Because look, there's another belief out there,
and I'm just gonna briefly touch on this.
There's another belief out there that says,
well you're not saved by works at all.
No works involved in salvation.
If you get saved, you're gonna do good works as a result.
Now look, I do believe that people who believe this
are still saved.
As long as they mean what they're saying
and they're truly trusting in Christ
and His finished work on the cross.
If they're truly trusting Christ
and His finished work on the cross,
and they just think that the Holy Spirit moving in
is gonna have an effect,
and you're gonna do the works, whatever.
Okay, I'm not saying that they're unsaved,
but they are dead wrong.
Because if that were true,
if that were true that everybody who's saved
just automatically does the works,
this world would be a very different place.
Because I'll tell you what I see,
I see 99% of people who are actually even saved
doing virtually nothing for God.
And I'm talking about people that are truly saved.
I'm not talking about a bunch of fakes
who don't even know what salvation is,
and they don't even understand the gospel,
and they're not even trustworthy.
I'm talking about people who actually believe
in the right gospel, the right salvation.
How many of them are actually doing something big for God?
Well, you know what, it's not a lot.
So to sit there and say, oh, but then people say,
well, okay, but you're talking about doing a lot of works.
I'm just saying they're gonna do just a little bit.
You know, just a little, they'll do something.
Come on, they're gonna do something.
But what does the Bible say?
The Bible says to him that worketh not, worketh not,
but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly.
His faith is counted for righteousness.
The guy who works not, but he believes.
You know, the Bible teaches that there are gonna be people
who get to that judgment seat of Christ
in First Corinthians three,
and all their works are wood, hay, and stubble.
And the Bible says that all their works are burned up.
Nothing made it through the fire.
Nothing was of eternal value.
Nothing was worth a darn.
And they get there, and it says,
"Yet he himself shall be saved, yet so is by fire."
The Bible says, "He'll suffer loss of reward,
yet he himself shall be saved, yet so is by fire."
So it's possible to believe in Jesus, be truly saved,
and then quench the spirit, walk in the flesh,
not do good deeds, get to the judgment seat of Christ,
and you're totally empty-handed on rewards,
and you're like, "But you know what?
I still made it in, yet he himself shall be saved."
Yet he himself shall be saved.
Who?
The guy who all his works were burned up?
Yet he himself shall be saved.
Why?
Because there's not one little work required.
It's not like you're at the judgment seat of Christ.
You know, picture it sort of like a conveyor belt, right?
You know, I bring everything I've done in my life,
and I plop it down on the conveyor belt,
and the conveyor belt's just like (mimics explosion)
It just burns everything, right?
All the wood hand stubble just gets smoked.
And then what comes out are the things
that can make it through fire.
You know, the gold, the silver, the precious stones.
So think about this.
Let's say I put all of my good works in,
everything I've done my whole life,
and it goes through, it gets torched,
a whole bunch of it wasn't worth anything,
a whole bunch of it didn't matter,
a whole bunch of it didn't count.
And then it's like, okay, I get to the other side,
I gather up, okay, this is what I get a reward for.
Everybody get it?
This is like the parable.
This is the illustration.
Obviously, it's not gonna be actually like this,
but this is what God is using to explain it to us,
you know, so we can understand it on our level.
Okay, well, what if you go through this thing
and it just burns up like virtually everything?
Just, and then there's just like this little gold flake.
You know, who's ever just been handed
little flakes of gold for free?
And you're like, whoa, this is real gold,
but it's like so thin and so light,
it's virtually worthless.
At the homeschool convention,
they were just like giving out fake,
kids are getting real excited about these flakes of gold.
So just imagine, you know, Gabriel or whatever,
you know, gets out like one of those little hand lenses
that a geologist uses, right?
And he's like, wait, wait!
'Cause at first he's about to say no reward.
You know, he's about to just put a zero,
and you're like, wait!
You know, you hand him the hand lens,
he gets up there, and he's like, you're right.
There is a little speck, you actually did something right.
You know, you actually,
and you know, you actually achieved something.
And then it's like, yes, I'm saved!
Yes, I get to go to heaven, woo!
Is that how it works?
No, because here's the thing,
you can have nothing come out the other side,
be 100% empty handed, and what does the Bible says?
If your works are burned, you suffer loss,
but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by far.
It's possible to just get into heaven on the grace of God,
even though you didn't do anything whatsoever,
as far as any kind of a good works afterward, okay?
It's out there, the Bible teaches that.
Now look, does that mean that we shouldn't do good works?
No, because the Bible says we're saved unto good works,
which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.
God has a wonderful plan for our life.
God has works for us to achieve.
God has a vision for our life, and I don't know about you,
I wanna get on his program, I wanna earn those rewards.
You know, I want the machine to jam up
when my works are going through, you know,
'cause it's like red alert because the conveyor belt's
so bogged down, I wanna do as much works as I can.
I wanna get as many people saved as I can.
I wanna do what God wants me to do
because God has foreordained the works.
I've been saved not by works,
but I've been saved unto good works,
which God has foreordained that I should walk in them.
But folks, don't confuse that with salvation.
Hey, every single week, I get up and preach to people,
not to sin.
I get up and preach against stealing, murder, adultery,
lying, and then I get up and preach, go soul winning,
read your Bible, pray, right?
I'm always getting up and telling people, do good works,
don't do bad things, do good works, don't do bad things.
But here's the thing,
those have nothing to do with salvation though.
You know why I get up and preach that week after week?
Because 90 some percent of people here are already saved.
So I don't have to just get up and preach about salvation.
Now I'm preaching about salvation this morning,
but next Sunday morning, it's not gonna be salvation again.
Now I've been to some churches that are like that,
where it's just salvation.
Look, next week it'll be something totally different.
But let me just be very clear on this,
salvation and doing good works are not connected whatsoever.
Except for in one way that says,
you can't really do any works that God's really gonna like
until after you're saved.
That's really the only connection,
is that if I'm not saved, nothing I do pleases God.
Once I'm saved, I can actually do something
that pleases God.
But that work has nothing to do with purchasing my salvation.
With or without it, I'm saved,
because salvation is 100% by grace through faith.
And folks, I hope that the salvation sermon this morning
was easy to understand.
I hope it was easy, because it's meant to be easy.
Because even though there's four points,
that's just an illusion that makes it seem like
it's more complicated than it is,
because it's really just one point.
The point is just fully rely on Jesus for your salvation
and what he did, right?
We could just all sum it up like that.
But I broke it down into four points of, you know,
trusting in Christ, believing the record
that God gave of his son,
taking that step of faith with no backup or fail safe.
That's just a more detailed way of saying,
put all your faith in what Jesus already did,
the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for the fact
that you've given us salvation as a free gift, Lord.
I hope that this sermon would help people
to maybe have additional clarity
or maybe give them some ideas of ways
that they could explain this to other people, Lord,
because we need to explain this to our friends.
We need to explain this to our loved ones, Lord.
And Lord, help us to always use the Bible
when we explain it so that we can have access
to the power of Scripture as we're presenting the gospel, Lord.
And Lord, if there's anybody here today who's not saved,
I pray that they would get saved before it's eternally too late,
that they would ask someone here,
because almost everyone in this church
knows how to present the gospel to them.
And so we just pray that anyone who's not sure
would reach out and get saved.
And Lord, if there's anybody here today who's saved
but they've never won anyone else to Christ,
I pray that they would set a goal for 2021
of getting at least one person saved this year.
And Lord, help us to support them in doing that,
and Lord, help our soul winning times to facilitate that,
Lord, in Jesus' name we pray.