Understanding Salvation

Luke chapter number 15.

If you're here today and you're not sure you're saved, you're not sure if you died, you would go to heaven immediately.

You want to, you hope to, of course, maybe think you're trying to.

But we're saved by grace, not by works.

It's a gift.

And Jesus said, you must be born again if you had a second birthday.

You see, people that have never been saved are spiritually dead.

When God created us, he created us with a body, a soul and a spirit.

And when man sinned, his spirit died and he was cut off.

Adam and Eve was cut off from God.

So now they were just a body and soul.

And when you get saved, you are made alive in Christ.

Until a person's saved, they're spiritually dead.

That's why they're not really interested in church or Bible or preaching or gospel music or anything else.

They don't understand, what's the big deal?

Why does anybody waste a perfectly good Sunday to go to church?

They don't get it.

It never even crosses their mind because they're spiritually dead.

And a lot of people go to church, they don't get much out of it, but they go to see their friends or because it's the right thing to do or whatever, but they're spiritually dead.

And so you must be born again.

But then after you're saved, your life.

Now I want you to listen your life right now for the rest of your life, whether it's days, weeks, months, years, however time you have left on this earth.

The quality of life, the quality of life, the success of life, the prosperity of your life, the joy of your life is going to be directly in proportion to, to your knowledge and applying the word of God.

It's all tied to the word of God.

That is exactly why the devil wants to do everything can to keep you from reading the Bible or understanding the Bible.

A lot of people read it, but they don't understand what they're reading.

They read words over and over again and they never really know ones who really tell them, what does that word mean?

And they never stop and get a dictionary and look it up and so what good does it do?

Have you ever thought, you know, I read the Bible today, but I don't know if I really got anything out of it or not.

And let's be honest, sometimes we just read the words.

Remember, I've told you many times, I'm gonna keep telling you, don't read the Bible to please God.

Read the Bible to know God, don't do a checklist with God and say, oh, I'm a good Christian, I read a chapter today.

That's the way a lot most Christians live.

But read the Bible to know God and read the Bible so that God can speak to you.

You see, God doesn't speak in an audible voice.

He speaks through the Bible.

We speak to God through prayer.

But communication is a two way street.

And so God wants to speak back to you through the Bible.

When you read the Bible, pray first and then say now Lord, you know where I'm at and you know the things I'm dealing with.

You know the problems, my worries, my fears, you know my confusion about things.

You know about my marriage, you know about my children.

Lord, I need to hear from youm today.

Would you'd speak to me through the word of God.

And that's when God speaks.

But I'm telling you from experience for many, many years, most Christians may read a few verses on Sunday when the preacher says open your Bible and they place their Bible every Sunday after church and they don't go back to it till next Sunday.

Now I hope I'm not speaking about you.

This church would be above the average because the emphasis is on the Bible.

In a lot of churches the emphasis is on entertainment or the emphasis is on this and ministry and that ministry.

But it's not really can say it's all about the Bible.

That's the average church.

But this church is above average.

But still there could be some here today that's struggling with getting the Bible and getting it into them and then getting it into their life.

And I want to help you today with something, in fact I've entitled the Message this morning, getting the lesson from the story.

How many of you don't raise your hand but a lot of us know the stories of the Bible frontwards and backwards.

We could tell little kids about David and Goliath.

Do we have a picture of David and Goliath?

Yeah, we've seen that story, we've told that story.

And the sling and the giant fell, hit him in the head.

But so what?

What's that got to do with me?

How does that apply to my life?

And most people don't know how to make that application.

I was raised, I still have a huge family Bible that sat on my coffee table.

There was six of us in the family and we lived with my grandfather that made seven.

And my granddad went to church, but the rest of us didn't.

And he had an old Bible.

I still have it.

And it was one of those family Bibles.

Some of you may have them.

And that family Bible was.

Nobody really read it.

It's just kind of a decoration.

And it was open right in the middle.

And they had all these pictures.

And I remember as a little kid, I wasn't saved, but I loved to look at the pictures.

I never read anything.

I just.

Wow.

And I remember Samson holding up the pillars.

And it was just so many great pictures, colorful pictures.

And I still had that Bible.

And there's nothing wrong with having a Bible on the table and having a family Bible, certainly that would be great.

But the Bible just sitting on a table or a bed stand or in the car is not gonna do anything for you.

Truth changes nothing.

Only applied truth.

Only applied truth.

And before I get in the message.

And I have to enlarge the clock back there so I could watch it a little bit better.

But write these down.

I'll tell you what, don't write them down.

Sam was so nice this morning.

She came in early and she ran these off.

And I'll have the ushers, if you could.

They're over on that table.

Hand everyone up one of those copies when they leave today.

And if they don't want it, they can throw it away.

Okay, but look at this.

How do you get the most out of the Bible?

Look at number one here.

When you read the Bible, ask yourself this question.

If I read a verse or a chapter or a book, is there a sin I need to confess in that passage I read?

That's just any passage.

And you.

Was sin even mentioned there?

Is there anything, Any sin?

Because, you see, the Bible says if we don't confess, our sin is a blockage in our life.

A blockage.

That's exactly what it is.

If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.

Nobody's perfect.

And that's why nobody's sinless.

Nobody here today can go a day without sinning.

You might think you can, but Jesus said, if you've thought it, you've done it.

Okay, so we all have trouble with sin till we get to heaven.

There'll be no more sin.

All right, but when you read first thing, because you ought to be sensitive to that.

Is there something here?

Number two, Is there a command to obey?

You may read that.

I don't know what you're reading, if you're using a devotional or whatever, but is there a command in that verse or in that chapter or in that passage?

Remember, the commandments of God are love notes from God.

God doesn't give us the commandments so he can put us under his thumb and control us.

He gives us those commandments so we can live good, so we can succeed and prosper.

They're for our benefit.

They're not grievous.

The Bible says the commandments of God are not grievous.

Isn't it funny, though?

In the day in which we live, everybody wants to know something about God, but they don't want.

We don't want to teach kids the ten Commandments.

We don't want to hang them around the school, might warp their little conscience.

And so putting the Bible in front of kids today, I'm talking about the world.

I mean, thank God we have a Christian school.

And thank God you parents are hopefully reading the Bible to your children.

But look at where we're at today because of the lack of commandments.

Number three, is there a warning to heed?

You see, the Bible not only gives us a winning message and a wounding message, but it gives us a warning message.

If you read the Bible, it may say, be careful or watch out or beware.

You find that in the Bible a lot.

Number four, is there a promise to claim we sing Standing on the Promises.

What promises are you standing on?

Can you name any of the promises of God?

Standing on the promises I cannot fail when the storms of doubt and fear assail by the living word of God I shall prevail Standing on the promises of God.

But most people don't really know what those promises are.

That's about faith.

We live by faith because we believe God keeps his promises.

God cannot lie.

Okay, number five, is there an example to follow?

An example?

Of course.

Jesus is our great example.

But you know, there's people in the Bible that God blessed because of the way they lived.

And they're good examples for us to follow.

They weren't sinless, they weren't superheroes.

They were people just like you and I.

But God blessed them and they may have given us a good example for a father or for a mother or a husband or a wife or even a teenager.

God used teenagers in the Bible and he can use them today.

You don't have to be 18 or 21 to pray or to understand the Bible or for God to use you in a mighty way.

Some of the greatest preachers that I've ever known read about started preaching 19, 20, 21, 18.

I mean, God would love to use teenagers.

And then number six, is there a lesson to learn in that story, in that passage?

Now, some of these May go, yes, some of them may know.

But if you say, God, I want to know something, and I want you to personalize this scripture that I'm reading today, would you do that?

God will do that.

That's what he wants to do.

He wants to speak to you as if it was just you and him.

Sometimes you read a Bible and you read a verse and you go, wow, this is like a neon light.

It's like it was written personally to me.

And you share it with somebody and they go, yeah, that's good, because that wasn't personalized for them.

I preach a sermon and some people may think, eh, glad that's over with, or that was all right.

I give it a five.

I want a one to ten.

But there's some people that go, wow, that was exactly what I dealt with this week.

And I didn't know what to do.

And you preached right on that subject.

In fact, I prayed this morning that my message, that God would personalize it to you.

It would not just be another long list of sermons that God brought you here today to hear something that would be personal just for you.

Number seven, I'm almost through.

Is there a blessing to share when you read about how good God is and some blessing that he gave you?

And you want to share that.

You want to share that with your family or your friends?

And then last, number eight, is there a word to look up?

And I already kind of mentioned that.

But when you get.

Let me encourage you to get you just a plain old dictionary, Webster's Dictionary, and put it beside your Bible.

Now, I have Bible dictionaries, and that's true, that's wonderful.

But there's some words in the English language that may not be in that particular dictionary.

So when you run across a word sanctification, you look it up instead of just reading.

Takes time.

I know everybody's busy and the devil says, yeah, and you're real busy and you're doing good stuff.

Don't stop and look up a word.

I'd like to talk to our teachers.

If I'm here long enough to maybe all teach the same lesson on the 12 key words of the scripture.

There's 12 key words.

If you can understand and explain and define that to a fifth grader, you got it.

And you need to know what those words mean.

They're all in the Bible.

And so I want you to think about that.

But the message today is getting the lesson and the Bible.

When you.

It's just hard to describe the glory of the Bible.

We have a marvelous Savior, we have a marvelous book.

We have a marvelous holy Spirit.

We can just go on and on.

Don't lose your marvels.

Amen.

Just hang on to them.

But sometimes, God, listen.

Reading the Bible is like looking in the mirror.

And that's something most of us don't want to do.

I don't like the first thing I do, I don't want to look in the mirror.

I go, oh, no, the tribulation period's here.

No, I want to keep the lights out long as I can.

Maybe that's the reason a lot of people afraid to read the Bible, because it starts reading them.

You know, mirrors don't lie, and neither do scales, weighing yourself.

They don't lie.

Some of them, we have one, you can adjust, you know, that's a little too much.

We can turn it down.

But mirror, it's like a mirror.

The Bible is like an answer book.

This world's going crazy trying to find answers that are right in the Bible.

But they don't read the Bible.

They don't want the Bible.

They don't believe the Bible.

It's a map.

Do you know how to get to heaven?

From Haslett, Texas.

There's a map in your hand.

If you're holding a Bible, it's a medicine cabinet.

A lot of people don't realize that God has some good stuff in the Bible to make you feel better.

It won't just cover up.

It's not a sedative.

It's a solution.

It'll heal you.

The Bible's like a sword for battle that the devil fears greatly.

I'm thinking right now of Eliezer.

The Bible says he was a great warrior.

And the Bible says he killed a lot of people in that war.

And at the end of the battle, he couldn't let go of his sword.

It says his hand clave to the sword.

You ever held something so tight so long that it was kind of hard and made your hand hurt when you finally let go?

Well, that's what happened to Eliezer.

The sword clave to his hand.

Wouldn't it be great if we got such a grip on the Bible?

And I'm not talking about physically, but just get such a grip on the word of God and you never graduate.

You're always learning more about the Bible, always.

But that Bible, you get so much into the Bible, people think you're a fanatic, and pretty soon it starts holding you and it's hard to let go.

That's why it's so important to teach children at a very young age.

They can learn.

They're smart.

They're smarter than we give them credit for, even at little three and four or five year old kids.

But to get them into the Bible, what greater goal?

And then the Bible's like an anchor.

We're living in a time when there's constant.

Every day there's all kinds of storms.

And I'm not talking about physical storms, but storms of life that come blowing into our life unexpectedly.

We need an anchor that will hold us steady while everybody else is getting blown off.

You can stand steady, but that's about the Bible.

That's the only way you're going to be able to do that.

The Bible is like a compass.

They've taken our compass away today.

To most people, they don't know which way is north, south, east or west.

I'm talking about spiritually and morally our country now.

They think right's wrong and wrong's right because they lost the compass.

They didn't really lose it, they threw it away.

And then the Bible's like a shield and it's like a blueprint.

It's a solid rock salvation.

It's a solid rock foundation.

The wise man built his house upon the rock.

And the rain came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it fell not because it was founded on the rock.

Who's the rock?

Jesus is the only rock.

So the Bible, we're not gonna read the whole Luke 15 and we're not gonna read the part.

We're gonna read it as we go along.

Cause I wanna give you an illustration of what I'm talking about.

We know the story of the prodigal son.

It's a favorite of a lot of people.

I never get tired of preaching on it.

And you've heard some great sermons on the prodigal son.

And most people, if they're saved now, unsaved, people may know it, may not, but they don't get the lesson.

They know the story, but they think, okay, it's great.

Makes me cry.

It's a sad story.

The boy came home.

Hallelujah.

But what's that got to do with me?

You could be sitting in church and your heart and mind can be a thousand miles away from God.

Yeah.

Right.

Now, some of you may be thinking about dinner and thinking about work and thinking about things you're going to go do today.

Not a bad thing.

Nothing wrong necessarily.

But what does it mean?

How do we get the lesson?

Well, verse 11, and he said, A certain man had two sons.

You say, okay, I can read the rest I know the rest of the.

And the younger of them said to his father, father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.

I want my inheritance early.

And he divided them his living.

What's the lesson there?

Well, he said, give me.

At the end of the story, he doesn't say, give me anymore.

He says, make me.

Make me as one of thy hired servants.

My father has it all, and I didn't realize it, and I wanted mine now, and I want to go do what I want to do.

He was very presumptuous.

Presumption.

It implies here that it's almost, you can almost say kind of demanding.

He wasn't.

You don't get the idea that he said, dad, could we talk?

I'd like to see the world, and I'd like to go here and do this.

And if you don't mind, you know, you may live longer than I'm thinking.

And I'd kind of like to have my inheritance now while I'm young.

We don't get that implication here.

I don't know.

I'm not going to build a doctrine on what the Bible doesn't say.

But he said, I want that.

That falls to me.

I want my inheritance.

He was presumptuous, taken for granted.

You know, the Bible says, we have plans for tomorrow.

The Bible tells us all the time, and we know it, and we say amen to it.

But it says, boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.

Tomorrow may not come.

If you're not saved, you need to get saved today, not tomorrow.

If you're going to start getting faithful in church, you need to do that now.

Don't be presumptuous.

Don't assume, well, I got at least 10 more years or 20 or 30, or.

I'm just a teenager.

I got my whole life ahead of me.

That's presumption.

That's assuming that God's going to do what you want him to do.

Don't be presumptuous of the Holy Spirit working in your life.

You know, I've seen it happen.

It breaks my heart.

I've seen people move to tears in a sermon and they refuse to come and refuse to get right.

And they just said, well, you know, I don't know.

And they go on and on, and pretty soon the tears dry up and pretty soon they get bored and drawing pictures during the sermon.

Pretty soon the song is boring and the sermon's boring.

They used to be over here and their heart was shaking and Trembling.

And they were hearing God and now they don't hear anything.

Get to church and get it over with.

What a way to live.

He was presumptuous.

And then number two, look here at verse 13.

And not many days after, the younger Son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country and there wasted his substance with righteous living.

We know that.

We know that's part of the story.

Well, what's it got to do with me?

Why did he go far away?

Well, if you're saved, you can't enjoy your sin and be close to God.

It's hard to really, really get somebody out of sermon and enjoy church in the choir and go, wow, what a great day.

And knowing that there's hidden sin in your life, you can't enjoy it because the Holy Spirit's in you.

Now if you can enjoy it, you can separate it and just live one way over there and another way in here.

You're probably not saved.

The Holy Spirit is in you and he is holy.

And he convicts us when we're not where we ought to be, or we're somewhere we shouldn't be, or we're watching something we shouldn't be looking at, or we're listening to something we shouldn't be listening to, or we're acting the way we shouldn't be acting.

Again, we're not perfect.

And if we fall into sin, we can confess it and say, God, I can't believe it.

I'm sorry, I don't want to do this, but please forgive me and cleanse me and give me power.

If that temptation ever comes again, God says, I'll be there.

God's not going to say, no, leave me alone.

Fight it out yourself.

No, he couldn't enjoy it.

You know, I read a phrase this week that's kind of haunted me a little bit.

Can't get it out of my head.

I don't even know who said it, that it said we sin when we become bored with God, When God loses the fascination and just being able to walk with him and talk with him and listen to him and enjoy him.

When that just becomes kind of, eh, take it or leave it.

Then we start turning to the world.

Instead of getting our pleasure from God, we.

We want to look around the world and see if there's something better.

Christians can do that you can't lose your salvation ever.

You can't ever be unsaved because it's a gift.

God doesn't give a gift to take it back.

It's a gift.

His love is an unfailing, unchanging love.

But I tell you what, if you're saved, you get away from God, you can lose your family, you can lose your health, you can lose your mind, you can lose your job, you can lose your peace, you can lose your joy, you can lose your future.

You can lose it all.

You can't lose your salvation.

You'll go to heaven if you've trusted Christ.

But you get away from God, anything can happen.

You say, well, I'd never do some things I'd never do.

I've never said that.

If you have, I'm not condemning you for it.

And I'm not patting me on the back.

But every time a preacher falls or people fall or things go wrong, I say, that would be me were it not for the grace of God.

I'm not stronger and better and more spiritual, and neither are you.

We are what we are by the grace of God.

He went into a far country where.

Why didn't he just go down the road?

You know, the Bible tells us to flee the very appearance of evil.

Well, he just went after looking for evil.

I heard a story one time about a man, a wealthy man, he wanted a chauffeur.

And he ran an ad in the paper, and he said, come to the house if you're interested in the job, and I'll try you out.

So the man came, nice limousine.

And the man got in the back seat, said, let's go for a drive, and I'm gonna be watching you.

So he went and went and drove and did okay.

And they were coming to a cliff, and the driver, the chauffeur, increased his speed.

And then at the last minute, he hit those brakes.

And that car slid around and slid around, and it finally stopped about that far from the cliff.

And he turned around and smiled.

How about that?

He said, yeah, how about that?

Well, the next day, another man came, same type of thing, and said, I'm going to try it for the job.

And he said, let's go for a job.

Let's go for a ride.

And he did.

And they got going down the road, and he saw a cliff.

That cliff, same cliff.

And he turned left at a street.

He said, wait a minute.

Why didn't you go straight so there's a cliff?

He said, you're hired.

I don't want to see how close you can get.

I don't want to say how far away you can stay.

And yet we have a lot of Christians today that say, well, I'm not going to go all the way, but I want to see how close I can get without actually committing the sin.

We ought to treat sin like a huge poisonous rattlesnake.

When you see it, you stop and freeze and move the other direction.

That's what I do.

I don't know about you.

That's the lesson.

We know the story, but the lesson.

And then it says in verse 14, and when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in the land, and he began to be in want.

Yeah, we know all about that.

But the lesson.

The lesson is, things don't last very long.

You think you gotta have it, you gotta go.

You gotta have one of those.

And before you know it, you know something?

He says he spent all and wasted his substance with righteous living.

Would you lean into me right here for just a moment?

And I'm not.

This is not new to me, okay?

I didn't come up with this, but I've been preaching it for years.

And some of you go, oh, yeah, I remember that.

But some of you may be hadn't been saved long.

This is very important.

Sin always takes you further than you planned to go.

You didn't plan to go that far.

Sin always keeps you longer than you planned to stay.

Thirdly, sin always, always cost you more than you thought you would pay.

There's no exceptions to that rule.

That's the lesson.

You know the story.

And then the Bible says he began to be in want.

There's no substitute for the things of God.

There's nothing tastes like God does.

There's nothing on earth compared to it.

But notice it says he went and joined himself.

He didn't join himself with his father.

He didn't call home and say, dad, I'm in trouble.

No.

He went to a citizen of that country.

And that citizen, the Bible says, sent him into his fields to feed swine pigs.

And he would fain have filled his belly with the husk that the swine did eat.

And no man gave unto him the lesson, the world's not going to help you.

Not the way God helps you.

You know what husks are?

You farmers.

Some of you men know that we don't eat husk.

We take that off the corn, right, and throw it in the trash.

We eat the corn.

There's not much value nutritionally in the husk.

Well, that's what he wound up eating.

He had his whole inheritance.

He wasted it.

He asked for help.

The man said, yeah, I'll help you.

You can go out there in the field and there's a bunch of pigs out there.

And Reach down in the pig pen and get some husk and eat it.

Can you picture that?

That's how the devil presents sin.

He presents it with the corn in it and a wonderful opportunity, but he tears it off and hands you the husk.

He realized Jesus said, come and dine.

Remember that song?

Jesus has the table spread where the saints of God are fed.

He invites his chosen people, come and dine with this manna he doth feed and supplies your every need.

Oh, tis sweet to sup with Jesus all the time.

And yet Christians say, well, I want to taste some of the worldly stuff.

Well, the Bible says verse 17, he came to himself when he came to himself, in other words, he started to realize how many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, they got bread, homemade bread, and even got extra left over.

And I perish with hunger.

I will arise and go to my father and will say unto him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy son.

Make me as one of thy hard servants.

And he arose and came to his father.

You see, that's what repentance is.

Repentance is not just regret.

Repentance is a change of mind that causes you to change direction.

That's what repentance is.

Jesus preached.

His first sermon he ever preached was repent or perish.

Change your mind.

It's not about you if you're not saved today.

You've been selfish, self centered, self righteous.

You're a rebel.

You're a rebel.

You say, I don't think so.

Well, you won't be saved till you think so.

If you think you're not that bad, then you're probably not saved and you may not ever get saved.

The challenge today is to get people before they can get saved, to realize they're lost and everybody thinks they're just as good as somebody else.

I'm not lost.

I'm not a bad person.

What do I need to get saved for?

That's just for them weak people, those bad sinners.

Most people say I don't need to be saved.

They don't know what.

Repentance is a change of mind that leads to a change of direction.

That's what he said.

He said, I will.

And he did.

He didn't say I should or ought to.

He said, I.

It says he arose and came to his father now, but when he was yet.

Oh, this is the.

This is the best part.

When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and Started throwing rocks at him.

No, of course not.

When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran, not walked.

And fell on his neck and kissed him.

There's God.

That's the forgiveness of God.

That's exactly a picture of God.

He can't overlook sin.

He can't pretend and cover it up.

But God says, when you realize.

And you'll repent of your sin and realize what it's done to me and what it's doing to you, I'm ready to forgive you.

God's waiting on you.

It's your move.

God's already moved.

Moved.

Lots of times.

He spoke to you lots of times.

And, Christian, you're not where you ought to be.

And God's told you that.

And he's waiting for you to turn around.

Repentance.

And the Son said unto him, father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight.

And am no more worthy to be called thy son.

But the Father.

But the Father said to his servants, bring forth the best robe and put it on him.

And put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet.

And bring hither the fatted calf and kill it.

And let us eat and be merry.

For this my son was dead and he's alive again.

He was lost and is found.

And they began to be merry.

Wow.

Wouldn't you like to have seen that?

What a day.

What a celebration.

A robe, a ring, shoes, a big cookout.

No probation?

No, we'll have this.

And maybe we'll just give you the shoes right now.

And see how you do for a few days.

And then we may give you a robe.

And if you keep doing right for six months, we might give you that ring.

It's pretty expensive.

No, he said, bring it all.

God's got so much for you.

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor entered into the heart of man.

The things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

So many blessings are being stacked up in heaven.

Because we don't think about them and we don't take advantage of them.

You ever heard the old saying, there's no place like home?

Yeah.

It's true, isn't it?

There's no place like home.

And there's no place like being right with God.

There's no better joy and thrill and blessing and hope.

Life just doesn't make sense when you take God out of it.

Oh, boy, what a savior.

Brother Donaldson, would you come to the piano for just a minute?

We're going to stand in a moment, but I want you to think about this.

This is an old hymn.

You've sung it here many times.

It's a great song.

And a lot of times, again, we sing these songs and these words.

And we don't really stop and go, you know, that's me.

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling Calling for you and for me.