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
if you'd like to follow along in your Bibles with the message
today, I'm going to be preaching from the Book of Acts, the Acts
of the Apostles. The Book of Acts is a historical
book that sets forth the beginning of the New Testament church.
because Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, had already come in time
and walked on the earth. He obeyed the law and did his
great work on the cross to put away the sins of his people. Paul wrote about it in Acts chapter
20, how Christ redeemed his church with his own blood. And his church
are the called out ones. They are the believers. the Lord
Jesus Christ. And that's what I'm going to
talk about in the next few messages. What it means to believe. We
talk about believing. Preachers will tell you, you
must believe. Here in the book of Acts chapter
16 is where I'm going to begin. I'm going to use two verses as
the basis for three messages on what it means to believe.
and the verses are Acts 1630 through 31. But this is the story
of Paul, the Apostle Paul, as he was going out through the
Gentile world preaching the gospel of God's grace in Christ Jesus. The same gospel that he defined
in the book of Romans as the power of God unto salvation to
everyone that believeth to the Jew first and to the Greek also.
If you hear the gospel and believe it, then you are an example,
a recipient of the power of God. Now that did not come by your
own goodness or your own cooperative nature or your free will. It's the power of God. That word
power, that's Romans 1 16. that when he says, I'm not ashamed
of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God. That
word power there is a Greek word that we derive our English word
dynamite from. That's how powerful it is. You
could imagine having a stick of dynamite go off. Well, that's
what happens when the gospel The good news of salvation by
the grace of God in Christ Jesus is empowered by God to the salvation
of a sinner. And he brings that sinner to
believe, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he says to
the Jew first and the Greek also, for therein, verse 17 of Romans
1, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to
faith. Now, when we're talking about
believing, we're talking about faith, God-given faith, biblical
faith, from faith to faith. As it is written, the just or
the justified shall live by faith. So, we're gonna talk about what
it means to believe. Well, back here in Acts chapter
16, Paul the apostle, along with a fellow helper, a fellow minister
named Silas, had been preaching the gospel in a town called Philippi. And Philippi was the same town
that God raised up a church here because of the preaching of Paul,
probably through this man who is known as the Philippian jailer.
He was the beginning of it. And God planted that small seed
and it grew and there formed a church. in Philippi. And you remember Paul later on
when he was in prison in Rome, he wrote a letter to the church
at Philippi called Philippians. And it's a beautiful book. Of course they all are. But here's
Paul and Silas. They were preaching the gospel.
They got arrested and they got thrown in jail. And here they
are in jail in chains. And it says in verse 25, this
is Acts 16, 25, it says, and at midnight Paul and Silas prayed,
sang praises unto God, and the prisoners heard them. They were
in jail now, in chains, but yet by the Spirit of God, by the
grace of God, they still sang praises unto God and they prayed.
And suddenly, verse 26, there was a great earthquake so that
the foundations of the prison were shaken, And immediately
all the doors were opened, and everyone's bands, their bonds,
their chains were loosed." That's a miracle of God's power, see?
And verse 27, it says, "...and the keeper of the prison, awaking
out of his sleep," now this is the Philippian jailer, "...and
seeing the prison doors opened, he drew out his sword, and would
have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. Now this man, he knew the penalty
for allowing prisoners to escape was a horrible death. And so he took it upon himself
to, he said, I'm going to run this sword through me because
I don't want to face that. But look at verse 28. Paul cried
with a loud voice saying, do thyself no harm for we are all
here. They didn't run. Paul knew something
that this jailer didn't. And he said, we're all here in
verse 29. Then he called for a light and sprang in and came
trembling and fell down before Paul and Silas. This is the Philippian
jailer. And I suppose here he wasn't
worshiping Paul and Silas. He was thanking them for not
running because that would have been death for him. And so look
at verses 30 and 31. And they, in verse 30, and he
brought them out, the jailer brought Paul and Silas out and
said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? He's talking about
salvation, but now the salvation that he's talking about here,
we don't know exactly what's running through this jailer's
mind, but Paul's answer gives us a clue. that he's not talking
about salvation from physical death here necessarily. Maybe he was confused about the
issue. We don't know. But he says, what
must I do to be saved? In verse 31, they said, Paul
and Silas in agreement, they said, believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ and thou shalt be saved in thy house. Now, when he says
in thy house, he's not saying that when you believe, that's
the salvation of your family too. No, he's saying that anyone,
you, your family, anyone who believes shall be saved. Well, believe what? Now, this
is something we need to understand. What does it mean to believe?
And people today are so confused, so ignorant on this subject,
the subject of believing, the subject of faith. Now, what does
it mean? to believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's what he said, believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes we can talk about believing
Christ. That means believing what he
said, his word. The Bible in Romans chapter 10
and verse 17 says, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the
word of God. Faith is not believing something
that you want to believe. Faith is not just believing in
something so sincere and so hard because you want it so bad. You
say, well, I want a million dollars. I'm just gonna believe that God
will give it to me. These preachers on TV sometimes,
they, for example, faith healers, or what they call them, or the
word of faith. They'll tell people, you can
be healed if you believe enough. That's not what faith is in the
Bible. It's not wishful thinking. It's not, as my old pastor used
to say, it's not I hope, I hope, I hope. In other words, just
a pipe dream. And if you believe it enough,
you see fantasy stories in movies and TV programs. That does tell
you something. If you just believe, if you just
believe. In the Bible, believing is a specific matter of believing
Christ, believing God, what He said. Anything you believe as
far as salvation, that is not based on the clear revelation
of God's word in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, anything
you believe that's not based on that word, that is no more
than false sham religious pipe dreams. Now let me show you that
over in the book of 1 John. If you look at 1 John chapter
five, Now he says believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. We can
talk about believing Christ, that's his word. We can talk
about believing in Christ. That means believing in him as
my salvation. Christ is my salvation. Now what
does that mean? Well that has specific points
of knowledge. You know the base word of the
Greek word for faith and of course that carries on into believing,
is knowledge. Knowledge, and it's a revealed,
it's a knowledge that we don't have by nature. First Corinthians
chapter one and two talks about that, how the most noble and
smartest people of the world, when it comes to salvation, when
it comes to the gospel of God's grace, when it comes to the righteousness
of God, the things of truth, the things of God, have not even
entered into their minds. Now they have religion, they
have philosophy, they have politics, they have economics, they have
a knowledge of a lot of it, but not the knowledge of God in Christ
in salvation. Christ said in John 17, He said,
This is life eternal, that they may know thee, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. So there's a knowledge,
and it's a revealed knowledge, and it's in the Bible. Now listen
to this. This is 1 John 5, and look at verse 10. He says, he
that believeth on the Son of God. Now that's Christ, and that's
speaking of who Christ is. Now what we're talking about,
what does it mean to believe on the Lord Jesus? It's to believe
in Him as my whole salvation and depend upon Him for all the
forgiveness of all my sins, for my righteousness. Christ is my
righteousness. He's the righteousness of God.
He died for my sins. and satisfied the justice of
God in my place, my sins were imputed, charged, accounted to
Him, and I have His righteousness, the merit, the value, the worthiness
of Christ imputed, charged, accounted to me, the very righteousness
of God. And it's to believe in Him, who He is, He's God in human
flesh, He's the Son of God. He says, he that believeth on
the Son of God. But He's not just the Son of
God, He's the Son of God incarnate. That means He's also man without
sin. He's the God-man. And what did
he do? He put away my sins and secured
my salvation, even the faith that it takes to believe on him.
So look at 1 John 5, 10. He that believeth on the Son
of God hath the witness in himself. He that believeth not God hath
made him a liar. Now that tells you something
about believing. If you don't believe God's word, you're calling
God a liar. Now you may not have used those
words, You may not have looked up in the sky and said, God,
you're a liar. But if I preach the gospel to you, and I can
back it up with this word, the Bible, the God's revealed word,
and you don't believe it, or I don't believe it, what do we
do? We're calling God a liar. He
that believeth not, God hath made him a liar, because he believeth
not, listen to it, the record. There's a record, a recording,
that God gave of His Son. Well, look at verse 11. And this
is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this
life is in His Son. Now, what does that tell you?
That tells you that salvation, eternal life, and everything
that goes with it, all the blessings and all the benefits of eternal
life, all grace here, all glory hereafter is a gift. You don't
earn it and you don't deserve it. So believing in the Lord
Jesus Christ, you need to see that whatever you have is by
virtue of God's grace through Christ. And he says, this is
the record because he believeth not the record that God gave
of his son. This is the record. God hath given us eternal life. And where do we find this life?
Now listen to me. We don't find this eternal life
in ourselves. We don't even find this eternal
life in our faith. We find this eternal life in
Christ. And we come to him by means of
God-given faith. And that's another thing, we
don't have faith by nature. Faith is not some spark of goodness
within us that we've got to find some eloquent preacher or evangelist
to fan that spark with his eloquence or his emotional appeals. Faith
is the gift of God. Ephesians 2 and verse 8 tells
us that believing in Christ, which is saving faith, He says
in Ephesians 2.8, for by grace are you saved, through faith,
by means of faith, and that's not of yourselves, it's the gift
of God. Not of works, not of your free
will, not of your goodness, natural goodness, you have none. Not
of works, lest any man should boast. You see that? Now, some
people say on that Ephesians 2.8, when it talks about that
not of yourself, it's not talking about faith, it's talking about
salvation. It's talking about both. Salvation is not of me,
salvation's of the Lord. Oh, Jonah learned that the hard
way, didn't he? Had to take up a three-day residence
in the belly of a great fish. And he came out, when he was
spewed out on the shore, he said, I've learned salvations of the
Lord. It's not of you, it's not of
me, it's of the Lord. And that faith is of the Lord
too, it's the gift of God. And I'll show you that in just
a moment from another verse, but look at verse 1 John 5 again. Verse 11, this is the record
that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His
Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He that hath the Son hath life,
and he that hath not the Son hath not life. Now that's plain. If you don't have Christ, if
he's not your Savior, if he's not your Lord, if you're not
washed in his blood, clothed in his righteousness imputed,
you don't have life. And so verse 13 of 1 John 5,
these things have I written unto you that believe on the name
of the Son of God. Now, often you'll see that phrase,
believe in his name. Romans 10, 13, whosoever shall
call upon the name of the Lord. shall be saved. To believe in
Christ is to call upon His name, to believe on the name of the
Son of God. Well, His name is not just a
label. His name is that which identifies
and distinguishes Him as the one true Savior of His people. The one true Messiah. His name is that which shows
forth, reveals forth His glory, His attributes, who He is, what
He did, why He did it, where He is now. So that when you call
upon His name, you see, if I'm in a crowd of people and someone
would holler out the name Bill, I just about guarantee you that
there'd be several of us who would turn our heads because
there'd be several bills in the crowd. That's a common name,
like John or Joe. You may have a very common name,
you may have a very uncommon name. Well, the name Jesus, all
right? You remember back in Matthew
1 and verse 21? He said when the angel told Joseph
not to put Mary away because she was with child, and said
she's going to have a child of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost,
and his name shall be called Jesus. What does that name mean? It means salvation. It means
for he shall save his people from their sins. And then over
Matthew 1.23, you might ask the question, well, is he able to
save his people from their sins? Yes, because he has another name.
There are many names. Because he's so glorious in every
attribute of his character, that one name cannot fully describe
him. His name is wonderful. His name is the mighty God. All
these things, Jehovah, Sid Canu, the Lord my righteousness. But
in Matthew 1.23, it says His name shall be called Emmanuel,
which being interpreted is God with us. God manifest in the
flesh. That's who He is. And so in verse
13 of 1 John 5, these things have I written unto you that
believe on the name of the Son of God, And you have to believe
on this specific person who did this specific work successfully,
because there are counterfeits. This Jesus that is popular today,
who's trying to save everybody, but cannot save anybody unless
they cooperate. He's a counterfeit. He's not
the Jesus of the Bible. He's another Jesus, Paul said
in 2 Corinthians 11. Another gospel. He says, you
must believe on the name of the Son of God, verse 13, that you
may know that you have eternal life and that you may believe
on the name of the Son of God. In other words, that you really
believe on the real Christ. And that's what he's talking
about. Look at verse 20 of 1 John 5. Listen to this. And we know that
the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding. You
see, that's an understanding that comes from God's revelation
by the Spirit through the Word, that we may know him that is
true. In other words, I know the true
Christ. I know I'm not trusting a counterfeit.
I know that I'm not preaching to you a counterfeit Christ.
I know that when I tell you to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
just like Paul told that Philippian jailer, that I'm pointing you
to the true Christ and not a counterfeit. Now, how do I know that for sure? And how do I have the audacity
to say another preacher, for example, is preaching a counterfeit? I'll tell you how I know. It's
by the word of God. What does God's Word say about
it? If you're going to believe on Jesus Christ, it's got to
be the Christ of the Bible. If you're going to believe God,
it's got to be the God of the Bible. What does God say about
Himself? I grew up hearing about a God
who, again, who wants to save everybody, but He can't save
anybody unless we cooperate, unless we, of our own free will,
make a decision for Him and side with Him. And if we don't, He's
a failure. That's not the God of this book.
Now, I don't mean to offend people. That's not my purpose. I want
you to come to the true Christ and believe on His name. Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. The truth is truth. And I'm here
to tell you the truth as I see it in the Word of God. And over
here in 1 John 5 20, he says that you may know him that is
true, and we are in him that is true, even in his son, Jesus
Christ, this is the true God. This is eternal life. You see
that? That's what this is all about. That's the whole issue
here. That it's all in Christ, and
it's all conditioned on him, That's what it means to believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now this Philippian jailer, you
remember he asked the question, what must I do to be saved? Well,
probably just, well, I know this for sure because before the Lord
Jesus Christ sends the Spirit in the new birth to convict us
of sin and of righteousness and of judgment, we all believe we
can do something in order to be saved. whether it's faith,
repentance, or what, we can't do anything. Christ did it all. And faith is the gift of God
given to his people by the power of the Spirit in the preaching
of the gospel wherein they see who God really is, a God who
is holy, who is just, and who must punish all sinners to whom
sin is charged, If God were to judge me right now based on my
best efforts to obey Him, it would be hell and damnation and
hell for me. That's what I'm telling you.
There's none righteous, no not one. That's what the Bible says.
There's none that doeth good, no not one. That's good in God's
eyes, according to God's standard. Believe what the Lord says about
me. I'm a sinner. I cannot save myself. The natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God. If I believe in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ, if I believe Him, it's because He sought me
out. He chose me before the foundation
of the world. He justified me before Himself
through the Lord Jesus Christ. That is, forgive my sins based
upon His blood. Justify me based upon His righteousness
imputed, charged to me, not my own. It's mine, but it's given
to me as a free gift and charged to me. And that He has died for
my sins. He redeemed me by His blood.
He paid the full price of my redemption with His blood. And
that He's regenerated me. He's birthed me again. You must
be born again. You remember when I talked about
Romans 10, 17. Faith cometh by hearing, and
hearing by the word of God. What does that tell you? By nature,
we don't have spiritual ears to hear the gospel. Now you can
hear what I'm saying right now audibly. But how do you react
to it? The Bible says in First Corinthians
chapter one, The preaching of the cross, I believe it's verse
18, or I believe it is, the preaching of the cross is foolishness to
them which believe not, to those who are perishing. But it's the
wisdom and power of God to those who believe. So how do you respond? If you respond negatively and
believe not, it means you haven't been given ears to hear. You
don't hear the gospel the way that you need to hear it. It's
your hope and salvation. and you don't have eyes to see,
but when God gives you those ears to hear, to hear his word,
faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, you'll
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. You'll trust him for all salvation,
for all forgiveness, for all righteousness, for all glory,
even the faith that you have by which to believe him, you'll
thank him for that. You'll see that that's a gift
of God, just like every grace of the Spirit. 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 1-1-0-2-3. Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia
31707. 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.