Father God, thank you again for bringing us here to our church so that we can lift up our worship to you. Father, we're just so grateful as we study your word. And Father, this morning as we look at your word and how it affects evangelism, Father, we ask that you would use your word in a way that changes our hearts and helps us to become good at spreading the good news. And Father, we pray all this in Christ's name, amen. Come on in, get settled in. So we're continuing our study on evangelism, and it's God-centered evangelism based on a book by a man named Kuyper. And so I'm going to start out with a story. So some of you guys know my story. God did not regenerate my heart until I was in my 30s. I was kind of a dyed-in-the-wool atheist and pretty brutal on most people that tried to evangelize to me. But I remember there were people that did, and they made efforts to try to explain the gospel to me. And I remember one particular day, I was on a golf course. I was on a golf course with a neighbor who was a friend of mine, and he was attempting to evangelize to me, and he was very persistent in it, and I'm grateful to him to this day. But he asked me a question that was kind of interesting, and it relates to our means of evangelism, which is our topic today. He said, are you saved? Do you know what my response was? Saved from what? And so the reason that I asked that question was because I had no knowledge of the gospel at all. You know, I was an atheist. I didn't believe God existed. I had reasons to believe that, even though my mom had dutifully dragged me to church. I really had never heard the gospel. My eyes were not opened. And so I really had no knowledge. And so I think today's topic is really important for us to understand the mechanics of evangelism. are described in the Bible and of course the first part of the mechanics is what are the means what does God use to bring us to this understanding of what the good news is and so we're gonna As we look at the Bible, we're going to make sure that we understand and ensure what this great evangelism is when we look at our evangelism and as we spread the good news. So today's topic is God's means of evangelism. We've covered some of this material in our class on the Holy Spirit, so some of it is going to look familiar, but we're going to shift it in the context of evangelism. But obviously when you're talking about evangelism, we're talking about the Holy Spirit's work And changing our hearts, and so we're gonna see a lot of that this morning. I hope so let's roll through it We got a few slides to cover so means of grace. You know a lot of times You'll hear this term being used what are the means of grace that? And what do we mean by the means of grace? And this is something we say, what method or means does God use to bring grace to us? So it's his message of the gospel. And so grace is what we use to describe God's saving work in our lives. He gives us grace for our salvation. And there's a double cure. There's two parts of this message of grace that come to us. And we talked about this during the Holy Spirit class. There was much confusion still within the church about these two things. But that great hymn, Rock of Ages, talks about this double cure. And so this message of grace or means of grace is the way he gives us this message, and this grace is a double cure for us. So it provides a cleansing of sin's guilt. That's our justification, our positional standing before God is in Christ and His mediation. But we also have this second part, which is really important to understand, and many churches don't spend a lot of time here. It's this cleansing from sin's power. So not only are we guilty of sin, but we're also captive to it. And so grace is the means in which God uses the salvation and brings us this double cure of justification and sanctification. And so we would say grace is what we use to describe God's saving work in our lives. The Bible describes two, or actually three, main means of grace. We're going to focus on the first one, but there's really three main means of grace that the Bible describes to us. It's the word of God, the sacraments, and prayer. And so we're going to spend most of our time looking at the primary means of grace as it relates to salvation, and that is the Word of God. So let's look at this in more detail. So the Word of God is going to be our focus because it is the primary means of salvation. or the means of grace for salvation. So how does this means of grace produce a saving faith? And that's what we want to look at this morning. And so the word of God is the only means the Holy Spirit uses to impart faith in the heart of man. All right? So let's look at Romans, if you've got your Bibles, turn to Romans 10, and we're going to look at 10, 13 through 17. And as you're turning there, I want to stress that all other factors that are subsidiary to the word as it relates to evangelism. And so we're going to look at Romans and see what it says here. So Romans 10, 13 through 17. And of course, this is Paul. And he's talking to the Roman church here and saying he's describing some things in chapter 10. And he says this, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. That's the end of a statement of an Old Testament that he's describing from Joel. But he says, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And then he goes into this interesting discussion or kind of back and forth where he's positing things to them. He says, how then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? In other words, how does the unbeliever, how does God call the unbeliever? He says, and how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? Sounds familiar, right? My story about being on the golf course. I've never heard the gospel. Okay. And how are they to hear without somebody preaching? So now he's moving from a kind of a, this, this big picture question, how are they going to hear? So now it's like, he's going to get real specific about it. He says, if they've never heard it, then, then he goes on and says, and how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they, how are they to preach unless they are sent? And then this is the important part, as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news, the gospel, but they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah said, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? And then Paul makes this conclusion in 17, and this is the conclusion of the matter. So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of God. So what is this telling us right here? I mean, he says, how does the unbeliever know? Well, he knows through the word of God. And how does he get the word of God? He gets it by hearing it. And so you look at the primary means that he's describing here, it's preaching. We're talking and explaining the Word of God to people, and this is the means in which God uses for people to believe something. Remember, my story is, are you saved? And my answer was, saved from what? I didn't understand what the gospel was. He hadn't explained it to me. I didn't know who God was. I didn't know who I was as it relates to God. And you see here where Paul is saying, so faith comes from hearing and hearing from the Word of God. What are we hearing? We're hearing the Word of God. And so the knowledge of the word of God is the prerequisite of saving faith. You don't just wake up one morning and understand the gospel. You're not gonna do that. That's not in our nature. Our fallen nature is not, that's not where we're going. We're not trying to say, how do I do this? We have to have some knowledge of the word of God as a prerequisite for saving faith. And so essentially you see this, the believer consents to the truth revealed in the word. Okay, so think about this, so we hear this information from the Word of God and we're consenting to its truth. And then we're entrusting ourselves for salvation on the Son of God. And so you're seeing there's this thought pattern that's happening as the Word comes to us. So we have to understand, we consent to the truth revealed in the word, and then we entrust ourselves for salvation on the son of God. So a lot of stuff in that statement, we're gonna unpack it a little bit here. But that's essentially what we're looking at is what knowledge we need as this prerequisite for the saving faith. The unbeliever cannot do this without the knowledge of the content of scripture. If you're stuck on an island somewhere as an unbeliever, Obviously God can do a lot of things but we can't be on an island and not understand the content of scripture as it relates to the faith. That's why God gave us not only natural revelation about himself but specific revelation that says this is what you must do to be saved. And that's what we're talking about. The Westminster Confession is helpful in this, and we're going to look at a couple of the larger catechism questions as it relates to the Word of God. So this is interesting to see how they describe the use of the Word of God in our lives as believers and unbelievers as we work toward it. So let's look at Larger Catechism 154. This question is, what are the outward means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of His mediation? So take the word mediation, what does that mean? He was on the cross and he mediated for us in such a way that God looks at him for our righteousness before God himself. So that's his mediation. He's doing something on our behalf. And so this question is, what's the outward means where he communicates that to us? The benefits of this mediation are salvation. And so here's the answer. The outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicates to his church the benefits of his mediation are all his ordinances, especially the word. Okay, you see this? There's these three means of grace, the word, sacraments, and prayer, all of which are made effectual to the elect for their salvation. So let's look at this last part. So especially the word, this is the outward means which Christ communicates to us through the word, and it's made effectual for the elect for their salvation. All right, so it goes on in the next question in the larger catechism, 155. It's like, how is the word made effectual to salvation? There's a lot of information about to come at you. I tried to bulletize it a little bit, so we take it in little chunks, because you know how the Puritans love those big old sentences. All right, so let's see what they said here. How is the word made effectual to salvation? So first of all, we have this general thing that says, the spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching, two things, reading and preaching of what the word is made effectual means of. And so what they're saying is when you hear the word preached and you read your Bible, this information, this communication of his mediation is made effectual by, and there's a whole bunch of these things, so I've kind of broken them down. So, an effectual means of, in other words the Spirit uses this, to enlighten and convince and humble sinners. Interesting they pick that as the first one. Remember, I didn't understand the gospel. I'm standing on the golf course and I'm saved. Saved from what? I didn't understand my condition. I didn't understand that I need to be humbled as a sinner. you know, that I need to be enlightened about my condition. I didn't think there was a condition I needed to be enlightened about. I was so blinded to myself that I couldn't see that I had a problem and I needed to be saved from something which was God. And so my question was saved from what? What do you mean I have to be saved? What's happening? What do you mean? And so you see here the Word of God is used, the Spirit uses it to effectually make us understand and enlighten us, convince us and humble us as sinners. It goes on to say, additionally, to drive them out of themselves and draw them unto Christ. So here we have the Word coming and not only humbling you, but now it's going to drive you to Christ. confronting them, I'm sorry, conforming them to his image. Okay, here we're getting into some of the things that are more than just your positional salvation. Now we're starting to talk about your sanctification. Conforming them to his image. How do we do that? That's through the word and subduing them to his will. Strengthening them against temptation and corruption. How do you fight temptation and corruption in life? Again, it's through the word. And then building them up in grace and establishing their hearts in holiness and comfort through this faith of salvation. I can't spell. In holiness and comfort through the faith unto salvation. So you see this bottom line. So we, through our hearts, in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation. So this is how the word is made effectual. The Holy Spirit through the Word does that. And so we see a lot of, you know, it's like, where do we go when we evangelize? It's the Word. The means of evangelism is the Word. It's the Word of God. It's the information that we need. So I'm going to go to my favorite. You guys love this one. Salvation Illustrated, get ready, here comes dead man, and then live guy. All right, here we go. We're gonna go back. Here he is, there he is. So let's go big picture. You know, I love big picture. I'm an engineer, I think in pictures. And so we see on the left over here, this thing starts out, you're dead, okay? You're in this death. And so remember, in John's gospel, Jesus says this. He says, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word, what and believes him who sent me has eternal life here's my word believes you sent me so we have a we have an understanding of the word what is it telling us we're believing that he does not come into judgment in other words you're freed from guilt now and you have passed from death and to your life. You're going over this little bridge here. You're dead. And you're not just mostly dead. You're dead. This is not Princess Bride. You are dead. You're not mostly dead. You're dead. All right. So get that. That is an important distinction to make when we think about evangelizing to someone. You're talking to dead men's bones. All right. They're not coming alive through what you're doing. They're coming alive through what? The Holy Spirit's regeneration. We see this when we talk about the Valley of Dry Bones. What did he do to bring the Valley of Dry Bones to life? He preached the Word, and they come to life. So we have this regeneration effect of the Holy Spirit. And what does the Holy Spirit use? He uses the Word of God. So when our minds are freed from the captivity of sin, and we are brought into new life, born again, We get the word of God, we now hear it, and we say, I now see it. I'm no longer blind. I'm not captive. The door of our jail cell is opened. The light is shining into this darkness. And here we are, the word of God comes into our little dead minds that are now being born again through regeneration, and we get up. and we move toward repentance and then our faith then goes into understanding what Christ did on our behalf. This is what salvation is for us. And then it gets better, but there's more. Not only are you now positionally saved through your guilt, but when you come over here to this life, this is what Christ called life abundantly. You're now changed in such a way that you are being transformed into the likeness of Christ. So not only are you saved by him, but now you're being transformed. as you're in union with him, to his likeness. And so this is the happy face, and we move toward the mountain, so to speak. This is our life abundantly, and eventually we, in glory, when we're in heaven, it's finally finished. We still got a big climb here, by the way. Sanctification's not like a snap and you're done, and you're now holy. You're holy before God through Christ, but now you're being sanctified into his image as you climb that mountain, moving toward glory. So do you see that, how the Word of God is the means in which we take the dead, dry bones and He makes them alive? Do you see how that is done and how the Holy Spirit regenerates that? He's the active agent. Salvation comes through the Lord. You're dead. You're not mostly dead, you're really dead. And you see how you're regenerated, then the Word of God comes and He makes it effectual in your life. All right, we'll move on. I know you guys love that illustration. All right, so faith in the Word of God. So here comes our question. We're trying to evangelize. How much information do we need to give people? How much knowledge about the Word of God? This is a big old book. There's a lot of stuff in here. How much is necessary? This is a great question. It's like, do I have to be able to explain from Genesis to Revelation what's going on? Eventually, but when you're first talking to somebody who says save from what you probably don't want to start in Genesis You know, there's there's a lot here. So let's just kind of break it down a little bit here. So We saw a little bit in our illustration of what this means. I So when you look at things, there's two main areas when we look at evangelizing to someone and explaining the word, the truth, that you've got to get across to people. And this is kind of my thinking as I look at this. And so the basic tenets of the gospel really are simple, although God is very complex, but he's brought in his revelation to us a pretty simple message. And so that message has two main components of it. It's the nature of God himself and then that knowledge of man and putting those together as the relationship we have with man. We need to understand as people, as humans, what our natural relationship to God is. So we have some information about God we need to know. What's his character? He's the creator. Does he exist? I mean, I was in that point of God didn't even exist, so it didn't matter to me. to what's my position to him. It was interesting in my walk toward regeneration, as I look back, I see the Holy Spirit. The first thing that had to happen in my mind was I had to bust free from an atheistic worldview that believed God didn't exist, to all of a sudden, the first thing that I had to understand was God exists, and then my worldview collapsed. because everything I was living for was for me because there was no God. But as soon as God made it apparent that there was a God, I had a big problem in my worldview and everything collapsed in it. And so that's when the knowledge of man started coming forth. You know, my wife was pregnant with my son. I was like, how do I explain the world to my kid? My worldview just collapsed. I have no idea what I'm going to do. What's the purpose of life? All those things started coming to me. And what God was doing was giving me a knowledge of myself, how lost I was in my sin and the need I had for a savior. And so we start seeing these things are pretty basic in understanding about the knowledge of God and then the knowledge of man. And then what has God done? as it relates to that, to make our relationship with God such that we are saved. So, fortunately, this basic question of how much knowledge is necessary has been done in several of the creeds. We're a creedal church. What does that mean? That means we look at things like the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. We look at the Westminster Confession of Faith. These are summaries of this big old Bible. And those Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed are two of the best that give the basic understanding of what is the gospel when we boil it down, what is it that we believe. You know, Logan asks every week or every month when we do our sacramental Lord's Supper, Christians, what do you believe? And so that's really the question that the non-believers got to answer. What do you believe about God? And so we see these kind of things that are in here. God is the almighty creator of all things. He exists. He's the creator of all things. God has made himself known to man through creation in the Bible. That's his basic revelation. About himself, God created man for relationship with him. This relationship requires obedience and worship. Man has failed to obey. or worship God in our fallen state, and therefore we are alienated from Him. As Richard, I was talking to him last week. We're at enmity with God. We are rebels. We're not neutral, by the way. We're enemies. We have turned away and said, no, I don't want God. That was me. I don't want God. God sent his only son to live the perfect life for us and become the perfect sacrifice in our place. So you see, there's the good news, but you had to have knowledge to understand why it's good news. That was my question, save from what? What's the good news? I don't even know what the bad news is. And so you can see that in these creeds, we're getting to the heart of what the word of God is concerning our salvation. So God promises salvation to those who believe and the promise of salvation through Christ. This is the bottom line. When you get here, when you believe the promise, this is what, now you're moving in faith. I believe what God has said about Christ's mediation on my behalf. I understand my condition. I understand God's call for me to be holy and I can't be holy. And so then I look and I see this. And it says, Jim, it's okay because I know you can't do it. I did it for you through Christ. And now I'm going to change you into his likeness. And so suddenly we start seeing this good news. It really is good news. I do need to be saved. I do understand what I'm saved from now. God's wrath because of my enmity with him. And so these are the basic tenets that we're looking at. Now, there's still a lot. When you look at it, you're like, okay, I'm gonna give this in one sentence to somebody? Yeah, gonna be a little tricky. So let's look at some of the examples in the scripture of the essence of faith. And there's two examples in the Bible that we're gonna look at. So go to Acts 16.31. And so we're seeing in this illustration, something that's pretty interesting. And we're gonna see how Paul respond, I mean, how they respond to the Philippian jailer. All right, so we look at this. This is, I believe, Paul, the Philippian jailer, and they're talking about this. You know, he's been imprisoned in Philippi, and all of a sudden you have this light, and Paul is freed, and the jailer's losing his mind. He's like, I'm going to be dead. And so let's look at it, it says Philippians 16, 31, and this is after the Philippian jailer asks, what must I do to be saved? You see this response, and they said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household. So when we look at this, it's a super simple message. You know, the Philippian jailer knew he was in trouble. He knew he needed to be saved, and what was the one, it was a quick answer, believe and be saved. Believe on what? Believe in Christ and be saved. That is the simple message that we see here that is so important for the unbeliever to understand. Believe on Christ and be saved. And we see this repeated again in John 3, 14 through 15. Remember, this is the great discussion that Jesus is having with Nicodemus. Nicodemus has come to him secretly in the night and is talking to Jesus. He understands that Jesus is very unique. He's saying, man, you're doing all these miracles. We know you must be from God. And then Jesus kind of changes the whole thing on him and says, you got to be born again. And he's like, what? I don't understand what you're talking about. And so Jesus says this to him in this description. He's trying to explain to him, this born again, this what is it you must do to be saved. And Jesus says, and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up. And then here's the big picture again, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. So again, what's this message, this simple gospel good news? Believe in the Lord Jesus and be saved. That's as simple as it gets. You don't get much more simple than that. Now, it's not that the message is simple from a standpoint of it's dumb or it's very basic. There's a lot of depth to understand what that is, but that's the simple message that comes out of the Word of God that says, this is what we must believe. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Two things there. What is Lord? God Almighty. What is Jesus? What's the definition of Jesus? Saves saves his people right and be saved. So what are we believing? We're believing on that He's the Lord. He's also the Savior. We're believing on that and that means we're saved So we don't have to make the the gospel you know something that is so difficult to understand getting into all these things and getting caught up into into a lot of apologetics not that I don't love apologetics I do but the gospel message from the word of God is really that simple. And so we need to keep it in mind when we're talking to somebody, what's the message I'm trying to get across? Believe in the Lord Christ and be saved. All right, so that's our essence. All right, so now we're gonna back up a little bit, gonna do this little theological going back and say, what's the origin of this faith? And I think it's important to understand the theology behind how an unbeliever becomes a believer. We saw it in our little diagram there of a dead man becoming live man. And so I want to review this, because as we're evangelizing, we need to take confidence that it's not in our work that the success or failure, so to speak, we hear that a lot. You know, if I just say the right words, this person will believe. It's really not up to you. God is doing something through you, and we're going to talk more about this when we get into the methods of evangelism, what God uses to bring this word. We've already said that preaching, through Logan in this case, his preaching is one of the primary means. So if you don't know what to say to your neighbor, just invite him to church, because The preaching of the word is what the spirit uses to change our minds, to regenerate us, to make us born again. So let's look at a couple things in this origin of saving faith real quick. So Ephesians 2.8 says, for by grace you have been saved through faith. So grace, God's giving you grace. Saved through faith, you now have this information and you're reaching in faith and this promise. That's how you're saved and it says and this is not of your doing it is a gift of God So right off the bat we see faith is a gift of God So we also see many places within the scripture where this is not we cannot naturally exercise faith this idea that the world is neutral and we're trying to decide between our Is there a God or is there not? It lowers God, by the way, and raises man, and it is a falsehood. So we cannot naturally exercise faith, nor do we want to. 1 Corinthians 2 talks about it as foolishness to the pagan. When we present this to a pagan who's not the elect, it's going to be foolishness to him. Don't be surprised when you try to invite him to church or tell him about the gospel that they respond in a very negative manner. I did for many, many years. So Romans 8 also says the carnal mind is against God. There's a lot more in Romans 8 than just that. So when we look at the seed of faith, it's planted at regeneration and it's called into activity at the effectual call. So before I get into Ezekiel and Jeremiah, think about Jesus' parable of the sower. The parable is really not about the sower, it's about the soil. And when you look at that, you see that the seed, which is the word of God, Jesus is talking about the seed being sown. And what he talks about is that it only takes effect effectually in the soil that has been prepared, the right soil. If it falls on the wrong soil or in the wrong place, it dies. It doesn't, it may even look like it grew a little bit, but it ends up dying. And so a proper soil, this is the Holy Spirit, think of Him preparing your heart, the heart of stone now becomes the heart of flesh, where the seed now can take root and it can grow. If we got a heart of stone, that seed isn't doing anything. You can drop it on that stone all you want and it isn't gonna grow, it's gonna die. And so we look at this and we look at Ezekiel and Jeremiah, both these prophets were talking about what was gonna happen as God was unfolding His covenant of salvation. He's pointing to Christ. And these two particular prophets were definitely pointing this. You see that God is pointing. This is what many of the Jewish people at the time were looking for is this Messiah. And so where did they get this idea? Well, they got it from these two guys. Listen to what they said. Ezekiel 11, 19. And I will give them one heart. In a new spirit I will put into them. So who's putting the new spirit in? God is. I will remove the heart of stone, I'm preparing the soil, from their flesh and I will give them a heart of flesh. So again, we see God is the moving factor in salvation. He's changing your heart. He's doing something that prepares you to hear the word of God. Then Jeremiah 24 7 says this, I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord. So who's doing that? God's doing that. He's giving you a heart to know that He is the Lord. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God, and they shall return to me with their whole heart. Again, we see God plowing the fields here and preparing our hearts, this regeneration work of the Holy Spirit, so that when the seed, the Word of God comes, it grows effectually. And that is where we would say, again, you look at Ephesians, you look at so many places in the Bible where it says, from the beginning of time, God has selected his people. And it becomes effectual at regeneration. So that's the saving faith origins. All right. So again, we'll talk about the sower. We talked about that. So what brings forth faith? All right, so now we're going to review a little bit. All right, by the word of God through the Holy Spirit, remember our man there. Regeneration happens, and then the word of God is implanted, and then your heart moves toward God. So in Matthew 28, 19, we see Jesus' great commission to teach the nations, preach the word, hold the truth before them. This is Jesus telling us to go. So why do we evangelize? If God's doing everything, why do we do it? Because not only is the means the word, but we're the method. We're what God is using. He uses us. He uses the preacher. He uses us as a preacher to preach this good news. All right, Acts 26, 18, Paul's commission. was to open their eyes and teach them. In Romans 10 through 17 we already talked about this. Faith is called forth by the word of God, by the truth of the gospel, and by the message preached. And then you see Paul encouraging Timothy, preach the word. And James, we're brought forth by the word of truth. How do we become believers? The word of God. This is how it's brought forth. So the object of our faith is the word of God concerning Christ's work on our behalf for salvation. Remember, we don't want to make this so complicated that the good news is not a simple message. Think about what the good news means. It's like if you found out something that was really good and you're like, man, I can't wait to share the good news. We ought to be like that with everybody. We have a great story to tell. We cross from death to life. Don't we want everyone to do that? Shouldn't that be our motivation? It's like, this is great news. We've gone from death. You know, you take somebody who is struggling with sin. Now, I was a selfish narcissist and my life just sucked. I mean, I can't tell you how much hurt I did in the pursuit of my own desires and to see how poorly it was going. But I thought, this is it. I'm pursuing. What do we always say? I just want you to be happy. Really? I want you to be saved. And that's what Jesus is saying to us. I want you to be saved. Because it moves you from death to life. And so if you really want that happiness thing, it's not in the pursuit of your desires, it's the pursuit of God's desires. And so the good news is you can change those desires of your heart to move from things that are destructive to you, narcissism, selfishness, and then we get into the sexual sins. They're wild right now in our society, and people are chasing that same satisfaction that they're not going to find in anything but God. And the good news is, you can go to the mountains, you can go to those places that you're seeking, but not through the path that you're doing. You have to accept what God is doing on your behalf through Christ, and He will change you into Christ's likeness. What a great message that we have. And so, I want to encourage you, because fear is what drives most of us to not explain the gospel to someone. And what's that fear of? It's the fear of being considered intolerant. Our society has beaten into us this idea that anything that we tell somebody that they're doing is wrong is somehow intolerant and unloving. That is the biggest lie straight from the pit of hell. If you truly want someone to have life and life abundantly, it's not by empathizing with their sin. It is by pointing them to this good news that we're talking about in the word of God, that Christ was their mediator and saves them. And so this is the good news. This is the thing. Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. All right. So let's look at these elements of faith real quick. So you have three main elements of faith. We have three main elements of faith that we're going to look at here. So we have belief, right? So remember, You have an unbeliever, he's moving into belief, you're going to see these things. This is what the Holy Spirit is going to do in their life. So you have an ascent to the Word of God as truth. So it's not something vague or a general ascent. It's very pointed. This is not, come have a relationship with Jesus. I don't even know what that means, especially to an unbeliever. What does it mean? It's like, are you saved? I don't know what that means. So we got to get to this point. It's not vague. It's very pointed. So remember Hebrews 11, 13, saints of old died convinced of the promises that were to come. So where did they get the information about the promise? God had spoken to these people. You know, you think about Moses, and you think about Noah, and you think about Abraham. They're all, God had come and given him his word. He had spoken directly to those men, and they believed that word. We have it in a written form. They were getting it directly from God, same thing. God's word has come to them, and they believe on it. So they were convinced the promise is to come, and in a firm conviction, a belief, of what they believed about the promises that God had made to them. So this is the first thing. We got to have belief. Second thing, trust. All right. So this is a big one. So it's not just a sin. We haven't made a mental ascent. God has said, okay, got it. Jesus died on the cross. Good. Good. Okay. You got the belief. Now we got to trust. And this is the big one. And we're going to talk about this in just a second about how, if you don't have this, you're going to be in trouble. Even if you make a mental ascent. that yet this is a means of which I'm going to live my life, et cetera. So it's not just a scent. We must have a confidence and a readiness to commit ourselves to it. You know, having recently watched people die in our lives, um, and I've been watching and you, and you see interesting things happen. Um, as people reach the end of their life, what do they think about? What do they, what are they, what are they looking towards? And so when you see Christians pass, and I've watched Christians pass too, I've been in the room with them, you know, there's something about it. There's something that they understand. They're putting their trust. They're not afraid. There's something about it that they go, I know where I'm going. I'm trusting that God is going to fulfill that promise to me and bring me to glory. that I'm not afraid of this death that's coming. So it's interesting. So we have this trust, not just an assent. We have confidence. We're going to commit ourselves to it. Into my hands, I commit myself, right? That's what Jesus said on the cross. So we have this commitment. We believe and trust so much that we call upon the Lord. Again, you go back to Romans 10, 13, for anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. All right, we saw great examples, Noah, Abraham, Moses, they all believed, and they trusted in God, and they were committed to what they understood that drove them to be basically heroes of the faith. These things bring together faith, belief, trust, commitment. That is your faith. That is what you're looking at and saying, I have faith. This is what God uses when he gives that faith to you in such a way that these are the things that happen. So you've got to be careful, though. Martin Lord Jones, in his book, about the Holy Spirit talked about this thing called historical faith, not true faith. And so what he's saying here is making only an intellectual assent based upon upbringing or what you've been taught, this is not enough. We see many people that only accept the gospel as like a system of truth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a Christian. I follow the precepts that are in the Bible. I'm a pretty good person. And so they hope that that's gonna be the thing that prevents them from going to hell. And so it's like Jesus talked about. Lord, Lord, didn't we do these things in your name? And he's gonna say to them, I didn't know you. Why didn't he know them? because they're doing this historical faith thing where they're not really committing to Christ as the Lord. They're not committing to the work that he has done. They don't have the faith that we just talked about, those three things. And so there's no trust or commitment to the truth. So 2 Timothy said, Paul warns that he says, they have an appearance of godliness, but they deny its power. Remember, Double cure, the power to do what? Power to remove the guilt and to change you. So there's the power thing. So you guys remember this from our story, and we're about to wrap up here. So there's a story that goes, there's this little boy, and he's out watching a tightrope walker go across this great chasm. And the tightrope guy's walking back and forth. And so he says, do you think I can do this? And the little boy says, yeah. Sure, you can do it. And then he walks back across and he grabs a wheelbarrow. And he comes and he says, get in the wheelbarrow. There's a big difference here between, yeah, I think he can walk back and forth across there, and he's going to walk back and forth across there with me in it. So this is the thing of, you got to trust me. The little boy's like, whoa, wait a minute. So I got to commit to this in my belief that not only do I think you can do it, but now you're going to do it with me in it. Now I got a whole different level of commitment, don't I? And so this is what our faith is. It's this level of commitment or trust. It isn't a blind trust, it's not a trust that's just like, whatever. It is, I understand what the word has said to me, and I'm committing myself to that. I'm trusting in the promises that God have, and that is what makes this saving faith. It's not this historical faith. My parents believe, so I believe. That's not gonna get it. And so when we talk to people, and again, this is why discipleship is so important. We don't wanna leave people as a baby Christian. We want them to grow in their faith. And so discipleship in our church, what we're doing right now, talking about evangelism, how to do it better, how to speak to people about your faith is growing and grows in our trust. So in faith, there's something beyond assent. It includes trust and commitment. All right, let's talk real quickly about subordinate things to the word. There's a lot of people in evangelism that talk about certain things. I've heard this said, you know, You know, evangelize always, use words only when necessary. I disagree with that. I think it is important for us to act like Christ. We're called to that. We're called to holiness. But don't let your actions be the thing that is the only thing that's coming forth. You know, remember, the Word of God. You've got to understand certain things about the gospel. So our behavior is important, but it's not paramount. You know, why can a guy who is a, you know, an ugly, narcissistic, you know, hater of everybody but himself talk to you about the Word of God? Because I've been forgiven. My behavior is not the main thing. It's the Word of God is the main thing. My behavior is important. Obviously, if I'm a reprobate and I'm trying to tell you about Jesus, you're going to be like, that's not going to work. And how many preachers have we seen destroy their witness by their actions? But again, the Word of God is the worst thing. Neither is our religious experience, although I will tell you that your Christian faith is full of experience, full of experiences that happen. Being born again, repentance, faith in Christ, growth and holiness, all part of the Christian experience. But they're not a substitute for the Word of God. The Word of God still needs to be spoken to unbelievers. So even our prayers. A lot of people say, well, it's just prayer. You know, it's interesting. the guy that wrote the book Kuiper, look at C here, he says, prayer alone without action of delivering the evangel is an abomination. Why does he say that? He says, if you're sitting there praying that someone that you know to be saved, but you're not doing anything, he says, that's an abomination. He says, you need to take action as well. So even in your prayers, God can use these things. Prayer alone without action, abomination. And so we're gonna see that God may impart saving grace through his word. He often imparts saving grace as an answer to those prayers, but there's gotta be action. Now there's also another problem here we gotta be careful of. Not only is praying for someone but not doing anything about it, sharing the word, an abomination, but he says this. He says that the gospel without prayer is folly. You're not gonna do it. Remember, how does faith come? It's the Holy Spirit. So what are we actually praying? Are we praying for him to make a good decision? We're praying for the Holy Spirit to change their hearts so that they will make that decision. They can't make it without the Holy Spirit doing it first. Think about your children and grandchildren. I pray every morning, Lord, change their hearts. Lord, bring them to understand who you are. This is the prayer. This is the thing that we want to see God do. Change their hearts. make them into the likeness of Christ. And so, and again, apologetics, much as I love apologetics, it is subordinate to the word of God. So when someone comes to you and says, okay, I don't get the Bible. You know, this fish can't swallow a guy and barf him up on the ground. That's just stupid. Okay. We could do an apologetic defense of that. Or we can say, you know, you know, that's a good point, but that's really not the main point that I want to talk to you today about, you know, You know, we can get into this. Well, you know, the existence of God. Okay, well, all right, that's apologetics. There's a lot of cool stuff. We're going to talk about some of that later. Not that apologetics isn't important. I think it is. But the main importance is what? Believe and be saved. Those are the messages that we look at. So again, God's means of grace, Holy Spirit imparts saving faith through the word of God. And the evangelical, the good news about Christ is the center of our evangelism. We're sinners. This is the means. God's word is the meaning of grace. We're sinners in need of a savior. and believe in Christ and be saved. Man, if you understand these last two things, you know, if you're wanting to wonder what to tell your children or grandchildren, that's it. Those are the two main messages right here. You're a sinner in need of a Savior, son. And if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and what He's done, you're going to be saved. It's really that simple but that profound. Praise God. And once again, because I know you love this picture, there it is. Remember, dead guy, word of God, he rises, we become like Christ, we live this life of sanctification as we climb, and where are we going? We're going to glory. Amen, hallelujah. All right, anybody got any questions? Man, I did it. Two minutes over. He's dead, dead, dead. Dry bones, dead, I should have drawn a skeleton here. You know, that's what I really should have drawn there, but I'm not that good a drawer, so I just, so I still got the grim face, dead guy, so. Yeah, I love that scene in Princess Bride. It's not really dead, it's just mostly dead. So now you're really dead. You are dry bones. All right, let me wrap this up in prayer, and then we'll go lift up our worship to a worthy God. Father God, thank you again for your word, and thank you that the Spirit comes and changes our hearts, and Father, prepares that soil for the seed of the word that grows in our hearts, such that we can understand the good news of the gospel, Father, we know that we are broken and our nature is destroyed. And Father, that nature has destroyed our relationship with you. But praise be to God that you have come and sent Christ on our behalf, that we can stand righteous before you through the work of Christ. And that not only that, but the Holy Spirit continues to work in our lives throughout our walk on this earth as believers to change us into Christ likeness. And Lord, we're just so grateful for that, and we're grateful that you have done all those things in our lives. And now we ask that you would continue to soften our hearts such that we may lift up praise that is worthy to you. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.