By One Man - Eric Troyer

Well, good morning. It's good to be here with you

this morning. And yes, as was mentioned, I am struggling

with my voice a bit this morning, and I hope

it's not too much of a distraction. I apologize if

it is, but you can pray that my voice will

hold out through the message here today. We've been battling

some sickness at our house. I came down sick about

a week ago, and I'm feeling a lot better, but

this cough is just plaguing me and can't get rid

of it. So anyway, Leah was down sick this week

as well, but she's doing a lot better this morning,

so we're thankful for that. I'm glad to be here today.

I was not here last Sunday I was sick, and

so it's good to be back with you and welcome

to the visitors this morning as well. I have been

contemplating bringing a message on salvation at some point, and

it just never seemed like it was quite the right time.

But it felt like today was the right time for

this message, and so I went to talk about salvation

this morning. I really struggled to come up with a

title for this message, but the title that I came

up with was by one man, by one man. And

you might wonder what I mean by that by one man.

But I have a few verses here that will help

shed some light on what I mean by this title.

Romans five, verses twelve and seventeen say this, wherefore, as

by one man sin entered into the world, and death

by sin, so death passed upon all men, for all

have sinned. For if by one man's offense, death reigned

by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace

and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life

by one Jesus Christ. And so I want to look

this morning a little bit at how sin entered the world.

Sin entered the world by one man, as it says

in these verses, and the remedy for that sin also

came by one man, and that is Jesus Christ. If

you care to, you can turn in your Bibles to

Genesis three. And I want to look at this familiar story,

what we call the fall of Man. This is the

story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.

God had just created the world. He had made everything

beautiful and prior to chapter three. Here in chapter two

verses sixteen and seventeen says in the Lord commanded the man, saying,

of every tree of the garden, thou mayst freely eat,

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,

thou shalt not eat of it, For in the day

that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And so

God had given these commands to Adam and Eve. And

I thought it was interesting Josiah's devotions this morning, about

God giving clear commands and man asking yet again for

clear commands. And yet sometimes even when God gives clear commands,

we don't follow them. We are all in race. I

will read Genesis three here, verses one through nineteen. Now

the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the

field which the Lord God had made. And he said,

unto the woman, yea hath God said, ye shall not

eat of every tree of the garden. And the woman said,

unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of

the trees of the garden. But of the fruit of

the tree which is in the midst of the garden,

God has said, ye shall not eat of it, neither

shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent

said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, for

God doth know that in the day you eat thereof,

then your eyes shall be open, and ye shall be

as God's knowing good and evil. And the woman saw

that the tree was good for food, and it was

pleasant to the eyes, and the tree was to be

desired to make one wise. She took of the fruit

thereof and did eat, and gave all so unto her

husband with her, and he did eat. And the eyes

of them were opened, and they knew they were naked.

And they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.

And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking

in the garden in the cool of the day. And

Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of

the Lord amongst the trees of the garden. And the

Lord called unto Adam and said, unto him, where art thou.

And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden.

And I was afraid because I was naked, and I

hid myself. And he said, who told thee that thou

wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree? Whereof I

commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat. And the man

said the woman whom thou gavest to be with me.

She gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

And the Lord God said, unto the woman, what is

this that thou hast done? And the woman said, the

serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the Lord

God said, unto the serpent, because thou hast done this,

thou art cursed above all cattle and above every beast

of the field. Upon thy belly, thou shalt go, and

dost shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman,

and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise

thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heal. Unto the woman,

he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.

In sorrow. Thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire

shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

And unto Adam, he said, because thou hast hearken unto

the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the

tree of which I commanded thee, saying thou shalt not

eat of it. Cursed is the ground for thy sake

in sorrow, thou shalt eat of it all the days

of thy life. Thorns also and thistles, shall it bring

forth to thee, And thou shalt eat the herb of

the field. In the sweat of thy face, shalt thou

eat bread till thou return to the ground, For out

of it that was taken for dust, thou art, and

unto dust thou shalt, thou shalt return. This is a

very familiar story to all of us, I think, But

yet it's a very important story in the Bible. It's

important history, you could say, of the human race. And

we have here man that has been given specific instructions

to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of

good and evil in the garden. But we have the serpent,

we have the devil coming, and says he was He

was very subtle, he was very crafty, he was a

smooth talker. He's very convincing, and as we like to say,

I'm sure he could have sold stripes to a zebra

or ice to an eskimo. He was very convincing. And

he comes to Eve and he says, yea hath God said,

are you sure? Has he really said this? And that

seed of doubt is planted into Eve's mind, and we

know that eventually Eve here is deceived and she takes

some of the fruit and she eats it, and she

gives them to Adam as well, and he eats And

what happens next is something that I don't think they

ever experienced. That says their eyes were open and they

realized that they were naked. And I believe in that

moment they found out what it was like to have

a guilty conscience, something they had not experienced before. Their

conscience pricked them and it was a burden, and they

knew that they had done wrong. They knew they had sinned.

So what did they do? Well? They tried to fix

the situation themselves. They sewed fig leaves for clothes and

put them on, and then they went and hid themselves

in the garden amongst the trees, it says, And that

evening God shows up to the garden and he begins

walking through the garden as was his custom. It seems

Adam and Eve were hiding, plagued by guilt and shame

for what they had done. And this picture of Adam

and Eve here reminds me of when I was a

little boy, and I was disobedient and not doing things

that I should. And I don't have any particular instance

in mind, but I'm going to make one up here

just for the sake of the example. You think of

some children that are at home, and maybe they were

playing in the house and they're playing with the ball

and mom says, don't play with the ball in the house.

You're going to break something. Well, dad's at work, he's

going to be home soon. Mom needs to run some

errands for about an hour, and she decides to just

leave the children by themselves for a few minutes till

Dad gets home and should be okay, right, So mom leaves,

and before you know it, there comes the ball, and

the ball gets to bounce and around, maybe it knocks

over Mom's favorite lamp, and the lamp tips over and

it breaks. Oh no, what are we going to do.

We've just broken mom's favorite lamp. We've got to fix this.

And so go to the drawer and find some tape

and try to take this lamp back together. And you

get the lamp back together and it's it's a little

crooked and wonky, but it's upright. It's there, and you think,

maybe mom and dad won't notice, but we know how

these things go. Mom and dads do usually notice these

things Dad's I don't know how it is at your home,

but usually at our house when Dad comes home, it

is something to be looked forward to. Everyone wants to

gather around and tell what they did that day, and

show them the pictures they colored, and the legos they built,

and what the babies did and so on. It's a

time of joy and sharing. But you know, children have

just broken mom's lamp and have a guilty conscience. They

don't look at Dad coming home quite the same because

Dad coming home might bring some fear and uncertainty because

we know we've done wrong. It might mean consequences if

Dad finds out what happened. And you know, from what

I've observed, children have an amazing ability and something like

this happens, they have an amazing ability to suddenly disappear

or look very innocent and occupied when Dad walks in,

because they know if Dad finds out, they're going to

have to answer for their actions. I think Adam and

Eve were doing something very similar here. They knew they

had done wrong. They tried to fix it, but they

knew they knew that they hadn't done a very good

job of fixing it. They could not repair what they

had done. They tried to sew fig leaves for clothes

to ease their guilty conscience and to hide what they

had done. You know, when God came into the garden

that Eden that evening, into the garden of Eden that evening,

there was no Adam and Eve there to greet him.

And in my mind, I guess, using my imagination a

little bit, I would like to think that when God

came into the garden in the evening, that Adam and

Eve were happy to see him, and they wanted to

come and to visit and to fellowship with him. But

Adam and Eve were not there that evening. They were hiding,

and we know God eventually came and he found them.

He called out to them, where are you? And he

eventually found them and discovered what they had done. I

feel like it's easy for us to look at Adam

and Eve and wonder, how in the world could they

have been so stupid as to eat fruit from that tree.

I mean, didn't God tell them that? God told them

very plainly, do not eat the fruit from this tree.

Don't even touch it. Not only did they touch the tree,

they also eat the fruit. But I think the reality

is that if we were in Adam and Eve's place

in an identical situation, I don't think we would have

done any better. The fact is they were human, just

like we are, and humans are not perfect. Humans make mistakes,

human sin, and we have all been sinners, just like

Adam and Eve were in that moment. We are sinners

in need of a savior. Romans three twenty three says

for all have sinned and come short of the glory

of God. Romans six twenty three says for the wages

of sin is death, but the gift of God is

eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. The wages of

sin are eternal death. And I just want to think

about wages a little bit. What are wages? Wages are

something that are earned or deserved. You know, I have

I have a few employees that work for me, and

when we are considering hiring a new employee, we usually

sit down with them and we have we have a

little discussion, and usually within that discussion there is the

topic of pay. Compensation comes up and we discuss what

we're going to pay them in exchange for their work.

And then if we hire that person once they begin working,

every two weeks, I pay them for what they deserve,

pay them in exchange for their work. M hm. We

all are sinners that deserve to die because by our

actions we have earned the wages of death. By our actions,

that is what we deserve. If we do not give

our lives to Christ, we're trading the pleasures of sin

for payment in full of death. And there's nothing we

can do on our own strength or merit to earn

our way to heaven or to get out of this

vicious cycle of earning the wages of death. We can

be a good person, as good as we want to be,

but it will not be good enough. It is good

to be a good person, but it will not be enough.

But the last part of that verse, then, Romans says,

but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ,

our lord Lord Jesus offers free of charge something that

is undeserved. It is not wages. It is a gift

of eternal life. And he will take those wages of

sin and put them behind him and give us this

free gift if we will only accept it. Jesus offers

that free gift to each and every one of us.

Salvation is an outpouring of God's love to his people.

I don't think we'll ever be able to comprehend in

this life God's love for us. Possibly in the next life,

but I don't think we ever can understand it in

this life. It is so immense and so vast we

can never grasp the fullness of God's love. I want

to turn now to a familiar passage in the Gospel

of John John three, John three, verses sixteen through twenty one,

and this is the story of Jesus visiting here with Nicodemus.

I'm not going to go into this whole story, but

I do want to look at these verses here toward

the end of this story, trying to comprehend which I

just said, we can't comprehend it, but trying to get

an idea of God's great love for us as sinners.

John three, verse sixteen. For God so loved the world

that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth

in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For

God sent not his son into the world to condemn

the world but that the world through him might be saved.

He that believeth on him is not condemned. But he

that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not

believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

And this is the condemnation. That light is coming too

the world. And men love darkness rather than light, because

their deeds were evil. For everyone that doeth evil hateth

the light. Neither cometh to the light lest his deeds

should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to

the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that

they are wrought in God. And so we see here

a God that loved this world, loved the people of

this world, the vilest sinner that you can think of,

the murders, the the thieves, the adulterers, the fornicators, all

of them. God loved each one of us so much

that he was willing to sacrifice his only son. And

as a father, I can't imagine how that must have felt.

You know, I have two sons, but I can't imagine

sacrificing even one of them, let alone if it was

my only son. I know that would be a noble

thing to do. But it is so unnatural, be so

unnatural to offer up a son for a wicked people.

But yet this was necessary. Jesus was blameless, he was pure,

he was without sin, and he was chosen as the

perfect sacrifice to atone for all the sins of men.

Jesus mission here on earth was not to condemn the world.

Jesus did not come to point out everything that everyone

was doing wrong and to bring condemnation. That was not

his purpose. His purpose was to come and be a

perfect sacrifice and to die for you and for me.

It also says here there are two condemnations that are listed.

The first one is that if you do not believe

on the name of the only begotten Son of God,

you are condemned. It is essential for salvation to believe

in the name of Jesus Christ, and we'll talk more

about that later. The second one is that light has

come into the world, but men love darkness rather than

light because their deeds were evil this morning. If you

love darkness rather than light, you are condemned. You are

in need of a savior. Light gets everything out in

the open. Light is healing, but wicked men love darkness

rather than light. First John one five says, this, then

is the message which we have heard of him, and

declare unto you that God is light, and in him

is no darkness at all. If we say that we

have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie

and do not the truth. But if we walk in

the light as He is in the light, we have

fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ,

his Son, cleanseth us from all sin. If there is

sin in your life this morning that has not come

under the blood of Jesus, you are in darkness. Let

us walk in the light as He is in the light,

and the blood of Jesus Christ will cleanse us from

all sin. I want to look now at how we

come to Jesus. How do we come to Jesus if

we feel this conviction of sin? How do we come?

How do we know what to do? I'm going to

look at a few verses here also in the Gospel

of John. The first one is in chapter six, and

I think this is a beautiful example here of two

parts of the tre nity that are working together for

our salvation. I call it a symbiotic relationship, because I

don't believe you can have salvation if one or the

other is not present. John six, verse forty four says,

no man can come to me except the Father, which

hath sent me. Draw him, and I will raise him

up at the last day. John fourteen six Jesus saith

unto him. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

No man cometh unto the Father but by me. And

so we see here there's two different things happening for

us to come to salvation. We cannot experience salvation unless

the Father draws us. The Father will draw us to

the Son. Likewise, we cannot come to the Father unless

we come to him through the Son. And this is

why I say, I don't think you can have one

without the other. They both have to be there. The

Father must draw us to the Son, and through the

son we have access to the Father. And it's just

a beautiful picture there of the Trinity. Two parts of

the Trinity there working together for our salvation. We cannot

force our salvation on our own strength. The Father must

draw us to the Son. This also may be a

good time to just say a few words to you children.

I know some of the things that I'm saying are

are maybe kind of hard but I believe that children

that have not reached the age of accountability are safe

in Christ. And what I mean by that is that

if you are not under the load of guilt, you

have not felt God drawing you to him, and I

believe you are safe in Christ. But I would just

like to say that if the Lord tarries, there will

come a day when you are going to reach the

age when you will come under that guilt of sin.

If you knowingly go against what the Lord has commanded,

you'll reach that age of accountability when you need to

make a decision if you will serve Christ or not.

And I would just say, do not resist. If you

find yourself in that position, do not resist. Let yourself

be drawn to the Father. What are the requirements that

we must meet to find salvation? I have a list

of five different requirements here that I believe are essential

to find our salvation. And the first one is two words. Here,

I believe faith and belief together. I think those two

are very hard to separate. But faith and belief are

essential for our salvation. That says there in John three

that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have

everlasting life. Acts sixteen thirty one, the story of the

Philippi and Jailer. After the earthquake. There he comes into

Paul and Silas, and he says, what must I do

to be saved? And they said, believe on the Lord

Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved faith in belief.

The next one I have is repentance. Repentance is a

deep sorrow or contrition for our sin or for an

offense or dishonor to God. It is often accompanied by

a change of mind and an amendment to life, a

turning away from our old ways and going a different direction.

Acts three nineteen says repent ye therefore, and be converted,

that your sins may be blotted out when the times

of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.

Second Corinthians seventy ten. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation,

not to be repented or without grief, but the sorrow

of the world worketh death. Third one confession, confess with

your mouth that Jesus is Lord Romans ten nine. That

if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus,

and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised

him from the dead, Thou shalt be saved. I also

believe that it is very important that we make confession

of our sin, not just confessing that Jesus is Lord,

but also confessing the wrongs that we have done. First

John one nine. If we confess our sins, he is

faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to

cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And I believe that this

confession should not be just a one time deal at conversion,

but it must continue to be part of the follower

of Jesus life. We are humans, as we talked about earlier,

and we make mistakes. We fall sometimes. But if we

confess our faults and ask God for forgiveness, he will

do that and He will cleanse us from that unrighteousness.

The fourth one to hear the word of God John

five twenty four says, verily, verily, I say unto you

he that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that

sent me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation,

but is passed from death unto life. And the last

one here that I have is to do the will

of the Father. Not every one that says sorry, Matthew

seven twenty one. Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord Lord,

shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that

doeth the will of my Father, which is in heaven.

When we become born again, there should be changes that

take place in our lives, and we should be able

to personally notice these changes. But I also think that

these changes should be so obvious that those around us

can see them as well. To be born again in

Christ is to become a new creature. We put off

the old man, and we become a new man in

Christ two Corinthians five seventeen. Therefore, if any man be

in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are

passed away. Behold, all things are become new. The power

of Christ and his work should have a transforming effect

on our lives. On the old man, we should not

be recognizable, should not be recognizable as the old man,

but we should be be recognizable as a new man,

a changed person. Clautionans two thirteen and fourteen. I want

to read this in the English Standard version says, in

you who are dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision

of your flesh, God made alive together with him having

forgiving forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record

of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. So

there's a couple of things here I want to look

at in these verses. The first thing is I see

some similarities here in the old and the new man

being dead in our trespasses. That is the old man.

The old man is dead to sin, sorry, is dead,

deserving death. But when we become a new man, God

makes us alive, alive unto him, he forgives us for

all our trespasses. These verses also remind me of balancing

a checkbook, or maybe some of you business owners. If

you use quick books and when you do your books,

you need to from time to time you need to

reconcile them. You need to make sure that they're on track,

that the accounts are coming out to the same. If

we have not accepted Jesus as our Lord and savior

of our life, we are not reconciled to God. Our

accounts are off, the numbers don't match. If you've ever

found yourself in that situation, just physically, speaking of the reconciling,

not coming out. You know what a frustration that can be,

and it means that something is off, something is not right.

We have to go back and find out where the

problem is and solve that problem and take care of

it so that our accounts can reconcile. When we come

to Jesus and ask for forgiveness, he is willing to

take those sins and those trespasses and nail them to

the cross, and he offers complete forgiveness, and he cancels

that debt. He wipes the slate clean, He balances the books.

It's all taken care of. It's as it should be.

Reconciliation has the idea of oneness, of union and harmony.

When we are reconciled unto God, we enter that oneness

with Him and that harmony. But I would also like

to warn us, even though we may be reconciled to God,

to take heed, because we can fall out of reconciliation.

Our account can become unbalanced. There can be problems that

pop back up. We need to go back and fix

them and set the record straight and ask for forgiveness,

and once again Jesus will be faithful to nail those

things to the cross and to once again offer forgiveness

and cancel those debts. I have a couple verses here

in closing Second Peter three nine and then Second Peter

three verse fourteen. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise,

as some men count slackness, but is long suffering to usward,

not willing that any should perish, but that all should

come to repentance. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that you look for

such things, be diligent that you may be found of

Him in peace, without spot and blameless. So this morning,

if you find yourself in need of a savior, you

have not made a commitment to God, do not delay.

God is not willing that you should perish or any

one else. The heart of God is that all would

be saved, that all would come to Him, that all

would come to repentance. And to excuse me, to those

of us who have made a commitment, I would encourage

you to be diligent that you may be found of

Him in peace, without spot and blameless. May the Lord

bless you