So what's the difference between salvation in the Old Testament and salvation in the
New Testament?
Now I already did a whole sermon on this recently, but I'm just going to touch on it in this
chapter because it's pretty interesting and there are a lot of people who get confused
on this subject.
How do we get saved in the New Testament?
Well the Bible's pretty clear how we get saved in the New Testament.
It says 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 under righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto
salvation.
A couple verses later it says, "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall
be saved."
So how do we get saved in the New Testament?
It's by putting all of our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, his death, burial, and resurrection,
and calling upon him for salvation.
So we're saved by grace through faith, but it has to do with believing on a name.
It has to be the name of Jesus.
We confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus, and we have to believe in our heart that God
raised him from the dead.
So it's the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus that we have to believe in in the
New Testament, and then we just call upon him by faith as our Savior.
Very simple.
It's easy to be saved.
What about in the Old Testament?
How did they get saved in the Old Testament?
What's the difference?
Well, here's the thing.
In the Old Testament, they were also saved by faith.
In the New Testament, they're saved by grace through faith, calling on the name of the
Lord.
Old Testament, they're saved by grace through faith, calling on the name of the Lord.
So in that sense, it's the same.
In that sense, they're saved the same way in the Old Testament as in the New Testament.
But there is a difference between Old Testament salvation and New Testament salvation.
Here's the difference.
In the Old Testament, they did not know the name of Jesus.
That name of the Savior had not been revealed to them.
So when they called upon the name of the Lord, they're not calling on the name Jesus.
They're calling on the name Jehovah.
Or in the cases of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they didn't even know the name Jehovah.
They called on the name God Almighty.
So the one difference is that in the Old Testament, they don't know the name of Jesus.
That's not been revealed to them.
And the second difference is that in the Old Testament, the death, burial, and resurrection
of Christ had not been revealed unto them.
So they're still putting their faith in the Lord to save them, but they had way less information.
In the Old Testament, they're trusting in the Lord to save them, but they don't know
exactly how he's going to do it.
They don't know exactly that his son is going to be born of a virgin and live a perfect
life, and die on the cross, and be buried, and rise again.
They don't know all that detail of exactly how he's going to do it, but all they know
is that it's salvation of the Lord, and they know that if they call on the Lord as their
savior, he'll save them.
And it's by trusting in him, fully trusting in the Lord to save them.
The difference with the New Testament is that we have the revelation of the name of Jesus,
and also the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ as the method of our salvation.
Now here's the thing about that.
In the New Testament, you must call on that name Jesus to be saved.
That's different than in the Old Testament, because look, in the Old Testament you just
call on the name of the Lord, Jehovah or God Almighty, as long as it's the God of the Bible.
Because notice, it didn't just say, "Call on God and you'll be saved."
It said, "Call on the name, the name of the Lord."
Why is the name important?
To make sure you're calling on the right person, okay?
So in the Old Testament, you call upon Jehovah, you call upon God Almighty by faith, and that's
how you get saved.
And once you're saved, you're always saved, Old Testament or New Testament, okay?
Then when you get into the New Testament, same salvation, except for the fact now there's
more information that we've received.
It's been revealed that that name is Jesus as the actual literal savior, the one who
actually died for us.
And then we understand the method that he died and was buried and rose again.
So here's the thing, in 2017, you can't just call upon the name of the Lord, one of his
Old Testament names, and just skip Jesus and skip the death, burial, and resurrection wrong.
Now that that stuff has been revealed, there's no salvation in any other and there's none
other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.
That's why before the New Testament came into force, Jesus spent three and a half years
doing what?
Making sure every single Jewish person, every single Israelite, heard about him.
And then when he died on the cross and was buried in Rhodes again, the first thing that
happens is, the day of Pentecost, there's devout men from every nation under heaven,
and they all hear the gospel, they all hear about Christ's death, burial, and resurrection,
and they all take that home to their home countries, and the apostles go out preaching,
and the gospel goes out everywhere, and now, people are responsible for that name of Jesus,
and for that information of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
You say, "Well, Pastor Erich, prove that to me."
Okay, well, look at the Bible here, just in this chapter.
Let's jump down to verse 31, and I'm going to show you that in the Old Testament, the
Old Testament saints, even those who are saved, did not understand, necessarily, the death,
burial, and resurrection component of it, just like they didn't know the name Jesus.
It says in verse 31, "Then he took unto him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we
go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son
of Man shall be accomplished; for he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall
be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spit it on; and they shall scourge him, and put
him to death; and the third day he shall rise again."
Now that's the gospel, that Jesus is going to die and be buried, and on the third day
rise again.
But what's it say?
"And they understood none of these things, and the saying was hid from them, neither knew
they the things which were spoken."
So did they understand the death, burial, and resurrection at that time?
No.
Are you going to tell me the twelve disciples aren't saved?
Well, we know one of them wasn't saved.
The rest of them were saved.
And let me just come right out and say this, saying that some of the disciples were not
saved is a stupid doctrine, except Judas.
Why would Jesus hand-pick unsaved people to be his disciples?
He only picked one unsaved person, why?
Because he thought that the scripture would be fulfilled.
He picked one unsaved person on purpose that would be the one that would betray him.
Because in order to fulfill scripture, he needed one of his disciples to betray him.
So he picks 11 saved good guys and he picks one unsaved bad guy.
But to sit there and say, "Oh, Peter and James and John, they all got saved later," garbage,
friend.
It's nonsense.
Or people try to say, "Oh, King David got saved like years after he was king."
Why would God handpick and anoint someone who's not even saved?
And say, "This is a man after my own heart.
He's not even saved."
I mean, the stuff that people come up with is crazy.
Why do you think he picked King Saul?
Because King Saul was saved.
Why do you think he picked David?
Because he's saved.
Why did he pick Solomon?
Because he's saved.
He picked those guys, handpicked those three men, Saul, David, and Solomon.
Handpicked 12 disciples, purposely picked one who was a devil, but good night.
The other 11 are saved.
And they will, when thou art converted.
Look, just because you've heard the word converted associated with salvation so much doesn't make
it so.
That doesn't mean when you get saved.
It's just when he's converted, it just means change, when you change, when you get changed.
We change all the time, and it has nothing to do with salvation.
So you have to understand that the 12 disciples here, isn't the Bible clear that none of them
grasped the death-bearing resurrection?
Now this is where the stupidity comes in, where people say, "Oh, there's multiple Gospels.
There's three Gospels.
There's a different Gospel in the Old Testament that you're not wrong."
There's only one Gospel.
It's just in the Old Testament, they didn't know as much detail about that Gospel.
In the New Testament, we know more details, but it's the same Gospel.
God was always planning on saving us the same way.
The difference is, in the Old Testament, they saw through a glass darkly, so all they knew,
the good news to them, the Gospel to them, is that someday the Savior is going to come.
They don't know what His name is.
They don't know exactly how He's going to die, or exactly about the resurrection.
They just know that if they call upon the name of the Lord, they'll be saved.
And they just know to just trust the Lord, not to put any trust in any false God, to
put all their trust in the God of the Bible, and that He's going to save them.
And He's going to send a Savior someday.
And they just call out to the Lord by name with that knowledge.
That's how they got saved in the Old Testament.
In the New Testament, there's more information given.
So this chapter is pretty clear that this guy, this sinner, how did he get justified?
By works?
Did the publican do any works?
No.
What did he do?
He just called upon the Lord for mercy.
God be merciful to me, a sinner.
I mean, he's just humbly admitting he's a sinner and just asking the Lord to save him.
That's it.
That's how we get saved.
That's how they got saved then.
So there's a difference, but it's not the difference that some people have made it where
they try, "Oh, they had to do works or offer sacrifices to get into heaven in the Old Testament."
It's not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats take away sin, the Bible says.
So that makes no sense.
So that's the difference.
Now, here's an interesting subject as well, and I don't want to go too deep on this, but
I think it's an important point to mention.
How about people, and pay close attention because I don't want to lose anybody because
I'm going to go a little deeper here.
How about people who were already saved when Jesus came on the scene?
Because here's the thing, people are saved in the Old Testament, right?
Okay, so what about people that are already saved and then John the Baptist comes on the
scene?
Jesus comes on the scene.
Did those people have to get re-saved?
No, of course not because you only have to get saved once.
So they were already saved.
The disciples didn't have to get re-saved when they met Jesus, they're already saved.
That's why I even picked them.
They were saved before they'd ever even heard of Jesus because they're under the Old Testament
system.
Okay?
Now, here's how this works because some people have put out a hypothetical, "Well what if
somebody was saved in the Old Testament but then when Jesus came along they didn't believe
in him?"
You know, here's the thing.
That's impossible situation.
Here's why.
Because Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice and they follow me."
Now, that means that when Jesus came on the scene, Jesus comes into Israel and starts
preaching.
Okay?
There's three kinds of people that are out there.
There are people that are already saved, okay, and those people, when they heard Jesus preach,
they knew this is the voice of the shepherd, this is the son of God, and they believed
in him, right?
But they were already saved and because they were saved, they believed in him, okay?
Then there's another kind of people, people that were not saved, but when they heard Jesus
preach or when they heard John the Baptist preach, they got saved, right?
John the Baptist, Jesus the Apostles got them saved.
And then there's a third group of people who were not saved, they heard John the Baptist
and Jesus preach and they still didn't believe in him and they still didn't get saved, right?
Now let me give you an illustration to help you understand this concept.
Let's say I took the Bible and showed a saved person a passage of scripture that they've
never seen before because most Christians have not read the whole Bible.
So if I took a saved Christian and I show them a passage of the Bible that they've never
seen before, and they point at it and say, "I don't believe that.
That's a lie."
You know what I would say?
That person's not even saved.
I thought they were saved, but that person's not saved.
Because if I show a saved person a passage from the Bible, they're going to believe in
it every single time.
And if they don't believe in it, it's evidence that they weren't saved, right?
Because you know what?
"He that is of God heareth God's words; ye therefore hear them not, because you're not
of God."
Okay, so if I show a saved person the Word of God, they'll believe it.
I'm not saying that they're going to necessarily have the same interpretation of something
that's complicated, but I mean if I just show them a clear scripture, it's just right there,
I mean how many times have you had somebody point at the Bible and say, "I don't believe
that."
And what does that tell you?
Not saved.
Okay, well it's the same thing.
If Jesus came along and started preaching, and somebody that you thought was saved said,
"I don't believe this guy is the Messiah.
I don't believe this.
He's a false teacher."
What does that tell you?
He wasn't saved in the first place.
Okay, so let me ask this.
Was Saul of Tarsus saved during the ministry of Jesus and Stephen?
No way.
Why?
Because when Jesus came along and preached, and when Stephen came along and preached,
and these other men of God preached, did Saul of Tarsus believe they're preaching?
No.
He fought against Christianity.
He persecuted Christianity.
Look, Saul of Tarsus was on his way to hell, right, until Ananias preached him the gospel
and he called on the name of the Lord.
Up to that point, he was religious.
He profited in the Jews' religion above many his equals of his own nation.
Why?
Because you could profit in the Jews' religion without being saved.
Saul of Tarsus wasn't saved until he got saved in the book of Acts with Ananias, called
upon the name of the Lord, and became the Apostle Paul.
That's who we're talking about, the Apostle Paul.
Before that, he was called Saul of Tarsus.
His mentor, Gamaliel, was unsaved.
Anybody who didn't believe on Christ wasn't saved because the people that were saved,
they were the sheep.
And when they heard Christ preaching, they embraced it because they said, "Hey, this
is the word of God.
We recognize this is the word of God."
When John the Baptist preached, they recognized it as the word of God.
When the Apostles preached, they recognized it as the word of God.
The ones who rejected it and said it was false and heresy, they were just showing that they
weren't even saved in the first place.
So anyway, I just wanted to cover that.
And by the way, with the people who got baptized by John the Baptist, they didn't have to get
baptized again, you know, after the death, burial, and resurrection.