Once my wife baked an angel food cake. All was going well until she had to be gone for a while, and I was left in charge (which most likely was a mistake) to take the cake out of the oven.
That sounded simple enough, I mean anyone can open an oven door and take out a cake. However, I did not realize this cake had special instructions for when it came out of the oven.
The timer went off and I took the pan out of the oven, sitting the pan, (bottom down) on the stove top. There I was feeling so proud, I had accomplished my mission. For some reason I happened to look at the cake mix box and realized it said, “Take cake from oven and immediately place upside down on a cooling rack.”
I hastened to flip the pan over, but it was too late, the cake had already sat down. You see, I was just guessing at what to do, I had not read the instructions.
Instructions are important in many things, especially when it comes to salvation. The Bible is God’s instructions given to man.
One should study God’s word and follow what it says. Man comes up with a lot of ideas about religion, but the instructions given by God are the only words that will save one.
In the book of Acts, one finds where the apostles and other preachers directed people to follow God’s instructions. Peter on the day of Pentecost preached about Jesus. He told about the good Jesus had done and of the miracles He had performed. Then he told them that they had crucified the very Son of God. Imagine realizing you had been a part of crucifying the Messiah. When they stopped Peter’s sermon and asked him what they could do, he told them to, “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).
They had to “follow the instructions”, all of them just not part of them.
The apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain” (1 Cor. 15:1-2). To remain saved, they had to continue to follow the instructions. This message has not changed,even though some have tried to change the instructions.
God’s instructions have not changed. Man must still follow the divine instructions to have eternal life. If you desire to have eternal life simply, “just follow the instructions.”
Many today just guess at what they need to do, so they fail in following the instructions given by God for man. God has a plan for man’s salvation. He gave His Son to die for the sins of mankind (John 3:16), He has given us the Bible – His word to know how He desires man to serve Him (2 Tim.
3:16, 17). In the book of Acts one is shown how individuals obeyed God to become His children.
They believed in Jesus as God’s Son, they repented of their sins, confessed Christ before men and were baptized for the remission of their sins (Acts 2:38; 8:29-39).
Men down through time have tried to come up with other ways of pleasing God. Some turned to making idols, while others have tried to change God’s commands to suit their own way of thinking (Rom. 1:22-25; Matt. 15:9).
God spoke concerning man’s ways and thoughts compared to His, through the prophet Isaiah, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isa. 55:8, 9).
There is no need to guess about salvation, just follow all the instructions.