Beliefs: Salvation (S08, E04)

Greetings and welcome to the Faith Chapel Podcast. My name is Jason and I am

the pastor of Faith Chapel.

In the podcast, we are going through a series looking at core beliefs of the Christian faith.

This will be a five-episode series that looks at some of the key doctrines of Protestant beliefs.

We continue this series today by looking at salvation,

the prototypical passage of salvation is Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9,

Ephesians 2:8

where the Bible says we are saved by God's grace through our faith or trust in Jesus,

and that this is a gift of God.

This is not something we earn, but something that is given by God.

Thank you for joining us as we dive further into this discussion.

There is a common thought in this world that this rich ruler portrays so well.

That if we do enough good things in our lifetime, God is obligated to give us eternity with him.

You see, the man that he was talking about was a thief on the cross next to Jesus.

A guy who had lived a worthless life, a guy who admittedly deserved to die by crucifixion.

And yet when he looks over to Jesus and says to him, Jesus, remember me when

you come into your kingdom,

Jesus gave him an announcement that today you would be with me in paradise.

When Jesus met this young ruler, the young Jesus said, you know the commandments.

You obey your mom and dad.

Keep the Sabbath. Do the 10 commandments.

And then the rich young ruler said, I've done all of those things.

I've done every requirement, but is there something missing?

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

You see, it's very works-based. It's this scale on, yeah, we understand that

sometimes we don't do the right thing, but most of the time we do the right

thing. And so God is obligated.

He has to take us into eternity with him.

And yet on the cross, Jesus says to somebody with a last second confession of Jesus as Lord.

My mercy covers you. My grace is sufficient for you.

You will be in eternity with me. As we continue to go through our belief statements,

today we're going to study and look at what salvation truly means.

What it means for us at Faith Chapel as followers of Jesus Christ.

What does it look like?

And to answer that question, we're going to go through the book of Romans.

There are several passages that we will be talking about.

And these passages are known as the Romans' road to salvation.

There are five passages that we are going to look at.

Some different people put different passages in here, but these are the five

that we are going to look at.

And they're in your bulletin. And your bulletin was designed this way in case that.

If you need reminded about what salvation is, if you come to a point in your life where you

are doubting your salvation or doubting your relationship with Jesus or the

goodness that God has for you, when you start to think for yourself,

I got to do more works in order to earn my way to God.

My hope is that you can use the notes section of this bulletin to write a key

word or a phrase or the whole verse out as we go through this.

And then you can cut it along the dotted line there and stick it in your Bible

or use it as a bookmark in a book that you're reading so that we can constantly have this

before us and remember what it is that we believe.

We're going to start on the Romans road with Romans chapter three, verse 23.

Now, this is a very famous passage, but it's not a passage that we necessarily like and enjoy.

And in Romans 3.23, it says this, For everyone has sinned.

We all fall short of God's glorious standard.

Now, this isn't a self-help manual. The Bible is not something that we use.

And if we put a couple of pieces into place from the instruction of the Bible,

that we're automatically going to be better.

And when we think about it in terms of calling ourselves sinners and falling

short of the glory of God, it kind of flies in the face of a self-esteem movement.

But it's the first step on the Roman's road.

We have to acknowledge and we have to admit that we fall short of God's glorious standard.

We have to look inside of ourselves.

The psalmist says in Psalm 139, to God, search me, O God, and know my heart.

Test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you.

This is the realization we need to have. Point out anything in me that offends you.

Anything where I am missing this glorious standard of yours.

Anytime that I am sinning. Now it's such a bad word that it's lost its context

and it's lost its meaning, this word sin.

And so I'm going to try to give an illustration of that using this game over here.

So this is a football toss game.

And the object is to get it into one of these circles. It will catch the football back there.

And you score three points. you lose a turn, you get a touchdown and score seven

points, you get a safety with two points, all sorts of things.

And the object and the goal of this game is to get it in there and to score points.

Sometimes you lose a turn and so that is not one you want to get into.

But sometimes you can score seven points or two points or three points.

Those are the ones that you want to get into.

And sin is simply just missing that.

Could I have a volunteer to come up and try this? Would anyone be willing to

come and throw a football?

Okay. Yeah. Come on up.

Any one of you or two of you. We have two footballs here. Okay.

So their goal and their objective is to stand here and to throw it and to get

it into one of the ones that they will score points from. All right.

And I'll show you where they are. So you each get a football. You each get to throw it.

All right. So this is seven points right here, this middle one. This one is two points.

And this one right here is three points. So three, seven, two.

Those are the three that you're trying to get into. All right. You get one throw.

Ooh, close. You guys did great. You want to take one more?

All right. That was just a warmup. Oh man. Oh, so close.

Yeah. All right. Thank you guys. Can we give them a round of applause for helping?

And so what they just did there was they sinned, okay?

And that's weird for us to say because they were just trying to do an objective.

And that's all that sin means. In the Old Testament, the word is katah.

And katah means when the Bible uses it, they were like the Benjaminites,

the tribe of Benjamin. They would take a slingshot and they would not sin by

missing by one hair's width.

Like they could take a slingshot and hit exactly where they wanted to.

They were not sinning in that capacity.

And so simply by just missing what we were supposed to do, simply by missing

the objective is what sin is.

And we make it this nasty word. I mean, the object of a teacher is to make sure

a student knows something.

And if they don't know something and they get something wrong on a test,

it's not the teacher's obligation to say, you did not get this right,

but I'm gonna fill it in for you and I'm gonna make sure it's correct.

No, it's to teach the people. And sometimes, and most of the time,

I would argue we learn best by making mistakes.

And so by calling out mistakes, we can help people learn and grow and develop.

And so it's the object and the idea of just missing a standard,

missing a mark. It's not a bad word at all.

We simply acknowledge that we know we are not living up to God's standard.

This is what we as followers of Jesus Christ need to pursue.

Understanding that we are not perfect.

And that we cannot save ourselves.

We cannot save ourselves. So we all sin and we all fall short of the glory of God.

Now, before we transition to our next verse, in our area, especially in Huntington,

travel is not so easy right now.

There's a lot of construction. There's a lot of heartache trying to get on five, about 5 p.m.

From Walmart to the high school. it takes a lot longer now than it used to.

And my point in bringing this up is the Romans road is not like that.

It is not impacted by construction. It is a path that leads us to where we need

to go so that Jesus can work in our hearts and make us who we want to be.

And so this first step that we take on the Romans road is the step to acknowledge

that you and I cannot make it to heaven on our own.

It's simple. It's really simple.

But sometimes pride and arrogance really gets in our way.

And we think of ourselves as better than we actually are.

And so when we, and I hope we do, pray, search me, O God, and know my heart.

Test me and know my anxious thoughts.

Point out anything in me that offends you.

We stop and we listen.

What is it in me that offends you? Where am I falling short of your glorious standard?

And we take the time and we process through it.

We think and we let the Holy Spirit navigate in our hearts what we need to do.

So that is the first step on the Romans road.

The next step we're going to look at is in chapter 5, verse 8.

And Romans 5, 8 says this,

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

While we were taking the football and we were hitting constantly right there

or right there or right there, God loved us so much that he sent Jesus to die for us.

Like, think about it. If you're the parent of a baseball player and your son

or your daughter gets on base 50% of the time, that is an amazing on-base percentage.

Fantastic.

But it still means they're not getting on base 50% of the time.

And when they have to walk back to the dugout after not getting on base,

are you disowning your child?

Or are you sending them encouragement?

And while we were still missing the mark of God's standard and we still do,

Jesus came and he died for us.

He was the parent who walked with the child back to the dugout,

giving encouragement and consoling or yelling from the stands,

get him next time, you're all right.

He was right there with us. He is right there with us and he is using his death

on the cross so that you and I can be with him in eternity.

And that's really what the next verse showcases. It brings these two verses

together in Romans 6, 23.

It says, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal

life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

So it brings these two ideas together. It tells us what we really deserve,

and that is eternal separation from God.

Scripture calls this the second death, where you and I, we deserve to be away

from God forever, but in his great love for us, we have the ability to get to eternal life.

Let me go back to the idea and the concept of being a parent of a child who has failed.

The idea that if your child brings home a test and they get like five out of

10 correct on this test, what do you think you would do?

Like that's a failing grade.

Would you disown your kids? Would you cast them out?

Or would you say, hey, let's sit down here and work at these arithmetic programs, these math problems.

Let's sit here and see, did you read the question correctly?

And if you read the question correctly, could you have gotten the right answer?

Or is it something else like you wrote an essay and you didn't get a good score

on it. All right, let's go through this essay.

Did you capitalize the beginning of every sentence? Did you put in punctuation

marks? Do you know where commas should go?

You're going to sit down there and you're going to train them.

Just because they missed the mark doesn't mean you cast them aside.

And that's what God is doing for us in sending Jesus Christ to us to die on the cross.

Again, verse 23 says, For the wages of sin is death.

God knows that we deserve the second death. God knows in our depravity and in

our brokenness, we have no right to be in his presence, but he came up with a plan.

He has a way of salvation.

And that is the death of Jesus Christ and giving to you and me the righteousness of Christ.

You see, in God's.

Great love for us. He wants us

to learn and to grow into being the men and women that he wants us to be.

And so we can't do that without his help and his guidance.

Part of our belief statement at Faith Chapel is that we believe that God is

the author of right and wrong.

He tells us what is right and what is wrong. He is our architect. He is our creator.

He knows us better than we know ourselves. And so he has the right to tell us

what's right and what's wrong.

And it's just our job to surrender to that. And we do that with the next verse.

Romans 10, or chapter 10, verse 9, where it says, 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.

You see, God gives us this imputation is what it's called.

He imputes to us, gives to us righteousness that we only get,

by confessing with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and by believing in our hearts

that God raised him from the dead.

These are the two things that we need to do.

The thief on the cross told the other thief, the thief on the other side of

Jesus. Stop mocking him.

Can't you see? Can't you perceive that he is righteous and he doesn't deserve

to be up here? But you and I, we deserve this.

It's confessing with our mouth that Jesus is Lord, but it's not the only thing that is required.

Because if that's the only thing that's required, the ruler,

the rich ruler would be an eternity.

Because he came and he bowed before Jesus. He knelt before him and he called

him good teacher, which Jesus points out.

You're saying that I'm God by saying that I'm good.

Yet he didn't give his heart. He loved his possessions. He loved his wealth

more than he loved Jesus.

And so he walks away sad and angry.

But the thief who really believes and understands his own depravity and who

confesses that Jesus is Lord and believes it through every part of his body,

he's in eternity with God.

And this is what you and I, this is where human responsibility comes into being.

As Faith Chapel, we believe in the Arminian way of looking at scripture,

that humans have responsibility.

And our responsibility in this is not to save us, but to say with our mouth

that Jesus is Lord, and then really believe it.

One of the things that I've really been praying over and convicted over is the hardness of my heart.

I don't understand why I do things that I don't wanna do.

And the things I want to do, that I know are right to do, I've run away from.

And I'm praying, God, put your message into my heart.

Somehow, someway, there's this callous layer there. It's like Play-Doh that's

really been sat out too long and there's some pliable things,

but you have to break it open to get to those pliable things.

And I'm like, God, I want my heart to be pliable. I want you to come in there,

and you to make me into the masterpiece that you are creating me to be.

But I'm getting in the way here. I don't know if I really believe in my heart

that God raised you from the dead. if I'm doing these things.

And so I want to believe that. So come penetrate the hardness of my heart.

That I truly follow you.

And that's what this means. God's going to do the work. We have to ask for the work to be done.

We have to say, God, come and take this sin away from me. Purge it from me.

Believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead and confess with your

mouth that Jesus is Lord, then you will be saved.

And flipping back to chapter eight, we read, so now there is no condemnation,

for those who belong to Christ Jesus.

Because we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts

that God raised him from the dead, because

we acknowledge that we are sinners and we have come under his authority,

because God has given us the righteousness of Christ,

you and I have no condemnation.

We are not going to be sent eternally away from him.

We can just rest and relax.

And this is the hardest part for me because I am a lot like that rich ruler.

All right, let's do good. Let's do as much good as possible.

Let's do as much good as possible so that I can feel like I am aiding myself in that.

Reality is I just have to sit. Psalm 46 10. It's right up there.

Be still and know that I am God.

The rest of that verse says, I will be honored by every nation.

I will be honored throughout the world when we are what? Still.

When we relax.

When we trust in his salvation.

This is what salvation looks like.

This is the path. This is the roadway. It starts with acknowledging that we are sinful.

That we miss the mark. And again, it's not a bad thing. Like, we all do it.

We all talk behind other people's backs at one point in time in our life or another.

We all lose our tempers sometimes.

It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's something that we should want to get better from.

We want to do better because we know we're missing the mark and we love God

so much that we don't want to do it anymore.

But we acknowledge we can't make eternity on our own effort.

What we deserve, we need to acknowledge. The wages of sin is death.

We deserve that eternal separation from God, but we realize in God's great love

and economy for us that he sent Jesus to die.

And when we believe by confessing in our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe

in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, we are not condemned.

Praise be to God.

It is that simple.

This is what our statement reads. We believe that we need to be saved.

We believe that we as human beings are sinners, but we also believe that God

loves us so much that he sent his son to die for us.

And that with our responsibility by confessing that Jesus is Lord and by believing

in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we are free from condemnation.

Second song we sang today. He's our rescuer. He gives us his righteousness and we rejoice in him.

So this is the Roman's road to salvation. Again, I encourage you to use your

bulletin in whatever capacity you want, but I really, it's designed in this

way so that if you want to write

a key word or the whole verse out in between these,

verses, the headings of the verses,

to remind you of what the salvation that we as Faith Chapel believe,

I just encourage you to take it home, to put it as a bookmark in your Bible

or whatever book you're reading, and to really get familiar with this.

Because ultimately, as followers of Jesus, it's not something that we keep to

ourselves, but we memorize it so that we can share it with other people.

And so you might be thinking that I'm trying to get you into a different.

Think of the word, denomination, by having you stand again.

But I do want you to stand again. And as you are standing, we're going to be praying.

And as we're praying, if you feel that you have not confessed Jesus with your mouth,

I'm going to encourage you to sit down during this prayer so that we can acknowledge

and we can see that you have confessed that Jesus is Lord.

And so that we as a congregation can celebrate with you.

So again, I ask you to stand, every single one of you.

And if you don't think that you have confessed Jesus as your savior,

if you have not spoken it with your mouth and you are ready to,

and you are ready to declare that Jesus is your Lord and your master,

as we pray, I just encourage you to sit down.

Gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for your grace and your mercy and your love.

Thank you for teaching us that we are sinners,

but that we're just missing the mark of your glorious standard,

and that the penalty for this deserves destruction away from you,

but that in your great love for us,

you sent Jesus, you sent your Son to die for us.

And Father, I just pray that you will give us the strength and the courage if

we have not yet, but we are ready to confess you as Savior, to give us the strength

and the courage to sit down.

So that at least the part where we are confessing with our mouth that Jesus

is Lord, we have accomplished that.

And I pray, Father, for all of us, that you will continue to penetrate the hardnesses of our heart.

Jesus, I lay this all at your feet. Amen.

Again for joining us in our discussion of salvation.

The Romans Road passages of salvation take us through our understanding of our sinfulness,

through Jesus's atoning work on the cross, and culminating in declaring Jesus

as Lord and trusting that God raised him from the dead.

If you would like more information about Faith Chapel and its ministries,

please visit the website, gofaithchapel.org.

Next week, we will conclude this series by looking at the doctrine of the church. Have a great week.