How Can I Be Saved

There may be someone here today who is concerned about their salvation. Perhaps you lack assurance, or maybe you have not been able to find Christ savingly, and you truly want to go to heaven, and you are afraid of being sent to hell. I cannot save you, friend, and you cannot save yourself.

Only God can open the heart and give saving faith. He is the one who takes the heart of stone and makes it a heart of flesh. I believe a preacher's job is to preach the gospel and the full counsel of God with an anointing of the Spirit of God.

It would be different if I were addressing nice people. But you are not nice people, but rune people with a rune nature and a bent toward sin. Apart from the Holy Spirit awakening you to your lost condition through conviction of sin, you will live your life deceived and rest upon a false bottom of a good opinion of yourself and a track record of service.

Listen to me, friends. There are many good church members in hell at this hour in agony of torments because they believed a false gospel and died in their sins. I know of which I speak, for I was once a lost church member myself who just did what the preacher told me to do, and that was to walk an aisle and repeat a prayer and accept this free Jesus.

The only problem was it wasn't the Jesus of my Bible, but a watered-down and shrunken Jesus that had no power to save. I'm going to be honest with you today, friends, and by God's Spirit point you to the Christ who can save you from your sins. The title of my message today is, How Can I Be Saved? And my text can be found in the Gospel of John in Chapter 4. You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends.

In this familiar passage of Scripture, we find Jesus in his humanity as he is plum-worn out and needs to sit down to rest his bones at Jacob's well. And we see the divine Jesus in his encounter with the woman at the well who is lost as a goose and doesn't know it because she is yet dead in her sins, much like the majority of society today, friends, lost and on their way to the terrors of hell. They are oblivious to the great danger of dying in their sins and entering a Christless eternity.

Most of us are already familiar with this passage of Scripture, so I don't have to read all 42 verses and put you to sleep in the process. But I will read us the verses that are pertinent to the salvation of a soul and ask the Spirit of God to attend the reading of his Holy Word. It is good that Jesus was left alone with this sinful woman and that his disciples were off on an errand to get lunch because, had they been there, they would have only gotten in the way of Jesus bringing this woman to a saving knowledge of him.

Do you know what that is, friend? A saving knowledge of him? Has Christ the Redeemer ever been revealed unto you? Have you ever found him and become savingly united to a living Lord? Because if you want him, you must go to him where he is, and that is where he now sits at the right hand of God, and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross. That cross had his blood all over it because of my filthy rotten sins, your filthy wretched sins. Here in our text, we find a weary Jesus and a wanton woman.

You see, friends, there used to be in society such a thing as shame of sin, but now sin parades down Main Street in all its shameful glory. Here in our text, Jesus is tired and thirsty, and he wants some water, and this sinful woman is tired of her life of sin, and she soon finds out she is thirsty as well, but not for H20, but thirsty for the living waters. You see, friends, a person must first get lost before they can be saved.

Jesus had to get this Samaritan woman under conviction of sin to where she saw her need of a savior from sin, and that's the main problem with evangelism today. We offer Jesus to folks who see no need for a savior from sin. Listen to me, friends.

I know I am a sinner, and I need a substitute for sin in the person of Jesus Christ, and so do you, friend, so do you. Notice how Jesus addresses her and first points her thoughts heavenward to a sovereign God who has a gift of living water. Look at verse 10.

Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked him, and he would have given thee living water. I will pause here, friends. Notice how Jesus deals with sinners.

We should take note and do as he does. Notice he does not offer her this living water yet, but in verses 13 to 14, Jesus describes this living water to where she begins to desire it, but he knows she is not yet ready to drink and partake of it because she's like many of you who still have a good opinion of yourself, and you see no need to bow to a living Lord and admit you are nothing more than a guilty rebel who hates all things holy. No, Jesus doesn't act like we evangelists today who cast our pearls before swine and offer folks a remedy for sin before they see their need of one.

If you were sick unto death, and the doctor told you there was a cure that would heal you, then you'd take all your money you had and you'd go get that remedy so you could live. But if you are well and in good health, you see no need of going to the doctor. That's what Jesus said to the Pharisees.

They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. For I am come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. It boggles my mind, friends, why many preachers today don't call sinners to repentance, instead they just smooth-talk them into their church, and then the whole bunch goes on to hell.

But Jesus knew how to deal with sinners, and we should learn from Him. Notice what He says next to this woman. Look at verse 16.

Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither. Let me tell you, friend, when the Spirit of God attends God's word, there's a piercing that takes place like a sword thrust. This sinful woman now knows conviction of sin, and she hangs her head in shame before a holy God who hates sin.

My Bible says that God is angry with the wicked every day. Here Jesus confronts her with her sin, and she sees herself as a sinner in need of a Savior. How about you, friend? Jesus hung naked on a ignoble cross and suffered and died and rose again so sinners could be saved, not the righteous, but guilty rebels who are willing to throw down their shotgun of rebellion at the nail-pierced feet of a sovereign.

I remember the day I got lost. I'll never forget it as long as I live. I was in my study, reading a sermon by Solomon Stoddard, the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards.

And as I read that sermon that afternoon, God opened my eyes, and I saw hell. I saw hell, friends. I saw that I was lost and on my way to hell, and not only that, I deserved to go there.

Oh, how I wrestled with God on my knees that day for several hours before he had mercy on me, all my props resting on a false foundation of a good opinion of myself, and a long track record of church service were kicked out from beneath me. I became a seeker that day and a beggar for mercy, and bless God, he saved me. I felt like that woman of Samaria who ran out and told her neighbors, I come, I see a man, which told me all things that I ever did.

Is this not the Christ? That woman became a soul winner when she got saved, and through her testimony, God shook an entire town in revival. Oh, friends, what God could do with you if you only let him get hold to you, if you'd only admit your guilt and repent of your sins and look upon a crucified Christ and sell all that you have and surrender all that you are to get the pearl of great price who can save you from sin and a devil's hell. Listen to this gospel, please, and it is my prayer that the Spirit of God will grant you a saving faith and give you the grace of repentance.

Listen to the gospel now, friends, and it is my prayer that you hear his voice as it comes to you and all power and majesty and authority. I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else. Seek ye the Lord, while he may be found.

Call ye upon him, while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. Let us pray.