GO5PEL - BELIEVE (Jan 30 2017) - Mike Armstrong

Romans chapter 10 is where we're going to be this morning as we continue in our series here.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

And as you're getting turned over there, I got a question for you.

And it's this How do you tend to respond whenever you're faced with a major life decision?

How do you tend to respond to that?

Now there can be all kinds of different decisions that you might need to make.

Maybe for you, you're a student here, right?

And you're starting to think through like colleges and do I go to college?

Do I go to university?

What should my major be?

Should I take a year off and go to work instead?

And you're trying to figure all of that out.

That's a pretty big decision to make for sure.

Maybe for you it's like a marriage decision, right?

Like who should I marry?

Should I marry this person?

Should I ask this person that I've been dating to be my wife?

Right?

Should I do that pretty, pretty important?

Maybe it's kind of a job thing.

You know, should I should I take this new job, this opportunity that's been put in front of me, or should I stay where I am?

Maybe it's a housing decision.

You know, should we sell our home and move into a bigger home?

Should we downsize?

Or maybe for you it's like, should we buy or should we rent?

Right?

All kinds of decisions, life decisions that we're faced with really all of the time.

So when you're faced with something like that, how do you respond?

Are you the kind of person who likes to, you know, meticulously weigh every single option before kind of making your decision?

Right?

Is that you and you like to weigh the pros and cons and you go through it and you take a long time?

Or are you the kind of person who, you know, you just jump in?

You're like, you're fearless, and you're like, I love, I love change, and and I love big decisions, and you've made like three of them at breakfast already this morning, and you know, that's you for sure.

Or maybe you're like on the other end of that spectrum, and you're like the procrastinator, and you're like, maybe if I do nothing, the decisions will kind of just take care of themselves.

Right?

Maybe that's you for sure.

Okay?

Well, we're back in our gospel series today.

We're back into that where we're looking at uh the gospel in five words.

The gospel in five words.

And so we started off, of course, with the word God, right?

You see that?

We started off the word God, and that was the idea that God is real, that God is really, uh, he exists and he created all things, and he made you and I.

And he made us not just to kind of, you know, let us go and have us do our thing, but he created us to know him, right?

To exist with him in a life-giving relationship with him, in perfect harmony with him.

And then, of course, the next week we looked at the word sin and the idea that sin kind of destroyed all of that.

The harmony that existed between God and man originally, between uh Adam and Eve, and God was uh blown uh to bits because of sin, because of pride, and because man decided I don't want to follow God, I want to follow my own way.

And every single human being who has ever existed since Adam and Eve have always, always struggled with a sin nature.

And we've been we've been separated from God because of our sin.

And so we talked about that.

And then, of course, last week was the idea of substitution.

Substitution.

And it was that, you know, that our sin has separated us from God, and there is no way that we can fix that gap, that we can bridge that that chasm now that exists between us and God.

And so God was like, the only way this is ever gonna get fixed is if I do something about it.

And so we talked about how God sent his only son, Jesus Christ, to bridge that gap.

And to die is a substitution, to die in our place.

God, Jesus fulfilled the law.

He fulfilled, he was he was perfectly righteous in every way, and he died the perfect death in our place for us.

And so we looked at substitution.

And now, today, of course, is uh the fourth word, and that's believe.

Believe.

Alright, so like any major life decision, and we just talked about a couple of different examples there.

Any major life decision, the message of the gospel brings every single person who's ever heard it to the place of having to make a decision.

Right?

You gotta make a decision now.

And it's this here's the decision.

Will I believe in Jesus Christ for my salvation?

That's it right there.

Will I believe in Jesus Christ?

In other words, will I accept the message that I've just heard?

Will I accept that?

Will I receive it for myself?

Will I surrender my life to the lordship of Christ?

Or, okay, there's always an or, or will I continue to be Lord of my life?

Okay, those are really the two options.

Will I follow Him or will I reject Him?

All right, and so all throughout this series, we have absolutely touched on this concept.

We've gone through this, we've challenged people to put their faith in the Lord for sure, but today is the day where we just face this topic head on.

Right?

We're just coming at it and we're not backing down, and we're looking at a really, really important scripture here that's that's so key that highlights and brings this to the surface for us.

And so we're gonna take it head on again, face it.

And I wanna encourage you, I wanna push you lovingly to really think about this.

If you haven't already trusted Jesus Christ as Lord, would you do that?

Would you do that today?

Would you put your faith in him?

Would you believe in the person and work of Jesus Christ our Lord?

Would you would you confess your sin?

Would you receive the forgiveness and the salvation that is yours through Jesus?

Would you become a Christ follower?

That's really the challenge here today, and that's what Romans 10 hits us with.

And so let's take a look at this now.

Romans 10, we're gonna be looking at verses 8 to 11.

So why don't you read along with me in your copy of God's word?

Here's what it says.

But what does it say?

The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.

That is the word of faith that we proclaim.

Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.

Let's pray.

Lord, we uh have the pleasure and the opportunity of unpacking such a well-known portion of your word, God.

Lord, and I pray that by your Spirit alone, Lord, you would be stirring in the hearts of our people here today.

Lord, I pray that uh your church, those whom you have called into a relationship with you, would be stirred afresh of the great news, the awesome news of the gospel.

Lord, I pray that we would be fired up and excited about who you are and what you have done.

Lord, stir us from our slumber, we pray.

And God, I would pray and be so bold to pray that if there is anyone here yet who does not know you, I pray that today would be the day of salvation.

Lord, open blind eyes, we pray.

Lord, we thank you that all of that is in your hands and we rest in that today.

So we pray it all in the mighty name of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

All right.

Well, to get saved, I must now believe.

Right?

Believe is the word that we're looking at.

Now, before we go uh any further into this here, um, what do we need, what do we even mean by the word belief?

Right?

What do we mean by that?

Well, I think it can be helpful if we start off uh with what we don't mean.

Okay, here's what we don't mean uh by the word uh believe.

Okay, first of all, it doesn't mean mere mental assent to the facts.

Okay, like you would believe that uh the color green exists.

Okay?

The the word believe here in the scriptures uh is a lot uh more than that, all right?

Uh the call uh to believe in Jesus Christ uh isn't simply to believe that he exists, right?

Because if you know that verse, and it's in James, it's James chapter 2, verse 19.

James 2:19

It says this you believe that God is one, you do well.

And then it says, even the demons believe and shudder.

Right?

So just believing that Jesus exists isn't enough for you to be saved, because it says that even the demons believe that.

They know that he exists, and they're completely anti-God.

Right?

They hate him, they are completely his enemies and marching against him and his will and his ways.

Okay, so we're not talking about merely believing that there is a God out there somewhere and he's doing something, or that Jesus is just simply an historical person who roamed the earth like 2,000 years ago.

Okay, we're not saying that.

Okay, neither are we saying that the belief is this idea of you know of a of a vague and baseless, sort of grasping at straws, you know, kind of kind of hoping for the best type of belief, either, or this attitude towards life.

You know, I think we see this a lot in social media.

You ever seen that those kind of quotes floating around on your you know your Facebook timeline?

Right?

You've seen this, people people post them and then repost them and guilt trip you into sharing them and you know, all of that kind of stuff.

And then the quotes are somewhere along the lines of, you know, sometimes you've just gotta believe, right?

And you've seen that before.

And maybe you've like walked through the mall and you've seen that like on a shirt in Forever 21 or something like that, right?

And you see these things, and you're kind of, if you think about it, you're left wondering, like, believe what?

Right?

Like, like, what are we even talking about here?

Like, what is this, what is this belief attached to here?

Okay, so it's it's not, we're not talking about belief for the sake of belief, right?

We're we're not talking about that.

Believing isn't isn't something that we do to just try and you know conjure up some good feelings whenever you know life doesn't make sense, and and this belief that you know somehow everything's just sort of gonna work out.

I I hope, I guess, maybe, hopefully.

Right?

That that's that's not what we're talking about here.

The belief that we're talking about is just like it's way better than all of that.

The belief that we're talking about in Scripture blows it all away.

Why?

Why?

Because it's it's anchored to something real.

Right?

It's anchored to something real.

It involves rock solid hope.

Right?

It involves confidence, and about it, it's about this deep-seated trust or or or or confident faith in a God who is actually worthy of your belief.

He's worthy of it.

And so we're gonna get into this, and we're gonna, of course, unpack this as we go through it all here.

Uh, but here's the first thing.

Okay, you've got notes you can follow along.

Okay, the first thing is that because the gospel has resonated deep within me, because the gospel has resonated deep within me.

Okay, let's work through these verses now, four verses to go through today, starting in verse eight.

Take a look again.

It says, but what does it say?

But what does it say?

It says, the word is near you, it's in your mouth, and it's in your heart.

That is the word of faith that we proclaim.

Okay, now, Paul, we know this from last week.

Paul is the author of Romans, isn't he?

He's the author of this of this book.

And what he's been doing in the book of Romans, he's been unpacking the gospel.

He's been explaining what exactly Christ has done for us, and he he dives into the depths of it, and Romans is like the greatest.

I love that book, and and that's actually where I've been spending my time lately in my reading, and I would encourage you to do that if you haven't spent much time in Romans for sure.

But what he's been explaining is that salvation is by grace through faith.

He's been talking about the work that Christ did on the cross and how salvation from sin isn't something that you and I can earn.

We can't behave, we we're never gonna be moral enough and good enough to ever garner God's favor.

Christ had to do it for us.

And salvation has been earned on our behalf.

Jesus did it.

And his his morally perfect life and his sinless sacrifice on the cross, it was enough to satisfy God's righteous demands and satisfy his wrath towards sin once and for all.

And so that's what he's saying here.

And then what does he do?

He quotes actually Deuteronomy 30, chapter 14, when he says, Hey, the word is near you, right?

It's near you, it's in your mouth and it's in your heart.

That is the word of faith that we proclaim.

And so he's saying here, he's like, You've you've heard the word of truth.

In other words, you've heard the gospel.

It has been explained to you, it's been proclaimed to you.

And so, in other words, he's telling them, and this is so important that we understand this, he's telling them, because you've heard the message now, you now know where you stand before the Lord.

Right?

You now understand that.

You've you've heard it, you hear what he's done for you.

And what he what he's saying here is that the word is near you, it's it's in your mouth and in your heart.

He's saying that the gospel has resonated deep within you.

It's resonated in your heart.

It's it's accomplished what it's set out to accomplish.

It's brought conviction of sin.

It's stopped your mouth from all of the self-justification where you try to convince yourself and God and maybe others that you are good.

It's done all of that, it's stopped that because the law has shown you just how broken and how fallen you really are.

It's unearthed a kind of this desperate sense within you that I've got this problem that needs to be fixed.

Right?

And you've felt that and you've you've understood that, and it's shown you also just how much God loves you.

Right, man, I I didn't deserve to have to have Christ go to the cross for me.

I didn't deserve any of that.

And so the gospel has been proclaimed.

You've heard it, you've you've heard the good news, and now it's brought you to the place, to the position where you've got to decide what you're gonna do with all that.

It's decision time.

And I think that that's something that we don't maybe don't often think enough about as the church.

Because I think what often happens is we focus uh a lot of our energy and our time, and it's a good thing, uh, to evangelism.

And how we as the church, we need to be proclaiming the gospel to the lost, right?

We need to be bold in our witness, and we need to be proclaiming uh a gospel that's clear to those uh who need him, and uh that's so key.

I mean, the evangelism is our fourth pillar, so it's a pretty uh important thing around here.

And and I mean, all of that is a huge responsibility to us as the church, for sure, no question.

Okay, do but we but do we realize, and especially if you're here today and you don't know Christ personally, do you realize that once you've heard the gospel message, there's now a huge responsibility placed on you?

Do you understand that?

Because you're not ignorant anymore.

You're not ignorant about kind of where you are and how you stand with the Lord.

Okay, the responsibility is now in the decision laid before you.

Am I gonna submit my life?

Am I gonna give my life over to the Lordship of Christ?

Or not?

Am I gonna confess my sin?

Am I gonna humble my proud heart?

Am I gonna bend my knee and put my trust, put my faith, put my belief that what he has done on the cross was enough to secure my salvation?

Am I gonna believe or am I gonna continue in my disbelief?

Okay, so listen, make no mistake.

This is life or death stuff.

Right?

This isn't like fluffy material material that we're going through just to tickle our ears and make us feel good here.

Okay, this is eternity.

And eternity is at stake.

So please, I I plead with you and I would even beg you, don't take this stuff lightly.

Don't take it lightly.

Consider it.

Feel the weight of this, even feel the burden of all of it.

Give it careful consideration.

Okay, but at the same time, also sense the urgency here.

Sense the urgency in it.

Okay, don't procrastinate, don't, don't act like you've got forever to figure this out.

And, you know, I'll I'll just take the next like decade and process this.

And, you know, maybe on my deathbed, I'll I'll plan to have the you know, the turning my life over to Christ then.

Well, listen, you're not promised any of that.

Right?

The scriptures tell us that our life is but a vapor.

We're not promised anything.

And I think the older that you get, the more you understand this, right?

You want to understand how quickly time goes by.

Don't act like you've got forever to figure this out.

I've talked with several of you even just this week, and some of you have been to funerals just in the last couple of days of loved ones.

And so you get it.

Right?

Life can be over in an instant.

It really can be.

So if the gospel has resonated deep within you, your response, I would encourage you and plead with you.

It's to believe.

It's to believe.

But I know you might still be thinking, well, what exactly does that mean?

What does it mean to truly believe in the way that the scriptures talk about?

And it's it's not this like, you know, belief to make me feel good, detached from anything real, and it's not just this mental ascent thing where I, you know, believe that Jesus exists.

What is the belief of scripture here in this passage?

Well, it means that I put my my trust in Christ inwardly and profess him outwardly.

Yeah, that's the second thing.

And this comes to us from verse 9.

Again, there's such a well-known uh verse here.

Let's take a look at what it says.

It says, If but if you confess, or because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

Okay, so this is really the meat of it.

This is the meat and potatoes right here, the nuts and bolts of how to get saved.

If you're wondering, you know, how do I do this?

What is my response?

What do I do?

Okay, this is really it.

And if you're looking at that or if you're familiar with that verse there at all, you will notice that there are really two features or or components that we see there that are essential for salvation.

If you're gonna put your trust in Christ, okay, and the first one is this inward trust in Jesus.

It's this inward trust in him.

Okay, so partway through verse 9, take a look.

This is what it says there.

It says that if you believe in your heart, okay, if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

And then it says, For with the heart one believes and is justified.

Okay, so the phrase there, you see it, believe in your heart.

Okay, you need to understand that first of all, the heart was considered the absolute, total core of a person.

All right, that was the core of the person.

It's where the soul is.

Alright, it's it's the deepest, most inner part of any individual.

It's where the thoughts and the will and and all of our motives originate.

And so that's what it's getting at here.

And so it's saying that that to get saved, okay, to know Jesus Christ, you need to believe.

A synonym for that is is trust.

You need to have a firm faith deep down in the core of your being and who you are, on uh on a heart level.

It says, in your heart, right?

In what?

That God raised Christ from the dead.

That's what you need to believe.

In other words, you you believe, you have been convinced in your heart of hearts that God did that, that God raised Jesus from the dead.

You believe the gospel.

You believe that it is true, not just as some general act that's out there that exists, but it's actually true for you.

It's a specific and very personal thing committed by God for you.

That's what it means to put your faith in Christ.

You must believe, you must trust in Christ inwardly.

It means that you've gone from trusting yourself, trusting yourself that you can impress God through your works to what to transferring.

I love that word.

I'm not I'm not trusting myself anymore.

I'm transferring my trust over to who Jesus is.

Who is Jesus?

He is God.

Trusting who he is and then what he has done.

What has he done?

He went to the cross to secure my salvation.

That's what you have done.

You have transferred your trust.

From yourself to him.

That's belief.

That's the belief we're talking about here.

And when we do this, verse 10 says that something really amazing happened.

It's one of those just amazing verses and actually words in Scripture.

It uses the word justified.

Justified.

It means that you are declared righteous.

You are made clean.

God no longer sees you or views you or interacts with you as though you're the sin saturated enemy, you know, bad guy, rebel.

Right?

He doesn't look at you like that.

Because your record of sin, it's been expunged.

It's been completely wiped out.

Jesus paid for all of that for you.

That's how God looks at you now.

Pretty amazing thing.

You've been saved.

And to get saved, listen, listen, you must believe this.

You must believe this deep down and trust that Christ actually did this for you.

It's an inward, it's a it's a heart belief.

Okay, but I also mentioned, of course, that there's really a second component here to true, genuine, saving faith.

And it's that we must profess him outwardly.

Do you see that there in the verse?

See that verse 9?

It says, Because if you confess with your mouth, you see that?

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and then if you jump into verse 10 there, it says, with the mouth one confesses and is saved with the mouth.

Now, this isn't saying, okay, that you actually literally need to pray a prayer or something out loud and audibly, or your salvation doesn't stick, right?

That it doesn't count.

And I know that sometimes you can look at that and you can push the meaning of this here a little bit too literally.

And you can think, well, I you know, I remember praying as a kid, or I, you know, I prayed a few years ago, but it was it was silent.

It was just it was in my heart, it was in my mind I prayed to God to receive Christ as my Savior.

Does that mean that my salvation is not real because I didn't confess it out loud with my lips?

Well, that's not what it's saying here.

I mean, just think about it.

What if someone is mute, right, and they can't speak?

Does that mean that they can't get saved?

No, of course not.

So that's that's not what this is saying here.

Let's just make sure that we, you know, we understand, you know, all of that.

Okay, but what this is emphasizing is that genuine saving faith involves an outward declaration that Jesus Christ is Lord.

That's what it involves.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

And I'm not trying to say here either that you need to, you know, we need to get you to stand up here and you need to, you know, declare it in front of a group of people, and we stick a microphone in front of your face, and you know, if you haven't done that, then you're not truly saved.

We're not going that far with it either.

Okay, but rather it's saying that your salvation is something that you just gladly confess it.

Right?

You're you're open about it.

It's an acknowledgement outwardly that you've surrendered your life to the Lord.

Right?

Your life is not your own now.

He has saved you.

Right?

That's the it's the outward profession of that inward reality.

Right?

It's it's what's happened on the inside is now revealing itself on the outside.

There's no conflict within you.

You're not double-minded.

You don't kind of believe one thing, but you but you say another.

Salvation is thorough.

It's an inward and it's an outward belief.

You're not trying to hide it.

And I think what this means, one of the implications here, is that there are no secret Christians.

There are no secret Christians.

You know, if you're unwilling to, you know, confess with your mouth, confess openly that Christ is Lord, okay, if you're conflicted about all of that, then you have to really kind of wonder, am I really saved?

Do I really believe in my heart?

Have I given my life to the Lord?

Okay, because genuine salvation always involves inward belief and outward profession.

Now, I would I would imagine that you know a lot of us here in this room, and it might even be safe to say uh the majority of us here uh in this room are true Christ followers.

Right?

We've done this, and maybe even for you, you can think back to that moment, you know, where you said, you know, you confessed your sin to the Lord and said, Lord, it's against you.

Would you would you forgive me?

Would you be my savior?

You can remember all of that.

You've experienced real saving faith.

But if we're honest, and I hope that we are here today, you would admit that, you know what, I have struggled at times with one or maybe even both of these components of true, genuine salvation.

Meaning that we've experienced times where we're not all that fired up about what we believe inwardly.

Would you admit that?

You've grown kind of dull to it.

You've grown cold, and you sense that you're you're kind of stale, and that that fire that you had about Jesus Christ and how pumped you were about him and how he had rescued you from so much darkness and so much sin, you know, that fire's kind of gone out a little bit, hasn't it?

And you're like, you know, you you you feel like you struggle with caring about the things that that used to come so easily and so naturally to you.

And you find that that that's just that's tough.

And you've gone through seasons where everyone does, where you go through seasons like that.

And the passion is is low.

And sometimes it even feels a little bit, at least for a season, like it's just not there at all.

Okay, maybe that's your, or perhaps we struggle with the outward profession part.

You ever wrestled with that?

And and making it real clear.

I'm a Christ follower.

I I love Jesus, I am his and and he is mine, and and and to your shame, you know, you feel like I I don't really want to do this, and and I kind of get all awkward when you know people ask me what I'm doing on a Sunday, and and I'm not I'm not very bold about it, and and I struggle to confess Christ as Lord, and you sense this confliction within you that you're conflicted.

Right?

The inward and the outward kind of seem to be out of sync.

I've felt that.

And I'm sure that you have too.

And I mean, doesn't it show us?

Doesn't it show us just how desperately we need to be drawing close to the Lord?

I mean, how much we need to be coming before him on a daily basis and coming face to face with this message, coming face to face with the gospel, who we are, what he has done to save us, how he has rescued us, the things that we have believed in.

Okay, we can't afford to take, you know, days and sometimes weeks or even months off of pressing into this amazing and incredible truth.

We need to be constantly reminding ourselves and coming face to face with it of the things that we believe.

Because these truths that we're talking about in this series and in this morning, this isn't just for the unchurched, right?

This isn't just for the, you know, the unsaved.

Do you realize that that the truth that saves us from sin and brings us into a relationship with Him, that's the gospel, it's the same truth that nourishes us and changes us as believers.

Okay, we don't we don't kick it to the curb once we're done and move on to deeper and better things.

Right?

We continue to press into this reality because this is the reality, this is the grace of God that transforms us.

It always has been, it always will be.

Because when we're tempted to look at other things that we want to save us or bring us meaning or bring us completion as people, you can call these things uh functional saviors or or idols of the heart.

Right?

If, for example, clothes, right?

You have you ever fall into this temptation?

Right?

If I were if I just had the right style, right?

If I just had the right wardrobe, right, then I would be happy.

Right?

Then I would have the respect of my peers, then I would be accepted by them, then I would feel the completion that my soul craves for.

That's one example.

Another one, food.

Okay, now I'm really offending people, right?

I desire comfort deep down, and so I eat my feelings, right?

Because I I want comfort and I believe it is that it's food that's gonna bring that to me.

And so we we overeat and a thing that a God made that is supposed to be good.

We have made a good thing, a God thing, and now it's something that we can't live without.

We worship it.

It's an idol, it's a functional savior that our heart tends to go through.

Listen, we all have things like this, we have multiple ones that our hearts lean to.

And when we're tempted to look at these false saviors, quote unquote, to complete us, we'll realize as we come face to face with the gospel.

No, they won't.

Right?

They won't save me, they won't completely me, they won't fulfill me in any type of way.

Why?

Because the scriptures say, it says in our verse, Jesus is Lord.

Right?

He is the one who will do it.

I believe that.

I did on the day that I trusted Christ as my savior, and I believe it now, I believe it today.

I reject these idols that my heart wants to bow to, and I surrender my life to you.

I believed it in my heart, and I've confessed it with my mouth, and I will continue to keep coming back to the truth of the gospel and remind myself of it and meditate on those truths until God, in his grace, begins to transform and change my heart so that my heart believes what the gospel says.

Right?

You see how the gospel is not just for the lost, it's not for a dying world, it's for us too.

It is for the church.

And that's why we would go through a series like this.

It is the core, it is everything.

Okay, so because the gospel has resonated deep within me, I put my trust in Christ inwardly and I profess him outwardly, realizing that I escape all shame in the end.

This is phenomenal.

This is amazing truth.

Take a look at verse 11.

Verse 11 says this, and we're gonna pull this apart big time next week for sure.

Okay, but it says this for the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.

They will not be put to shame.

Now, the shame mentioned here in this verse is talking about the shame that you would experience if you died and you met Jesus face to face, having not trusted him as Savior.

Okay, can you can you just try and imagine the you know the awful, the the the sickening and and just crushing awareness that would wash over you in that moment as you realize that Jesus is in fact Lord of the universe and he is Lord of my life, and there is no more chance that I have to put my faith in him.

I am out of time.

I had my chance and I didn't take it.

The full weight of your sin is being held against you now, and you've got to bear the burden of all of that.

And your only destination is an eternity in hell.

Right?

Imagine the imagine is the awful, awful weight that that would be.

And the realization of the shame.

Right?

I could have done this.

I heard the message, I remember I was sat sitting in church and I decided to reject it.

And now I've got nothing but shame.

But what this is saying here is that those of us who have, in fact, put our faith in Jesus Christ, we have believed in him, we escape all of that.

We escape it all.

We will not be put to shame, it says.

Not ever.

Christ absorbed all of our shame on the cross when he died, didn't he?

He absorbed all of it.

And it's and in its place, what do we get?

What do we get?

We don't get shame anymore.

That's all in Jesus now.

In its place, we receive honor.

We get to be called sons of God.

We are we are given prestige now as his children.

Just think about what we get.

It's amazing.

But there's a catch, right?

And the catch is that you have to believe.

You have to believe.

And so again, the question that stands before you is will you do that?

Will you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?

Have you confessed with your mouth and believed in your heart that God raised him from the dead?

Have you believed in the gospel?

Have you transferred your trust from yourself to him?

Has his record of perfection been transferred into your life?

Have you done that?