Salvation is Not This Or That

I was sitting in a Baptist church and the pastor gave his testimony. He said that he was saved as a eight-year-old boy when he went forward during an invitation and gave his heart to Jesus. Then this pastor said the following to his congregation.

He said, all you have to do friends to go to heaven and be saved is to believe John 3 16. That's all you have to do and you will go to heaven. And when he said that, I felt sorry for that congregation who had an unsaved pastor as a man over them.

He was not only lost himself, but he was leading his congregation to hell with him. The trouble with most folk today in church is that they don't read the Bible to know what the word of God says about salvation. They would rather be lazy and let a pastor tell them how to get to heaven.

But what if he's a false shepherd and he tells you the wrong way and you never know until you wake up in hell's flames. Listen friends, salvation is not a mental decision. Salvation is not a profession of faith.

Salvation is not believe in John 3 16 or believe in a text or a doctrine. Salvation is not walking an aisle or repeating a prayer. Salvation is not a feeling or an impression or hearing voices or seeing a bright light.

Satan can give you all those things, but he can't give you life. Salvation is not this nor that, but Christ. And that's the message today, friends.

Salvation is not this nor that. Salvation is not believing in the death of Christ, but believing on the Christ who died. Salvation is Christ.

Have you gotten to Christ, friend? Do you know Christ? Salvation is a vital union with the living Lord. Are you in Christ? There can be no salvation apart from Holy Spirit conviction. You better listen to me here, friends.

You must be brought under conviction of the Holy Spirit to have your eyes open to the fact that you are lost and guilty before God. Jesus said, I'm come to seek and to save that which was lost. Jesus spoke in parables about lost things, a lost sheep, a lost coin, a lost son.

Have you ever been lost, friend? How do you know you were saved if you've never been lost? Have you ever taken your place as a lost rune center at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ? I repeat, there can be no salvation apart from Holy Spirit conviction. For if you miss Holy Spirit conviction, you miss repentance. And if you miss repentance, you miss faith.

And if you miss faith, you miss the new birth. And if you miss the new birth, you miss Christ. Oh, friends, have you missed Christ? Are you resting your hope of heaven on an empty religious profession and a good opinion of yourself alongside a long track record of service? But if you are, you sit on a rotten plank board that creaks and shifts every time you move about, and it will eventually break down, and you will slip on by, going right down into the region of hell itself.

If you've never been awakened to your lost condition, if you've never exercised biblical repentance, if you've never experienced the work of grace upon the heart, which is regeneration, meaning being born again, then you risk dying in your sins with no covering for them. You are exposed to the wrath of Almighty God, whose anger will burn as an oven. I used to work in a grocery store when I was a kid of a boy.

My job was to break down the boxes that the produce came in and then bring those boxes to a cast iron furnace at the back of the store. When I would open that heavy iron door, I would see white hot flames twirling and twisting, and the heat was so intense the skin on my face was singed by that awful heat. Hell is worse than a million furnaces going full blast, because the poured out wrath of God upon sinners in hell is both intolerable and unending.

If I could walk you over to the brink of hell and lift the lid off that bottomless pit just long enough for you to hear the shrieks and screams of the damned, you wouldn't be able to sleep at night. Maybe your personal testimony is that you were saved when you received a sign or something significant appeared to you. I used to know a man who claimed he was saved because he was out sitting in the woods one day and reading his bible, and an owl appeared to him in a tree, and he thought that was God's sign and answer to him being saved.

But what that man didn't realize is that owl doesn't give a hoot in hell about your salvation. If you rest in your salvation on a sign that you were lost and in your sins and you're climbing to heaven on a rope of sand, if you are resting your hope of heaven on a decision or a profession of faith, then your salvation is no more than a hole in the wall. The angel of death could come for you unannounced at any time and escort you down to hell.

There is a common day of judgment where every mother's son will stand up against the strict and severe law of God, and perfection will be required, and all who stand there in their own merits will fail that test and be sent to a devil's hell. Listen friend, if you have no covering for your sins, you are not under the blood of Christ, then you are exposed and in great peril of dying in your sins and being damned for all eternity. Do you realize how many baptists are in hell at this hour who thought salvation was a decision or a profession or believe in a text? Do you know how many preachers are in hell at this hour because they did not believe repentance was necessary for salvation? Jesus was not lying when he said, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish, and that means you, friend, if you've never exercised repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, because if you miss repentance, you have missed faith.

Have you gotten to Christ or have you missed Christ? That's the question. That's the burning question, friend. Have you gotten to Christ? Salvation isn't in doing a physical act or in a response to a pastor's invitation.

Salvation is Christ. Salvation is the Spirit of God implanting in the believer a new disposition for holiness. Regeneration by the Spirit of God is taking away the heart of stone and making it a heart of flesh through the new birth.

Have you ever been born again? Have you missed Christ? Are you safe in the ark? Is he your refuge, friend? Are you washed in the blood and born from above? Or have you missed Christ? Salvation is not what the modern gospel claims it is. The diluted, only-believed gospel of our day will only give you a false peace and send you to hell. You must come under Holy Spirit conviction and be awakened to your lost condition.

You must repent. You must be born again. It is my prayer that if you have only an empty religious profession to hang on to, that the Spirit of God will have mercy and open your eyes and awaken you to your great danger of dying outside of Christ, exposed to the wrath of Almighty God.

God is a God who must punish sin, and the sentencing of the law must be carried out upon all guilty rebels who sin and have committed treason against the sovereign. Have you gotten to Christ, friend? Or have you missed Christ? Or have you found him? Listen to these gospel pleas. 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.

But Jesus declared, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father except by me. Let us pray.