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Save Yourselves

by Greg Robbins  
11/01/2016 / Salvation

Acts 2:37-40 "Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. With many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation."

Today the modern preachers and teachers make it sound like salvation is all of God and none of us. Peter obviously didn't believe this. He said, "Save Yourselves from this untoward generation". I tend to believe Peter and not the modern preachers and teachers. We are to save ourselves. Only we can believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, repent, and obey him. The decision is ours and ours alone. No one can make those decisions for us and no one but us will answer for ourselves on judgement day. There is a Godward side and a manward side of salvation. God did for us in Jesus and his shed blood what we can never do. We do by exercising our free choice what God cannot do for us. So in a very real sense we save ourselves.

Now before you judge what I say as being false, let's examine carefully the proceeding verses. "Now when they heard this". Faith comes by hearing the Word of God proclaimed in one form or another. Here it was Peter preaching the gospel. "They were pricked in their heart". The problem with so much modern preaching and altar calls is that there hasn't been a pricking in the heart, before people "receive" Christ.

I remember so well hearing Billy Graham on television in 1979. When he looked into the camera and spoke to the television audience, there was a very powerful and mysterious pull on the inside of me. It was strong and I wanted to pray, but he said to raise your hand, and I was afraid to because people were watching me. It was a definite pricking of my heart.

When the heart is pricked there is an immediate need for knowledge. "Men and brethren, What shall we do?" The instruction that we receive at that moment is of great importance to us. Have you ever noticed that those who get saved at a Baptist Church become Baptists? Those saved at a Pentecostal Church become Pentecostals? Those saved at a Non-Denominational Church become Non-Denominational? And so on? All of the thousands of denominations and splinter groups all teach something different. If everyone heard from God correctly they all would teach and say the same thing. So many people get deceived with false doctrine right at the very beginning of their walk. All believe that their beliefs are the correct ones. But since they all differ, they have been deceived. We need to continually pray that Father give us eyes that see, ears that hear, and hearts that understand.

The correct information is what Peter gave. He said "Repent". The very first step is repentance. The Jews had an advantage that we don't have today. They all had a very clear knowledge of what repentance is. Repentance is not feeling sorry for your sins. Repentance is being first pricked in the heart to receive the fear of God, and then to STOP SINNING. If I say that I repent of committing adultery but continue to commit adultery, than there has been no repentance at all. I may feel sorry for doing it, I may weep and ask the Lord to forgive me and to help me to change, but that is not repentance.

Then Peter said to "Be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins". He did not say to repeat the "sinners prayer". There is no "sinners prayer" in the Bible. That is an invention of modern man. If we would only follow the instructions that Peter gave we would have true conversions instead of people being half-saved as they are today. Today we preach that people can "accept" Christ without there first being a true repentance. The people who "accept" Christ have no real understanding of what repentance is, so how can they truly be saved? And for this very reason the modern church is full of sin.

James 4:4 "You adulterers and adulteresses, know you not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be the friend of the world is the enemy of God".

Last of all Peter said that they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. No one who lives in unrepented sin has ever received the Holy Spirit. He is holy and those who receive him become holy too. One of our greatest problems today is that we pick green fruit. Instead of allowing the Holy Spirit time to do his prevenient work in the lives of people, we rush them to pray the "sinners prayer". Then we tell them that they are saved and guaranteed of going to heaven. The truth is that they are green fruit and only HALF saved.

True salvation takes time. The people to whom Peter preached on the day of Pentecost had heard John the Baptist's preaching and had been baptized by him. They had heard Jesus preach, teach, and perform his miracles. They also had been taught about obeying God and about repentance from a tender age. There had been much prevenient work in them. They were fully mature fruit, not green fruit.

The people we preach to today have had none of this prevenient work done in them. They are green fruit. So the quality of converts today is very poor. They have had no opportunity whatsoever to become mature fruit. We do things man's way and therefore get very poor results. If we were to repent and begin to do things God's way, we would then get much better results.

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