You know,

and the world. It's possible for someone to be religious and not be saved.

Today on Truth for Life weekend, we'll find out why salvation requires more than church attendance or Bible knowledge or involvement in religious activities.

We'll take a look at a good religious man who got it wrong before he got it right.

Alistair Begg is teaching from John Chapter 3, but he begins by recalling the story of Levi's conversion in Mark Chapter 2.

Calvin writes, there is nothing in the world deserving of God's favor he nevertheless shows he is favorable to the whole lost world

when he calls all without exception to faith in Christ, which is entry into life.

When in Mark chapter 2, the people grumble concerning Jesus going to the home of Levi,

who was a newly professed follower of Jesus, but a tax collector nevertheless, and the religious establishment

said, this is ridiculous, what is he going into the house of someone like this for? And Jesus

says, I didn't come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. And when we read the gospel

records, we realize, as my good friend, Sinclair Ferguson says,

the pulse beat of God's heart has an evangelistic rhythm.

Now, my purpose in these studies is largely twofold.

One, in order that some who as yet do not believe in Jesus may come actually to believe in

him, to discover him not simply to be a figure in history, somebody who is remote to them, but a friend

and a savior. And at the same time, to enable those of us who profess to follow Jesus, to understand how

Jesus dealt with people and how we in turn may be better enabled to live out our Christian

lives in the context of our day. John sets it up. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

That gives us all the credentials that we need. At the end of chapter two, John has described

some who believed in Jesus. In fact, it says that when he was in Jerusalem at the

Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs he was doing. So there was a kind

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