Latest / Deep-Grace Diving with Tim Wright and Terey Summers / #110 What Must I Do to Be Saved?

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#110 What Must I Do to Be Saved? · Deep-Grace Diving with Tim Wright and Terey Summers

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_01: Hey friends, Tim Wright here, along with John Burgess, Deep Grace Diving Podcast.
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  SPEAKER_01: Our good friend Terry Summers,
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  SPEAKER_01: of course,
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  SPEAKER_01: is right now fully engaged in the play Les Miserables here in the Phoenix area,
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  SPEAKER_01: doing, I think it's eight shows a week.
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  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: these plays go two to three hours long,
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  SPEAKER_01: so she's really working hard and she's been getting great reviews,
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  SPEAKER_01: so we're really proud of her.
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  SPEAKER_01: But we're not going to have her around for a while, so it's just the two of us.
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  SPEAKER_01: And we're continuing our series,
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  SPEAKER_01: Christianity 101, by asking the question, what must I do to be saved?
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  SPEAKER_01: What does salvation look like?
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  SPEAKER_01: We may even talk about what are we being saved from,
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  SPEAKER_01: but the question is, what must I do to be saved?
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  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to have John start us out by reading us a story from the book of Acts.
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  SPEAKER_01: The book of Acts is in the New Testament.
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  SPEAKER_01: It is the sequel to Luke's Gospel.
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  SPEAKER_01: So Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke, which is Luke's telling of the story of Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then he has the Book of Acts,
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  SPEAKER_01: which is the telling of the story of Jesus and his work through the church,
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  SPEAKER_01: the beginnings of the church.
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  SPEAKER_01: And early on in the book,
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  SPEAKER_01: we meet a guy named Saul,
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  SPEAKER_01: who is a persecutor of Christians,
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  SPEAKER_01: who has an encounter with Jesus and becomes one of the great defenders of Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: And really begins to shape how it is that we understand Christianity as a movement.
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  SPEAKER_01: He is arrested.
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  SPEAKER_01: And he is in jail with his buddy, Silas.
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  SPEAKER_01: And something amazing happens right around midnight.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so John's going to pick up the story for us.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so right after that experience, Saul becomes Paul.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right, Tim?
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  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
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  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
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  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
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  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
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  SPEAKER_00: So starting at verse 25.
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  SPEAKER_00: About midnight,
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  SPEAKER_00: Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and
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  SPEAKER_00: the prisoners were listening to them.
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  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly there was an earthquake so violent that the foundations of
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  SPEAKER_00: the prison were shaken and immediately all the doors were opened
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  SPEAKER_00: and everyone's chains were unfastened.
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  SPEAKER_00: When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open,
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  SPEAKER_00: he drew his sword and was about to kill himself since he was supposed to be
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  SPEAKER_00: Since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Paul shouted in a loud voice, Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.
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  SPEAKER_00: The jailer called for lights and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then he brought them outside and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to stop you there.
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  SPEAKER_01: What must I do to be saved?
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  SPEAKER_01: We'll pick it up.
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  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's talk a little bit about that, John,
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  SPEAKER_01: because the fact that we're asking the question means that maybe there are a lot
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  SPEAKER_01: of different answers to that question,
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  SPEAKER_01: and maybe some of those answers are better than others.
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  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to look at what Scripture has to say.
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  SPEAKER_01: But John, when you hear that question, what must I do to be saved?
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  SPEAKER_01: What are some of the things that you hear in terms of answers that you've heard over the years?
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: the, the, the great human mystery here is what are the checkboxes I need to have?
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's natural for us all to ask those things.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like, can we just, obviously, this is an important question.
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  SPEAKER_00: So if I can make sure that I have all the boxes checked, then I'm in good shape.
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  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, how, how much second grade Sunday school do I really need to teach?
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  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: And for me,
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  SPEAKER_00: that for me personally,
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  SPEAKER_00: that would be not one day longer than I need to check that box.
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  SPEAKER_00: And how much good do I need to do that God can recognize that I'm doing enough good?
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think this would be a good question for our Catholic priest friend
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  SPEAKER_00: when he comes back is because I think can the Catholics not sometimes get into
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  SPEAKER_00: a little bit more of the checking boxes mystery part of here than
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  SPEAKER_00: the Protestants can?
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  SPEAKER_00: That would actually be a good question for us to ask.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'll write that down.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I do think Protestants have their own boxes to check.
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  SPEAKER_01: The question itself suggests that we must do something to be saved.
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  SPEAKER_01: What must I do to be saved?
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  SPEAKER_01: And it's a natural,
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  SPEAKER_01: normal question for somebody to ask who has had the kind of experience he's had.
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  SPEAKER_01: He has had an experience of An encounter with God and he's saying,
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  SPEAKER_01: okay, how do I get in on this?
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  SPEAKER_01: What do I do?
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's also fair to say, what must I do to be saved?
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  SPEAKER_01: He's asking a question, how do I save myself?
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  SPEAKER_01: Because had those prisoners escaped, he would have been executed for not keeping his job.
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  SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: it could be that there's a little bit of a double meaning in that,
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  SPEAKER_01: what must I do to be saved for him?
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  SPEAKER_01: How do I save my skin?
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  SPEAKER_01: But he was listening to them singing the hymns.
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  SPEAKER_01: He was listening to them.
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  SPEAKER_01: He knew that they were in there for talking about Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: What must I do to be saved?
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  SPEAKER_01: And so we have developed these really interesting theologies.
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  SPEAKER_01: One thing you need to do to be saved,
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  SPEAKER_01: some people may be familiar with this, you need to say the sinner's prayer.
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  SPEAKER_01: And the sinner's prayer is sort of a form of saying, God, I know that I'm a sinner.
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  SPEAKER_01: I know that I deserve hell and your wrath.
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  SPEAKER_01: I thank you that Jesus died for me and that you forgive me.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so what I must do is I must make a decision for Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: I must accept Jesus as my Savior and live on the basis of his love for me and his saving of me.
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  SPEAKER_01: Nothing I'm not necessarily wrong with that answer,
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  SPEAKER_01: but I would suggest maybe it's a bit incomplete because part of
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  SPEAKER_01: the problem is it puts the whole salvation onto me and my prayer and saying
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  SPEAKER_01: the right words.
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  SPEAKER_01: So in moments of doubt you'd say, did I pray the prayer with conviction?
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  SPEAKER_01: Did I really mean it?
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  SPEAKER_01: Did I use the right words?
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  SPEAKER_01: Did I pray it with enough belief in my system?
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  SPEAKER_01: And so you start to doubt, well, do I do I need to pray that prayer again?
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  SPEAKER_01: Do I need to feel it more?
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  SPEAKER_01: And when the doubts come, what you are depending on is your words and your actions.
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  SPEAKER_01: And that can be a pretty slippery slope.
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  SPEAKER_01: Because we can't always trust our words or actions or even our intentions.
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  SPEAKER_01: Did I pray that prayer like this jailer because I was scared?
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  SPEAKER_01: You know, did I really accept Jesus for the right reasons?
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  SPEAKER_01: And so you have these stories of people where maybe altar calls are a part
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  SPEAKER_01: of their worship service every weekend and people are invited to come forward
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  SPEAKER_01: and accept Jesus as a savior.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I've heard these stories before,
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  SPEAKER_01: people who go up every week because they're just not sure, did I do it right?
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  SPEAKER_01: Did I say it right?
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  SPEAKER_01: Because if it's something I have to do, how do I know that I did it right?
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  SPEAKER_01: How can I really feel confident in the decision that I made and in the words I used?
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  SPEAKER_01: So it puts the whole onus of salvation onto me and how I did it and my attitude,
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  SPEAKER_01: what I was feeling at the time, maybe what I ate, the gas in my stomach.
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  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are a whole bunch of things.
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  SPEAKER_01: And if all the stars aren't aligned just right,
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  SPEAKER_01: I can fall prey to some doubt pretty quickly and then feel like I have to do
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  SPEAKER_01: the whole process over again because I have to save myself.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I would say every time, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: It's this human condition is we want to know what the boxes are,
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  SPEAKER_00: but then we're never sure that we've checked them correctly.
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  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Again, have I prayed the right prayer?
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  SPEAKER_01: Was I in the right mood?
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, does it count if I just repeat the words the pastor is asking me to pray?
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  SPEAKER_00: If I need to figure them out on my own?
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because it's that sincere.
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  SPEAKER_01: And is it the formula itself that saves me, the sinner's prayer that saves me?
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  SPEAKER_01: You know, again and again, it's just that question, what must I do?
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  SPEAKER_01: And we get caught up in what I must do, and there's not a lot of peace there.
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  SPEAKER_01: So let's finish off the story and then I'm going to turn to another one as well.
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  SPEAKER_01: So you got us up through verse 30.
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  SPEAKER_01: We brought them outside and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved?
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  SPEAKER_01: And the story continues.
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  SPEAKER_00: They answered, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.
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  SPEAKER_00: They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all were in his house.
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  SPEAKER_01: I want you to go back and read verse 31 again.
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  SPEAKER_00: They answered, believe in the Lord Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: Did you say in or on?
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  SPEAKER_00: In.
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  SPEAKER_01: Huh, we have the exact, are you reading from the New Revised Standard Version?
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  SPEAKER_00: Yep, the NRSVUE, the updated edition.
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  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's what I have, and mine says believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, huh.
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  SPEAKER_00: That would be another thing to explain.
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  SPEAKER_01: I have the revised standard version.
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  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't have the updated version.
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  SPEAKER_01: All right.
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  SPEAKER_01: So they changed it back to believe in.
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  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
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  SPEAKER_00: Believe in or on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.
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  SPEAKER_00: They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.
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  SPEAKER_00: At the same hour of the night, he took them and washed their wounds.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then he and his entire family were baptized without delay.
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  SPEAKER_00: He brought them up into the house and set food before them,
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  SPEAKER_00: and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.
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  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so the answer in this one is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.
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  SPEAKER_01: Now,
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  SPEAKER_01: let's remember first of all that all of the stories that we have of conversions In
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  SPEAKER_01: the New Testament are what we would call first generation conversions.
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  SPEAKER_01: The gospel is spreading.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so people are,
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  SPEAKER_01: of course,
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  SPEAKER_01: being invited to follow Jesus,
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  SPEAKER_01: to pledge their allegiance to him, to believe in the Lord Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so you're going to be using language that has sort of this you didn't believe
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  SPEAKER_01: and now you do believe kind of thing, because it's first generation.
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  SPEAKER_01: You are essentially converting First generation people.
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  SPEAKER_01: Now, what happens when families convert?
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  SPEAKER_01: We'll talk more about that next week with baptism.
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  SPEAKER_01: The second thing that we want to tease out here is what does it mean
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  SPEAKER_01: when we say believe in the Lord Jesus or believe on?
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  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times we will interpret that to mean we have to believe certain things about Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: We have to believe certain facts about him.
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  SPEAKER_01: We have to think a certain way about him.
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  SPEAKER_01: But here,
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  SPEAKER_01: the word being used,
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  SPEAKER_01: believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, isn't about believing certain things about Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: Essentially, the word means trust.
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  SPEAKER_01: Trust in the Lord Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: Now, certainly,
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  SPEAKER_01: if we're going to trust someone,
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  SPEAKER_01: there are certain things that we want to believe about them.
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  SPEAKER_01: They're trustworthy.
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  SPEAKER_01: They're faithful.
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  SPEAKER_01: What they say about themselves is true.
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  SPEAKER_01: But we're not talking here about a belief system.
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  SPEAKER_01: Theology so much, what we were talking about is
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  SPEAKER_01: where will the energy of our life go?
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  SPEAKER_01: What will be the North Star of our life?
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  SPEAKER_01: What will be the compass of our life?
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  SPEAKER_01: In whom will we put our trust?
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  SPEAKER_01: And the word trust here has more of a sense about surrender.
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  SPEAKER_01: When we trust someone, yeah,
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  SPEAKER_01: there's a decision to trust them,
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  SPEAKER_01: but when we trust someone,
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  SPEAKER_01: essentially what we're doing is,
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  SPEAKER_01: one way to visualize,
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  SPEAKER_01: we're basically just falling back into their arms,
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  SPEAKER_01: into their hands, and we are surrendering our lives to them.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's a bit more passive than active.
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  SPEAKER_01: And here's what I mean by that.
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  SPEAKER_01: We don't trust in people unless they've already proven themselves trustworthy.
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't walk into,
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  SPEAKER_01: say, a car dealership and look at a guy and immediately think he's trustworthy.
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  SPEAKER_01: That guy is going to prove himself trustworthy in the way that he treats me and
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  SPEAKER_01: the kind of deal that he gives me.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then my trust grows as I'm in relationship with him.
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  SPEAKER_01: But he's the one responsible for proving that he's trustworthy.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's not my responsibility to trust him.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's his responsibility to prove that I can put my trust in him.
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  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
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  SPEAKER_01: It's not what I am doing to be saved.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's what Jesus is doing to invite me in a sense to allow him to save me.
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  SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the one who is proving himself trustworthy so that I can believe.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's about God's work first and foremost, not about mine.
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  SPEAKER_01: I trust Because God has proven God self trustworthy.
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  SPEAKER_01: I believe because Jesus has proven that I can believe in it,
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  SPEAKER_01: proven himself faithful so that I can believe in him.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's a relational word, not a cognitive word.
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  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we struggle about what we're doing here.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like, what am I doing?
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  SPEAKER_00: What is my part in this?
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  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like you have a metaphor about a chair that's going to come out pretty soon.
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  SPEAKER_01: I could bring up the chair, yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I've used this before,
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  SPEAKER_01: but when you sit down on a chair,
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  SPEAKER_01: you are putting the full weight of your life onto that chair.
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  SPEAKER_01: You are trusting that chair because you've had experiences with chairs in the past
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  SPEAKER_01: and they've proven themselves to be trustworthy.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's not your trust that holds you up.
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  SPEAKER_01: It is the trustworthiness of the chair that holds you.
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  SPEAKER_01: It is the chair itself that is the energy of faith, so to speak.
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  SPEAKER_01: It has proven itself faithful to you,
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  SPEAKER_01: and therefore you are willing to surrender,
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  SPEAKER_01: to trust your life, your entire being, into the arms of that chair, so to speak.
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  SPEAKER_01: So, for us,
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  SPEAKER_01: It's always when we say, what must I do to be saved?
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  SPEAKER_01: It's always good to remind ourselves that God is in the business of saving.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's Jesus who saves us.
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  SPEAKER_01: And the way that Jesus saves us is relational, not cognitive, but relational.
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  SPEAKER_01: And there's some cognitive to it as well.
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  SPEAKER_01: But he does it by constantly coming to us over and over again to say, I love you.
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  SPEAKER_01: I believe in you.
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  SPEAKER_01: I am faithful.
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm trustworthy.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it's in that relationship then that we can say, I trust.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's not my trust that saves me.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's God's trustworthiness that saves me.
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  SPEAKER_01: My trust is a response to God's trustworthiness.
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  SPEAKER_01: It is not my trust that moves God to act.
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  SPEAKER_01: It is God's trustworthiness that moves me to respond.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I'll say that again.
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  SPEAKER_01: It is not my trust that moves God to act.
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  SPEAKER_01: It is God's trustworthiness that moves me to respond.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: And this is super important.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's super important because in some ways we're a bit more passive in this process.
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  SPEAKER_01: God is the one who is the main actor.
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  SPEAKER_01: But then when the doubts come, all right, Tim, do you know you're really saved?
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: How do you know?
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  SPEAKER_01: Well, because God's trustworthy.
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  SPEAKER_01: Because God can be counted on.
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  SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus died for me.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's not because of what I believe or how I believe or what I said.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's because God is trustworthy.
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  SPEAKER_01: I can trust in the promises of God because the cross proves that God is faithful.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so now the energy of my belief and even energy of doubt is not in me
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  SPEAKER_01: and what I do, but in God and what God does.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that description of grace keeps us from going down this rabbit hole
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  SPEAKER_00: of did I trust God enough?
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  SPEAKER_01: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: Do I trust him in the right ways?
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  SPEAKER_00: Do I believe in him slash trust in him?
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  SPEAKER_00: And have I reached the right level of belief and trust?
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  SPEAKER_01: And the answer to that may very well be no.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't matter.
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  SPEAKER_01: Because God is the God who holds me.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's God's grace that holds me.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's God's faith in me that produces faith in me.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so times of doubt,
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  SPEAKER_01: times of questioning,
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  SPEAKER_01: We will wrestle with things,
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  SPEAKER_01: of course,
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  SPEAKER_01: but ultimately it is God's grace and trustworthiness that will overcome our doubts
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: because it is God who saves me.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's not my decisions.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's not my words.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's not my prayers.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I respond to that by following Jesus,
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: by entrusting my life into the hands of God,
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: but that's a response to a God who's already called me and chosen me,
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: who is already saved me.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: So what must I do to be saved?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in a sense, nothing.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: God's already done all the work.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why Jesus, you know, Jesus doesn't use the word belief a lot.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: He just says, follow me.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what it means.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: The same thing.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: I follow Jesus because he's trustworthy.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: He's proven that he's someone I should follow.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so it becomes more of a relational word than it becomes like a decision word or
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: a cognitive word.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the first thing we always want to be clear with people on is God is
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: the one who does the saving through Jesus.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's God's trustworthiness that produces trust in us.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: And as God produces that trust in us,
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: our natural response is just to sit down in the chair because we know it's going
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: to hold us and to surrender to the grace of God and then to live out God's grace,
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: not to save ourselves, but because we've already been saved.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: I am also reading this,
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: if you're up for another question,
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: and it says, we can change it to believe or trust.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: That sort of sounds like As long as one person is trusting in Jesus,
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: the rest of the household's in good shape.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's what he's saying.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I think in part that's what he is saying.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: What they're saying is in that culture,
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: remember this is a very different culture than ours,
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: that culture, households did things together, right?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: So if the father,
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: so to speak,
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: of the household becomes a Christian,
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: the whole household is just naturally going to follow along.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: I see.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And they're going to go in that direction.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: We live in the United States of America where you can have five or six people in
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: the same family living under the same roof and they all have five
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: or six different opinions about God and politics and everything else.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: And we just live in that tension.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't live that way then.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's not to say that faith was imposed on them.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: It is to say that they had a far more communal understanding of how faith works.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: We work faith individually in the United States of America.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: They worked faith communally.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: In the New Testament,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: especially in Jewish households,
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: you know, where babies are circumcised at eight days and a part of the faith.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a communal understanding.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: But we're going to go more deeply into that next week when we talk about baptism as well.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: I do want to read another passage.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: It just gives us a slightly different slant on this.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it's still from the book of Acts.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: And this is right after Pentecost.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is the day where the Holy Spirit Quote,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: unquote, fills the disciples and Peter goes out and he gives a big speech.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And they're a crowd of about 3000 people there, at least that we know of.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And he is talking.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's sort of using Old Testament scripture for the Jews.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: It would have been the Hebrew scriptures.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: He's talking about Jesus, who this Jesus is.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then in verse 37 of chapter two.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when they all heard this, they were cut to the heart.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And said to Peter and the other apostles, brothers, what should we do?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, what should we do to be saved?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Peter said to them,
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: that your sins may be forgiven and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'll come back to this the rest of it next week, but I want you to notice something here.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: If you base your whole theology of salvation on the story that you read,
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: then we have to believe in Jesus or trust in Jesus.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: If we base our whole theology of how we're saved on what Peter just said,
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: then we have to repent and be baptized.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like they're giving us two different answers.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: And in reality, they're giving us the same answer, but the answer is nuanced.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer is specific to the person that they're talking to.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, repentance was always a response to an act of God or the grace of God.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Repentance is not something we do to get God to do something for us.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Repentance is our response to a God who has said, I love you.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Trust me.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: So in a sense, Peter is saying the same thing as Paul.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Where Paul used the word believe or trust, Peter's using the word repent.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: They basically mean the same thing.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: They mean God has spoken to you.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: God has proven himself to you.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: You are interested in this.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: You've been moved by it.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: So now your response is to live in a new direction,
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: to trust, to follow Jesus, to be Jesus people.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: But it all starts with God, right?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: They heard the sermon.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: They heard God speak to them.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then,
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: once they were convinced of God's faithfulness,
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: they said, hey, well, all right, how can we be a part of this?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And Peter says, repent, which means to sort of turn and go in a different direction.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: And Paul writes in Romans, it's your kindness that leads to repentance, O Lord, right?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's God's kindness that moves us to repent.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's not my repentance that moves God to be kind.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: It is God's kindness that moves me to repent,
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: to trust, to surrender my life to Jesus, to follow Jesus.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: So again, it's about God's work and our response to that work.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: And naturally,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: when we're adults,
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: we're going to,
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: as adults, we're going to say, okay, well, what does this mean for my life?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, repent, trust, live a different direction.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and be baptized.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: And be baptized.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to come back to that next week.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Next week, our question is, what is baptism?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: And is there a relationship between baptism and salvation, so to speak?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, we've just seen two stories where there is.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Peter says, repent and be baptized.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: And Paul in the prison said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then immediately they were baptized.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: He and his whole household.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: So there's something about baptism and salvation that go together in these stories.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll tease that out more next week.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's our cliffhanger.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Baptismal cliffhanger.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: But again,
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: to be clear here,
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: and I know that it might sound like we're being kind of picky with language,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: God is the one who initiates salvation.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: God is the one who proves that God can be trusted to give us the salvation,
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: that God is trustworthy.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it is that grace, it is that kindness of God that comes to us.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: It is the faithfulness of God that then moves us
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: to say, yeah,
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: I want to live in that.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be a part of that.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever language we use.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so then the question for us is not what prayer do we pray?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: What words do we use?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: What things do we believe?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: At this point, really,
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: it's just about falling backwards into the arms of a God who's going to catch you.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: And remembering that it's God's faith in you that creates faith in you.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's not your faith that moves God to believe in you.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's God's belief in you that moves you to believe in God.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's not your trust that moves God to be trustworthy.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: It is God's trustworthiness that moves you to trust.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: It is not your love for God that moves God to love you.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: It is God's love for you that moves you to love God.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's always because therefore.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's never if then.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because God loves, we love.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because God is faithful, we trust.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so when the doubts come, that will wrestle with them, of course.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's what doubts do.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they usually can make us stronger.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: But in the end, if you ever wonder,
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Am I really saved?
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because Jesus died and rose again for you because God is faithful.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because God claims you as God's own.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's what saves you.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what will hold you even in the midst of questions, doubts, whatever that might be.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: So what must I do to be saved?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, really, the question is, how does God save us?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's really the question.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: And God saves us with grace, compassion and mercy.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what would I like to do in response to that?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: What do I do in response to that?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it's not my response that saves me.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: My response is already my act of being saved, so to speak.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm responding, it's because God has already saved me.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: God's already moved me.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: If I sit in the chair, it's because I already know it's going to hold me up.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: I already believe in it because it's proved itself faithful.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: I have a relationship with the chair.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: The chair created the relationship.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm asking the question, what must I do to be saved?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're already saved.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: You already believe this thing.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: You're just asking, well, now what does it look like?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus would say, well, follow me.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Paul might say the word trust.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Peter might say, repent.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: All means the same thing.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: So when we're asking the question, what must I do to be saved?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think the real answer is I'm already saved.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: What we're really asking is, well, now how do I just live in the joy of this?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: What does it look like?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: If that makes sense.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's huge.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is fantastic.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: we should really spend more time on the ramifications of the grace that's explained
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: by Peter and Paul in this way.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now I don't have to worry.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to worry about the boxes.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: No, there are no boxes.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's no boxes.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Or we can say this, God checked all the boxes.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: God checked the box.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: God checked boxes, whatever boxes there are.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: But God doesn't really like boxes.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll talk more about this next week because when we talk about baptism,
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: there are profound implications for what salvation, so to speak, means.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's going to be a reminder to us again next week that God is the one who does the saving.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's not my faith that moves God to save me.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's God's faithfulness and belief in me that moves me to believe.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: And if we can always remember, it's God's action that moves me to respond.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to find far more joy in our relationship because now it's not
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: about proving myself to God.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's about getting to know God as much as I possibly can and living in the grace of that.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm constantly living with the question, have I done it right?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Am I doing it right?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: Am I being good enough?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: Rather than living in complete trust and just sitting in the chair and being held up
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: by God's grace,
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: we're just going to live a life of panic rather than a life of grace and love
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: and mercy.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And life gives you enough panic the way it is.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: We have plenty of that.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: We don't need that in our Spiritual lives.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: All right, John, next week, baptism.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very, very much.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, everyone, for listening.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: If you enjoyed the podcast, please share with a friend.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be back with you next week.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: Deep Grace Diving Podcast.