23 Things That Save

Introduction

Well, good morning. Today’s lesson is simple by design. But we’re going to give you a more all inclusive approach and look at the plan of salvation that is typically done. The Bible says in Ephesians 4 and verse 12 that the work of the evangelist is to equip the saints to the work of ministry. I take that very seriously. And there is a handout, four-page handout that was in the very beginning of the material we passed out last week. And I think there’s some extra copies also available in the back. So you can just sit back and just sort of listen, knowing that there’s a detailed outline that you can go through at another time.

This can be done after you have done the big picture presentation if the person is having a little challenge with the role of baptism in the plan of salvation. Or this can be done as a standalone if you think that this is something that would be appropriate depending on the background, the person you’re trying to share the gospel with. And it deals with the ultimate question of life, which is what must I do to be saved? This question is asked and answered over and over again in the Bible. And so the Bible’s filled with this very issue, and yet there’s so much confusion about what the right answer is. It’s amazing to me how Satan has taken things that should be very clear and simple as given to us by the Holy Spirit in the Word of God and clouded the issue in part because of people’s misunderstanding of a figure of speech.

So we’re going to look at that figure of speech. We’re going to give you an all-inclusive list of the things that save in the Bible, Psalm 119 160, the sum of thy word is truth. That’s especially true when it comes to this subject. And if we have time at the very end, I’d like to talk for a few minutes about the sinner’s prayer. All right. Why is there so much confusion? A lot of it has to do with this term that has to do with grammar and how we understand our language.

1. A Part That Refers to the Whole

Senectity is a figure of speech in which a term or part of something is referred to the whole of something. For example, you may look out at a ranch and you say, how many heads do you have out there? Or even how many heads of cattle? Well, we’re not just interested in the head of the cattle, we’re interested in the whole cow, right? And yet we talk about the heads to refer to the whole. You might look out on a uh a nice day, and you see that there’s a bunch of sailboats out on a lake, and you say, How many sails out there today? Well, again, we understand we’re not just interested in the sails, but the sails represent the boat. It’s very common for someone to say, Man, my car just keeps on breaking down.

I need a new set of wheels. Well, you’re not just interested in the wheels, you’re interested in the entire vehicle. Someone says, that’s a nice set of wheels you got there. They’re complementing the entire car, not just the wheels. And we frequently say, Will you get your rear end over here? I suggest we’re not just interested in their rear end, we’re interested in their whole body. I mean, that’s just the way we talk. In fact, it’s so interesting that people have struggled with this, you know, figure of speech so much that in the restoration movement, you go back about 150 years, people were wanting to speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent, all of which is well and good. But they misunderstood the term cup as if the cup itself is what mattered rather than the contents.

My wife wakes up in the morning, she says, I’ve just got to have my cup of coffee. She’s not interested in the cup. She wants the contents of the cup. Jesus told his disciples, drink ye all of it. He was talking about the contents. That’s what mattered. The fruit of the vine, which is going to represent the new covenant in his blood. But we have some well-meaning brethren. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but they’re often referred to as the one cuppers. And they act like if you don’t have just one cup because Jesus talked about the cup, that somehow or other you’re unscriptural and you’re not following the Bible pattern. And so you’ve got a division in the Brotherhood because there was a misunderstanding of the use of the term cup and how it simply refers to the contents, not the cup itself.

And so when we come over to John 3.16, probably the most famous verse in the New Testament, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

But people just frequently just quote this. The belief here obviously stands for the whole process. Believe is often used in the Bible as a synectity. Now, on the other end of this scale, you’ve got 1 Peter 3 and verse 21, which says, baptism now saves you. Well, again, baptism stands for the whole. Someone says, you know, when were you baptized? We don’t just mean that you were dipped in water. We mean when did you make the decision to become a disciple? We understand it’s the whole process. Will everyone who is baptized only be saved? Baptism does you no good if you haven’t got all the other prerequisites that should go before it. I think one of the best examples to illustrate what we’re saying here about synectity is in John, excuse me, in Acts 16 and verse 31, Paul is talking to the Philippian jailer.

And the jailer apparently was a pagan, had no idea about Jesus until he had this particular encounter. And so he says, What must I do to be saved? And the answer is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. So he’s told you’ve got to believe in Jesus if you’re going to be saved. But then we find in verses 33 and 34 that the same hour of the night, they were baptized immediately. So a part of this belief must have included this final act of baptism. But then it turns around and says in verse 34 that they rejoice greatly with all his house, having believed in God. So they go back to the beginning statement about you have to believe in Jesus, and then finally theyar, believe, repent, confess, and are baptized, right?

And then it says, see, they believed in God. Well, they didn’t just believe. See, people take these verses that are supposed to be the part that refers to the whole, and they want to add in their minds the word only. And that is a huge mistake. And we need to make sure we don’t do that. In Romans 10, 9 and 10, very famous verse If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with a heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with mouth confession is made unto salvation. Well, obviously here, belief and confession refer to the whole.

This is taken from the Methodist Creed book. I have a copy of the Methodist Creed book in my library. On one of the pages there, it says, and I quote, that the doctrine of faith only is a doctrine full of comfort.

Well, the problem is there’s only one time the phrase faith alone or faith only is found in the Bible. And it’s in James 2 and verse 24. You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. Let me say that a lot of times people will say, well, we saved by our faith, or we saved by our works. That’s a false dichotomy. It’s not an either or we’re saved by belief-based action, as we talked about in the big picture presentation. And so we’re saved by faith that works. That’s the way this fits together biblically. They both go together as one. But again, it’s just so frustrating to me how common it is for people to, in their minds, when they read these verses, to add the word only.

And we brethren, when we do our own exegesis of text, need to be very careful that we don’t make that same mistake.

And we’re told in that wonderful text that faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. And then they go on and basically say that’s the only way you can come to faith. See, that’s what Romans 10 and verse 17 says. No, that’s not the only way you can come to faith. In fact, Romans chapter 1 and verse 20 says the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, having them be having perceived them through the things that are made, and therefore people that reject God just because of the witness of nature and the cosmos are without excuse. And so you can come to some degree of faith simply by observing nature. Don’t say only in Romans 10 and verse 17.

2. Different Answers Based on Where They Are

The text doesn’t say that. There’s another way to come to faith, at least faith in God. And so all of us need to be careful not to treat the Bible that way, because when you do so, you wind up coming up with some pretty serious false doctrines. Many of you know that my wife and I had the privilege of spending 10 years up in the Pacific Northwest at the Kirkland Church. And so let’s assume you’re up there in Seattle, and you ask the question, how far is it to Birmingham? That’s quite a road trip. And so somebody says, oh, well, from Seattle, it’s about 2,540 miles to Birmingham, Alabama. And you go, oh, we better get started, or we got a long way to go. And so you continue to travel, and now you come to another city.

You get to Denver, and you say, How far is it to Birmingham? Same question, different answer. 1,330 miles. Okay, still got a long way to go. Then you get pretty close. You get to Memphis and you say, How far to Birmingham? And the person says, Oh, you’re about 260 miles away from Birmingham. Now I want you to notice that every time you ask the question, how far is it to Birmingham? You get a different answer. And the answer to the question depends on where the person is when they ask the question. And so you’ve got all these examples of people asking in the Bible, inspired teachers and writers, what must I do to be saved? Well, they get different answers based upon where they are on the road to salvation.

We just talked about the Macedonian jailer. Well, he was an unbeliever. As we said, as far as we can tell, he was a raw pagan. So first thing he needed to do was to be taught about Jesus and become a believer in him. And so he’s told, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Not believe only. But that’s where you need to start if you don’t know Jesus. Well, what about the people on the day of Pentecost? Well, they already knew about Jesus. Many of them were there at the cross yelling, crucify him. And they came to believe in Jesus, and they actually were convicted by the sermon, and they confessed that they’d done wrong, and they wanted to know, well, what do we need to do to be saved?

And they’re told to repent, be baptized for the mission of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So that’s where they were at. They recognize Jesus, they recognize they’d done wrong, they need to repent and be baptized for the mission of sins. And then we’ve got Paul, we’re going to talk more about him later in today’s lesson, who obviously became a believer when he saw the Lord on the road to Damascus. And he says, What must I do, Lord, to be saved? And he already felt bad about what he’d done and was repenting. And so Ananias comes to him and says, Well, all you have left to do at this point is to be baptized and call upon the name of the Lord and have your sins washed away.

3. 14 Things That Have Some Part in Salvation

Wasn’t saved on the road to Damascus, folks. He was saved after he obeyed the final step that Ananias then told him that he needed to follow. And that’s all he was told to do because he’d already done all the others. So you see, just explain to people that you get different answers to these questions based on the context of where they are on their own personal road to salvation. Now, let’s talk for a minute about the fact that there are actually 14 things that the New Testament teaches that have some part in the salvation from sin. And I think this is important. I’ll just be really honest with you. I think we’ve overused the five steps, and in some cases, misused the five steps. Because we start oftentimes with the five steps.

And the five steps have to do with our response to God’s grace and our response to the teaching about Jesus. You know, when you go out on a date with someone, you may have high hopes, but hopefully on the first date, you don’t start talking about the wedding. A little premature, don’t you think? I mean, we sometimes want to immediately bring up the subject of baptism, which is the thing you do at the end. I call it the believer’s wedding ceremony. And so the problem with the five steps is there’s no real emphasis in that on the grace of God and on all that Jesus had to do for us. And that’s where you must start. The power of God is in the gospel, not in a checklist.

And so it’s fascinating when you look at 14 things that the Bible says has some part in salvation from sin. This next part is not controversial. For sake of time, I don’t have time to read all these verses. But it talks about the role of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The way I understand the scriptures, it’s like the Father is the architect. He’s the one who came up with the plan of salvation. And then Jesus raises his hand and says, I’ll execute the plan. I’ll go down to earth and make this happen. And then the Holy Spirit says, I’ll finish it. I’ll communicate the message to others. And so they all had an important role in the scheme of redemption. And of course, we’re all familiar with Ephesians 2, 8 and 9.

For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It’s the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So here the emphasis is on we are saved by God’s grace. Titus 2 and other passages say the same thing. And of course, John 3 16 talks about, for God so loved the world. What was it that motivated God to come up with this plan? And what motivated Jesus to say, I will give up my life for humanity. It was love. It wasn’t the nails that held Jesus there on the cross, it was his love. And 1 John 4 and verse 17 says he made love perfect. And the Bible talks about God’s hope in Romans 8 and verse 24. For in hope we have been saved.

And very important, I think this is often not emphasized enough. Romans 5 and verse 10 says, we are reconciled and saved by his life. Yes, we were saved by the death, burial, and resurrection, but if he hadn’t lived the perfect life, his sacrifice wouldn’t have meant anything. When you partake of the Lord’s Supper today, the unleavened bread is to remind us that Jesus’ sacrifice was perfect. It was unblemished. If he had committed even one sin, he would have had to die for his own sin and could not die for our sins. So we were saved by his perfect life. As well, of course, for his death or his sacrifice. And that’s what 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 18 tells us. It says, the word of the cross to those that perish are foolishness, but to those who are saved, it is the power of God.

So the word of the cross and everything involved in Calvary was a key part of our salvation. And in Romans 5, 8 and 9, we’re told we are befied by his blood. We often sing the song, nothing but the blood of Jesus. Jesus said that he poured out his blood for the forgiveness of our sins. And so obviously, the blood of Christ is a critical component here. And also the name of Christ. Acts 4 and verse 12 tells us that there is no other name under heaven by which anyone shall be saved, saved by the name or the authority of Jesus. Now I know that’s narrow.

There’s only one way that God has set up for us to be saved, and that is through his Son. And of course, the gospel, 1 Corinthians 15 says the gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. That’s sort of the gospel in a nutshell, and that is the power of God unto salvation. We’re also told that you need someone to teach you, a preacher or a messenger. It was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. So it’s our job in these vessels of clay to hold the treasures of the gospel in our hearts and then share that with others. And then in John 8 and verse 32, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

4. Nine Ways We Must Respond, Not Five

2 Thessalonians 2 and verse 10 talks about those that perish because they receive not the love of the truth that they might be saved. And so all of those things are involved in our salvation. And then there are actually nine ways we must respond, not five. But nine ways that the New Testament says the true disciple responds to the gospel. And of course, we’re all familiar with the five steps. I could remember as a teenager learning these steps and the verses that go with them and memorizing those verses, and those are all true, and those are very applicable and helpful. We just don’t want to limit ourselves to these in the way that I think sometimes we do in our thinking. And by the way, I want to share this with you.

I remember when I was a young Christian, and I’d think about here, believe, repent, confess and be baptized, and I’d think that first one seems kind of superfluous. Well, of course, you’ve got to hear it to believe it. I mean, why is that even hardly even said? It kind of goes without saying you have to hear the gospel in order to believe it and ultimately obey it. But you know, I’ve come to understand over the years that actually, instead of this being sign of superfluous, it’s actually probably the most important of these five steps. Because the idea here isn’t that it just goes through the airwaves into your brain through your ears. The idea here is that you have to be open. You have to be willing to hear with an open mind.

You have to be a seeker to find truth. And that’s what we’re looking for today is people that are open, willing to hear, willing to listen. And sadly, a lot of times that’s hard to find out there. But we’re looking for people that are looking. And so this is so critical. A person has to have an open heart to hear the gospel, believe it, repent once they’ve been convicted by it, then be willing to confess with their mouth Christ as Lord, and then be baptized for the mission of their sins. Let me also tell you something that I came to this conclusion 30, 40 years ago, and I’ve never really understood why typically in our fellowship, when someone comes forward to be baptized and we ask them to make the good confession.

We want them to confess with their mouth. We often say, Do you believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God? Well, that’s certainly biblical, and that’s what we need to ask them. But this verse here in Romans 10 says, confess with your mouth, Christ is Lord. So I add and have added for decades, and are you willing to make that Lord that you believe in the Lord and master of your life in all things? Because you’ve got to humble yourself and submit your will to the Heavenly Father. And the whole act of baptism is an act of submission, demonstrating that. And so I encourage people to make them follow Romans 10, 9, and 10 and confess with their mouth Jesus as Lord, as well as the fact that you believe that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Okay, let’s also illustrate it very clearly. You know, we go back to this idea of people you often heard preach the man, not the plan. Again, that’s a false dichotomy. It’s not either or you preach the man and the plan to get into the man, Christ Jesus. These go together. In fact, you can’t teach the man without talking about the plan, and that’s exactly what we find in Acts chapter 8. We learn here that Philip approaches the eunuch, who was interestingly enough reading the text while he was riding in this chariot. You might say this was the first example of texting while driving. I waste that joke on you. I guess I did. Anyway, here he is. He’s reading the text while he’s riding in this chariot, and uh and Philip is made aware of this, providentially through the Spirit.

And he says, understandeth what thou readest. And he says, How can I, unless some man guide me? And he began from that very text, Isaiah 53, to preach to him about Jesus. So we aren’t told specifically what he said there, but we are told that after he’s preaching Jesus unto him, he wants to become a Christian, and so he starts looking for water. And he says, Well, here’s water. What hindereth me to be baptized for the remission of my sins? So I can get into Jesus. And so he says, if thou believest with all thy heart, thou mayest. And so they went down into the water, and then they came up out of the water. This isn’t sprinkling, this is an example of immersion. That’s what baptism is, and what happened afterwards.

They go on their way rejoicing, because he made the decision to become a disciple. He started by preaching the man Jesus, and in the explanation of all of that, it ends in his being baptized for the mission of his sins. And so then he’s on his way rejoicing. So you preach the man and the plan.

Well, in the very chapter where John 3.16 is found, you find John 3 5. Jesus answered, Truly, truly I say unto you, unless one is born of the water in the Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. So it’s not just belief.

And one of the things I appreciated about Ronald Reagan is he was in an interview one time, and he was asked, Are you a born again Christian? Ronald Reagan smiled and he said, What other kind is there? I remember watching that interview going, yes, I’d love to have a presidential candidate who tells the truth about that very important subject. You need to be born again of the water and the spirit. And as I mentioned, we’ve got examples of this. For example, in the second century, Ireneus. This is 150 AD. He says, and we are lepers in sin. We are made clean from our transgression by means of the sacred water and the invitation of the Lord. We are thus spiritually regenerated as newborn infants, even as the Lord declared, except a man be born again of the water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

So you have this baptismal water that was set apart for a holy purpose, and when these people respond by faith, they knew it was at that point that they were regenerated. They were spiritually born again of the water and the spirit.

Titus 3 and verse 5, where it talks about he saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewing by the Holy Spirit, which matches up completely with John 3 5. We need to be born of the water and the Spirit. If I understand this properly, it seems that when we by faith participate in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, and we go through this sort of believer’s wedding ceremony. This is where we become one with Christ. This is where we are united with Christ in his death. That’s the Holy Spirit that sort of cleanses the soul or washes the sins away in this spiritual regeneration. And then you come out of that watery grave, having been born of the Spirit, when you have responded by faith to water baptism.

Now let’s go back to this example of Paul, because so many of our religious friends out there will talk about how Saul of Tarsus was saved on the road to Damascus. And that is just not what the text teaches. He became a believer on the road to Damascus. He became aware of how he had been persecuting Jesus when he was persecuting the church. A lot of important things happened there when he was blinded by the light and Jesus revealed himself to him. But I want you to look at this.

What shall I do, Lord? He doesn’t say, well, you’ve already done everything now that you confessed your faith in me. No. He says, I want you to go up and go into Damascus, where someone’s going to tell you what you need to do to be saved. And while he’s there, he fasted three days. The text says he neither ate nor drank. Now, he was praying there, having been blinded, and was just focused completely on trying to get his life right with God and truly repenting. Now, if anybody was ever able to just pray through, and based on praying through, you’re going to be saved, it would have been Saul of Tarsus. But there’s nowhere in the New Testament where somebody came to the Lord simply through prayer.

And this is a perfect example of how it didn’t happen here. And by the way, Ananias is sent to Saul of Tarsus, and he immediately has the scales fall off his eyes. There’s this miraculous healing of his blindness. And then after three days of these acts of repentance and a miraculous healing, Ananias told him, and why do you delay? Or why tarryest thou? Get up and be baptized and wash away your sins. Calling on his name or appealing to Christ’s authority. So when was Paul saved? When he had his sins washed away. If he was saved on the road to Damascus, he wouldn’t have had his sins washed away. Wouldn’t have needed it to be washed away because he’d already have been saved. So I think that’s a really helpful biblical example of how to put all of this together.

Now there are four additional ways in which we must respond, in addition to just the five steps. James chapter 2 tells us that we need to respond by a continued life of obedience. We’re told in 1 John 3 and verse 24 the one who keeps his commandments abides in Jesus and He in Him. So we have to continue to walk in the light as He is in the light and have some obedient faith. Romans 1 and verse 5, Hebrews 5, 8 and 9. He’s the author of eternal salvation to all those that obey him. So you can’t just go through the ritual of baptism and then after that just go about live any way you want. You have to abide in the vine, abide in Jesus, and be obedient to him.

And Matthew 10 and verse 22 says, He that endureth to the end shall be saved. And we’re admonished, of course, to run the race with endurance, looking to Jesus as the author and perfecter of our faith. And Jesus has decided in the plan that God and the Holy Spirit, they all cooperated in, that Jesus would choose those who choose him. It’s a voluntary act.

And so he says in Acts chapter 2, with many other words, he testified and exhorted, saying, Save yourselves from this meaningless or untoward generation. So only the people who chose to respond to Jesus could be saved. So there’s a role in which you choose to save yourself when you make that decision. So all of those things put together is what the Bible says about salvation. Now, when I go through these things with someone, and a lot of times there is kind of a light that goes on when they realize, oh, so you know, in so many of these passages, it’s not an only, it’s just a part that stands for the whole. And all these 23 things matter. And then I ask them, which one of these 23 things do you want to leave out?

Which one of these 23 things should we leave out? And every time the person says, Well, I don’t want to leave any of these things out. He says, Well, I don’t either. And so Jesus said, the word that I speak shall judge you in the last day. All of these things matter. And we want to make sure that we accept and declare the whole council of God. And in this presentation, baptism is just one of 23.

5. Where Is the Sinner’s Prayer Found in the Bible?

It’s just we tend to focus on that because so many people want to try to explain it away. And this, I just think really clearly helps people understand that it’s all important, and we just want to preach and teach the whole council of God. And don’t you want to be a part of that? So a lot of people stumble upon this because they’re taught about the sinner’s prayer. Where is the sinner’s prayer asking God to come into your heart found in the Bible? By the way, I mentioned the excellent book, The Muscle and a Shovel, when I was here two weeks ago. Chapter 39, one of the latter editions, page 368, has a wonderful discussion of the sinner’s prayer and its uh origin and how late it is in history.

And just that one chapter is worth the price of the entire book. Are you aware that it wasn’t until 1678 in the book Pilgrim’s Progress by a man by the name of John Bunyan? As far as we’ve been able to determine, that is the first time anybody ever postulated that one can simply be saved by asking God into your heart. 1678. It’s a little late, don’t you think? If people think that this idea of asking God into your heart is acceptable, they’re basically saying that we’ve got this figured out now, 2,000 years post cross, and that the apostles and all the early Christians had it wrong. Does that make any sense to you? Remember, the Holy Spirit in John 16, 13, they were, the Holy Spirit was appointed to deliver all truth to the apostles over time.

And so they were given the truth that saves.

And that is just so important historically for people to understand. And even after it was promoted in 1678, it kind of got forgotten. It really wasn’t began to really be promoted until a fellow by the name of Dwight Moody out of Chicago started promoting that. And then later on, Billy Sunday during the Great Depression, he was an athlete who had a lot of charisma, and he left athletics and eventually became a preacher, and he started preaching and promoting this. And that was picked up by Billy Graham, and then later on the campus crusade for Christ. And so it’s just almost universally taught among our Protestant friends that you’re saved by faith alone, and by that they mean all you have to do is ask Jesus into your heart or pray through.

And most of our Christian, quote, friends believe that.

Someone says, Well, Brother Hunter, what about Revelation 3 in verse 20? Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and anyone who comes in to me and opens that door, I will sup with him or have fellowship with him and him with me. Well, that particular admonition was written to the church at Laodicea. That was written to a church that were made up of Christians, many of which needed to repent because they’d fallen away. So this idea of Jesus is standing at your heart door, and he wants you just to kind of open the door, that was written to Christians who needed to repent, not to alien sinners who wanted to come or needed to come to Jesus for the first time. C.S. Lewis was talking about this idea of the sinner’s prayer, and he says, this concept is only found in Scripture when one begins with the idea that the sinner’s prayer is true.

He says, I consider this a great cataract of nonsense, as it only appears in Scripture through the imagination of readers influenced by the sinner’s prayer phenomenon. A great cataract of nonsense, a blurring of what is there in the text simply because you’ve been told these things earlier by others. And so we can summarize it. It is not found in the Bible, it was not used by Jesus or the apostles. It is absence from any historical manuscript, and was first proposed in 1678 in Pilgrim’s Progress. It contradicts the biblical plan of salvation. So, where in the world do we get this idea that we should leave anything out? I don’t want to leave anything out. I want to, like Paul, preach and teach the whole council of God.

Conclusion

So, do we sometimes leave the impression that baptism is more important than it is? Yeah, I think we do. Because so much of the religious world has left it out. We want to start with that. That is just the final step. And it’s a necessary step. But so were the other 22 things that the Bible says about salvation. Necessary things for us to accept. So this just kind of puts this all in perspective. And I’ve just had a lot of success in people saying, oh, yeah, I don’t want to leave anything out. Of course. I will be baptized for the remission of my sins, because that’s the final step where I can contact the blood of Jesus and have my sins washed away in baptism. Okay.

Any thoughts about that or any feedback? I gave you the handout so you could sit down with somebody and go through this with them. It’s really so simple, but it is really a powerful way to share the good news of the gospel in its fullness, in my judgment. Yes, Sean. I’ve seen that when studying equality, especially in our classical things, seems to mean the most difficult step for a lot of folks. Even more than you do in the water. Yes.

Whether it’s a marriage situation, a drinking situation, something. And that’s what I have found would be one of the most challenging things today.

I don’t want to just get people away. Oh, of course. You know, you want them to understand you’ve got to change a lot. Yeah. So have you seen that before? Oh, yes, you have to repent and be baptized. You have to make a U-turn, which is what repentance is. And that’s often a critical thing. I’ve found, Sean, that the last 10 or 15 years, for the first time ever, I run across people. If you were to die tonight, would you go to heaven? And they’d say, Oh, yes, I know I’m saved. And I say, okay, tell me about what you did for you to have confidence that you are saved. And they’ll go, well, what do you mean by that? And I’ll say, Well, surely at some point you were convicted you were a sinner and you knew you needed a savior, and then you began to do something to seek the Savior Jesus.

Tell me about that. And more and more I have people who say, Well, I’m saved, but I I’ve never repented. I’m a good person. I don’t think I need to repent. And I just think, what kind of a crazy world view is that? That people think they’ve never really sinned. I say, well, if you think you haven’t sinned, that that’s that’s one sin right there, because the Bible says that a man who says he hasn’t sinned is a liar. And so, yes, repentance is critical. The whole idea of softening your heart. And that’s why you count the cost with someone and deal with what they may need to repent of. So, yes, very important thing. And we live in a culture where people don’t want to do that.

I’m sure you guys heard of Joel Olstein. He will not talk about sin and will not call people to repentance because he says people already feel bad enough about things. So he just wants to have a ministry of encouragement, which doesn’t include repentance. Well, that’s he’s changed the gospel right there, hasn’t he? All right. Thank you all for being here and listening so well. And don’t forget to pick up uh a copy of this 23 Things That Saves handout so you can have it for future reference. Thank you.