Answers to Agnostic Neighbors

Introduction

That last song, I stand in all of you, you are beautiful beyond description. It had power to it. I think my microphone was on. That’s a beautiful song. I am so grateful and thankful to be a part of the congregation here at South Bumby. And if you’re visiting with us, we are so glad that you’re here this morning. We hope that you also are wanting to only follow after the will of the Lord, to follow after the Bible, and to ask yourself what saith the Lord in all things. When we gather together as God’s people, when we gather together as the flock, as sheep in the pasture, we have a great shepherd, our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, who loves us, and who gave the greatest example of service.

Par excellence, the greatest example of service that there ever was. And so this morning I’d like to talk about what sometimes happens in the world in which we live in, and that is when we meet someone who knows we believe in the scriptures. They know we have a very high regard for biblical matters.

But they in the community that they live in, and that the mindset that they have is, well, I don’t have that faith. I don’t have that belief in your God of the Bible. I don’t believe in Jesus, those people might say. And they say, why do you? And the question that they ask is, can you listen to some of the things I have to say? Because as they might talk to you, they might say things like, Well, it’s not that I don’t believe there could be a God, I just can’t figure them out from the Bible. Or it’s not that I don’t want to have faith, I just don’t have it yet. And the initial construction of this sermon began many months ago when I was having a conversation with someone in the community, particularly someone that was at my house talking to me for a good long while, and they were agnostic.

They weren’t basically an atheist that said there’s no way there could ever be a God. They said, No, I just don’t have that faith yet. They said essentially to me, basically, well, I’ve got some questions that I want you to consider. And so, what this lesson will do towards the second half of the lesson is address this fellow’s eight questions. He had eight questions and he he had them very detailed, and one of the things that we’ll look at is the importance of listening to the questions and listening to what someone says so that you can understand where they’re coming from. What they want to know, and basically asking the question, what shall I say to my agnostic neighbor? We know that here at South Bumby we are engaged in a study of uh the Bible and a theme of transformation, and some of you may be saying, Well, I know you I’ve I can pick up a card, an outreach card, and give it to a person.

I can I can tell somebody I’d like you to come to church services, but what do I say in the event that they say, well, I don’t believe that that the Bible is legitimate? Or what if they say, um, well, I I just don’t have enough evidence to believe in your God. Isn’t that a hard question? Isn’t that a difficult question? Isn’t that something that takes a little more study than just saying, oh, well, we were we have religious differences. I go to this church, you go to that church. Isn’t there something different? The next slide is going to use a word not perfectly accurate because it’s from uh the research group that is called the Pew Research Center, but I needed the scripture, the uh the data to be on here so that I don’t misrepresent the Pew Research Center.

So if I can get a, let’s see, that one there. I don’t have a laser pointer up here, but if you look at the uh, let’s see if this is the laser pointer. Anyways, if you look up the top, it says, in the if the U.S. had a hundred people, sixty-two of them would be Christians. What that means is not like biblical born-again members of the church. That means if the U.S. had only a hundred people, sixty-two of them would say they have a faith in God. They would include 23 evangelical Protestants, 19 Catholics, 11 mainline Protestants, five people who would be with the historically black Protestant denominations, particularly like the AME or the African Methodist Episcopalians. Uh two members would be of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and two would identify with other smaller groups.

We would find, well, where do we find ourselves in that category? Uh it’s split level. Some people, when taking the survey who are members of the Church of Christ, they would just say, Well, I’m an evangelical Protestant. Others would say, No, I’m not. I’m just by the Bible, and I have no evangelical nor Protestant, and they would answer in the two. So what we’re basically saying is members of the church maybe make up about five to seven of that group. Meanwhile, 29, remember, this is if the U.S. only had 100 people, 29 people, that’s almost 30 of 100, would be affiliated with what is called the nuns. Not N-U-N, like people that are Catholic nuns, but N-O-N-E, like zero people, would be made up of people who describe themselves as agnostics, atheists, or nothing in particular when it comes to religion.

Looking at the second chart on the list here, if I can go there. See, we’re gonna go to next. Yeah, there we go. Just use the mouse, Tony. I’m gonna use the you’ll see this going on. If you see right here, this evangelical Protestant as a 23 mainline Protestant 11. When you look at U.S.’s the 100 people, uh if if the U.S. had a hundred, a hundred people, six two would be Christians, two would be Jews, one would be Muslim, and look at this huge number of religiously unaffiliated down here at the bottom. I don’t know if that’s circling right or not, but you’re basically looking at a gap between 60 and 30. That’s basically the amount. So when we look at the next chart, which relates to Florida, this is this information comes from the Pew Research Center that is very new information as of March 4th, 2024 and 25, meaning this is about the most current information I know of.

You go to the next slide, and it shows a breakdown of the West, the Midwest, the Northeast, and the South. I want us just for today’s lesson to focus just on the South where we live here. People talk about this as the Bible Belt. Not so much anymore, brethren. There are 20 people or would that are in this area that you would say, well, yes, that’s making up the majority. If you looked at the Midwest, the Northeast or the West, there’s not as many quote unquote Protestants, but look down here at this religiously unaffiliated, these agnostics. Half. If there were a hundred people, 10 would be agnostic, or I don’t have enough evidence to be in the box believe the Bible, 20 would be Protestant. So what do you say to your religious neighbor when you’re recognizing it used to be that you had percentages of people that were religiously affiliated?

Where in this predicament that we’re in today, a huge percentage, not a hundred percent half. It’s not like you have a hundred people here, 50 don’t believe, 50 do. It’s not that, but you do have at least 30 in the percentage proportion, even some would say upwards of 60, that don’t believe in the Bible. What do you say? First and foremost, please hear this. Listen. One of the things I have run across, and you probably have as well, is that they will say religious people are pretty rude or loud or vocal, and we are. Have you ever just sat down and just listened to some of the thoughts of someone who maybe is agnostic or someone who doesn’t uh believe in the Bible? For about an hour or an hour and a half, I just sat and listened.

I didn’t make any comments. I didn’t have any answers to these questions this individual had. I said, I’ll just listen to you. You want to hear someone hear your side? Talk. Tell me your side. I’ll listen to it. I’ll tell you my side some other day. But if you want to actually tell me what you’re saying, get your thoughts out. Say what’s on your mind. Say what you’re thinking, so I’ll know where you’re coming from, and I can actually listen to you long enough to know well, what would be the biblical answer to that? Because some things do have a biblical answer, but they’re so layered or so within some context that I don’t get to know exactly what to tell you unless I know exactly what you’re thinking.

Check out these eight questions. Define God. That’s what the individual wanted me to do. Define him. Next, the Bible comprises authors from everywhere. Why are there multiple authors of the Bible? Another one, this individual said, Well, why do bad things happen to good people? Same individual said, bad things happen to Jesus. I mean, you all call him the Son of God, and bad things happen to him. Another question the individual said is the cross. I just don’t get it. Why the cross? Why that much pain? Why that much uh challenge? Another question the individual asked was, why do some Christians believe that genes don’t mutate or that certain levels of science aren’t real? Because the person says, I know genes mutate, you get a different flu shot each year.

I’m not dumb. I understand sometimes you get vaccines. Why do some people not believe in any type of medicine, if you will? Some people they say, I’m not going to take any medical care. I’m just going to live my life without medical care. Why is that? That person had a legitimate question, and I’m going to address that later in the lesson. Another legitimate question he asks is, how is it that some of your Christian people or your so-called Christian people are so wrathful when communicating? This individual said, You all have a scripture that says, well, if you’re angry, you shouldn’t sin. That if you have anger in your heart that you should not boil up with wrath, he says, he sees that all the time with priests and other people.

And then the individual gave a really in-depth one to conclude the thing with. And these weren’t all given like in order like this. I had to listen and think, and then throughout the week, kind of, what was that other question? Did I get the other one? Did I recall the other? And I’m writing it down on this little card that I’ve had for weeks and weeks, and I’ve just been double-filling it out, making sure I didn’t miss anything this individual said. And this other one was telling, he said, followers of God often will say, May God bless you, or may God be with you, or God bless, or God bless you. And he says, Why don’t they just say be blessed? He says, Isn’t it in the terms of the Bible that only God is the one giving blessings?

And when you look at the ends of the books of the Bible, he’s saying, May God be blessed and the apostles are giving blessings by God. Why is it that we are using Bible terminology in the wrong way? I just had to scratch my head on that one and think on that one for a while. We as Christians, through the years have said we call Bible things by Bible names and do Bible things in Bible ways. A lot of religious-minded people, they have the Bible, but they’re not using Bible terms in Bible ways, and they’re not calling Bible things by Bible names, and they are giving their own definition of a blessing from a person to a person instead of from God to a person, or they’re basically saying in such a way that they are evoking their blessing on them.

1. Define God: He Is Elusive

And so that is something that that person has a valid question to. But I want to use this order that I’ve got them in this morning. And for sake of time, I’m going to go ahead and skip to the next slide so that if you’re taking notes, you can quickly jot down my thoughts and we’ll go through them all. I know there’s eight of them. I know there are a lot here, but I think we can get through it. We’ll begin with define God. I think a lot of people, when they ask for a definition of God, they want a crutch. They want a crutch they can lean on, and they want to define God with simplicity. They want the simplest answer to define God. They say, okay, all powerful, that’ll work.

And all powerful God. You believe in an all powerful God, that’s simple. He’s powerful. But there’s more to God than that. Somebody says, well, I want him to be all grace giving. Well, he’s grace giving, but don’t you want him to be just? Because somebody you might want a just God and a grace God and a powerful God. I think that the key element to God when we’re trying to define God, hear me out, is he’s elusive. He’s undefinable. One of the primary characteristics of our God is we as people can’t define him. He says to Job, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? He says, uh, can you draw out the behemoth or the Leviathan with a hook? Can you uh tell me of when the stars were arranged in the ways they were?

I know Leviathan is in the water, behemoth on land. I get that. But I’m basically saying he’s a where were you when all these things were formed? You look at the stars in the sky, and it’s a divine way that God formed a map, a nighttime map. I don’t know how that works, but he did that. I he named all the stars by name. Wouldn’t you like to know what he called them? And I’m sure it wasn’t red dwarf and little giant. I mean, he names all the stars by name. God is powerful. To define him on human terms is to kind of mess it up. And the reality is when we as Christians start saying, well, he’s omnipotent, all powerful, he’s omniscient, he’s all knowing, and he’s um uh omnipresent, he’s all places.

Yeah, that’s all true. But we still can’t define him on human terms. He’s elusive. Some people view God as some sort of puppeteer that just says, Oh, I’ll just tell man what to do on earth and he’ll just do whatever I say. Other people think of him as an old aloof professor who just kind of lean in and going, okay, whatever the kids do in class, that’s fine until the test. They either pass or fail. I won’t deal anything with them, won’t give them instruction, I’ll give them a book. They can read the book, but I won’t physically talk to them. That’s not how God works. But some people view him that way, and you have all these different views of God, and the reality is he’s elusive.

That word elusive means it’s hard to describe. And he’s describing when we describe our God, he’s a good God. And part of the reason we recognize that is when we mature, ask yourself this question. When we mature and get older and wiser and gain wisdom, some of the things we do, we know why we’re doing it. But to a little infant, they don’t know why we’re doing it. To a little kid that’s a little older, they don’t know why we’re doing it. To a teenager, they go, Are you sure about that? And I said, You wait 10 years, you’ll know exactly why I get that. I mean, when we get older, we gain wisdom. And God is called the ancient of days. If we look at the passage of scripture in uh Ezekiel, where he’s referred to as the ancient of days as well as Daniel.

2. Why Are There Multiple Authors of the Bible?

So defining God, he’s elusive. Another question I would ask you to ask yourself is do you know why there are multiple authors in the Bible? You say, nope, it’s it’s written by God. Well, one God, I carried about by the Holy Spirit, first Peter, I know that scripture. Yes, but there are different authors of the Bible. Please don’t deny that. There is one God who carried those 40 different men to write the Bible, but there were about 40 different men who wrote the Bible. They were unique, they spoke in different languages. Some spoke Hebrew, some spoke Greek. In some rare occurrences, there was even the writings of Aramaic that were within the Bible. But when you look predominantly Old Testament, Hebrew, New Testament, Greek, but when you look at the Bible, you have a book of a lot of different authors.

Now, these are men that God said, Well, you start writing, and if I disagree with it, I’ll say, Don’t write that, I’ll tell you what to write. If I say agree with that, I’ll agree with that. The Holy Spirit carried them along to get the document written. It had to be, it had to be approved by God. We sometimes talk of the seal of the Spirit. It had to be stamped by God’s approval. First Peter 3 6, uh 2 Peter Peter. 2 Timothy 3 16 says, all the scripture is inspired of God or is breathed by God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly furnished unto all good works. It’s all by God as his design, but yes, there were 40 different men that wrote it.

And someone says, Why so many? And don’t they disagree? First of all, they don’t disagree. The Old Testament prophecies are corroborating. They make a connection with the New Testament. Even when you look at the New Testament authors, you say, Well, there’s differences in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Absolutely. Matthew wrote to the Jews. Mark wrote predominantly to the Romans. Luke wrote to the poor and those downtrodden. And John wrote in signs and sayings about God’s people. I sometimes talk about the four R’s. One talks about royalty or writing to the Jews. The other talks about the resurrection with Mark. The other talks about rejection with Luke and all the people that were rejected that Jesus affirmed. And then the last one speaks of reflection or the long lessons that John teaches in long elaborate words to show they corroborate.

They weren’t colluding to give some sort of document where one guy just, okay, that word, that word, we’re gonna get all that lined up. They create a creative document that they write. God says you have your personality that you can write that with. It will convey the mind of God, because if it doesn’t, it won’t have the stamp of approval of God, and the Holy Spirit carries them along to write that message, and so it corroborates. Why are there many authors of the Bible? Because if one guy sat down and wrote the whole thing, people would pick it to pieces, like they did with the law of Moses. They’ll pick it to pieces. Moses wrote Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and they picked it to pieces.

3. Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

God used that information, he says that’s good writing, and then he brought about the prophets to confirm that writing. Then he brought about the New Testament to say it was good for a time, but something better will come. Then we talk about, well, why do bad things happen to good people? Free will. If God was not going to like people, if God was just going to be mean to people, people wouldn’t be here. If God wanted to be mean, he wouldn’t allow us to experience things. Bad things happen to good people because of free will. We have the opportunity to do good. And some of the characters in the Bible were very bad men, and then they reformed. Then they changed. They did something better, or once they were doing something heinous or terrible.

You take Manasseh, for example, terrible guy, had his kids pass through the fire. What does that mean? He actually was going to take his children and did so and offered them up to Molech and burnt them. That’s terrible. Well, what did he do later? He was just drawled away in hooks. He repented, and at the end of his life, we don’t know his judgment state because we’re not God, but he did a turnaround in life. He wasn’t as good as Josiah, who remained faithful all through his life, but bad things happen to good people so that we can realize when we make a poor choice, God is going to give us enough grace, that’s the second part, to hopefully be able to do a turnaround. Why do bad things happen to good people?

Because God has grace and free will. That’s nice. What about Jesus? God let God get hurt? That doesn’t sound right. Jesus went to war. Jesus went to war against the devil. Back in Genesis chapter 3, it says he would crush the head of Satan. He would face a heel wound. So on the cross, Jesus would have a heal wound, but he would crush the head of Satan. He went to war. He went to battle for us. Even in our reading that we just read in our meditation moment, the five minutes of meditation, if you were to go back and look at Colossians chapter 2 and looking at what he did at the cross, go back to that verse you just read in verse 14 and 15, wiping out the handwriting of requirements, in other words, basically saying, bye by old testament law and enter the new testament.

He says, he says, he’s taken that out of the way, nailed it to the cross, having disarmed principalities and powers. He made a public spectacle of principalities and powers, triumphing over them in it. In other words, at the cross, he went to war. And he’s your savior, but he’s also your king. He’s your battle leader, and he did something we can’t do. We can struggle against Satan, but we cannot defeat his power. Jesus, on the other hand, who struggled with Satan as well in Matthew chapter 4, that was very clearly evident, he was able to conquer death. Because death can’t hold someone who’s sinless. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t have a way to suppress the power of God. And that’s what Satan tried to do.

4. Why the Cross? He Paid the Price for Justice

And so when you look at this idea of why does evil things happen to Jesus, this happened to Jesus, namely because he is the one that is going to show us how to deal with it. In Hebrews, it says he is able to sympathize with us. For he was tempted in all ways like as we are, yet without sin. He can sympathize with us. Bad things happen to Jesus, absolutely. But then someone says, why the cross? I mean, you could say, well, why didn’t he just live 90 years? Because, I mean, you’ve got Moses, he lived into his hundreds. You’ve got Noah, he lived into his well over hundreds. You’ve got uh Josiah, Daniel, they all outlived Jesus. Can somebody give me a little illustration there as to why Jesus lived only 35 years?

Nope. God’s elusive. Back to that first point again. I’m not here to try to figure out all the answers because I’m not here to try to figure out God, but I can say this: the cross is when God paid the price for justice. You want to be freed from your sins? Someone’s got to pay to have freedom from sin. And the blood of Christ is what does that. The blood of Christ paid a way for us to be saved. If you looked at Matthew chapter 4 and look at the second temptation of Jesus, in the second temptation of Jesus, the devil tempts Jesus in a way we’re not tempted. The first temptation, oh yeah, we’re all tempted there. We’re probably in an hour. If I kept you here for another hour, our stomachs would all start grumbling, right?

One more hour. I’m only gonna preach three hours, right?

Because I’m hungry, I’m a human, I’m a person. Well, Jesus is in the wilderness for 40 days. Whether he had water or not, we’ll leave that to some other study. But he has no food. And the devil says, You turn these rocks into bread. You can do that. You’re the you’re the son of God, can’t you? Why don’t you just turn these rocks into bread? He doesn’t do it. He says, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth from the mouth of God. I’m not gonna live by just my belly. I’m not gonna do it. So we’re all there. We all can have that temptation. We could all say, Yeah, if I was in the wilderness 40 days, I could be tempted in that same way.

But we’re not gonna be tempted by the second way. The second way is one that only applies to Jesus. He says, Cast yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple. And it says, and notice how he uses scripture to twist him. He goes to the Psalms and he says, For it is written, oh uh-oh, Satan using an is written phrase to Jesus. Jesus replies back with his is written and will give Jesus’ it is written first, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. That’s his answer. But Satan uses the Psalms and he says, it says, You can cast yourself down lest you dash your foot against a stone, and the angels will take charge over thee and you’ll be saved. Why that temptation?

Because that would show his power to the Jews as a conquering king. That’s what they were expecting. If Jesus jumped down from a tall mountain and jumped right over Jerusalem, and oh the angels come down, and it’s a big big scene, and they’re like, oh, this is our Savior. This is what we expected, some long-awaited king who’s not going to get hurt. He’s just gonna coast down to the to the ground with the angels taking charge over him. We kind of laugh it up a little bit, but that’s reality. If that was how he was going to come into this world, he wouldn’t have gone to the cross. But here at the cross, he paid the price for justice. He made a situation where God said, if he goes to the cross, people will recognize two things.

And Steve, where is Steve? Right there. Steve made a great point in this, as he said in the in the Lord’s Supper talk, he said, do you recognize what Jesus has done for you? When you partake of the Lord’s Supper, do you realize essentially God died for me, God in the flesh, Jesus in the flesh, uh 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and 6 for me, that God gave his life for me. And so, in that context of why the cross, it’s so all of us would say, if somebody died for me, I’ll respect that. And so that’s very important. It paid the price of justice. Without the bloodshed, there could be no remission of sins, or without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. But we know in the scriptures that because of the shedding of blood, there is remission.

5. Why Do Some Deny That Genes Mutate?

Those first few things relate to the Bible. Maybe you can use them in your own way, maybe word them your own way with scriptures uh that that apply to you, and hopefully they’ll help you when discussing with an agnostic, someone who just doesn’t have enough knowledge about the Bible but wants to know more. Um, and there’s a lot more we could say, but plenty more we could say, but it will just continue on in the study. Why do some deny that genes mutate? That was his question. And I listened to it and I kind of got this sense. He said, There are some religious people that they won’t take a blood transfusion, they won’t have uh any inoculations. Uh, when they’re going overseas, they really don’t care about getting uh uh some sort of shot to help them uh not get what uh you know if they go overseas and they die, they won’t get some sort of disease.

But some people are like, nope, nope, I’ll be fine. Why that people are people have different people that have different views that have different views about things. There’s some denominations that teach don’t have a blood transfusion, don’t accept blood from somebody else, because that’s that person. Well, your soul, your mind, who you are is who you are. Whether you accept blood from somebody into your body to keep you alive, that’s not changing who you are. Even if a denomination says you can’t go to the hospital to get well. That’s not that’s not who you are. Your mind, your person, your thinking, your capacity is you. Sometimes you might need medical care, you might need a medicine, you might need something, and the medical community is there to help you.

Now, here is an interesting comment. He said, Some people deny the mutating of genes and say, why deny that? And the question is, well, we deny evolution. And someone would say, Well, yeah, you deny evolution, but you even deny there’s new strands of flu shots. This was what the guy said. This is literally why he told me. He said, ‘You deny that.’ I didn’t shake my head, yes, because in my mind I’m going, no, I don’t. I believe that there are new strands of the flu all the time. It’s just a disease. It’s just something that exists. Yes, there’s going to be new strands of it. But he thought I did because he’s met some religious people that believe that there is no real science in the world.

We have many Christians who are doctors, many real Christians who are sincerely in the medical community who can tell you certain things in life happen. Do I believe in evolution that there was an amoeba and that amoeba turned into a fish and the fish turned into a frog and the frog turned into uh a uh a dog and the dog turned into a monkey and the monkey turned into a man? No, I don’t believe that. A lot of people think that in the world, but I don’t believe that. I believe in six literal days of creation, and on the seventh day God rested. That’s what I believe. Because that’s what he says in Genesis chapters 1-1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Lord hovered over the waters, spirit hovered over the waters. And on day one, he created light, day two, he created the skies and the seas, day three, the land, the trees, and so on. Each day he created things in order. I believe in that. But some say, well, why not accept established science? Hear me out. Science, if science is testing provable things. That’s the whole point of science. The scientific method tests provable things. And if we can test approvable things, we can find ways to stay within a system of order. Granted, there is established science, and then there’s hokey science. I am not a scientist. I am a preacher.

So when someone asks why do some deny that genes mutate, I would say, well, because some people are under that persuasion that they believe that. But that doesn’t mean you can you can say someone’s eternally going to be lost because they believe believe various views. You might want to teach them better, but those things don’t relate to the Bible. Those things aren’t in the Bible. That’s not biblical things that are focused there. The first few things are things focused there. And what I would try to redirect as best you can someone to help someone understand you can have fundamental beliefs and you can’t have beliefs that evolution is wrong. When you believe that there are different strands of the flu shot, we should be able to say, yeah, that’s true.

There are.

6. Sinful Wrath and Calling Bible Things by Bible Names

See what I mean? It’s something that should be solved that easily. Next one. Why do some Christians have sinful wrath when communicating? This needs to be addressed. Really, the sun should not go down on our wrath. We should be the type of people that if we’re communicating, we first listen. We first focus on the scriptures. For let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, and you all know the rest of it. That’s right. I heard one just say it. For the wrath of man doth not produce the righteousness of God. If you’re going to be wrathful, that’s not going to make God righteous. And certainly, if we’re wrathful in what we say, that’s not the way to be. And then to this last question, we need to be really careful as Christians to call Bible things by Bible names.

A lot of people are really into this idea of saying, well, however, the religious world around me says it will be okay enough. Where in reality we need to call Bible things by Bible names, do Bible things in Bible ways, and have our vocabulary limited to the scriptures. If God said it a certain way, we need to find out what is the way he said it and follow after that. Let’s have a word of prayer. Dear Lord or Father in heaven, we thank you so much that you’ve given us this opportunity to talk on such important matters. We ask that you help us to apply Job 1 through 3, 2 Timothy 3.16, Matthew 25, and Genesis 1 and Romans 2 as we study these things together.

Conclusion

We ask that you help us be able to teach those in the world who want to have faith and help them to know we care about them. We don’t dismiss them, and we want them to come to Jesus to understand that He can save them. And we ask that you help us in our endeavor to teach even those who might be agnostic or who do not have enough faith presently to believe in your holy Son Jesus. Bless them and help them and help us in these efforts. In Jesus’ name. Amen. This lesson has not been entitled in the design to teach what one must do to be saved. But we do need to say this, that when one comes to the realization that they need to be saved from their sins, Romans 10 17 has to be established before John 3.

Has to be established before Acts 2 38. These questions that we talked about in the lesson, they can be answered, but only can they be answered with the eye of faith. Romans 10 17 says, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. We first must recognize that we must hear God’s word and seek out his word. Read it, study it, obey it. If you’ve read the whole scriptures, you’re very good because you know it fits together. You have that mindset, you have that mind about you. And from everyone that I’ve ever studied with it has finished reading the Bible, they read it again and they read it again. And there’s a reason because it’s unlike any other book. It is a divine library.

And the faith that we have comes from the will of God from heaven to men. And faith comes by hearing God’s word. If you hear God’s word and are willing to believe it, Jesus Christ came to this world as a suffering savior to show us that he wishes for us to go to heaven and us to appreciate the love that he has poured forth for us. And when bad things happen to good people, and when bad things happen to us or to those we love, God says, I know what that’s like. And so does my son too. So we have one who can sympathize with us. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that if we believe in him, we wouldn’t perish, but have the life that is forevermore.

And then if we are willing to believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we need to confess the name of Christ, turn away from our sins, and be baptized.

And ye shall receive the gift of the Spirit. For the promise is to you and to those who are afar off, as many, as many as the Lord our God will call. If we can help you in any way, please come forward and sit on a front row as we stand and sing.