Faith Baptist Church
4258 Botetourt Road
Fincastle, Virginia 24090
(540) 473-2325
II Chronicles 7:14
As we said in our last lesson, the passage given above was written for believers.
Some think that if there is a large number of professed believers in a nation that God will not only spare this nation, but He will also bless this nation. But, getting saved is just the beginning. The three phases of the believer’s relationship with God are:
Phase I - Salvation. Salvation happens only once in the believer’s life. Once you believe in the Jesus Christ as your Savior you are saved forever.
Phase II - The believer’s life on earth. This phase lasts until death or the rapture of the Church. During this phase it is incumbent that the believer learns Bible doctrine consistently, and grows to spiritual maturity under his or her right pastor-teacher in a doctrinal church.
Phase III - Glorification. This is the eternal glorification of the believer after death or the rapture, where you first will stand and have your works judged by the Lord Jesus Christ. So, it is important that the believer spend as much time as possible learning and applying the word of God to his or her life.
We hear so much about mass evangelism, but if those who are coming to Christ are not matured in the faith by competent dedicated pastor-teachers, and Bible teachers, then those saved masses will become the Devil’s buffet. If believers do not get into and stay in a doctrinal local church and band together around the word of God then Satan will sift those believers like wheat, I Pet.5:6-9.
This is exactly what Satan is doing today with all the free lancers who feel free to come and go as they please. A USA Today report says faith is shifting, drifting or vanishing outright. “When it comes to religion, the USA is now a land of freelancers.” More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases…everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers - or falling off the faith map completely.” (March 9, 2009 edition).
Whenever their toes are stepped on by sound preaching they go somewhere else. Whenever they do not get their way they go some where until they do not get their way again and off they go again.
God does not sustain a client nation where his people live in rebellion and ignorance. Ignorant believers are never intelligent servants of the Lord. They often fall prey to superficial activity and some to false teachers, Eph.4:14; I John 4:1-4. I recently spoke with a person who was well versed in the beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witness cult. This young man told me that he had recruited many young people who professed Christ. These immature believers do not know enough scripture to detect the errors taught by this particular cult, a cult which denies the deity of Jesus Christ. Some converts to Christianity, due to ignorance of Bible teachings, are pulled in by the good family togetherness of some organizations and cults, and others are pulled in by the emotionalism of Christian bands and the beat of their music, and they are distracted from learning sound Bible doctrine.
How The Believer Acquires Their Salt
After salvation believers need to reach spiritual maturity. It is in spiritual maturity that the believer acquires his or her salt, his or her stand, his or her witness, their backbone, a backbone needed to stand for the faith, not bending to every wind of humanistic secular philosophy coming down the pipe.
Believers need to make such a stand on a consistent basis. He or she lives the godly life behind the doors of their homes and behind the doors of their hearts. Their life becomes Christ like, because their hearts have become Christ like through spiritual metamorphosis. A transformed life is brought about by exchanging our human viewpoint for God’s divine viewpoint, Rom.12:1-2; I Cor.2:15-16; Phil.2:6. Being Christ like does not mean you have become a jellyfish, or a noodle. It means you have adopted enough divine viewpoint; that is, the mind of Christ, to demonstrate consistent courage in the face of cosmic opposition, I Pet.5:6-9. It means you have adopted enough divine viewpoint to not be distracted by things that pull you away from the word of God.
This is the responsibility of every believer, and it is the responsibility of every pastor-teacher to teach the Word of God categorically and systematically so as to indoctrinate God’s people with God’s viewpoint, and not just do so in one or two areas of God’s word, but from the whole council of God’s word, Acts 20:27-30.
It is not enough to learn just a few doctrines of the Bible, and then get busy for God while forsaking the vast treasures of the Bible.