Is it Good Enough for You?
1 Timothy 2:4 (God our Savior) desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Is it really true?
Many people say that they cannot believe the Bible and others say that they cannot believe God. Why is it so hard to believe? It is because we have to be convinced something is true before we can believe in it. When I preach the Gospel, I emphasize that we don’t make the Gospel true by believing it. We believe it when we are convinced it is true. However, we do make it effective in our lives and in our relationship with God when we believe it.
A Simple but True Message
Recently, I taught a lesson to children using Acts 16:31, “So they said, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.’” I tried to help the children understand that believing on the Lord is not just believing about Him. People can believe that there is a God in heaven; they can believe in the facts of the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord; they can believe that there is a place called heaven where the saved are blessed eternally and a place of eternal conscious punishment for those who reject the Lord; but believing about those facts will never save them. They must have complete confidence in the truth that this is God’s message and that in trusting the message they are saved eternally. They cannot just believe about the Lord, they must trust the Lord when He says through Paul and Silas, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.”
Many people say they believe those things but they also say that no one can know for sure that they are saved until they die and meet God. Their problem is that they believe about some of the Gospel facts but they don’t believe that trusting in the truth that Christ died for our sins will save and does save. So I asked the children over and over again, “What is the answer to the question, ‘What must I do to be saved?’” They would answer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” I then asked them if that was true. And of course in the class they responded as I wanted them to. They said in unison, “Yes!”
I explained to the children that the message believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved was a message to the jailor who asked how to be saved and it was a message to his whole household. He couldn’t trust in the Lord for his whole household but they had the privilege of believing the same message that he was hearing. Interestingly, his whole household did hear the message and was convinced of the truth of the message that night. They all believed and they openly confessed their faith by being baptized. I believe that there was at least one child in my class who believed that the message to Paul was true that day when she heard this message. She later told me that she was saved because the Bible said that if you believed on the Lord Jesus you were saved.
Is the Truth of the Gospel really that Simple?
Paul and Silas’ answer to the jailor’s question, “What must I do to be saved?”, is a little too simple for most of us. We have to add conditions and we have to add teaching from other passages to clarify what Paul meant. But the jailor didn’t need all that. He asked a simple question, “What must I do to be saved?” He got a simple answer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” That was truth he could depend on. That is truth I am depending on. If it was good enough for Paul and Silas who preached it, if it was good enough for the jailor and his household, it is good enough for me.
Is it good enough for you?
Meditation for the week of July 27, 2014