Equation of Salvation and Transformation - 08.09.26 - Kyle Morris

Amen.

Amen.

Man, that violin is so good, is it not?

Wow.

Thank you, Jonas, for sharing that gift with us.

Well, good morning.

My name is Kyle Morrison.

I'm lead pastor here at Revive.

I haven't been up here for about six weeks, so maybe forgot how to do this, but we're gonna give it a go.

If you have a Bible, I want to invite you to turn to Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 15.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

Before we dive in, I just want to say I'm not a math guy at all.

And I know that's hard to say for me from the stage because I know how many engineers go to Revive Church.

And I'm not gonna mention any names, but someone on the stage that just left actually has a PhD in mathematics.

So I got to be very careful in how I talk about math.

My wife, on the other hand, is amazing at math.

While I was really struggling to get through geometry in high school, she was doing calculus.

And so, as some of you know, we homeschool, and when I say we homeschool, I mean the we part of that very, very lightly.

Uh Erica homeschools, for the most part, our kiddos.

She was a public school teacher for 10 years, and uh she's just really, really bright and really, really loves to teach and learn.

And my kids know that when it comes to mathematics, there's a point in time where you might as well not even go ask dad.

I'm all about self-deprecation.

I'm not gonna tell you what grade that is, but it's somewhere between third grade and ninth grade.

I'm just no help.

Like, it's like reading a different language when they bring a problem for me to help them with.

Today, we're gonna look at our text in Acts chapter 15 through a mathematics equation.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

But today, if you're like me and you're math challenged, it's okay.

This is simple addition.

Simple addition.

So I wanna I want to put this up on the board.

This is a simple equation.

Something plus something equals salvation.

Everybody can handle that.

Something plus something equals salvation.

This is the equation of salvation.

We're gonna look at this this morning, and I hope we're gonna walk out encouraged that the grace of Jesus Christ is more than enough.

It's more than enough for you.

It's more than enough for any single person who turns to Jesus Christ.

And so we're gonna look at what Acts 15 has to say about this.

Before we do, let's pray and let's ask for the Holy Spirit to work in our hearts.

Jesus, Father, Holy Spirit, what I'm gonna say, if it's not powered by the Spirit of God, it is useless.

And so this morning I pray, Holy Spirit, would you take these words on this page, the ones I've written and the ones I'm gonna say that I haven't even put down on paper, and would you use them in our lives to teach us, to change us, to grow us, and to mold us into more mature followers of Jesus Christ.

God, would you take these words even for some who are here and watching online who have yet to put their faith in Christ?

And would you this morning use your word to woo them with your love?

You are a God of love who calls your children to follow.

We pray all of this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So, Acts chapter 15, what we're gonna look at today, it's ultimately asking one of the most important questions, and I don't want to say one of the most important questions.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

This is the most important question that a human being can ask, and it's this what does it take to be saved?

How is a person saved?

And we'll start in Acts chapter 15, look at verse 1.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, unless you were circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.

And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.

So being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers.

When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them.

But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, It is necessary to circumcise them and to keep and in order them to keep the law of Moses.

The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter.

Now we're going to talk about the debate and the dissension and the matter that's at play in this text, but I want to give a little context and background because we're walking through the book of Acts, and there's a bit of a pause in the story here with the gospel spreading.

I mean, Paul and Barnabas, as we've seen over the last few weeks, they're on this missionary journey, and the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of salvation in Christ Jesus, is spreading like wildfire.

It's covering the earth.

Gentiles are coming to faith in Christ, which, if you're not familiar with the term Gentile, any non-Jew is a Gentile.

And so Gentiles are believing in Jesus.

The church is growing, and in the middle of that church growth, there's a controversy that erupts.

And here's the question.

Very simple form.

Can a Gentile, so a non-Jew, can a Gentile become a Christian simply by believing in Jesus?

Well, some of the Jewish Christians are saying no.

Not unless a person is circumcised according to the custom of Moses.

They're saying, in a sense, Jesus plus circumcision plus following the law of Moses, that is what equals salvation.

So it's not Jesus alone, it's Jesus plus all of these other things.

I'm gonna tell you right now, this was not a minor disagreement.

This is one of those moments where you can't just avoid this kind of conflict.

This is one of those moments where you don't just walk away and say, okay, we're gonna agree to disagree.

Like this was a major disagreement.

And I would say in the book of Acts, this is the most important issue that comes up.

In fact, we see it's important because Baal and Barnabas, they completely stopped what they were doing, which happened to be taking the good news of Jesus Christ across the face of the earth, and yet they stopped their work in order to engage in this most important theological debate.

Why?

Because it was important, incredibly important.

Why?

Because theology matters.

Theology matters.

And while not all of us have a day job like mine where we think about theology, all of us as Christians have a responsibility to be theological, to think theologically.

Because what we believe about God shaped, or what we think about God shapes what we believe.

And what we believe to be true about God will actually change how we live.

Therefore, theology matters.

A.W.

Tozer, a really smart dead dude, he said this.

What you think about when you think about God is the most important thing about you.

What you think about, what comes to your mind when you think about God, is actually the most important thing about you.

Why?

Because what you think about God and what you believe about him will ultimately change who you are and how you behave.

So let's go back to circumcision.

I'm not going to define that.

There's children in the room.

I'm just going to assume we know what that is.

Why would circumcision become such a huge issue?

Why would these Jewish Christians show up and say, hold on for just a minute.

Yeah, we know Jesus.

Like, he's a pretty rad dude.

We get it.

But why is it Jesus plus this little surgery and then you're in?

Well, we got to go all the way back to understand Israel's story.

And just let me let me set the level playing field because all of us were coming into this conversation from different backgrounds and understanding of the Bible.

Christianity finds its roots in Judaism.

That might seem obvious, but I want to make sure the starting point is clear.

And so in the Old Testament, when God called the people of Israel to be his people, he made a covenant with them starting with Abraham, and part of that covenant was the circumcision of males on the eighth day after they were born.

Now, important clarification.

This does not mean that God only cared about people who were from Israel.

Israel is not the only ones who would be blessed and everyone else would be excluded.

Rather, what we find out in Genesis chapter 12, verse 3, is that God, his intention in calling the people of Israel and setting them apart and blessing them was so at some point in time they could reach the other nation.

Genesis 12:3

So they were blessed to be a blessing.

So God called the people of Israel, and God gave Israel his law.

Now, when we think about God's law for Israel, typically our minds immediately go to the Ten Commandments, right?

Can you name all the Ten Commandments?

Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not have any other gods before me, thou shalt not bear false witness.

Those are the moral laws.

Those are the things that we tend to think of when we think about the Ten Commandments or when we think about God's law, the moral law that we still, hopefully today, still strive to follow.

These are laws that show us the heart and the character of God.

But God also gave the nation of Israel all other kinds of instructions for living, which, by the way, if you weren't here a few weeks ago when our one of our new elders, Wes Dobson, talked about baptism, do yourself a favor and go back and listen to that message.

Because what Wes Dobson did on that day is he talked about baptism that we celebrate in the church, and he linked it all the way back to the Old Testament and the reality that baptism was a follow-through or is a conclusion of the reality that one of the reasons why God gave the people of Israel the law was to show the people of Israel how sinful they were.

There wasn't anything wrong with the law.

The law was God's heart and God's character.

It was God's perfect way of expressing this is what it means to be holy people in the midst of a perfect and holy God.

And yet no one could follow it.

And so within the law, you had moral commands, you had ceremonial and purity practices, you had a sacrificial system, you had food restrictions.

Here's what you can eat, here's what you can't eat, here's what you can wear, here's what you can't wear.

You had circumcision as a part of that and temple worship.

Not only that, but these laws and these specificities that God gave also instructed people what to do in the case that they became unclean.

And there were specific instructions that someone had to walk through if they became unclean by what they ate or what they saw or what they touched.

And so we look at that and we go, okay, what's the point of that?

Why did God go to such great lengths to give this law to his people?

Well, first, I already mentioned the law revealed God's holiness and humanity's sinfulness.

Right?

This is what the Pharisees who are challenging salvation through Jesus Christ are coming up against.

What they don't see is that all of those laws in the Old Testament, the laws around purification and the laws about being ceremonially unclean, all of those laws are pointing to the reality that without intervention from God, we cannot be clean.

Without intervention from God, we stand in this place of being guilty and unclean.

That means we can't just run into the presence of a holy God as sinful people.

And so all of those things, they were meant to point the people of Israel to this desperate need they had for a savior, a Messiah, one who could stand in the gap, one who could be completely and totally pure and clean in their place.

Are you tracking with me?

One who would atone for their sin once and for all.

Not an animal, not what they had practiced for over a thousand years in the temple of trying to make the people of Israel clean through priests coming before God.

But no, no, no, no.

Once and for all, one final sacrifice in the place of all people for all time.

The Lamb of God, the one who would take away the sin of the world.

So the law, it revealed God's holiness and humanity's sinfulness.

Also, God gave the law, and he gave the people of Israel the law in order to be a witness to the world.

That meant that the people of Israel in the Old Testament, guess what?

They were the only ones who had the law of God.

They were the only ones who had prophets that God sent in order to speak on his behalf.

They were the only people who were considered God's people.

Singular, no one else.

So in giving these laws, what was God doing?

Well, he was setting his people apart.

He was setting his people apart from nations who were committed to a pluralistic, polytheistic type of expression of religion.

Nations that were consumed with the worship of all different kinds of false gods and false deities.

And so, what was God doing?

He was setting his people apart so that these other nations would see the awesomeness of the people of Israel's God.

And this is why God told the people not to mix with other nations, not because God doesn't love other people, but his covenant with the people of Israel was meant to completely set them apart.

And what do we find in the Old Testament?

How did the people of Israel do?

Really bad.

Seems like they did a little bit like we do in life in trying to be holy before a holy and perfect God.

Right?

They failed miserably.

They chased other gods and other idols.

But guess what?

God did not default on his promise.

God did not default on his end of the covenant.

The covenant that he made with Israel was not dependent on Israel's behavior, but instead was dependent on the faithfulness and the perfect character of God.

Amen?

Amen.

That it's not dependent on us.

Now I want to stop here for a minute.

I want to make sure that we're all on the same page because I see some eyelids that are kind of dropping a little bit because we're talking about some Old Testament stuff and we're talking about the law.

I want to make sure that we're on the same page.

Laws like circumcision were meant to point the people of Israel to the reality that they needed a greater sacrifice.

They needed someone to stand in their place and die in their place.

That's the whole point of blood.

That's the whole point of the shedding of blood, the sacrifice that is needed in order to pay for sin.

And the spiritual rescue that they were meant to receive had now come in the form of Jesus Christ.

Literally, God incarnate, God taking on flesh.

Jesus accomplished what sinful humanity could never accomplish.

And so when we look at the Old Testament, we shouldn't think about the Old Testament as something we kind of wad up and throw away.

The Old Testament is actually such an important part of our faith and heritage because here's what the Old Testament does: the Old Testament sets up the entire Bible and sets up our own lives, and for us to understand our own lives through this reality that we serve a perfect God that we cannot please on our own, that we can literally bring nothing to the table to be made right with Him.

The people of Israel couldn't do it, and we can't do it.

Jesus fulfills the story, He doesn't erase it.

And so you've got this Pharisee party.

In the midst of salvation spreading across the earth, they show up in Antioch where the gospel is exploding.

And they're like, hey, I don't think Jesus is enough.

I mean, he's necessary, but he's not sufficient.

And so they want to require these new Gentiles to be circumcised in order to be saved.

In a sense, Jesus is not enough for your salvation.

It's Jesus a plus, a plus, a plus, a plus, a plus.

Look at verse 7.

Now here's what's sweet.

What we're about to read in these next few verses, these are like the heavyweights of the church.

We got James, the half-brother of Jesus Christ, who wrote the book of James.

We got Peter, who Jesus said, I'm going to build my church on the word of your confession.

We've got Paul and we've got Barnabas.

I mean, when you think about the 27 books of the New Testament, the overwhelming majority are being written by these three guys who in this moment decide not to stay silent, but they decide to stand up.

Here's what they said.

And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you.

That by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.

And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as He did to us.

And He made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.

Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we've been able to bear?

But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.

Verse 12, and all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

And after they finished speaking, James, the half-brother of Jesus, who, by the way, while Jesus was alive, he didn't buy into this whole following his half-brother as the son of God.

He's like, I know this dude.

He's not the son of God.

But after Jesus' resurrection, his mind was changed.

And he said, This brothers, listen to me.

Simeon, which is a formal name for Peter, has related how God first visited the Gentiles to take them from, take them as a people for his name.

And with this, the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written, after this, I will return and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen.

I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord.

And then check this out.

And all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who make these things known from old.

So here we have these giants in the faith who are stepping up in this moment, and they're essentially being a mouthpiece to the church.

I mentioned earlier, Brother E, who's my mentor, he and I were talking about this text yesterday.

This is an aside, but I think it's important.

If you remember that moment in Caesarea Philippi when Jesus looked at his disciples and says, Who do people say that I am?

And nobody really speaks up, and then Peter says, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Do you remember that?

And Jesus responds by saying, I will build my church.

What is he building his church on?

He's building his church on the confession of Peter and on the apostles who will go after him.

And then there's this really weird thing that Jesus says.

He says, Hey, whatever's loose on earth will be loose in heaven, whatever's bound on earth will be bound in heaven.

And we all read that and we go, Yeah, that sounds great.

I have no idea what that means.

This is what it means.

In this moment, through the word of God and through the Spirit of God, the apostles came together and there was a unity in spirit that said, Hey, as we look at Scripture and as we study the Word together, and as we're filled with the Spirit, and as we're walking in the Spirit, we have come to an agreement that these ceremonial laws, these things like circumcision, they're no longer necessary for the Gentiles.

And so this becomes actually the way that the church moves forward.

Now I want to focus especially on what Peter said.

Look at verses 8 and 11.

Peter says about the Gentiles in his argument.

He said, God knows their heart.

So what is Peter saying in that moment?

He's saying that your relationship, a person's relationship with God, is not about circumcision, it's not about whether or not they jump through the hoops, it's not about their church attendance, it's not about whether they do this thing or that thing or avoid this sin or that sin or vote that way or don't vote that way.

It's actually about the heart.

And the people who are listening to this should have known this because if they were scholars of the Old Testament, which they were, if they had read and even some maybe memorized many of the words in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, they would have known that a time was coming where God would actually do something that he had never done before.

He would actually write the law on people's hearts, that he would change out the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh.

And yet they don't see it.

And so Peter continues, he's saying, Hey, listen, we've been at places where the Spirit of God, in the same measure that was given to Jewish people, have been given to these Gentiles.

You remember the story of Peter and Cornelius?

When the white sheet comes down from heaven and God shows Peter in that moment, hey, the things that were unclean, the animals that were unclean, I've made clean, but God's not talking about animals, He's talking about people that all people have the opportunity to trust and give their life to Jesus Christ because of Jesus.

Doesn't matter nationality, doesn't matter background, color, race, nothing like that.

That every single person has that opportunity because guess what?

We're not cleansed by making sure that we follow all of these rules.

We're cleansed, as Peter says, by faith in Christ.

Then he says this in verse 10 he says, Why are you putting God To the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples.

Anyone know what a yoke is?

A yoke was kind of a farming apparatus.

I should have a picture of it, maybe for second service, that someone would put on the neck of oxen, and the idea was that this yoke would allow the load that the oxen was pulling or the ox was pulling to be manageable.

And so oxen were able to carry heavy burdens because of the yoke that was placed around their neck.

Now, here's what Peter's doing in this moment.

He's going, hey, hey, hey, Jewish brothers and Jewish sisters, guess what?

We are people who have lived under the law of God.

We are people who have bore that yoke, have tried to follow the law, and guess what?

We can't follow it.

You know that.

I know that.

We can look up over a thousand years of Israel history and we can see all of the places where we have failed to follow God's law.

So why in the world are you trying to put a yoke on the Gentiles that to be honest, we haven't been able to carry ourselves?

And then verse 11 is the climax.

Peter says, We believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus.

And so the question is, why would anyone require something of people that God himself does not require for salvation?

Right?

Peter, he's defining how a person is saved.

I mean, how is a person saved?

Would you know how to answer that?

Would you know how to answer the question of how someone's saved?

If you had a coworker or a neighbor who knew you were a follower of Jesus and watched your life and saw that you weren't perfect in what you do, and that actually you were a person who extended grace, and let's say they brought up the conversation of salvation to you, and they said, Hey, how is someone saved?

Would you know how to answer that?

Because salvation is not circumcision, it's not keeping the law, it's not church attendance, it's not your Bible knowledge, it's not how much money you give, it's not being a good person, it's not growing up in a Christian family, and you can point to all of the heritage.

My father was a pastor, my grandfather was a pastor, my great-great-grandfather was a pastor, and if you go all the way back, I'm related to Jesus.

It's faith in Jesus Christ.

Not a law, not a ceremony, not a little surgery.

Peter says he's cleansed our hearts by faith through Jesus Christ.

I hope I don't have to ask the question, why does this matter?

But I wrote it in here, so I guess I will.

Why does this matter?

It matters first and foremost, theology always matters.

What we think leads to what we believe, leads to how we live.

And we see these early church leaders, the fathers of the faith, the very ones Jesus looked at, some of them and said, Hey, I'm going to build my church on the confession that I am the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and you're going to work together to make sure that my church moves and operates by the Spirit under the Word of God.

You see, Paul and Barnabas and Peter and James, they're fighting for the very thing that makes Christianity unique.

I mean, this is what this is what the Jewish challengers were saying, if I can just put it in Kyle paraphrase.

They're basically saying, hey, that Jesus guy, we we get that he's important, but there's gotta be more.

They gotta be a little more like us.

We gotta figure out how to make them make them a little more Jewish.

Make them a little bit more kosher.

And Peter responds, says, No, Jesus Christ came and he died on the cross to remove all of the burdens and all of the barriers that keep people from God.

Why in the world are you trying to add a burden that Jesus Christ removed?

You see, this is what sets Christianity apart.

This is what makes Christianity so unique, so different than every other major world religion.

Right?

In every other world religion, the burden is on the human being to try and be made right with God, whoever that God is.

Do this, don't do that, face this way when you pray, live this way, and God will treat you that way.

You see, all other religions invite their participants to carry the burden, to satisfy the demand, to take on and hold up the weight.

And maybe, just maybe, at the end of their life, maybe, just maybe they will be approved.

Maybe there'll be a positive reincarnation, maybe they will reach the highest level of heaven.

And Christianity and salvation by grace alone through faith in Christ alone is something holy and completely different.

Christianity says that Jesus Christ has taken on the weight, that he and he alone has carried the burden and the punishment for our sin.

He is the one who bled and died, fulfilling the righteous and perfect requirements so that we can be in the presence of God.

And so our salvation is not up to us.

It's not a list of requirements that we are to meet, or it's not a set of rules that we are to follow.

And some of you, you're detoxing from that.

You grew up like I did in a denomination that said, life with God is these list of rules, and God, he'll approve of you and everyone else in this church.

They'll look at you okay too if you do them.

That's not Christianity.

That's religion.

That's dead.

It's Jesus and only Jesus.

I mean, look at the look at the crux of this debate: circumcision.

This is not an issue for people today.

People might choose for their child this at birth, or they might not.

Circumcision and Christianity are not related in our modern times.

But here's where this is relevant because the Pharisees were fixated on circumcision as an external religious symbol.

And do we not get fixated on the same things?

If we could just do more, or if the people we know would just do more?

More Bible reading, more fasting, more quiet times, better church attendance.

And again, I would encourage you toward all of those things.

None of those things on that list are bad in themselves unless they become the burden or the means by which we think somehow God approves or disapproves of us.

That's religion.

If you think those are things that you do in order to be saved, then you've missed what is amazing grace.

It's not a religious checklist.

You see, when you receive the Holy Spirit, which we see this in Acts, there is no faith in Jesus Christ without the Holy Spirit.

Do you know that?

There's no such thing.

When you give your life to Christ, and when I say give your life to Christ, I don't mean that Jesus becomes kind of a little one-hour add-on to your life.

That's not what I'm talking about.

If you've been sold that bill of goods, I'm sorry.

To surrender your life to Christ is to look at Jesus Christ and say, Jesus, you paid it all for my life.

You bought my life with your blood.

I'm giving you everything.

Do whatever you want in my life.

Whatever brings you the most glory.

That's different than just praying a prayer, isn't it?

So when I say faith in Christ, I mean allegiance.

I'm pledging my allegiance to you, Jesus Christ, and you alone.

That He carried the weight and the burden of our sin.

We get there by coming to this place of surrender.

We get there by coming to this place where we just get so tired.

Have any of you felt like you're ever on a religious treadmill?

Like you're just going through the motions, that you're just walking, but you're actually not getting anywhere.

Like a religious treadmill or thinking we can earn it, that is that is antithetical or opposite of the gospel.

This is why Jesus said this in his own words.

This is maybe one of my favorite passages in all the scripture.

Jesus says this, listen.

He said, Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

How many of you have heard that passage before?

Let me just be really clear on what Jesus is saying here.

Jesus is saying, Come to me.

Not get yourself together and then come.

Not complete the checklist and then come.

Not make yourself worthy and then you can come.

No, he says, come to me.

What did he say?

My yoke is easy.

Those that sentence doesn't belong together.

There's a word.

Is that a paradox?

What is how could a yoke be easy?

The whole idea of a yoke being strapped around the neck of an oxen was, this is so hard that I need support to do this very thing.

And Jesus says, my yoke is easy because I've already done the work.

Just hit yourself to me.

I'm carrying it.

Life with me is light and easy.

Now, when I say life with me is light and easy, I don't mean the circumstances of your life are light and easy.

That's not what I'm talking about.

Life with Jesus is not light and easy.

It's not like all of a sudden, all right, I'm on the Jesus team, so come on, success, success.

Come on, comfort, come on, convenience.

No, no, no, that's not how Jesus works.

He says light and easy because is this not the most important thing in every human being's life to experience salvation and to be reunited with the very one who's made us?

Like if you got that right, what else matters?

And I say that as someone who's been through suffering, who has been through hardship.

So I don't say that lightly, but I say that in the reality of life and all that there is, whether you have 10, 30, 50, 70, 80 years, the reason why Jesus' yoke is light and easy is because he removes the burden and answers the question of the most important thing about you, and that is, how am I saved?

How am I reunited with this God that loves me?

And so, where are you tempted in your own life to add to this equation?

Where are you tempted to add to this equation?

Are you tempted?

I mean, the culture that we live in in the state of Colorado is tempted to say, it's Jesus plus being a good person, even though someone might not acknowledge Jesus, but this happens even in a room full of believers.

It's Jesus being a good plus being a good person.

I've done more good in my life than bad.

Or it's Jesus plus religious performance.

If I pray enough, read enough scripture, attend church, enough.

Or maybe it's Jesus plus ministry.

I've filled my entire calendar with serving and giving, and so it's Jesus plus the amount I can serve and give.

Or maybe it's Jesus plus morality.

I don't do the things that they do.

So it's Jesus plus my good decisions.

Maybe it's Jesus plus theological knowledge.

I know the Bible better than anyone I know.

I mean, isn't aren't those the kind of things that can actually lead to self-righteousness?

So I love the story.

I always go back to it, so if you're a regular attendant of revive, you might be tired of hearing about it, but it's so important.

There's this story in the book of Luke.

It's become my favorite parable of Jesus.

It's called The Parable of the Prodigal Son.

But this story really, I think, should be titled The Story of Two Prodigal Sons.

And the story goes like this: there's a father who is a Middle Eastern father.

He's a Jewish man, and he's a wealthy man, and he has this entire estate.

And he's rich, and he has two sons.

He has an older son and a younger son.

And one day, the younger son comes to his father and says, Father, I want my share of the inheritance right now.

Now, I'm going to tell you right now, doing that in an ancient Near East culture was to wish your father who was alive dead.

And so instead of this father kicking his son off of the property, you know what he does?

He looks his son in the face and says, Here, here's your half.

And the story continues, and the son, he goes off to a faraway land and he starts living wild.

He starts using his father's money for booze and women, and he makes an entire mess of his life.

And he gets to this place where he's literally working as a slave in a pig sty.

Not a very kosher job for a Jewish man.

And he gets to this place, and the Bible says that he comes to his senses, and I think this is what the Bible, how the Bible thinks about repentance.

Repentance is this moment where we come to our senses and we realize that we're running away from God, and so we turn to God and we agree with him, God, I'm making a mess of my life.

And he does it.

And all the way home, the younger son, he's talking out loud because he's planning his return speech.

He's like, okay, when I walk up to my father, if he doesn't shoot a stone with a slingshot at me first, or if he doesn't send people to beat me up, then here's what I'm gonna tell him.

I'm gonna say, hey dad, I've really messed up.

And while I would never ask to ever come live on your property, why while I realize that my identity now is no longer a son, but it's a slave.

Hey, would you hire me to be one of your servants who walk who live in the city and come in as a day laborer every day?

He's like, maybe, just maybe, my father will extend me that kind of grace.

And so the story goes that the son is walking toward his father, and he walks through the big gate, and he begins the final steps toward his father, and all of a sudden he sees his father running at him.

And at this point, he doesn't know what to do.

He doesn't know whether to run, but where's he gonna run?

Who's he gonna run to?

And he just assumes that as the father is running and yelling, that he's yelling some sort of curses at him, my paraphrase.

And as the father gets closer to the son, hey, get my robe, get my ring, get the family ring, get some sandals, start heating up the grill, my son.

He was lost and now he's found.

And the son is overwhelmed by the father's grace and the father's mercy as he returns to the God figure in the story, and the God showers him, the God who is father showers him with grace.

Now that story is typically thought of as the prodigal son, but the reason why this story is the prodigal sons, and I'm gonna bring this back around hopefully to where it makes sense.

The older son, who actually represents the Pharisees, the very one who are coming and saying that these people need to experience circumcision.

The older son, he's standing out in the field with his arms crossed.

And the father comes out to him and says, Son, what are you doing?

Your brother is home.

He was lost and now he's found.

And the older son looks at his father and says, So you're giving him the fattened calf, aren't you?

Oh, so you're celebrating him now.

You're celebrating the one that took half of your inheritance and ran and wasted it and spoiled it, and now he's gonna get?

He's gonna get the party?

What about me, Dad?

I've stood by your side.

I've never left you.

I've never turned my back on you.

I've done everything that you've told me to do.

I have met every list and every regulation that you have ever told me.

And the father looks at him and said, Hey son, what I have is yours.

It's always been yours.

Come into the party.

And that Jesus ends the parable.

And we have no idea whether the son went inside and celebrated his brother, although I think Jesus makes it pretty clear that he didn't.

Listen, the gospel of Jesus Christ, I hope we understand in this church, the gospel of Jesus Christ is for everyone.

Everyone.

Liars, cheaters, adulterers, murderers, sex addicts, drug addicts, drug dealers, everyone.

Every single person can be saved by the grace of God.

And we as a church, we actually have this beautiful opportunity to join in with the grace of Jesus Christ to guess what?

Make sure that there is no one on this planet, but more specifically, in our proximity, in our home, in our neighborhood, in our city, where we work, that would ever question whether or not we think that they are too far from the grace of Jesus Christ.

The equation for salvation is this Jesus plus nothing equals salvation.

Nothing.

By nothing, I don't mean that we don't believe or repent or have faith in Christ.

I mean that we don't add anything to Jesus' saving work on the cross.

I'm gonna invite the van to come back up.

I I only got halfway through my sermon.

I find that when I'm out for a long time, I end up saying more than I planned.

And that's okay when you preach through a book of the Bible.

We're just gonna pick right up next time.

Because the second half of this, the second half of this passage is really important because here's what I want to make really clear.

You could hear that we are saved by grace in faith in Christ alone, and we could respond by saying, then what difference does my behavior make?

Like when Paul, who's in this story, when he writes to the church at Rome, there are people that are asking that same question.

And so Paul writes to them and says, Hey, some of you you're saying, hey, if it's grace and grace alone, then why not keep on sinning?

Well, we don't keep on sinning because we realize that grace, that which has been given to us freely by Jesus Christ, was not free to him.

He paid the ultimate price in our place.

And so I want to invite you as these guys lead us in a song.

I'm gonna leave plenty of space.

We have like 15 minutes.

Here's what I want you to do.

Our crosses are right here.

And a cross is a symbol and it's a representation of what Jesus Christ has done in our place.

The cross is the representation of the salvation of equation, or equation of salvation.

That it is through the cross that we are accepted into God's presence.

And so this morning you might be here or you might be watching online, and today you're like, this is the first time the gospel has made sense to me.

I just thought the gospel was a whole lot of rules that I was supposed to follow, and I just assume that, hey, the Christians that I know, they don't follow those rules either.

So what difference does it make?

And so today you're understanding that salvation is Jesus Christ plus nothing.

And today you want to give your life to Christ.

Or maybe today you're sitting here and you're going, actually, I've been going through the motions of Christianity for a long time.

And if I'm honest, I actually have never surrendered my life to Jesus Christ.

In fact, what I've done is I've just added to the equation.

I've just thought it's Jesus plus my good works, or Jesus plus my money, or Jesus plus my service, or Jesus plus my church attendance, or Jesus plus me being a nice person.

And so today, what you need to do is you needed to come to the cross and you need to say, God, I bring nothing with me.

And for some of us, myself included, we've we've surrendered our life to Christ, but we've fallen in the trap of trying to do things.

Love people, give money in such a way that we might be using those things as the very basis by which we come to God and say, God, you owe me.

Like the older brother, you owe me, God.

I I've stood by your side, I've done this, and I've done that, and there have been things in your life that you can't understand and you can't explain away.

There have been suffering that you've experienced, and you're looking at God and you're going, God, I don't want to come in.

And today's an opportunity to lay those at the feet of the cross, foot of the cross.

And so as Grace and leads us, I want to don't miss this moment.

Come to the cross, come to the front of the stage.

We'll have prayer team members who will come up as well and feel no pressure to pray with anyone, but if you want to pray with someone, then we're here to do that.

Father, thank you for the gift of your son Jesus Christ.

I have nothing to add.

We thank you for him and his sacrifice for our salvation.

Jesus' name.

Amen.

If you're able, would you