Whoever Will Call on the Name of the Lord Will Be Saved

Today's verse, I want to start back as was read, I want to start back with what Mike covered last week. But I put up for the title for this section, Whoever will be called on the name of the Lord will be saved. Just a wonderful verse. Boy, do you know what's funny? Not funny, but interesting.

You know, I try to divide up the sections. I get to do the dividing. Mike lets me do things like this. You can divide up the books that we're going to teach. Hey, OK, good, I like that. So I divide them up into small chunks, because I like to teach small chunks. That's kind of me. So my division of this section probably wasn't the best, and I'll explain that as we go along. Anyway, that's just a little sidebar.

So a wonderful verse. But actually, verse 14 will truly explain this verse the best. And that'll be next week. So come next week, too. Come this week and next week. You too, Fred. Okay, so let's go. Okay, so here's that pointer. Let me move that out of the way. Uh-huh. That's actually not seeing that. Okay, never mind. I'm talking to myself here. Okay, so I thought it would be appropriate to kind of look at just a real high-level summary of where we've come from here. And it kind of just divides into two sections.

So for what we've covered so far, 1 through 13, the first section Verses 1 through 5, if you could try to put it together in one thought process, this is man's way of seeking acceptance with God. And man's way, the Jews were experts at this, man's way was to create their own righteousness. They created a system to make themselves look good before God. At least they thought looking good before God. But, as we know from those verses that talk about that, they had a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. They had a concept of how to please God, but it was not what God asked of them. They created their own system. I was thinking about that, and that's so much like man. I was thinking about myself. I may be talking about myself a little bit today. I think back to when I was a teenager, maybe before a teenager.

My mom was a wonderful mom. She took us to church, the first Christian church in Miami, Florida. And so she took us there faithfully. My father didn't want to go. He never wanted to go. We took there, myself and my sister, took us there pretty faithfully every Sunday. Eventually, over time, I was baptized. But, you know, I never ever heard the gospel. At least I never remember hearing the gospel. So therefore, I thought I was pretty good.

I was confronted one time in a bus station. In the back in those days you ride the bus. I rode the bus up to college and back and different places and stuff. So this guy approached me in the bus station saying, Do you know about the Lord Jesus Christ? And I said, Oh yeah, yeah, I've been baptized. That was my defense. That was going to get me to heaven, so to speak. So that's kind of like what's going on here.

The Jews created their own system to please God. But what we see, starting in verse 6, God is going to explain through Paul what's God's way. What's God's way of making man acceptable to Him. And it all centers in the Gospel. It all centers in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So a couple of sections here we're talking about. The cool part here is that Paul's going to say, he's going to go back to the Old Testament, back to Moses, what Moses said. He's going to show that God's Word is available. And he used some tremendous words. And that's going to set the stage for showing us that God's Word is still available.

It's still the same pattern as it was with Moses, even though the commandments back then is now God's faith by faith righteousness. And that's what we're going to see in 9-13. Under what conditions can I be made acceptable to God? So we have the first part was man seeking for God. Now this is God's way as Paul is going to describe it. This is how God desires to accept man.

So let's start out. We're going to go back to Deuteronomy chapter 11 and go through the four verses, Deuteronomy chapter 30, the four verses we're going to cover. And we're going to see that these four verses will kind of set the stage for what Paul is going to talk about. He's going to quote these verses, but he's going to change some words when he does that. So let's start off.

For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. Verse 12, it is not in heaven that you should say, who will go up to heaven for us, to get it for us, and make us to hear it, that we may observe it. Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, who will cross the sea for us, and get it for us, and make us to hear it, that we may observe it.

And then verse 14, but the word And this context is speaking about the word of the commandment. The word is very near you. It's in your mouth, in your heart, that you may observe it. So in this context he's talking about the commandments that were given through Moses to the children of Israel and he's saying, you know these, verse 14, the Word is very near you, it's in your mouth and in your heart that you may observe it. So let's think, here's some observations about that. And Mike did a great job last week and I listened from home. It's interesting to see it that way, differently.

So the Word, the Word of God in that time period was learned orally. People didn't have books. There were some scrolls around, but most people learned orally. So that's why this phraseology is kind of important here. So it was learned orally. So the first point is, When something was learned, the idea that you have, it would say it was in your mouth.

That's how you would phrase it. If you think about that, if you're an oral society, if you can't say it, you don't know it, right? I mean, you got to have, you know, if you're talking to people, if they don't come back at you and say it, then they don't know it. So they would say it's in your mouth. Another point.

When you learned it, you would say, I have it in my mouth. We would say, I got it in my head, right? I got it in my head. They would say, I got it in my mouth. And then Macaulay says, this was an idiom in that time period. If it's in your mouth, it's also in your heart. If it's in your heart, it's also in your mouth. So this idea of being in your mouth and heart, it's words that speak of, I have this idea, I know this idea, I know it. It's in my mouth and in my heart. You say they're different places, right? Yeah, it is, but you've got it. You understand it, you've got it, and you can verbalize it. So several verses that talk about that. Let me just read a couple of these here.

In the Jeremiah passage it says, Your words were found, and I ate them. So he says, I ate your words, right? Did he really have his words for lunch? I mean, that's kind of tough. And your words became to me as joy and delight of my heart. Then down in Ezekiel it says, Open your mouth and eat what I am giving you. Speaking of his word. Mmm, tasty words, right? Chewing up your Bible today. And then there's a passage, an Isaiah passage says, Listen carefully to me and eat what is good.

Delight yourself in abundance. And there's one I didn't have up here in Exodus 9, 13.9 it says, The law of the Lord may be in your mouth. That the law of the Lord may be in your mouth. So in that oral society, having the Word of God in your mouth and in your heart to observe it was key. So Paul's going to take that core concept and he's going to show us about that, just wonderfully. And that's going to make, and you're going to say, I know what you're going to say to me, well how is the Bible in my mouth and in my heart? How is it? Let's see if I can answer that. Okay. So last week, we'll start off with the first verse from last week.

Quoted from the Moses passage, But what does it say? So the question is, what is the it? And if you look at the context that was read, it is speaking of this righteousness that's on the basis of faith, or faith righteousness. It's saying, it's no longer the commandment, but Paul is saying, what does it say? So in a sense, he's having this faith righteousness speak. But what does it say? What does faith righteousness say? the Word is near you, it's in your mouth and in your heart, that is the Word of faith which we are preaching.

So he's saying that the Word of God and he was speaking to Jews so you could actually for Jews you could say well maybe these guys they knew the Old Testament they understood that so but what about me and we'll try to answer that as we go along okay let's go to the next verse. that if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart, that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

So we're going to notice there are several pairs of words that show up that are important. I put them in blue. Mouth and heart are important. Then confess and believe are important. And then we see them again, but kind of in a different order this time. For with a heart, a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with a mouth, he confesses, resulting in salvation. So we have mouth and heart, confess and believe. And we're going to talk about those.

So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go back and we're going to look at 8, 9, and 10. One of my favorite ways to approach it in block diagram form, right? Courtney is smiling there. For an engineer, block diagrams are king, right? You put it in a block diagram and you know it. It's in your mouth. Anyway, okay, I'm deluding here a little bit or getting delusional.

Okay, so you could say that verse 10, 10-8 is going to talk about the availability of God's Word. This is the availability of God's Word. So I put what it stood for in here, but what is the righteousness by faith saying? So what is Paul saying that righteousness by faith, this is the message that God wants, what is it saying?

Well the first thing he says from the previous verses, it's not saying we must go up to heaven. We don't need to travel any place, just like, they didn't need to travel any place, you don't have to go any place, you don't have to go up to heaven. And it's not saying you must go down to the deep or to the abyss. It's not saying that.

It's saying it's much closer than that. The word, in this case, it's that word rhema. It's not, it's not the other word for, it's not, my mind's going here. It's rhema, the spoken word. I'll leave it at that for right now. It's a spoken word is saying it's in your mouth, or you could say it's available.

And it's also in your heart. So those ideas of mouth and heart are kind of synonymous concepts, right? God's Word is available to you, whether you say it's mouth or heart, you have it, it's there before you. You don't need to travel someplace, you don't need to look to some guru out there to find you what God desires. It's there, it's before you, it's in your mouth, it's in your heart. And Macaulay says, mouth and heart are figures of possession of the truth. That says you have it, but the question is what do you do with it once you have it? You have it, but what do you do with it?

And it clarifies that this is a word of faith, the gospel, the good news, which we are preaching. That's what Paul was preaching. He was preaching the word of faith, the gospel, the good news. And he said it was in your mouth and in your heart. So that's verse 8. So the next 9 through 13 will kind of expand on the key words here. All right, so 10.9. Requirement. So here are the requirements. What are the requirements? What does God require? He says information is available to you. What am I to do with it? So he starts off. And if you confess with your mouth. So this if here is one of the ifs in scripture that is a conditional if.

It's maybe you will confess and maybe you won't confess. that Jesus Christ is Lord. But if you do confess, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, so what do we confess? I'm sorry, who do we confess? And this has been a, if you read, if you've been around the church for a while, these verses have been used in interesting ways to encourage people to do certain things. Anyway, so who, one of the key points is who do we confess to? Well, pretty, pretty much most of Scripture talks about confessing to God for your sins, and certainly in this case as well. We confess, we confess to God. So if we confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, confession is recognizing who Jesus Christ is. So that's the first part of this verse. Second part, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. Okay?

So at this point, We appear to have two things to do here. We've got to confess and we've got to believe. And this has raised no end of controversy, as the British would say. So you have two things it appears. But if you think about it, confession and believing are just two aspects of our faith in the person and work of Christ. If you look carefully, we often say that you're to believe in the person and work of Christ. Well, look at these two statements. The first statement is a statement of who Christ is, right?

He's Lord and you're agreeing with that, right? And the second part is what He accomplished, right? He was raised from the dead. So that's the gospel. So yes, it has two aspects, but to make it two different separate actions and to require people to do things based upon that, I think it's the wrong approach. Okay, and then the result is, you will be saved. Believing and confessing result in being saved. So, question, most people know, what does it mean to be saved?

Just one little small part of this and we, you know, salvation is such a wonderful thing, God has provided for our present state from the penalty of sin, you're saved from the penalty of sin, we're being saved from the power of sin and we will be saved from the presence of sin. We'll talk more about that, we'll see this later on, you will be saved later on. So that's verse 9. Now to verse 10. So verse 10 seems like it kind of rehashes this issue about believing, confessing.

And just to keep you on your toes, it reverses the order. So, and I think actually that's a blessing because man is very much like, you know, give me the rules and I'll obey them. Well, if I have it A, B, C, A, B, C over and over again, I'm pretty excited to do A, B, C, well, he reverses the order and you think, well, which one do I have to do first? Do I confess or believe or believe and confess? He reverses the order. What's going on here? I'm getting confused. Hopefully this doesn't confuse you. Okay.

So he starts off with the heart a person believes. leading to righteousness, I have a verse for that in Romans 3.22a, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe. So it's stated over and over again, especially in Romans, that righteousness is attained by faith, not by works. That's how we attain righteousness. And the next part of the verse is, and with a mouth he confesses leading to salvation. And the verse for this is, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. So he has confessing here results in salvation. So to make those two separate things, I think we're talking about one thing here. Here's the point. Believing, confessing, in my mind, I'm not thinking I'm alone here, are similar ideas.

You are to believe in what God has said. You are to confess about who He is. When you put your faith in the gospel, you are saved and receive the gift of righteousness. So we know that once we put our trust and faith in the Lord Jesus, we are saved eternally for all time and we know we have His righteousness.

Okay, so that's verse 10. So now today's verses. For the scripture says, �Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches, for all who call on Him, for whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.� So now, you notice I highlighted the key words here in blue again, but we have a change here, which is interesting.

We have believes, which we had that before, but now we have this idea of calling on. So Macaulay makes the observation that Paul seems to have intentionally replaced confess with call on. And we see, if you look at that, And he's basically saying we have similar statements that you used confessed in the previous verses. We have call in the name of the Lord Jesus or confess Jesus as Lord.

Very, very, seem to be very similar ideas. And then in 11 it's an assurance about believing, you won't be disappointed. And then 12 and 13 assurance that you will be saved. And what I found was that if I had included verse 14 in today's message, I could have given you more information about calling on, but I'm going to stop short intentionally. Okay, let's carry on. Okay, for the Scripture says, whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.

So this is a quote from Romans 9.33, which we've covered in the past. And it says, and actually it's a quote, the original quote is from Isaiah, Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, a costly stone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it, the costly stone, will not be disturbed. So we know from the New Testament from many passages this costly stone is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And here we have the we have the negative of being disappointed so you will not be disappointed you will not be disgraced or dishonored Or put to shame so the idea is not being ashamed of the Lord That's not what's in view here It's that the fact that God in the future will never put you or turn you away. He'll never we had the favorite my favorite verse in in Hebrews, I will never, never leave you nor forsake you. Read that in the West sometimes. There are five negatives there. God is never going to turn His back on a believer. He never will. That cannot happen. Okay, let's carry on.

So what I thought was, after looking at this, whoever believes in Him, You know that idea of believing in Him, that phrase is just used in so many passages. I thought it would be worthwhile just to kind of go through about six passages or so, five or six passages that talk about what believing in Him, what do I receive when I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? What do I, what are the wonderful blessings I have? So let's start off here. The results of believing in Him.

First one is, this one you can quote by heart hopefully. For God so loved the world, and gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. But then we have a couple of verses after that. We have one that has a positive and a negative one. The positive part is, He who believes in Me is not judged. Wonderful news.

He who does not believe in Me has been judged already. And so why is God going to judge any man? Because he's been a bad person? Because he's not gone to church? Because he's, you know, whatever. It's only because of his relationship with his son. Because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten son. It's all about Christ. That's how any person will be judged. He'll be judged based solely upon that. And that should be a shocker to some people. John 6 40 For this is the will of my father everyone who beholds the son and believes in him will have eternal life And I myself will raise him up on the last day just a wonderful blessing for what? Happened we have we possess right now every believer possesses eternal life.

I in Acts 10.43, of him all the prophets bear witness that through his name everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins.

And then lastly Romans 4.5, but to the one, I like this one too, do you guys like to work? Are you big workaholics? But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly. His faith is credited as righteousness." So God is not about us working, doing, performing.

He's about us believing. That's what He's about. If you miss that, you're going to miss Him. He wants you to believe Him, to trust Him. He's your Heavenly Father. He loves you. He cares for you. It's a relationship. And that's all these words I was thinking. All these words we see about believing, confessing, calling on, they're all kind of communication words about ourselves and our Heavenly Father. He wants to communicate with us. He wants us to believe Him, talk to Him, confess Him, to call upon Him, be in a relationship with Him.

You see I don't have any Facebook account, but I guess you can put on there, I'm in a relationship with blah, blah, blah. If you're dating, people are smiling, I've seen people talking about that. So if I'm in a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, that's what you want to put in yours. Anyway, okay. All right, verse 12.

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. And now he's writing this to Jews. Remember these 9, 10, 11 are to Jews, to Jewish believers. And he's telling them straight up, for there's no distinction between Jew and Gentile. So he wants to assure them.

He could say it, transfer it, indeed, indeed, there is, and it's that word amy, the state in which something continuously exists. Jew and Gentile, there's no distinction and it continuously exists, not for a small time period. In the church age, there's no distinction, period. Present tense, continuous action, there's no distinction, no difference, no divide between Jew and Greek. A couple of verses in that light. This one's a hard one to read. Okay, let's see if I can do it here. Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is He not the God of the Gentiles also? Yes, of the Gentiles also. So He's the God of the Jews and the Gentiles.

This one's great. This one's fantastic. There are no gender issues in this one. Okay, anyway. Galatians 3.28, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. So every person that arrives on this planet can be saved and can be in a relationship with Jesus Christ. And they can put that on their Facebook page. for you the same Lord... so actually I like the Weiss translation of this one, because Lord has been added, you have two Lords in there, so for the same Lord is over all. So same Lord was used back in verse 9 earlier, it kind of qualifies who he was talking about there, right here, so it's the Lord Jesus Christ.

So in Acts 2.36 it says, Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain, God has made Him both Lord and Christ. this Jesus whom you crucified.

So Jesus Christ is Lord, that's who He is. He's God, He's Jesus Christ the Lord. And overall, not excluded, the word which He sent to the sons of Israel preaching peace through Jesus Christ, He is Lord of all. And this last verse kind of testifies to that in Matthew At the end of Matthew it says, Jesus came up and spoke to them. All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. So Jesus Christ is Lord of all. So now, this is really cool, He's Lord of all and here's something that He is, who He is, an attribute of Him. He's abounding in riches for all who call on Him.

You have to have a relationship. For you to get those riches, you have to be in a relationship with Jesus Christ. So the interlinear has it. I'll do this because it helps me put additional comments in here. The Lord is being rich, connect with the verb tense too. The Lord is being rich to all the ones calling on Him. A little bit wordy. The Lord is being rich to all the ones calling on Him. Being rich is the idea to be constantly rich, present tense, constantly rich. He's not just rich some days, he's rich all the time, 24-7, and not rich in the sense that you get lots of money.

This is an attribute, like I said before, and here's a verse, or do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and tolerance and patience? So there's the riches he's talking about, his kindness, his tolerance, his patience. I think of the verse, "...not willing that any should perish, that all should come to repentance." That's what it says.

Ephesians, "...in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace." God is rich, rich in His care for mankind, rich in who He is. And that's the riches you want from God. So next, so what are the focuses of His riches?

This is cool. It says right there in the verse, to all the ones calling on Him. Isn't that amazing? His riches are to His creation, to the ones, and in particular, the ones calling on Him. Again, it's everyone, pos, none excluded, calling on, and we're going to see this a couple of different times here.

This is a preposition form, I believe, to call upon by way of adoration, making use of the name of the Lord. But Merriman, you know, we're kind of heading toward verse 14, so in anticipation of that, this is really a better definition. The idea is to call independence upon him. So this is calling independence upon him. Him is the Lord Jesus Christ.

So here's my little wait till next week statement. In verse 14, two things will be presented, calling upon Him and believing in Him, and it's going to talk about the relationship between calling on Him and believing in Him. There's a certain way it's going to describe those, so I'm going to leave that discussion until next week. Okay, last verse.

It says, for whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. And this is a quote from Joel 2.32a, and it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered. And I kind of broke it up. For Mount Zion in Jerusalem there will be those who escape as the Lord has said, every even among the survivors whom the Lord calls."

So we see that this really is not talking about the present age, the church age, this is talking about the day of the Lord. This is speaking to Jews about the day of the Lord and He's going to deliver them. And it's going to be those who call upon His name. But now Paul, he's going to apply it to our day. So just before we do that, here's a comparison that's interesting.

Paul earlier said, for all, pas, none excluded, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Now he tells us a wonderful statement, for everyone, whoever calls on the Lord's name will be saved. And the reason I put in the interlinear here was because it points out the everyone and all is that Greek word, pas, all, none excluded. So God in His mercy, we have moved from the situation where all have sinned, to the fact that everyone who seeks the relationship by calling on the Lord Jesus' name will be saved.

Just a marvelous, marvelous statement. Okay, last couple words here. So then, now we come, in this verse we come to the verb form of call on, and in this case it's a middle voice, so we're calling on, call to oneself for one's benefit, and it's on the name of the Lord, everything that He is. His totality, all His attributes will be saved. Okay, so here's a little tickler for next week. And this is from Merriman. The caller in the sense is not asking to be saved. That was kind of a shocker when I first read that. But if you read verse 14, He is in effect saying, Lord, I am depending upon you for my salvation. So that kind of bothers you a little bit, read verse 14 and come next week.

Okay, so this first bullet here is just talking about comparing the confessing versus the calling statements, very similar. But here's the point, this last little idea, this is sort of a summary statement, kind of have two summary ideas here, this and the last chart.

So we know from many passages Here's just a wonderful, for by grace you have been saved through faith, not of yourself, it's the gift of God. So we see in Scripture, so faith, I think these passages, people have tried to summarize otherwise, but I think this is a key point. So faith is in view in these passages we talked about.

And it's talked about in several ways. So faith And the person and work of the Lord is talked about several ways. It's talked about confessing with your mouth. It's talked about believing in your heart. It's talked about with the heart a person believes. It's talked about with the mouth he confesses.

And then next week we'll see in verse 14, believing and calling upon Him. That's all, in my mind, that's all the umbrella of faith. These are all words that God has used in His wisdom to try to tell us about what faith is about. It's about a discussion, a relationship with Him.

And you're calling, you're confessing, and so on. So I think that's what, and the object of all these, all those verses, the object of all those verses Our faith is the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, so I have one last chart. All right, so I believe, and I'm not alone here, public confession of your faith is not required for salvation. So I have a story to tell about this one.

I became a believer 1980 maybe, 80, 81. I was attending church at that time. I was attending a Bible study. I realized I was a sinner, not from the church services, but from the Bible study. I'm not trying to make a statement here, but anyway. So here, I'm in a situation where I become a believer and nobody's asked me to walk down the aisle or make an altar call. It never happened. I believed driving my car to work. I'm a sinner. I need a Savior. I'm in trouble. So, I become a believer, but I've never, I don't, you know, Bonnie and I talk, a lot.

Anyway, so time passes on, I'm in this church, this is overseas in England, it's an evangelical free church, not part of the Church of England. I hope the church, I think the church is still there, I don't know, I hope it's not a mosque now. So anyway, I don't believe I ever actually confessed my faith publicly. When I attended that church, it wasn't until I came back to the U.S., maybe at some church, I confessed my faith.

So, you know, years passed, years passed. So I guess my point is, forcing people to go up and confess, I don't think is healthy. But people have taken those verses and kind of massaged them and said, well, you gotta go up and confess your faith. And, Lonnie, can I tell the story about your mom? Is it okay? Well, her mom and dad had, her dad came to faith almost right before his death. So, her mom, I don't know, I feel bad about this. Her mom said to her dad, you have to confess this, you won't be saved unless you confess. Well, not me exactly. What's that? Confess to someone.

Okay, so when some of her sisters or brothers came over, he confessed his faith to her brothers and sisters. But I just, you know, I just, anyway. So anyway, there's a lot of, you know, you could say horror stories about confessing your faith. But the key point is, Christ wants you to believe in who He is. The confession will follow, I think. And actually, some good points I have about that.

And the passage of confessing is spontaneous. It comes out of the mind or out of the heart. If something comes out, it's a result of who you are. It's not the before. And then Macaulay says, you can't structure it. You can't A, B, C, and then you confess. No, it's not that way. It's something that comes out of you. And then faith makes itself known by oral confession. And it does. It really does. But the timing of that is between you and the Lord, as far as I'm concerned.

And here's just one last point, a couple points. So if you look in Scripture, if you think, well, Roger, you've made a big mess of this. You could tell me about five or six things I have to do. I'm getting totally confused here. If you look in Scripture, Chafer says you can find 115 passages where salvation is conditioned upon believing only. You'll find the word believe in there. 115 passages. So go home tonight and find those 115 passages. And you can say, well, Roger, you got me all confused, but I got 115 to hang on to. Or you can look at the 35 passages that talk about faith.

My point here is that God in his wisdom has used other words that seem to make it maybe possibly more confusing, but I don't think so. I think it's to show us how much He cares for us and how it's the relationship that He's looking for and how confessing, believing and calling upon Him are all part of our experience with the Lord Jesus.

So the last verse I have, Acts 16.31, and they said, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household.

Okay, let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank You so much, Lord. We thank You for Your Word. We thank You for just the clarity of it, Lord. Thank You for how You challenge us to trust You and believe in You. And You give us many words to describe the relationship that we have with You, many to describe how we come to faith in You, Lord. We pray for clear understanding as we go through this chapter 10. In Christ's name, amen.