I Believe And...

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon's captions — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

Williams opens his own segment at Bossier City by pressing the house to respond to the presence of God — when Moses turned aside to see the burning bush, it was the recognition that drew the voice — then takes two texts that frame the whole sermon: John 3:16, "whosoever believeth in him should not perish," and John 8:24, "if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." His burden is in the title's trailing word: *and*. Belief is powerful — Scripture implores men to believe hundreds of times — but belief by itself is only a vehicle, like a saddle that can be set on any horse: a man can believe the truth and be saved, or believe a lie and be damned (2 Thessalonians 2:11). It is the beginning of faith, not its end: Hebrews 11:6 makes believing that God is merely the first fabric of the faith that pleases him.

The proof text is James. A man may say he has faith and another has works, but James answers, "shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works" (James 2:18) — and then the verse Williams leans on hardest: "Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble" (James 2:19). Devils believe, and their belief moves them — to trembling. A believer whose belief never moves his hands, his feet, his mouth in prayer or his body in worship is, by that measure, behind the devils. Real belief provokes action: it gets a man out of the pew at altar call, onto a job application, into the waters.

So John 3:16 is not the whole conversation. Thirteen verses earlier Jesus told Nicodemus, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" — born of water and of the Spirit (John 3:3-7). And Mark's Gospel joins the two halves: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved" (Mark 16:16). Peter's Pentecost answer is the same *and*: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2:38). Williams closes with the Ephesian disciples of Acts 19, believers who had never heard of the Holy Ghost: when they heard, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and when Paul laid hands on them the Holy Ghost came on them. The sermon lands in a long altar appeal — he dismisses doubters with unusual bluntness and calls believers, young people especially, to come prove their belief by receiving the gift themselves. The recording ends with the altar full and the prayer still going.