Faith lesson 7 Week 3
Mike Doyle · Apr 5, 2015
Faith, No. 13
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49265072075

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, we got to question 6, right? Or 5? Come on, you guys are supposed to remember. Okay, we'll do 5. Look at Romans 10, 6 through 15. Okay? The question is, what three things are discussed here regarding salvation? So let's do this. Somebody who can read English, go ahead and read it. Romans 10, 6-15. I'll get my reading in. Okay.

But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, say not in thine heart, who shall ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down from above, or who shall descend into the deep, that is to bring up Christ again from the dead. But what sayeth the word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart, that is the word of faith which we preach, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture says, whoever believes on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Let's stop there. What version is that? I know, I got the King James Version. Well that's better than what you've been reading. There you go. I'm kind of going back and forth because I'm not big on the these and those. So the question is, what three things are discussed here regarding salvation? The first one is, I think, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and He came into the world to save it. Okay? I'll keep going until you argue with me. He came as a man and He's both man and God. And He went to the cross and He died. He paid the penalty for the sins of the world. Is that all in there? Okay, so how about this one?

With the heart man believes unto righteousness. What's the heart mean? Mind. Mind of Christ. I think it's kind of the essence of who you are. Your heart is your core. Okay, so would you say it's more than the mind? And would it be personal? Yeah, it's not only analytical. Your heart and soul, would that be better? It says, uses the word heart. That it is personal. Personal. Yeah. Okay.

He died for me. So I think I want to make a distinction between what Bob was saying, mind, Because you can all make an intellectual assent to something you think is true, right? Can't you do that? When I was being led to the Lord, these guys kept asking me, well, do you understand what we're saying to you?

And I said, absolutely. You think it's right? Yeah. Yeah, it's fine. But your heart wasn't there. That's right. It wasn't. It wasn't. So I think you believe from the core of your very being. You exercise, at the core of your very being is your will, and you exercise your will to believe. Okay? So, before you believe, you still have spirit. Dead. Dead spirit, so it's not really spirit? Yeah, it's just dead to God. But I mean, would heart be kind of like spirit?

No, I don't think so. I don't really think so. I think it has more to do with your will than anything else. I've sort of grown into this idea that the whole reason we have a will is to believe. What else would you use it for? I mean, we think that we can will ourselves, will things to happen, will ourselves in and out of situations. But Romans 7 is very clear. Paul says, I'm willing.

I will really hard not to do the things I shouldn't do. Guess what? It's not working out. And the things that I want to do, that I really will to do, I'm not doing. That was in that writing today. So, will doesn't necessarily mean implementation. Do you understand what I'm saying? Will does not necessarily mean implementation. I use my will to believe.

So at the core of your heart is your will. But the rest of your soul, your mind, has the facts straight. Miss Holy Spirit, that's only one side of it, right? I mean, even with our will, it's still God acting on us. You know, we even think that we can even will ourselves in our own heart to believe that's still only like half of the equation, right? You know, in terms of a lost person, no, because I think that it's what you do. Faith or believing is a non-meritorious act. And there's no question that the Spirit of God is involved in it, but He isn't willing with you. You understand what I mean?

It's not like Friday night we talked about Galatians 2.20, the life I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God or in the Son of God. It isn't Christ's faith that saves me, it's mine. No, I take that back. It's my faith that appropriates the salvation that's available for me.

That's a better way to say it. Well, and can you make a distinction there that it's not like, oh God, I really want to be saved. It's more of an assent that you accept who Jesus Christ is, you agree. What's already there. And because of that, the salvation comes and all the other... Sure. for salvation, right? See, boy, you've got to watch it. Well, if you believe, you get salvation. It comes with it. Believing, yeah. Are acceptance and belief the same? Are they synonyms? No. No, they're not.

My point being is this, where a lot of the people where you accept Jesus into your heart, I think they use this, believe in your heart. is the common phrase. Not anything of the co-crucifixion, the identification, none of that. But I think this is the verse that people draw, that you believe in your heart. So, accept Jesus not in your heart. They negate all the identification.

I kind of think, myself, is that sometimes, too, it's to stop resisting. You know, like, not necessarily, take you in or I want you, it's like I'm done resisting you and then it's like the Holy Spirit comes in. It's almost like a will to stop resisting. Let me ask you this. I'm going to pick on you for a minute.

Let's say you're a non-believer and the Spirit of God is working on you to draw you to Christ. When you get to the point where you're going to believe. Do you believe out of the old man? What do you think? Yeah, you do. Sure you do. Sure you do. But that's the last act of the old man. Because once you do that, what happens? You die. You get crucified. So, you know, it's a wooing and a drawing. But in your heart, you make the decision to believe. That's the easy one. How about this one? With the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

You have to do that? You have to go around and talk about it? No. You have to say it out loud? No. What's the word confession mean? Agree. agree, say the same thing. Ask who? God. Sure. So this isn't, you know, I'm going to get my megaphone and go down to Coors Field. I'm going to stand there when everybody's coming out of the game and tell them they're all going to hell because the Rockies lost. Well, it's also the one where it's like, if you want Christ in your life, confess it now and come up to the altar or whatever, right? So confession is made unto salvation. What you're really doing is agreeing with the gospel.

Okay? You're saying the same thing. There's nothing wrong with, is there, with, you know, like, well... Broadcasting? No, there's not. No, but going forward if somebody, you know, because I think I was 12 years old. Yeah. And then I was baptized. Does that not count? What does it count for? Well, it started me believing. Well, let's back up for a minute.

If all you did was believe, and you never went forward and you never got baptized, does that mean you're half saved? No. No, you're totally saved. Right. Because faith is the issue. I see. Okay. I mean, you can go forward and the problem with going forward and coming down and coming out of your chair and being baptized and making Jesus the Lord of your life is that you begin to think in your mind, well, I'm contributing to my salvation by doing some of this. No, you're not. Salvation is of God only. Your exercising faith in the person and work of Christ puts all of the value of your faith on Him. OK? You can be baptized, but what is baptism? What is baptism all about? It's a public declaration of what's already happened. What's already happened to you. Right.

It seems like a lot of those, from what I've heard people say, the ones who go like six times for an altar call or whatever, they say it seems to be more of an emotional thing. It is. You know, like not necessarily, heart thing, and not necessarily an intellectual thing, but like an emotional thing that's kind of temporary. Hopefully you can see how important it is that if you're involved in being used of God to give somebody the gospel, that you're really clear about it. You know what you're talking about. You've got it down.

So that there isn't any misunderstanding that they have to do one or two spiritual push-ups along with the gospel to get saved. How about whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved? That's in there. What's that all about? I think that means the same thing as in verse 11. Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.

You call on the name of the Lord. What is a calling on somebody's name? It seems like it identifies the object of your faith. Like you're not saying Santa Claus, I believe. You're saying Christ. That's a good way to see it. Yes, Santa Claus. I'm trying to move along so Courtney can get up here. Question six, Romans 10, 17.

There's an article in front of the word faith, the faith. What does the faith mean here? Now mine doesn't say the or the, but where it says faith it goes in front. So a definite article point, let's talk a little bit about that. So it can say the faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

So when you put the definite article in front of something, what does it do? It points to the specificity of it. The example that your dad gave was that, well, you can say there's houses or a house along here. But if I said there's the house, I'm talking about a specific house. I can say there's a lot of doctrine, there's a lot of this, there's a lot of that, but if I say the faith, I'm talking about specific. What am I talking about specific here? That it's specific to me.

Is it talking about the essence of faith? We've spent two months talking about The essence of faith. Is it talking about that? It's talking about the object of your faith. Which would be the essence of your faith, right? Which would be the essence of faith. So mine says faith comes from hearing the message and the message is heard through the word of Christ. The faith. Yeah, we're talking about specific faith. So are we talking about that? Think back now, we've spent a lot of time on what the essence of faith is. What does the essence of faith have to do with you? Nothing. It's what it is. So is it talking about that? Sure it is. Is it also talking about your personal faith? Yeah, it is. So you could say it's talking about both. Sure. Did I lose somebody here?

No. So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. So God comes at man as we build upon this and the Word of God expresses the reality of who God is. So here you are in the Word and you're finding out what? who God is, his essence. You're finding out what he's done. So, the things of God, that which is absolutely certain is expressed in the Word of God.

That's the essence, right? The essence of faith has to do with the things of God. the proof and the reality of the things that aren't seen, which are the things of God. At this point, you don't have anything to do with that. These are all God's things. It doesn't matter how you feel about them, whether you have rest or you're uncomfortable. The essence of faith and the things of God are of themselves. Your emotional reaction to them is irrelevant at this point.

But once you include personal faith, now you have who you are in the equation. You have a rest, like we talked about last week when we said, how does a person believe Do you remember that question? And the answer was, you just rest in the facts. The reality that comes out from God's essence, you just rest in that. Rest is personal. The reality of God's facts are not personal. They're objective. So does that mean it's important to find out what God has to say about stuff? What's more important, how you feel about it or what God said?

That's an easy one, isn't it? But in practice, don't you find that you say, well, it all is about me anyway. So I know what God said, but it's really all about how I feel about it, right? My goodness, no. I hope you're learning that. What God says is so. How you feel about it may or may not be so. So at some point you have to confess that God's right, whether you see it or not. Is that okay?

I talked about Friday night that we were doing Galatians 2.20 and the first phrase is, I have been crucified with Christ. That's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard in my life. Really? Were you really crucified with Christ? How do you know that? That's right. God's Word said it. You don't remember. You don't have an experience. You don't have anything to do with it. God said you were crucified with Christ. What do you do with that information? That's it. That's it. It's not real complicated.

But you're going to find, in the word of God, volumes of things that God says is true about you, that your emotion and your experience are going to totally deny that. So the issue is, that's why the essence of faith is so important, and why the facts are so important, to learn them and to learn to trust them, no matter what experience you have. A couple of weeks ago we went through I talked about this, Abraham looked at his body, couldn't procreate, looked at Sarah's womb, got no shot there, and what did he do? He believed in what God told him.

Guess what? Here comes Isaac. I can look at myself, I can look at my life and my circumstances and say, crucified with Christ? Are you serious? Yeah, he is. He is. But at the same time, he tried to help God. His first shot was failure. Baptism, or our walking forward, or anything else. It's not of self. Yeah, we're still paying for that mistake.

There is an idea that we can help God along, or that what he really did was he came to me and he said, here's what I want you to do now, get busy. And on the other side of that coin, it's very difficult for us to settle down on the fact that God only requires one thing from me, and what is it?

That I believe him. I believe him. He's the implementer, we're the believer. Trust me, if you believe him, you're going to be busier than you've ever been. You're going to wonder, I must have been asleep back then. But this is a process, right? Yes, it is. Yeah, oh boy. I mean, you know, like at 12, I thought that wasn't the end of it. I mean, Luke was just the beginning. Sure, sure.

It's spiritual growth. What is spiritual growth? Have you ever thought about how would you define spiritual growth? Just real quick though, so are you talking about belief for salvation as a process or belief in the life of the Christian or things beyond salvation as a process? I don't know what I believed in. You know, what can I say?

I was 12 years old. I wanted to be like everybody else in the Sunday school class. Okay. So, but I think God understood that. But then right after that, they were right on me. Okay, now you go and you get your mother to come. And then there was this burden. You know, I thought, oh, I'm free. I'm good. And then you go and do this. So it's, oh, gosh. I mean, I'm almost 86. So you can't say that one thing is, I mean, gosh, I mean, I am so happy that I was brought to this church. And at my, at the last minute, And you run into a guy like J.D. who makes you explain. I think J.D.' 's point is correct.

There are millions of people who... Salvation is simple faith. And there are lots of people who... I think there are millions of people who have believed and have salvation. But they just don't grow. They're in the nursery for... years and years, the growth process. The point is trying to be, salvation happened, it's not a process, it's a point. And then the growth, that spiritual growth is a process that goes over years and years.

I think there are millions and millions of people who are believers, but they don't grow because I believe, because of the identification. They don't know the identification, know all these things. They're trying to get at them better and do all these things. So there's salvation in millions of people. And that's a point. But then the growth is a process. I think, you know, putting words to your face. Yeah, maybe just to add one more aspect to it.

I think, you know, you have to understand the gospel to believe it. So, death, burial, and resurrection. that is personal to you, that you're an offense to God, without His sacrifice on your behalf. And so, to understand the essence of the Gospel, it takes time, and that is a process. But that's not a believing process, that's an understanding process. But once you understand and you have confidence in that truth, from that very moment, and we all have it, and we can't all go back and say it was 1964 at 6 o'clock, you know, we don't know necessarily the exact moment, But there was an understanding that you had of the gospel, and once that good news penetrated your heart to the point where you had confidence and you believed, you were saved. And then you begin to grow in believing more and more and more about Him, and that's the spiritual growth side. So when we say believing is a process, oftentimes what we're really saying is that understanding the gospel takes time. And maybe at an early age it can be confusing at first, and you may believe what you understand, but you haven't understood really what it says.

There's a point where you do, and then that's where the choice is made. Right? That's where that moment takes place. And it might be quiet, in prayer. It might be on the road driving 80 miles an hour. Who knows when that moment is for each of us. But there's an exact point in time when new life begins for you. And it's not really important to know exactly that moment, but to acknowledge that it did happen in that moment's time of confidence. Is that fair? It's okay.

I would say that I've always liked the guy that the Lord healed who was blind. And the Pharisees were on him trying to get him to, well how did it happen? And they wanted all the details. At the end of the game, he said, all I know is I was once blind and now I can see. I was once lost and now I'm saved. I don't understand how he did it. I don't even know where he is now. But I know I'm saved. Do I know the nuances of it?

Nope. That's the learning process. I call that the persuasion process. Because a person can believe on a person's work that he died for my sins, he was buried and resurrected. That may be the only information I have. And I believe that. But I don't really... One, there's no absolute certainty about it at first, because as soon as the resistance comes, most believers take a look at their life and say, well I know I did this, but boy, my behavior doesn't...

You go through that process, but the Spirit of God is, what is He doing? He's working to persuade you that God meant it. It's like I've told a lot of people, I am absolutely convinced that I'm saved, but I don't know about you. Because God didn't convince me about you, he convinced me about me. Is that the day that I'm saved? No, I was saved I may or may not have had a complete understanding, but growing in the knowledge and in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is spiritual growth.

You learn these things with your mind. You at some point say, well, you know, I really am from Missouri, God, you've got to sort of make this clearer. You know, I've got to have an experience. Or what can I do? We take every road but the one simple road. I take yet your word. I don't even have to know right now what it means to be crucified. But you're saying it, I buy it. And I only buy it because you're saying it. You have proved faithful to me. Guess what?

When your faith kicks in, in the person of God, then hold on because he's going to make it He's going to open it up to you and persuade you that, yeah, you really were crucified. You really were buried. You really are resurrected now. And again, you might be totally persuaded about it, but Carol sitting next to you knows the same information and she's not so sure. But you both believe the same thing.

And who's to say like, okay, I'm just going to use your example that God can't use You're wanting to be like the other kids in Sunday school as an opportunity to start a relationship with them, right? The motivations that the Spirit uses are so varied. Yeah, so maybe that's just the motivation. Was to say, I want to just be like the other kids in Sunday school. Boom! You got it. But you can tell when it begins to have an impact on a person's life.

There's a guy in our church now, a new guy, who I was in business with 30 years ago. He's a lawyer. I've been married three times. He's called me up and said, I have this girlfriend who's a Christian. She says, our relationship isn't going any farther unless I become a Christian. I need to come talk to you.

So he did. We talked for four hours. He left and I thought, hmm. And then he called back a few days later, he said, oh, by the way, I believe in the person and work of Christ and I'm saved. I said, hallelujah. He said, a peace came over me like I've never known in my whole life. So I'm thinking, great. And then the relationship with the girlfriend falls apart. And I'm thinking, uh-oh.

Is the salvation tied to the girlfriend? Or is he going to stick? He's sticking. He's sticking. So God used that relationship? Sure did. He used the relationship to save him. He got the right information and he believes. And now he's pursuing the learning of the word. It comes to Bible study, it comes to church. But even if it didn't stick? It still sticks with God, right? Salvation. Sure does. So even if he walks away from it and says, boy, I've got a fun deal out of this, and the girl left, and forget it, I'm going to go, Amen.

That's a great point, because there are a lot of Christians that go to God and say, now look, here's my problem, here's how you can solve it, and here's how much time you have to do it. And he doesn't respond, and they take a pass on God. Does that mean they're not saved? Well, you know, spiritual ID checking isn't my job. That's God's job.

Well, and I'm thinking, too, about positionally, you know, what... That's what you're talking about. Yeah, it's the same thing. I think I have to mention that here, that, you know, like Wanda's talking about, why at the end? I mean, she's had it all this time, from the moment she believed, right? It's just, if you don't... have the information to believe, there's no benefit to you now. Right. Well, Wanda, you're just like the Christians in Jerusalem in 77 AD. How did the Lord get them out of town and get them moving? He sent the Romans in to wipe the temple flat. And now they had no place to go. They have to trust the Lord. It came to that. It wasn't resident in a building. It's now resident in a person. Do you see what I'm saying?

The circumstances very seldom verify the truth of your faith, the positional truth. It's the essence of the things of God. And whatever the experience or your emotion is about it is irrelevant when it comes to the things of God. He's either telling you the truth or he's lying to you. Which is it?

And maybe one step further is that We think of it as our own being saved and our own growth and where we're going. But God has a plan for us with other people. So it may be up until that time that just wasn't the time that he's going to use you for somebody else. How long does it take a Christian to realize two really interesting things? That Christ died for us so that we would no longer live unto ourselves. How long does it take the Spirit of God to persuade you about that one?

And, here's the second part, that death works in us so there might be life in you. Those two things. That's the Christian life. Death works in me so that there might be life in you. Christianity is not about you. It's about the Lord Jesus Christ and it's about serving him and his body. But to get you ready may take 40 years, 50 years, 60 years, because he has something specific that you're going to do, and he's getting you ready for it. And if it's only one thing in your whole life, that's enough. That's enough.

Just one other thought, and I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, but Paul, you mentioned kind of the idea of, who's to say if the motivation wasn't when God would initiate a relationship to believe for all of us, but that that doesn't actually kick off a relationship with the Lord, but it's what He's using to bring you to a place of belief.

And so, you may have been motivated by wanting to be like other believers at that time, and that led you to a place of understanding. Salvation didn't happen because you had a motivation to be like others. It happened because of what He did on your behalf and your moment in time belief in that truth. And then your motivations change.

They start to shift and change and maybe they fall back and they move forward and life's like this in terms of motivation. I guess I just wanted to clarify my understanding of that is that the motivation to believe is not belief itself until you... That's true. That's true. Speeding ahead here. Question 7.

Who are the heralds of the gospel and how do they get their responsibility to preach? And it's verse 15. Here's the verse. How shall they preach except they be sent? as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good news."

So, we could say today that, Paul could say back in his day that, how was the gospel communicated? King James? King James Version? It was verbal. So, how shall they preach except they be sent? Oh. But it was from the letters of Paul, so it was kind of written too. Yeah, but what kind of letter did Peter have? It's verbal correspondence, isn't it? Sure. But think about this. How shall they preach except they be sent? Emphasis on the word sent. Yeah, go to all corners of the world and proclaim it. Oh, you fell into the trap. I did? Yeah.

What's the Great Commission? What's the what? What's the Great Commission? You just said it. Go unto all the world and preach the gospel, right? Well, I mean, if you happen to be in Africa, it's not like you have to go into the whole world. Well, if you're in Africa, you have to come to the States. No, but what I'm saying is people all over correspond with each other. Here's the thing.

The Great Commission Go really means in the going, wherever you're going, whatever you're doing, preach the gospel. How do you preach the gospel? Well, by your behavior and by talking. So one, like J.D. was saying, it's very important to have the right information.

Right. Okay? But if you're an observer of people's behavior, you know, the guy that lives across the street knows that you're a Christian. Is he paying attention to how you live? Yeah, more than if he didn't know. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So sometimes the way you act speaks a lot louder than what you say.

So preaching, we're all called to preach. We're all called to be ambassadors of the reconciliation. But Paul said sometimes we are these letters written on the hearts of men, written on our hearts for all men to read. What's the great thing about a letter? It's a non-verbal communicator. Understand that? What's on your heart can be read and preached to men.

So who you are in terms of conformity to Christ is really important. So as we grow, what happens? Initially you think it's about me, but it isn't really. It's about the person coming down the road that God is preparing you for so that you can be that epistle. You can be the one who conveyed and took the message.

And I think it's important that it's in your heart to live like that because as a former non-believer I could see when people were fake too because I'm living this certain life because I'm a Christian to show you and it would kind of build up like then you do look so that when they fall you can like laugh at them. So I think it's careful to be careful not to do it just to show people, but to do it because that's what you sincerely believe.

Were you going to say something? Well, I'm kind of hung up on this word preacher and preach. Go for it. So we have a connotation that comes to mind when we hear that word. When the average believer reads this, it's like, oh, that's not me. I'm not a preacher. But the word just means to proclaim or announce. If you read it that way, it all of a sudden becomes personal, in the sense that, oh, I didn't go to seminary, I don't have that title on the door of my office.

But now I'm announcing something, I'm proclaiming it, I'm heralding it, and that's the idea here. It's not the position in the church, or the modern western day idea that we have around someone at a pulpit. And the proclamation isn't necessarily preaching in the sense that we know it to be. It's in the way you conduct, let me put it better, it is the way in which the Spirit of God conducts the life of Christ through you.

The only fear I have about that, which is true, this is all true. Here comes the butt monkey. Exactly. The problem I have with that is people. My my words is never put your trust in a person. And if you if this person's a living epistle. And he's the one. He's the one. And you look to that person, and you put your trust in that person.

Never put your trust in a person. Because they will guarantee you fail. And how many great preachers, great orators... One of my favorites died this week. You should always verify what anybody says with God's Word. Everything we say should be verified by Scripture. You should never trust in any of us.

If it's the life of the Lord Jesus that's being manifested through you, and you're of a mind that, I don't care what I see, I'm going to go check it out, that's really cool. Because it will verify the life you're leading. The great thing is that the Spirit of God very seldom lets you in on what He's doing. Sometimes He does, but most of the time He doesn't. You have no idea who you're influencing, or what you've said, or what you've done, Because it's God who saves people and it's the Spirit of God who grows them up.

It's not you. But you might be the only Bible I might read. That's right. But he's not reading me. Okay, so when I go to Bible study in your house, I'm not going to trust a word you say? You should be checking it out. That's right. Verify it. Yeah, you should be. I'm sorry, I didn't hear that. It's a good thing you didn't. If you're doing a Bible study at home, at my house, you can come if you want.

It's too far away. So I could say it this way, a person hears the gospel by someone who is a bearer of the news of the message. Every believer is a herald, whether verbally or otherwise. 2 Corinthians 3. You are a letter written in our hearts, known and read by all men, being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. Every believer is responsible to manifest the gospel. Yeah, that's a tricky one because every believer does. Every believer is not responsible. The Holy Spirit is the one conforming us. Every believer is already doing it, you know.

So it's like if you think you're going to write your own letter or change your own behavior to make it look better for other people, then you're kind of off the mark because you are the letter And people are reading it, and you do it because that's who you are, not because you want to influence other people. I would bet that because we are so self-centered, that the Spirit of God orchestrates it in such a manner that they're reading the letter that's in your heart and you have no idea it's going on. Because if you did, you'd get arrogant about it.

Okay. How many buzzers? One. Go Courtney. Three minutes. When the gospel is proclaimed to an unbeliever, does it force a response from them? No. Yes. Yes. I have a no, a couple no's, and a bunch of yes's. It doesn't force someone to believe. No, I didn't say that. I said, does it force a response from them? Yeah, like, oh jeez, you're so messed up. What do you think? I think no. I think if it forces some response because it's the word of God.

But it doesn't require a decision necessarily evidently because supposedly there's an average of 14 testimonies people are supposed to hear or telling of the gospel before they believe. So evidently there are different amounts of belief that can go with the small amount of response that they're giving. Where in the Bible is this different amounts of belief? I'm just saying, you know, maybe they become a little more open or interested or something, but no way are they going to believe this.

Well, you don't know that. No, but it's the Holy Spirit. It happens in people. So here's the herald. He shows up and he's got the gospel message. to you three people, and you've never heard the gospel before. And so he's just laying it out to you, either verbally or non-verbally, and there's an understanding. You hear it, and God would desire a positive response out of you, wouldn't he? Because he desires that all men be saved.

But could the response be negative? So the issue is that man is not neutral at that point. They already have rejected God. And now they're rejecting even further information about God. So there's not a place of neutrality prior to hearing it and then responding, but they're just furthering their rejection. So their response is just a deeper no, right?

Yeah, Romans 1 specifically says that. But I think there are persons who believe in Romans 1. They accept that there's a God of the universe based on the creation and they see him. That's not salvation, but they do believe him and they honor him as God. I can't back this up biblically, but I'm absolutely persuaded that if a human being does that, God will get the gospel to him. I agree as well. How about a Jew then? Huh? How about a Jew, or Hasidic Jews? They've rejected the truth, the gospel. I know, but they believe God. But they don't believe the gospel. No, but that isn't what you said.

Right, you said then that would lead to belief. Oh, I see. Don't trust what he's saying, Monique. Trust and verify. Gotta have two witnesses. I see they're gonna be present. Well, I've changed my answer. Here's the deal. The gospel and the word of God presented to a person forces them to make a decision. A response. A response. They either negatively or positively. But there's a response. That's the point.

And maybe it's still no. And it may be, oh you almost persuaded me. What does almost persuaded mean? I'm not persuaded. It's like, are you still beating your wife? Yeah. When did you stop beating your wife? Okay. Oh boy. Courtney, I tried. So I'll do question nine next week and then Courtney will be up. So let's close.

Dear Father, Father we thank you for the grace that we live under and the gospel that we possess and the person of your son that we possess and especially today to recognize that we are living in the resurrected glorified Lord Jesus Christ and we pray in his precious name. Amen.