
declared to be the son of God with power according to the spirit
of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. Now that's what
he did. In other words, the gospel concerns
the person and the work of Christ. The gospel, the believing in
Christ means you believe in who he is and you believe in what
he accomplished when he died on the cross. Who he did. what He did. That's what it's
talking about. Now who is He? God manifest in
the flesh. What did He accomplish on the
cross? Now listen very carefully to
this point. When Jesus Christ, you know,
everybody who calls himself a Christian talks about the cross, talks
about the blood, They may sing that song, what can wash away
my sins? Nothing but the blood. Do you
really believe it's nothing but the blood? Everybody says they
believe in Christ, the crucified Christ, that he died, he was
buried, he arose again the third day. Here's the key now. What
exactly did Christ accomplish when he died on that cross? And
the Bible says it here in Romans 117, the righteousness of God
was accomplished. Now, what is the righteousness
of God? Well, the word righteous means justness. God is just. What is this about God's righteousness? The justness of God. Well, the
Bible teaches us that we all fell in Adam. We fell into sin,
we fell into death, and we're born spiritually dead in trespasses
and sins. We are totally depraved by nature. And that total depravity, now
when I say depravity, you might have all kinds of things come
up in your mind, okay? Now think about this. You might
have all kinds of ideas in your mind about depravity and what
that depravity means. But let me show you something
over in John chapter three. Now, in verse 18. Now here's
Christ speaking of a religious man named Nicodemus. Now this
is a man who had risen to great heights in his religious sect,
the Jews. He was a member of the Sanhedrin,
that's the Jewish court. And they didn't just put anybody
on that. And he told Nicodemus, you must
be born again or you cannot see the kingdom of God, you cannot
enter. And he told him about the gospel, talked about Moses
lifting up the serpent in the wilderness. This is where you
have John 3.16. Look at John 3.16. For God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth
in him. Now there it is. What does it
mean to believe? Whosoever believeth in him, the
true Christ, both who he is and what he accomplished, whosoever
believeth on him, in him should not, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Now that's
a beautiful verse, but it doesn't mean what most people think it
means. Most people think that it means that God loves everybody
and Christ died for everybody, and now it's up to you to seal
the deal. by believing. And that's not
what it says at all. If God loves everybody and Christ
died for everybody, even those who perish eternally, then there
is no hope of salvation for any of us, according to the Bible.
Because if left to ourselves, we will not believe. We won't
believe of our own wills. We just won't. First Corinthians
2.14, I quote it all the time. The natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God. Neither can he know them, they're
spiritually discerned. If left to ourselves, we will
not receive him. Now hold your finger there at
John 3 and look over at John 1. Now remember what Christ told
Nicodemus. He said you must be born again
or you cannot see the kingdom of God. So it takes a new birth.
How's one born again? There's a popular book written
by a popular evangelist on how to be born again, and here's
what he says. He says, in order to be born
again, you must believe. You believe, and then you're
born again. You make your decision, and then you're born again. That
is not what the Bible teaches. What does the Bible teach? Well,
look at John chapter one, and I don't have time to go through
all the verses that I could go through here now. I'm not just
picking out pet verses. You won't find me any verse in
the Bible from Genesis to Revelation where a sinner of his own free
will does what's right in God's eyes. It takes the gift of faith,
and to get the gift of faith, it takes the new birth by the
power of God. But look at John chapter one
and verse 11. It says, he, that is Christ,
came unto his own, and his own received him not. Now that's
us by nature. Now who will receive Him? Back
in the Old Testament, God continually reprimanded the Jews, the Israel,
for not believing Him. But he told them, he said, now
in the future, it's not gonna be like that. I'm gonna have
a people, I'm gonna give them a new heart, give them a new
spirit, new life, and they'll be my people, and I'll be their
God, and they shall all know me. Now, what is God telling
them there through the prophets? Is he saying, now, you all won't
believe, but in the future, there's gonna come a better class of
people who have more good, who are better than you? No, it's
by grace through the new covenant, which is ratified by the blood
of Christ. It's all conditioned on Christ,
not conditioned on us. So look back at John 1 11, he
came unto his own and his own received him not, they didn't
believe in him. Verse 12, but as many as received
him, now there are some who receive him, they believe in him. Who
are they? Well, to them gave he power to
become the sons of God. Now the word power there is not
the same word power in Romans 1 16, which says the gospel is
the power, the dynamite of God. That speaks of ability. It's
God who is able to empower the gospel to my salvation. But here
the word power means the right or the privilege. Now here's
what it's saying. Do you claim to believe in Christ? Do you claim to be a child of
God? Do you claim to be saved? What right do you have to make
that claim? I make that claim. What right
do I have? Who has that right? Well, it
says, as many as received Him. They have that right to be called
the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name, believe
in the true Christ. Now look at verse 13. Don't let
this go by you. Those who received him, who believe
on his name, who have the right to be called the sons of God,
they are those, verse 13, which were born. Now what birth is
he talking about here? Well, not of blood. He's not
talking about our physical birth. He's not talking about our physical
pedigree or heritage, nor the will of the flesh. That means
the works of the flesh. The new birth did not come about
by our natural birth or being born. Like, for example, the
Jews would say, well, we're children of God because we're the seed
of Abraham. Oh no, it's not by blood, not by physical pedigree. And they might say, well, we
know we're children of God because we've done what we were supposed
to do. You might say that. Somebody says, well, I accepted
him as my personal savior. I walked an aisle. I confessed
him before men. I was baptized. Oh no. Now should
believers be baptized and confess Christ before men? Yes, but that
doesn't bring about the new birth. That's not of the will of the
flesh. It's not of the works of the flesh. Now look at the
next line, John 1, 13. Nor of the will of man. It's
not of your will, your decision, your desire that you're born
again. He says in verse 13, which were born but of God. Born of God. And that's God's
business. That's God's work. Now go back
to John chapter three. Now keep this in mind now. Look
at John chapter three, verse 16. That's not talking about
everybody in the world, for God so loved the world. He's not
talking about every individual. He's talking about his elect
out of every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation. And he says
in verse 18, now look, he says, he that believeth on him is not
condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because
he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
This is the condemnation, that light is coming to the world,
and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds
were evil, their works. For everyone that doeth evil
hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds
should be reproved. That's man by nature, and he
births us again to believe on him. I hope you'll join us next
week for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia. Contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
or email us through our website at www.TheLetterRofGrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.