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It's good to be back here at North Dartmouth again and see you dear people. A few I don't think I've seen before, but it's good to see you, and it's good to see each one of you out to the meeting. I trust you'll keep coming out. I'm not sure what Steve, uh, I'm quite sure what he announced for meetings on the, uh, down below. And Nick, I didn't hear, so I can't say what he said, but I think I'm supposed to be here Thursday night too, aren't I? Yes. Whether I'm supposed to be or not, I'm going to be. Yes. Okay, that's okay. Uh, I want to look at a verse in the book of J- uh, Jonah. The little bit of Jonah.
If you have a little difficulty finding that, start at the book of Daniel or Ezekiel and keep on going, page after page, and you come to the little book of Jonah. Jonah, of course, you know the story, I'm quite sure. Jonah was a runaway prophet. He tried to run away from God. He, uh, God wanted him to go somewhere, and he didn't want to go, so, uh, uh, he, uh, said, in essence, what we were singing in that. Most of the people just sing the first line of that hymn, take my life and let...
And Nick, I didn't hear, so I can't say what he said, but I think I'm supposed to be here Thursday night too, aren't I? Yes. And whether I'm supposed to be or not, I'm going to be. Yes. Okay, that's okay. Uh, I want to look at a verse in the book of J- uh, Jonah. The little bit of Jonah. If you have a little difficulty finding that, start at the book of Daniel or Ezekiel and keep on going, page after page, and you come to the little book of Jonah. Jonah, of course, you know the story, I'm quite sure. Jonah was a runaway prophet.
He tried to run away from God. He, uh, God wanted him to go somewhere, and he didn't want to go, so, uh, uh, he, uh, said, in essence, what we were singing in that hymn. Most of the people just sing the first line of that hymn, take my life and let it be, period. Don't bother me anymore. That's the attitude of most. They stop at that verse, and that we shouldn't stop at that verse. That's what Jonah did. If he was singing that hymn, he stopped at the first part of the verse. Take my life and let it be. He ran away, paid the fare, went down to Joppa and paid the fare, and he ended up in the belly of a whale, and uh, he was in terrible misery.
And this is what he said in J- in the second chapter of the, of Jonah, verse number eight. Now he said, uh, they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. You say, what in the world does that mean? Thank you, brother, but it's only dry preachers that need water. Uh, they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. You say, what in the world does that mean? Well, I'll explain what it means to Jonah, and then I want to use it as an application in the matter of salvation.
Now, Jonah had the mercy of God. Let me explain what mercy is. Mercy is God's compassion on us in our need. And the only way God can have grace for us, he has to have mercy on us first. Let me explain that. I visited a few people in the hospital that were dying. They were terminally ill, and they were dying. And I could look at those people with compassion and mercy and feel for them. But I couldn't have grace for them, because grace would be something that I was able to do for them, and there's nothing I could do for them.
So grace, the grace of God is the outcome or the fruit of his mercy. If God never had mercy on us, he couldn't have grace toward us. See? God's mercy, God has two attributes. He has many, but there's two attributes of God, particular things about God that is associated with our salvation. The first one is mercy, and we read about that in Titus chapter three and verse five. It's not by works of righteousness that we have done, but it's according to his mercy that he saves us, saved us.
So we're saved by the mercy of God. That's the one attribute that God has toward the whole world, mercy. That is, he looks at us in our sin and in our filth and in our need, and he has compassion on us, and that compassion goes out to sinners, and that's God's mercy. Grace is his ability to do something about it. Now, we can have mercy on people that's, that's in need, but we can't always do something about it. Grace is what God is able to do about what he sees in a fallen human race. So that's why in Ephesians chapter two and verse eight it says, for by grace are we saved through faith, and not of ourselves.
It's the gift of God, it's not of works, lest any man should boast. So I hope you got that clear. Anything outside of that is a lying vanity. A lying, you know what a, we all know what a lie is. A vanity is just a word that means something that's empty, it's of no value, it's useless, it's vain. So Jonah is saying, looking back over his disobedience, trying to run away from God, and he says, I've forsaken the mercy of God, and I thought I could get away from doing what God wanted me to do.
I'd run away from him, and I'd hide a- hide from him. But he says, that was a lying vanity. I couldn't hide from God. I couldn't hide from God. No way could I could hide from God. Reminds me of a verse, I think it's in the book of, uh, Jeremiah. I'm not sure I can find it offhand, but it's a book in the book of Jeremiah, and it says, who, God says, who can hide himself from me? Where can he go to hide from me? Nowhere. Man is always running away from God. Man started a sinful course in in Genesis chapter three verse eight by hiding from God.
He hid himself from God. Man's doing it, uh, been doing it ever since. That's the nature of sinful mankind. We're running away from God, trying to hide away, trying to hide from God. And there's nowhere we can go in this old wicked world or in the universe above or anywhere below where we can ever hide from God. God is omnipresent. That means his presence is everywhere, and, uh, you can't get a run away from God. Now, Jonah was trying to run, run away from God. He had a little scheme of getting away from God. He ends up calling it a lying vanity.
It was a trick of this, of the, of Satan to get him away from, uh, God doing what God wanted him to do, and God was going to give him mercy and help and grace for what he was going to do. So that's Jonah and his problem. Uh, the whole world was plunged into sin by deceit. It says that Eve was thoroughly deceived when she ate of that tree in the Garden of Eden. Very innocent, in a sense, but she was sincerely wrong.
She, uh, she was deceived. And the Bible says that the devil is a deceiver. He works as a deceiver. He appeared to Eve as a serpent. He appears to the Christian as a lion, a roaring lion going about s- seeking whom he may devour. He appears in second Corinthians chapter ten as an angel of light. Uh, he appears in a lot of clergism, clergymen in, in, in America and everywhere today. Because he's a deceiver, and he takes a bit of, uh, a lot of truth and sandwiches it, if I could use that word, with some lies, and he gets you to eat the truth, take in the truth so he, so you'll take in the lie.
See, he tried to tell Eve that what God said wasn't really necessarily wrong to eat of that tree. What God really said, he said, was that didn't s- uh, mean say, he says, what God really meant, if you eat of this tree, you're going to be just like gods. You're going to be like the gods. You're going to be somebody more than you are. And that was this evil. So the Lord has good material, uh, the devil has good material to work on in every one of us. Because Jeremiah chapter seventeen and verse, uh, nine says, the heart of man is deceitful above all things.
There's nothing more deceitful than the human heart, and it's desperately wicked. That's your heart, that's my heart, apart from the, light and understanding that the, the Word of God gives us, that's our hearts. We're wicked, and so the devil is working on us. He's working on the world and, and continuing deceiving them with lying vanities. And when, and when they deceive by lying vanities, it diverts them from the mercy they're forsaking, the mercy that God has for them. And God has mercy for everybody. Back Ephesians two and verse five says that he is rich in mercy.
He has he in in in the Psalm one hundred and thirty six, I think the the verse there has merc- God's mercy in it Twenty seven times in that in that in that Psalm, speaks about the mercy of God. It's the main attribute that God has toward the children of men, because he's looking at them as sinners and unable, unfit, helpless, and hopeless, and he's looking at them in mercy and compassion. When it says God so loved the world, it does not mean that he liked the world. Psalm five says he hates the workers of iniquities.
He, he hates evil doers, and every one of us are evil doers. God's love in John three sixteen is a compassionate love. It's not an emotional love. It's not an affectionate love. There's nothing about us that God likes. We like, we love people because we like them. God loves people because he's compassionate toward their needs. His is a compassionate love. He hates every bit of us. He hates our natures because they're completely corrupt in his sight. He hates our heart. Out of that heart comes the issues of life, and that heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
Jesus said, out of the heart of man comes evil thoughts and murders and adulteries and fornications and such like. God doesn't like that. That's, he is absolutely holy, and he hates every bit of that. And he hates us because, eh eh, when we're unsaved, because of what we are, unclean and unfit for his holy eyes. He can't look on evil favorably. He can't approve of us in that state. That's why we need to be born again. That's why we need a new nature. That wa- that's why we need the Spirit of God working in us, the work of Christ that he's done for us on the cross.
We have in America and Canada to the day, Eva- evangelism. And I may have said this before, but I'll say it again. It's about a mile wide and about a quarter of inch deep. That's all. Very, very shallow. So that we've got seventy five million people, understand, in America that press- profess to be born-again Christians. Most of the professions in modern evangelism, one year after they're gone, over ninety percent of them, after ninety percent of them are gone, they give up their profession.
That's sad. What's wrong? There's some work of Satan there that's deceiving those people and leading them astray, and they're making what we would call false professions. I've seen people that's been really disturbed by the preaching of the gospel, and they're really bothered, and some have made professions, and they could see a look like a a big change in them. By the month or so, they're gone. They're gone again. Don't seem to amount to anything. What's the matter? Somewhere they're deceived about this matter of getting in on the mercy of God.
Somewhere they're following a lying vanity, like Jonah, that carry him, carry them away from God and not to God in his mercy. So we want to look at some modern things that might be carrying people away from God when they professedly are coming to God. I remember when I wanted to be saved fifty eight years ago now. It took me a whole year observing a lying vanity that if I cleaned up my life and quit smoking and quit drinking and quit filthy talk, and quit that, and quit something else, and quit something else, that I would be acceptable to God.
Now that's a lying vanity. That's a lying vanity. I had another lying vanity that I experienced when I, just before I was saved. I looked at Romans ten and verse thirteen, it says, whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. So I think one, two, or three times I got down and prayed and asked the Lord to save me. And I waited and waited, waited, nothing happened. And I got up and said, ah, I'm not saved. I'm not saved though. Why wasn't I saved? Something was wrong. Somewhere, somehow I was believing in a lying vanity that if I asked the Lord to save me, I don't know what I was looking for, a light from heaven or something to, I don't know what I was looking for, a feeling or what.
I just waited, waited, waited, expected the Lord to save me, he didn't. Lying vanities, this place is full of them, but I want to give you some of them. Uh, the devil will tell you first that you're too, usually will tell you either too bad to be saved, or you're good enough, you don't need to be saved. That's one lying vanity. I've had a lot of people tell me, I'd like to be saved, but God, God wouldn't save me, I'm too bad. I'm such a wicked person, God would never save me. That's a lying vanity, and that lying vanity does not come from the Spirit of God.
It comes from the devil. He's a deceiver. Uh, then on the other hand, I haven't met a lot of people. Oh yeah, I, I, I know I'm going to heaven. I'm, I'm good enough. I haven't done anything wrong. I had a few little mistakes, God will overlook them. That's another lying vanity. You, you can't, you can't get to heaven that way. You're forsaking the mercy that God has for you when you say, I'm too bad to be saved, you're saying God's mer- God's mercy and God's grace isn't great enough to save me. And on the other hand, if you're good enough to be saved, you're saying, in essence, uh, I don't need God's mercy. You're forsaking God's mercy.
You're forsaking the fountain of his mercy, which is the blood of Christ that was shed at the cross of Calvary. You're leaving that, and you're saying, I- I- I'm- I'm doing- I'm doing pretty good. I think I can make it all right on my own. I remember before I was saved, I don't think I ever believed, as a little boy going to Sunday school, I don't ever remember of ever believing that I was ever going to die and go anywhere with heaven. If you'd asked me if I was a Christian, uh, I remember when being in the army, if you would have asked me if I was a Christian, I, I would have said no. But if you'd asked me if I was going to heaven when I die, I, I would have liked to say, yeah, I think I'm going to heaven.
Because I was so much better than the other fellow. He did a lot, they did a lot of bad things, and I did too, but they, they were worse than I was, so uh. I'm like the fellow on uh death row in uh some years ago, a preacher went in to talk people on death row, and there was one fellow who murdered somebody, and he went to talk with him, and the guy said to him, he says, why are you talking to me? Go down the corner there, there's a man down there that's murdered seven people, go talk to him, he needs it, not me. So that's a lying vanity to compare yourself with other people and saying, well, I'm so much better than they are, and thinking that's going to get you into heaven.
That's a lying vanity, and a lot of people get that. The devil will tell you that if you get saved, you're going to lose all your friends. He'll never tell you that you're going to make a lot of new friends and good friends and Christian friends. He'll never tell you that. But he'll tell you you're going to lose all your friends. He'll also tell you that, yeah, it's no good to you for you to profess to be saved and trust in Christ as your savior because you can't live a Christian life. You know you can't live a Christian life. He'll tell you that. That's another lying vanity. You can't live a Christian life until you get it, that's for sure. You can't even live a human life without birth.
None of us would be here today if we never, if we had never had a natural birth, and you can't live a Christian life. A Christian life is the life of Christ living out in us, and you got to be born again to get that life. If you're never born again, you can't live a Christian life. You can live like a Christian, you can try to live like a Christian, but that doesn't mean you're living a Christian life. You're just living a natural life, trying to be like a Christian. It doesn't work that way. Lying vanities everywhere. The devil is full of them, and he keeps busy, he keeps busy believing his vanities and his lies.
Okay, I suppose one of the most prevalent lying vanities is religion. Uh, if you do much knocking on doors, uh, as a Christian, and I have done a bit of that over fifty-seven years, and, uh, you're almost invariably, the first question you're going to be asked, what is your religion? And that's the best quest- that's the best question they can ask me. That's exactly what they want to, want them to ask me. And I just tell them I don't have one.
I'm a Christian. I don't have a religion. I'm a Christian, a person that belongs to Christ. I don't represent a religion, I represent a person, Christ. I'm a Christian, and uh, but people think if they have a religion, we get people say, well, I've got my church, and you've got your church, and uh, I'm going to stick to my church. That's a lying vanity. I remember a fellow one time we were visiting, and and he uh, he was a uh, belonged to a certain church, and he said to us, he said, have I got to leave my church to be saved?
And I'm not, I'm, I'm quite sure I wouldn't have s- told him that. I'm quite sure if I'd have told him, yes, you got to leave your church to be saved. You can't trust in that system and what they teach, uh, and be saved. You got to leave the, you got to leave. He'd have said, go, don't come back. So I told him, I said, no, you haven't got to leave your church, but you have got to take your trust out of the church and put it in Christ, and you will be saved. Now, he did that, I would say about thirty five years ago. He- he took his trust out of his church, his religion, and put it in Christ.
And when he did, his feet come out with his trust. He never went back again. There was nothing there for him, so his feet came out too. He come out feet first, but not really not. He come out heart first because he put his trust, took it out of the church, his religion, and put it into Christ, and it works. That's when you become born again. So religion is just a lying vanity. Religious people trust in themselves. They might say, oh yes, I believe Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I believe he was buried and rose for their dead. And every one of us believed that before we were saved. I believed that all my life, but I wasn't saved until I was twenty seven.
So you add that up with fifty years, and now you know how old I am. So, uh, lying vanities everywhere. The Pharisee and the publican, the Lord gives a parable, went up to the temple to pray in chapter eighteen of the book of Luke. The Phara- the reason he gave that parable, he wanted to show people who w- that that were trusting in themselves that they were righteous and looked down at others. And, uh, the Pharisee, he says he wasn't a, a fornicator, he wasn't an extortioner, he didn't cheat anybody, he was a just man, fasted twice a week, gave a tithe of all he did. He was trusting in his religion.
All the Pharisees, the sect of the Pharisees in the Bible, the, the Lord said they were like whited sepulchers. It was full of dead men's bones. They were like a platter played a, a, a, a plate clean on the outside, but dirty on the out- cut, dirty on the inside. If you were to stand on the Mount of Olives, we stood on the Mount of Olives a few years ago, looking over at the old city of Jerusalem, all you can see is weighted sepulchers, no depth to them, probably two or three feet up under the earth, uh, all weighted sepulchers. That's a burial ground on both sides of the, from the Kidron Valley, both sides of the hill that goes up to old Jerusalem and up to the Mount of Olives.
Uh, what weighted sepulchers, and Jesus was using those weighted sepulchers as an illustration of people that were whitewashed but not washed white in the blood of the Lamb. They, they made great professions of being righteous on the outside. That's re- that's religion. The word religion is used only once in a good sense in the book of James chapter one. Religion is everything that's external. Salvation is internal. Salvation works from the inside out in our lives. Religion is something that's external on the outside and nothing on the inside.
Jesus said they were like white sepulchers, it was full of dead men's bones. He called them generation of vipers because they were thoroughly deceived. They'd forsaken the mercy God had for them through lying vanities that they could be religious and be saved. Now, there's another one. Keeping the law. People, the law is, is, the law of God is absolutely perfect. It's holy, it's spiritual. We read in Romans chapter seven. The problem is us. We can't keep it. But people think if they try to obey the Ten Commandments, that they they'll get into heaven.
I remember one time a young fellow and I had been out in the street, uh, years ago, giving out tracts. In fact, we were standing at a tavern, and, uh, we had two doors, and one of us would stand at one door and the other one. Most of the time, the one door, say, I was standing to was where they went in, and the other door is where they come out, so they got tracts in both way- places. And, uh, we went over to the mall afterward, and this young fellow was with me, Jim. He met a man with his collar on backwards, a clergyman with his collar on backwards, and he said, he stopped, he said, sir, can you tell me the way to heaven? The man said, keep the law, and he kept on going. Keep the law.
There's countless of thousands of people in church this morning that believes if they do the best and try to keep the Ten Commandments, they get to heaven. Now, the Ten Commandments condemns us because we break it. The Ten Commandments is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. When we look at the Ten Commandments, we have to conclude we are sinners. I remember a man one time told me that, and uh, that he uh believed he was good enough to get to heaven, and I took my Bible and went through it in Exodus chapter twenty and went through the commandments, ten commandments.
When I got through, he said, explained them all. When I got through, he said I broken eight of them. And I said, you expect to get into heaven? You broke 8 of you. Listen, if you broke eighty percent of the laws of our land, you'd be in prison for the rest of your life. So he figured the Lord, the Lord was... They're looking for mercy at the judgment bar of God. There's no mercy there. There is no mercy at the great white throne judgment. It's too late. The rich man in Luke chapter twelve uh, sixteen that died and went down into a place called Haiti, went down there.
He said to Abraham, he said, send Lazarus back and to tell them to repent once they come into this place. And the first thing the rich man said down there, he lifted up his eyes and he s- he he cried out for mercy. Have mercy on me. No mercy there. There is no mercy at the great white throne judgment. We're on a journey, and we're going s- to we're going to one, one gate, as it were, that leads out of this life into eternity. And if you're saved, you're going to go to heaven. If you're not saved, it's appointed unto you once to die, and after that to judgment, and there's no mercy offered by God at the great weight on judgment.
The books will be open. If you're not saved, you'll be judged by what you've done, and it's the law that will be that standard of judgment. So the law brings a curse on us. Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things of the law as they are written to do them. In Galatians chapter three verse ten. But verse thirteen says that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law because it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on the tree. James says if you obey, if you disobey the law in one point, you're guilty of it all. So keeping the law, you are forsaking your own mercy.
It's a lying vanity. Nothing wrong with living a good life. Nothing wrong with obeying the the Ten Commandments, but it's absolutely wrong to obey them in order to think you will get to heaven by obeying the Ten Commandments, because you're not. You can't get there that way. So there's a couple of things, keeping the law and uh, religion. Uh, another pop- very popular thing is, uh, doing the best I can. I remember being in a place one time, and this, this lady, uh, had really taken another lady's husband, and they were living common law, but I did- I wasn't supposed to know that.
And I went in and talked to the lady who was living in adultery, and, uh, she said she was a Christian, and uh, I said something to her about how did you, how do you become a Christian, or what are you doing, or what are you thinking, what did you do? She said, well, I'm doing the best I can. And I said to her, uh, are you really doing the best you can? You couldn't do any better? And of course she admitted, oh yeah, I could do better. So I said, you still, you're not doing the best you can. People say I'm doing the best they can when they, they're not doing the best they can. So Sherry, her name was, and uh, after a while she gave up and started to cry because she knew that I wasn't supposed to know how she was living.
I did know, but I wasn't supposed to know that, and she didn't know me. I was in a strange place, and uh, she gave up and she started to cry because she knew she was, she was believing in a lying vanity that if she could do the best she could, God would overlook her sin. That's a lying vanity. She was forsaking her own mercy a- a- that, that God had for her in Christ. So, there's a lot of lying vanities. Now I'm gonna get some more that's closer to home, and, uh, I don't want to confuse anybody, and if you're saved, there's nothing I can tell you that will, will shake you off the rock.
It might shake you a bit, but it won't. If your faith is in Christ, there's nothing I could say that would ever, uh, uh, change that. You know who, you know who you believe in, and you know who you're trusting in, and I don't. So if I say something that, that's, uh, hits you a little too hard, just ignore it, that part. Giving your heart to the Lord. You get this all the time. People are telling people, uh, witnessing and telling people, give your heart to the Lord. Now, where do you ever find that in the Bible? The Lord doesn't want your old heart. He says it's deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
On the contrary, God wants to give you a new heart. He doesn't, he doesn't want that old heart. That old heart is where all of the corruption, out of that heart, Jesus says, comes evil thoughts and murders. And why would the Lord want that old heart? The Bible does not say that you should give your heart to the Lord to be saved. Uh, repeat this little prayer after me. You get that quite a bit. Listen, there are thousands and thousands and literally millions of people that have said the sinner's prayer and never, never got anything from it.
I remember visiting one time, and a young man told me he was a Christian, and I said, when do you become a Christian? Oh, a year and a half ago. I said, how did you become a Christian? I asked Jesus to come into my heart. Did he come? I said. He looked at me well and said, I don't know. I don't know whether he came or not. I hope I don't, I, I don't have a faith in Christ like that. I hope so. He said, I don't know, and I understand probably that was four or five years ago, I understand that man, that man has give up his profession. Because he was believing in a van- a lying vanity by saying if he gave his heart to the Lord or asked Jesus to come in his heart, he'd be saved.
Now, don't get me wrong, you can ask Jesus to come in your heart and you can be saved. You can pray the sinner's prayer and you can be saved, but you can pray the sinner's prayer and not be saved. So saying the sinner's prayer is not the way to be saved. You can be saved in a lot of different ways. Frank Knox, an old Irish preacher, says that he was saved when he was shingling a house, and he said, I went down off of the roof to get some more shingles. I went down the ladder, he said, a lost sinner, and I walked up the ladder saved, as quickly as that. He didn't say the sinner's prayer. He didn't forsay, uh, he wasn't believing in a, in a lying vanity of forsaking the mercy of God.
He went down and trusted on the, on the way down there, picking up a bundle of shingles, he trusted Christ as his savior, and he went back saved. We were having a meeting one time in the city of Saint John, New Brunswick. There was a lady there that was really bothered. Not too far down the street from the hall we were in, there was a set of traffic lights, and she said she drove up to the light and it was red, and she said before the light turned green, says I was saved. Wasn't very long. Lights sometimes change very quickly. That you don't have to say anything to be saved.
We were in a place in Newfoundland one time, and we were in an area where people, a lot of people profess to be saved in a certain church they went to there, and we say, how did you be saved? How, how'd you get saved? I confessed my sins to the Lord and asked Jesus come in my heart. Now, where in the Bible does it tell you to do that? You can do that, don't get me wrong. You can do that, and you can be saved, but you got to do something more than that. That isn't enough. Think of that. I confess my sins to the Lord. The Bible does not tell a sinner to confess their sins to the Lord. It tells the sinner to repent of his sins, and repentance isn't con- confession.
Repentance is a change of mind. Confession is something you do with your mouth, and you might confess your sins to the Lord and never, never intend to repent of them and ch- change your mind about doing them as sin against God. The Bible does not tell you to ask Jesus to come into your heart. It tells you to believe in your heart. If thou believest with all thine heart, the eunuch was told he could, he would baptize him, Philip would baptize him in Acts chapter eight. Romans ten and nine, that thou shalt confess with thy mouth not your sins, but Jesus is Lord, and believe in thine heart that God raised him from the dead.
Believing you can ask and not believe, and you can believe without asking. It's the believing in Christ that saves, not the asking. If you ask and believe, to be sure, you'll be saved. But if you don't believe, if you don't trust at the moment, the same time you ask, you're just wasting your words to ask. The Lord will not save you unless you believe in your heart one hundred percent in the sacrifice that Christ made on the cross for your sin, unless you believe that, and you can confess your sins until you're blue in the face, but God cannot forgive you of your sins until you trust Christ as your savior and and re- and confessing your sins is not repenting of them.
We have whole church systems that go to confession on Saturday nights, then they go out and get drunk afterwards, and they go out, they just go out as routine confessing their sins. So it's not the the Bible way of getting in on the mercy of God is very, very plain. It's repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ in Acts chapter twenty and verse twenty one, Paul was one of the main preachers in the New Testament. He was one of the main missionaries in three missionary journeys.
He had a very short ministry, not many years, but he, he, he was a mighty man of God, and he said everywhere he went, whether it was the Jews or the Gentiles, and that's all the people in the world, he preached the same thing. Repentance toward God. Repentance is when I change my mind about sinning against God. And when you change your mind, it changes your direction. If you were not coming here this morning and you were driving along the street somewhere, and all of a sudden you change your mind, I think I'll go to the chapel this morning, it changes your direction too. If you don't change your directions, means you didn't change your mind, and you go right by this place. So, repentance is a mental word.
It's not something you say, it's some- it's- it's- it's something you know and understand in your mind. I've sinned against God. I've sinned against the holiness of God, and you change your mind about, say, I don't want to do that anymore. I can't help it, but I still don't want to do it anymore. And the minute you repent and trust in Christ one hundred percent as your savior, that's when you get in on the mercy of God. That's when God's mercy is accepted, and that's when his grace goes into your life, and that grace gives you the divine ability to live, uh, uh, to live Christ, to live out the life that you have in Christ.
So, those are some lying vanities. The devil is a masterpiece, master worker, uh, at deceiving people, and many, many people are deceived in be- in in this matter of salvation by believing in some lying vanity, and when they do that, they're forsaking the mercy that God gave them. Remember one another occasion visiting a lady, and I had a radio broadcast for about thirty five years every week, and she, uh, she listened to me, and I went to visit, went to visit her, and she said, uh, she said, I believe I'm saved, and I believe Jesus died on the cross for my sins, and and, uh, I said something to her about, uh, being baptized.
I said, have you been baptized yet? Oh yeah, I was baptized as a baby. I said, do you think you'd get into heaven without being baptized? Oh no, no, she said, you got to be baptized to get into heaven. Said she believed that Christ died on a cross for her sins, but did she? She believed in baptism too. You can't do that. Listen, it's all Christ or it's not Christ at all. You can't add anything to the gospel. Once you add it, you destroy it. A little boy who knew all of his childhood about the Savior dying on the cross for his sins finally got saved, and he said this: I always knew and believed that Jesus died for my sins, but I never knew that that was enough.
That was all I needed, and that's all we need. Don't need any more. To come to him as a sinner. He has mercy for us, a compassionate love for us. To come to him as a sinner and put our uh trust one hundred percent in what he did for us on the cross. That's not believing in a lying vanity. That's coming, that's obtaining the mercy that God has for us in Christ. Shall we pray? Our Father, we come to thank thee for thy great and wonderful salvation.
We ever thank thee for sending the Savior down from heaven above, that we who are so deceived by the evil one and by the sin that is in us, we who are so unclean and, and, and in thy sight and unfit for thy sight, we ever thank thee that thou did send the Savior down into the world to save us from our sins and to cleanse us from all uh, unrighteousness and to uh, uh, wash us in the blood of Christ and accept us in the Lord Jesus Christ. We ever pray for each one that thou would strengthen us in our faith in the Lord Jesus, deliver us from any lying vanities about salvation, that we might rest completely on the rock Christ Jesus.