God doesn't hear sinner's prayer

In the midst of a very cold jog Christmas morning, my sister-in-law suddenly asked me, “What do you think of Billy Graham?” I told her he was an apostate preacher with bad theology who couldn’t even tell a person how to get saved, and actually probably hinders a lot of people from becoming saved.

The other month, in a swing through the Christianity section at Barnes & Noble, I flipped through Graham’s 2013 book, “The Reason for my Hope: Salvation.”

He stipulates that people must, among lots of other incorrect advice for basic salvation, repent of their sin and “confess Jesus Christ as Lord of your life.”

Just look at this one passage from Graham as an example: “I have always asked people to make public confession in our meetings because Jesus in His earthly ministry demanded a definite commitment. He had reasons for demanding that people openly follow Him. Jesus knew that an unwitnessed vow is no vow at all. Until you have surrendered to Christ by a conscious act of your will, you are not a Christian.

“No transcribed prayer grants a sinner salvation, but the Bible is clear that we must recognize our sin and repent of it, be willing for God to change us, and obediently follow Jesus Christ. This is the most important step anyone can take in life and is the only way to truth.

“Pray this prayer: O God, I am a sinner. I repent of my sin. Forgive me and help me turn from my sin. I acknowledge what you have done on the cross for me and receive your son, Jesus Christ, as my Savior. I confess Him as my Lord. Give me faith to believe and trust as you lead me into obedience, relying on you in all things. Thank you for redeeming me and making me your disciple. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

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 Last Sunday, Jordan dedicated his morning service to the issue of basic salvation. Here is part of what he said:

“Oftentimes when I’m sharing with people the gospel, and even here when I’m talking in a meeting, I tell people, ‘You don’t have to go anywhere, you don’t have to move a muscle. You don’t even have to pray.’

“What you have to do to get saved is believe and that’s a real important issue frankly. The only response grace will accept from you is faith because faith is not you working; it’s you trusting what He said. Faith is also the necessary response. It’s the required response.

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“Years ago, I made that statement down at the Pacific Garden Mission and got some people really mad me. They said, ‘Well, you’ve got to pray The Sinner’s Prayer!’ That’s a common religious idea.

“People say, ‘You need to repent and turn from your sins to get saved.’ No, you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to get saved. Others say, ‘You need to ask Jesus into your heart; make Him lord of your life.’ No, you need to believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins and was buried and rose again for your justification.

“All this other stuff is just a bunch of religious confusion. People say, ‘Well, you need to confess your sins and turn from your sins.’

“Why would you tell a lost person to do something he can’t do?! The only thing a lost person can do without working is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

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“You need to develop a discerning ear about these issues. Elihu says to Job in Job 34:3, ‘For the ear trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat.’

“I’ve always thought that’s a great thing to remember. Your mouth can taste a hamburger and you know where it comes from. You know whether it’s McDonald’s or whether your momma made it.

“Your ear’s designed to try words. You’re supposed to have a discernment in your listening capacity when you hear things taught. Where you can discriminate between them, just like your mouth can discriminate between a piece of bologna and a T-bone steak,

“Your ear is able to tell differences in messages. One of the things that caused Galatianism, the mixing of law and grace, is they lost that ability to distinguish between the messages they were hearing.

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“Galatians 3 says, ‘O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?’

“Notice they started well. Before their eyes, Jesus Christ was evidently crucified. When they started their Christian life, it was thought they were there watching the Lord be crucified. It was that clear and plain and simple to them. They grasped it to that depth. It was a reality in their thinking. They knew about it.

“ They believed it, trusted it and it was set forth before them and the doctrine had an impact on them. They had an understanding of what took place a Calvary.

“But now Paul says, ‘You’re foolish.’ That word ‘foolish’ doesn’t mean dumb, stupid or ignorant. It means you’ve quit using your head. A fool can have a brilliant IQ but not have the ability to think through the common issues of life.

“They’d been bewitched. They let somebody come along and trick them; cast a spell over them. Make them not use their thinking processes properly.

“We’re talking here just about the issues of salvation. We’re not talking about functioning in the Christian life. You have to get salvation first in your Christian life, and when you lose the issue that ‘by grace are you saved through faith,’ it isn’t what you do or your resources, but trusting in what He’s done . . . when you lose that, you lose any capacity to have your Christian life function at all because you’ve transferred all of your dependence from Him to yourself or to others.

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“This thing about The Sinner’s Prayer comes from an account in Luke 18 that Jesus taught as a parable. Verse 9 says, ‘And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.’

“Notice who He’s talking to. People who trusted in themselves. People who thought it wasn’t ‘by grace plus nothing, not of myself.' Here’s people trusting in their resources, looking down on others.

“When you think about prayer and praying, praying won’t save you because in the Bible, prayer is a work. When you tell somebody to pray, or you give them a prayer to recite after you, or tell them to pray and ask God to save them, you’re telling them to work! Salvation is not of works.

Colossians 4:12 (‘Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always labouring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God’) is the verse that caused such a problem at the mission that time. What was he laboring fervent for them in? Prayer. That means prayer is a labor.

“Romans 15:30. You see, prayer is one of the good works that believers perform. I Timothy 5:5. The reason prayer doesn’t save you is because prayer is the function of a Believer.

“That will help you understand the verse in John 9 in the account of the blind man Jesus heals. Verse 9:31 says, ‘Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth.’

“You take that verse at face value. Why would you tell a lost man to pray if God doesn’t hear sinners? God hears Believers.

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“The problem with praying is that prayer is a good work for Believers! Someone will immediately say, Well what about the verse, ‘Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved?’

“In almost every tract, in almost every gospel presentation that you’ll hear an evangelical, fundamental gospel preacher preach, he’ll use Romans 10: 9-13 as the closer. I picked up two in the last week at places.

“Can I tell you, that is a mark of a lack of understanding. That’s a mark your ear ought to catch just like that because of the confusion it causes.

“There’s an order to this thing. First, the guy gets sent, then he preaches, then they hear and when they hear, they do what? Who’s the ‘whosoever’ in verse 13?

“Well, according to verse14, you don’t call until you believe and when you believe, what happens to you? Verse 10 says, ‘For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.’

“The first thing you do is believe and when you believe, you get righteousness. That’s called justification. You get the righteousness of God when you believe, you don’t get it because you prayed, confessed, worked, gave up, held out, let go of. You got it because you believed God’s Word. You trusted God’s Son. You believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.

“It’s Believers who call upon the name of the Lord. I Corinthians 1. Believers call upon the name of the Lord, but they’re not calling on the name of the Lord to get saved; they’re calling on the name of the Lord because they ARE saved! The issue isn’t prayer; the issue’s believing.”