Life In The Spirit - part nine
What Must I Do To Be Saved?
I know a doctor who was resuscitating a man who had died during a cardiac exam and he just passed out. And the doctor began to try to resuscitate him and all of a sudden the man woke up and said, “I.m in hell, don.t stop.” And the doctor says, “I.m not going to stop.” He lost the man again; he came back again and he says, “Tell me how to get saved.” And he says, “I.m a doctor, not a preacher.” What would your answer be if someone said how do I get saved?
The doctor was a doctor that I used to work for. The doctor was a doctor that I used to witness to. His name was Dr. Maurice Rawlins and I would talk to him and he.d say, “Will you leave me alone? I am fine. I know Jesus Christ.” And I remember looking at him; I was a little brash and I said, “Dr. Rawlins, if you know Jesus Christ, if you really know Him, then you.re really going to get it at the judgment seat of Christ, because you don.t act like you know Him.” Anyway, it.s amazing that he did not fire me. But he didn.t. I would give him tracts and one day I remember walking into his office after I had given him one and he was sitting there reading it and he jammed it in his desk drawer and got up and was really gruff and that.s the way Maurice was.
So when he was resuscitating this man and this man said, “Tell me how to get saved,” and he says, “I.m a doctor, not a preacher,” you know, the man went out again and finally the man looked up with this look of horror and said, “You.ve got to tell me how to get saved.” Maurice knew the basics. He knew that Jesus Christ died. He knew that He paid for our sins. He knew that He rose again from the dead and he told him that and he said, “You just have to believe.” And the man said, “I believe.”
Well, later on Maurice went into his room to take down notes on this phenomenon that had happened and when he got there he asked the man about being in hell and the man said, “I don.t remember anything about that, but I just know this that I have received Jesus and I am a child of God.”
It was after that when the other doctors began to kid Maurice that it was evident that not only had the man gotten saved, but Maurice got saved, because he was thinking about what happened to that man. He was thinking about the change in that man after he prayed and Maurice realized that he said that he believed but his life had never been changed. What makes the difference?
It.s the Holy Spirit, Beloved. You can pray all the prayers that you want to pray, but they don.t really work unless you really and truly mean it and you receive Christ. And then when you receive Christ, you receive the Holy Spirit. And when you receive the Holy Spirit then you.ve got a changed life.
Well, Peter is at the house of Cornelius. This is where we left him. And Peter has told them you know, it.s not my style, it.s my MO, my method of operation to go to Gentiles. houses but I.m here and I.m here because God told me that I shouldn.t consider you unclean. Well that.s an interesting statement, isn.t it. So as he talks to him, then he turns around and he opens his mouth and he says this. And we.re in Acts, chapter 10, verse 34. And just in case you missed the last program, it is 8 years after Pentecost, 8 years after the Holy Spirit descended on those men and, for 8 years now the gospel has been going out in Jerusalem and in Judea to the Jews, but not to the Gentiles. Cornelius is the first one to have a witness in his home. And when Peter.s there he.s not like Maurice Rawlins. He knows what to say. And Maurice knows what to say now.
Well Cornelius is about to be transformed. This is a man now that has a hunger for God, but he does not yet know His Son Jesus Christ. And so Peter says, “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality.” Have you got that down? “God is not one to show partiality.”
You know there are some of you that were involved in World War II, and you still have a hatred for the Japanese. There are some of you that have hatreds for other nationalities and if you knew that they were going to be in heaven you.d say you don.t want to be there. Well I want to tell you something, if that.s your attitude, go check and make sure that the Holy Spirit.s under your hood, that you.ve got that power of the Holy Spirit, because God is not a person that shows partiality.
Listen, he says this; it.s very important. “But in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him.” Now what does he mean, “… the man who fears Him and does what.s right?” He.s talking about a man that all of a sudden realizes, hey, there is a God. When Maurice was resuscitating that man and he had that experience, he realized that he was headed for hell and that he needed God. So he.s saying God is looking for those who fear Him, those who understand that He is God and who want to know Him and who want to do right. They want to do right and they.re doing right as well as they can do right, but they don.t have the power in them to do it all the time.
You know, is that you? Is that you? Has God got you tuned to this program because that.s you, because you want to do what.s right, because you do have a respect and a trust for God, and you walk away in the business place when other people start slamming God and when you hear them use the name of Jesus Christ in a profane way or hear them you know, call on God.s name and desecrate it or tell jokes like that. It offends you. You haven.t aligned yourself with Christians yet, but it offends you. God.s dealing with you and that.s why you.re hearing the truth of God today.
Well, let.s go on and hear what else Peter said. He said, “The Word, which He sent to the sons of Israel preaching peace through Jesus Christ.” You see if you don.t have Christ, you.re at enmity with God. You.re an enemy of God. And it.s not God that.s moved away from you; it.s you that has chosen to move away from God, to do your own thing, to live your own way. It.s your choice. And so you.re at enmity with God.
And he says, “If you want to have peace with God, there.s only one way to get peace,” and the only that connects you with God is the cross and you.ve got peace through Jesus Christ. It says, “He is Lord of all.” In other words, He rules over all. He is Master over all. Hebrews, chapter 1 says, “All things came into being by Him.” And that.s John 1. And then Hebrews 1, “And He is the sustainer of all things. He upholds all things by the Word of His power.”
So he goes on to say, „You, yourselves, know the thing that took place throughout all Judea, starting from Galilee after the baptism, which John proclaimed.” I mean they didn.t have newspapers. They did not have radio. They did not have television. But they had word of mouth. And when something happened in that area, Israel is a very, very small land. And so when something happens in Galilee it can reach the ears of those in Jerusalem very quickly. And when you have somebody walking around, healing the sick and raising the dead and causing the blind to see and the dumb to talk and the lame to walk, I mean man, news is all around. And when you have somebody that.s out there and he.s wearing this kind of a hairy garment and he.s out in the middle of the wilderness and he.s crying, “Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand,” you know it. And he says, “You.ve heard all of this. You.ve been here. You.re occupying our land. You know what.s going on.” He says, “You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit.”
If you.ve been following this series, if you.ve been listening to these programs then you know, how from the very beginning, from Genesis, chapter 1, verse 2, we have looked at the Holy Spirit and we have looked at the fact that the Holy Spirit would anoint Jesus. It.s in the Old Testament. Now it says it here in the new. And, and you know, you say, O, I wish I had heard. I wish you had heard too. I wish you had been listening and studying along with me. But you know what? Good news, good news, you can go to our website preceptsforlife.com, preceptsforlife.com. And when you go to that website you can find out how to get these programs.
Okay, back to verse 38. “You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power.” You see when you get the Holy Spirit, then, as I said, you get the, rrruuummm (engine noise), you get the engine under the hood. You get the power that makes the car grow. So He anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power and how He, Jesus, went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.
And when I mark my Bible, if I come to any reference on the devil I put a red pitchfork over it and I hope that you are marking your Bible. I hope that you mark verse 38 where it says the Holy Spirit, every reference to the Holy Spirit. Verse 39: “And we are witnesses of these things. He did, both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. We saw this. He did it in the land of Jews. He did it in Jerusalem and they also put Him to death by hanging Him on a cross. And God raised Him up on the third day and granted that He should become visible.”
Now what has he just done? He has just covered the death of Jesus Christ. He has shown them that these people were under the power of the devil and that.s because of their sin and that God has raised Him from the dead. What did Maurice need to tell this man that he was resuscitating? He needed to make sure that that man understood who Jesus Christ was, that He was the Son of God who died for that man.s sins, who was buried and who was raised from the dead, because God was satisfied with His death. And Peter goes on to say more. And we.re going to see the impact that it had in just a moment.
I.m so glad you.re back. Well let.s go back to Acts chapter 10; well, verse 40 Peter is preaching the gospel to Cornelius and his household and his friends cause he.s got them all there because Simon Peter is coming to explain this to us. And God told me to get this man here and I know something great is going to happen. Well Peter says, “And God raised Him, Jesus up on the third day and granted that He should become visible, not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God.”
You know when you read through the Word of God carefully you see who.s in control. It.s God that.s in control. When that man was dying and Maurice Rawlings was resuscitating him from the dead, that was orchestrated by God. That was orchestrated by God because God was drawing him to Himself. Now watch what happens, and God was using that to draw Maurice to Himself and then to use Maurice greatly as a result of all that.
Well it says, “He was visible, but not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God, that is, to us who ate and drank with Him after,” you want to put a time clock there, “after He arose from the dead. And He ordered us,” He, Jesus ordered us; we.re under commission, we are under our Master.s command. “He ordered us to preach to the people and solemnly testify that this is the One, Jesus, who has been appointed by God as judge,” listen, “as judge of the living and of the dead,” which means, Beloved, that if you don.t have Jesus you.re among the dead and you are going to perish forever. But God doesn.t want that. Watch what he says. “Of Him, all the prophets bear witness.” So you go back to the Old Testament, “all the prophets bear witness that through His name everyone who believes in Him receives,” and this is awesome, “forgiveness of sins.”
I mean do you have a past that torments you? That you want to hide, that you want to bury, that you wanna erase? I know, I.ve been there; I have that kind of a past. Well listen, you can have forgiveness of sins. This is what salvation is all about. There is forgiveness of sins. You can start anew, but you started by believing in His name.
In Acts, chapter 4, verse 12. Let.s go back and look at it very quickly. In Acts, chapter 4, verse 12. Peter is preaching and he replies to the people who are looking in amazement at the man that he.s just healed. “And he replied to the people, „Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this or why do you gaze at us as if by our own power or piety we made him to walk?.” And then he goes on to say that, “„there is salvation in no other, for there is none other name given among men whereby we must be saved..” And if anyone, anyone does not believe in that name, does not believe in Jesus Christ and thinks he can get to God through another path through another religion they are wrong, they are deceived. They.re going to be judged by Jesus, who is the judge of the living and the dead.
So go back to Acts, chapter 10 again and listen to what he says in verse 43. “Of Him, of Jesus, all the prophets bear witness that through His name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.” You may be a Muslim that is curious about this program. And you may have been curious about the Passion of the Christ and you may have gone to see that film because Mohammed and the Koran refer to Jesus Christ, and so you want to know more about Him. Well, one of the things that you need to understand is you believe that He is a prophet and a prophet He is. But a prophet, a true prophet cannot lie. A true prophet never tells anything false. And this True Prophet, Jesus Christ says that He is the way, He is the truth and He is the life and no one, no one comes to God the Father except by Him. There.s only one God and there.s only one way to God and that.s through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. There.s salvation in no other name. But it.s through this name that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.
And I know if you.re a Muslim that you don.t know how to get forgiveness of sins. Well this is the only way that any human being Hindu, Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, Jew, anyone can ever have forgiveness of sins is only through Jesus Christ. And while Peter was speaking these words the Holy Spirit, now watch, “The Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening.” And it says, “And all the circumcised believers who had come with Peter;” Peter didn.t go down them alone; he took some Jews with him, “were amazed.” Why? Catch this. “Because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been pored out on the Gentiles,” and this is a very important phrase, “also.” “The gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also.” It.s Gentile Day, hey, it.s Gentile Day! The Spirit has come.
Now the Spirit is going to all the world and the message is going to come out so that they can see and understand that there is forgiveness of sins, there is reconciliation with God, there is peace with God, but it.s only one way and that.s through Jesus Christ. And these Jews that were there probably on the day of Pentecost are blown away because this is what they.re seeing. It says, “For they were hearing them speaking with tongues and exalting God.” Now you say, why is God doing that? Because God wants them to understand that He.s no respecter of persons, that anyone who comes to Him, from any nation can be saved, and that it.s not just for the Jews and this is what he.s pointing out.
“And then Peter answered and said, „Surely no one can refuse water for these to be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit as we did..” In other words he.s talking about salvation. What is he doing? Stop and think, put away your preconceived ideas. He.s saying believe. He.s saying get saved. They get saved, they believe and the Holy Spirit falls on them just like He did at the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, if you go through the Scriptures and you study it very, very carefully, and without prejudice, the baptism of the Holy Spirit is synonymous with salvation.
You say, but I.ve had an experience after I got saved. That was your experience, but the Bible teaches that the baptism is synonymous with the Holy Spirit. If you put aside every man.s experience, and you went only by the Word of God, you say I.m not going to do that. You need to, Precious One. This is God.s manual, not experience. Then experience comes along and if it doesn.t line up with the Word of God, it wasn.t from God. But you could have an experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit, but it doesn.t mean that you got the baptism of the Holy Spirit, because the baptism of the Holy Spirit is synonymous with salvation. You need to study inductively. Go to preceptsforlife.com and find out how you can take our workshop. We have a workshop that helps you understand everything about the Holy Spirit. So what has happened? “He ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ and they asked him to stay a few days.” They were saved. What about you Beloved? Have you been saved? Have you recognized that there is salvation in none other than in Jesus Christ? If so, come to Him today, receive Him and miss hell and know how to have eternal life.
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