Understanding Salvation and Faith

There is no more important subject in all the Bible than knowing how a person becomes a follower of Christ, knowing how a person becomes a person of God, adopted into his family. There is such confusion about what it means to be saved and what salvation really is. You ask people all around if they are saved or if they are followers of Christ or if they are committed to him, and you get all kinds of different answers. But the Bible gives us clarity about that. Because from the very beginning, God has started out saying, what I want for you is the same relationship I had with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before they sinned. I want to be able to walk with you every day. I want to be able to talk with you every day. I want to be able to guide your lives. This is God's goal for us. He wants that close relationship with no barrier between ourselves and him so that there is a oneness between our own lives and the life of God. That's what he wants. That's been violated because of sin that enters our world, and what God does is he starts out by beginning to tell us exactly how he wants to change us. And the first change that he wants to make in our lives is simply to make us aware that we have violated the relationship between him and ourselves so that we know that we stand as enemies of God because we've failed to live in obedience to what he's told us and what he's asked of us. It's this conviction, this sense of uneasiness or sense of shame that comes over us that leads us, first of all, to turn to God. It's his way of saying, let me get your attention. I know there's some things I need to say to you. This conviction of sin causes us to turn to God and say, God, what do I need to do? We become aware that we've failed him, so we ask for forgiveness at that moment. And God does forgive us whenever we say we're ready to turn our lives over to you. This openness to God, to admit and acknowledge our need for change and transformation is the beginning of what comes in the saving power of God. Whenever God comes to us and he tells us, I want you to change, it begins with remorse, a sense of shame, a sense of uncertainty in your life, a sense of emptiness in your life. And whenever that comes, God says to us, here's what I want to have happen to change about you. If you have remorse only, no change comes to you. What God really wants is repentance from us to say, I don't want to live the way I've been living in the past. Instead, I want a new life, a different kind of life. It is this hunger that God brings to our minds. But how do we live this way if in the past we haven't been able to? Well, the Bible tells us this secret thing that God does. First you surrender your life to God, then he places inside of us his Spirit, the Spirit that made the world, that guided Jesus, and that Spirit every day guides us. He gives us power to be able to live a different kind of life. He helps us to know what's right and wrong. He gives us the ability to make choices we never could before because the Spirit now gives us self-control. He gives us self-denying sacrificial service, the love of God, so that we begin to treat everybody around us differently. The great secret of changing relationships is not for other people to change, but for us to change. Once we change and begin to treat people differently, then they respond differently to us, and all relationships are changed, and life changes its focus and its nature and its character when God does this. But how do you have that happen to you? It starts off with God beginning to saying, your life needs to change. So if you've ever had that thought, then that's God saying, I want you now to listen to me, and I want to change your life. I want to save you. I want to give you salvation. I'm aware that God wants me to change. I can either be upset about that, I can know that it's true and do nothing about it and live with that remorse, or I can stop and say, God, I'm ready now for you to change me. I no longer want to be the person I used to be. Instead, I want to be something you have made me to be. This repentance, turning around, going a different direction, the passion for that is what it means to become a follower of Christ. But the question is, how can I live this life if I couldn't live it before? What is there that happens that allows me to be able to live a different life? Many times the things that are in our life have been collecting there for years and years and years. They're habits and they're patterns and they're deeply embedded in our nature. And they're impossible for us to change. Absolutely impossible for us in our human nature to change. For salvation is a divine act of God, it's not something that you can do on your own. You can't surrender yourself to live in obedience to God and keep that promise all the rest of your life. For what happens is we start and we fall away and we start and we fall away. There's something that has to happen inside of us that's greater and more powerful than we ourselves. And this is the act of faith. Faith is a secret that allows God to transform who we are from the person we used to be to the person he wants us to become. So I have to stop here. There are two words that are very important to understand. One is the word believe and the other is the word faith. And we use the word believe in a lot of different ways in our language because we use it to say well I believe in Superman. And when we say that we mean we believe that Superman exists somewhere in the universe in some way. But it doesn't necessarily have any impact on me. We use believe in that way. When the Bible uses the word believe it's far different than that to simply understand that something exists is not a part of what the Bible means by that word. In fact the word that we use the Bible uses for believe and the word the Bible uses for faith are really basically the same word. Faith and believe in the scripture comes from the same word. One is a noun and one is a verb. So that when you talk about believe as a noun and you talk about faith as a verb it's the same thing in God's eyes. What it means is this. If I believe something is true and I have faith that it's true I act on it. So it's like in the Bible it's saying when you believe you're saying I believe in God the creator of the universe who made everything that there is made all the rules by which the stars and planets operate and all those by which people live and he set these in stone so that they are the demands that God makes on anyone who believes that he is God. That he has all power all wisdom and all authority. So everything he says is right will be right from the time he said it throughout eternity. Everything that he says is wrong will be wrong from then throughout eternity. There is no changing in those things because God has decreed them and he is the ruler of everything in the world. He's the judge so that every one of us stand before him in our last days and he looks at us and he judges our lives based on whether or not we have accepted his authority and allowed him to direct and guide our lives. Whether we have believed in him. You are the one who tells us the right things. Our minds will tell us other things but you have told us the right things. Our desire tells us other things we need to do but you have told us the right things. He stands to judge each one of us based on whether or not we have believed what he said and whether we have had faith in him to trust him. You see believe and faith are connected. If you believe that God is the ruler of the universe with all wisdom and knowledge then you trust him. You have faith in him. His faith says simply to God you have more wisdom than I do. You understand things more than I do. I trust you to tell me what's right and I trust that if I do what's right you will help me. What God has is great wisdom and to have belief and faith in God you have to believe that everything he says in the scripture is the most wise and reliable thing in the world. You can't have faith in something you don't believe and trust in. And then you have to accept the idea that God cares for you. He loves you. The death of Christ on the cross is the most supreme evidence that God would do anything in the world for you to help you. He will not do everything you want him to do because a lot of things you want him to do are not good for you and they're not the right things for you but he will do everything that he can do to provide life for you. You have to believe that he loves you. His will is for good things to come to your life regardless of what the circumstances really are. So you have to have confidence in his wisdom. You have to have confidence in his love for you. And you have to have confidence in his power that whatever you do the power of God is going to enable you to do what you need to do and he's going to take care of you to defeat anything that would destroy you. If you have this kind of confidence in God you believe that that's who he is you can trust him then. Now there are two stories that I want to read this morning. They're stories that sort of allude to faith. They give the appearance in one of faith and what genuine faith is in the other. The first of the stories that I want to read is found in Luke chapter 18. If you'd like to find this in your Bible. A lot of times people think believing in God simply means that you believe that the things he said were true and that you believe that he is the one who should help you. But there's a dimension that comes with this and it is not only that you think these things are true in your head but they are shaping your life and your choices and the way you see the world. This kind of belief or faith shapes your life and it shapes your choices so that you give your life to God and you begin to think differently because you listen to what he says is true and you believe it and you begin to act differently because in each of these circumstances he says here's what I want you to do even though it's not what everybody else does. Here's the story. A certain ruler asked him good teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life. Why do you call me good Jesus answered. No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. Do not commit adultery. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not give false testimony. Honor your father and your mother. All these I've kept since I was a boy he said. When Jesus heard this he said to him you still lack one thing. Sell everything you have. Give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me. When he heard this he became very sad because he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked at him and said how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. Indeed it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. This man displayed a lot of the evidences that you see in someone who comes to salvation. The first step that happens was he was a man who knew there was something wrong with his life. He had all the money. He probably had a position of prestige in the community. But inside of himself he knew his life was not quite right. That's easy to look at people who violate all the commandments that he suggested to this man he should keep and say boy those people are off the deep end. But here's a man who kept all of those. But the Holy Spirit said to him there is something in your life that is missing. You have all the money. You have all these things that you're doing. You have prestige in the community. But you know that your life is not complete. That's what the Holy Spirit does. It's sometimes a knowing sense. Something's wrong. Something's not right with me. This is God's way of coming to you and saying I want to have you to trust me. That means that you haven't been trusting him before. Now Jesus starts by saying to him well I want you to understand that you call me good master but it's only God who's good and he's the one who defines what good is. You can't define that yourself. So he's going to show him that what he thinks is good is not necessarily what God thinks is good. So Jesus starts with a simple thing. He says here are the commandments. You know you should keep the ten commandments don't you? Yes you know that. And Jesus then begins to recite to him you'll notice not all the ten commandments but he starts with the second half of the ten commandments. He says to him you know that you should do what the commandments say. Don't commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not lie, honor your parents. All of those were sort of the second half of the ten commandments. How you treat the people around you. Now this man had been a religious man. He knew the commandments. He had been trying to keep them to the best of his ability. And in this way everyone who knew him would say this is a godly man. Look at how he treats his parents. He never lies to you. All these wonderful qualities that are consistent with what God wants. The man said I've done those since I was a little boy. But still he did not feel right about himself. He knew that there was something more to life than what he'd experienced. The conviction of the Holy Spirit was saying to him although you've done all these good things and everyone around you says you're a wonderful person and a very good person. You know there is something missing in your life. Jesus started with these commandments because the second half of the ten commandments are the result of what you do with the first few of those. You shall have no other gods before me. Nothing in this world will have authority over your life greater than me. That's the first one. And then he says as a result of that I don't want you to steal or to lie. I want you to obey your parents. But you see you can quit stealing and lying and obeying your parents and still not have God as the Lord of your life. Because these are things you choose to do because it's popular, it fits in, it seems reasonable to you. When it seems reasonable to you and you do it, you're in charge and not God. That's what circumstance this man found himself in. He was a very religious man. He knew when this uncertainty in his life came he should find some spiritual answer to it. So he came to Jesus and Jesus says you've done all these things but there is one thing that's missing. You have never said to God I will do anything in the world you ask me to do regardless of how difficult it is because I trust you. I trust your wisdom. I trust that you love me. I trust that your power will enable me to live even if I do what you tell me and it's dangerous to me. So Jesus then went to the heart of this issue. He knew from the man's presence with him that the most controlling factor in his life was his wealth and he had amassed his wealth. It was his treasure. So Jesus said here's what you need. Are you willing to allow God to tell you what to do with your money? So Jesus said here's the one thing you lack. Sell what you have. Give to the poor and come and follow me. God is not interested in his money. He didn't say give it to the temple. He didn't even say give it to me. He said do you trust God enough to believe that if you do what he tells you even if it seems disastrous to you that it will give you life in all of its fullness? Here was the test. Do you trust God more than you trust yourself? Do you trust that he's most wise in asking you to do this? Do you trust that even though you give up your wealth he will still love you enough to give you a life of fullness? Your wealth did not bring you fullness but what God has for you will bring you fullness. Do you trust him that he loves you enough that what he's asking you to do will not hurt you but it will complete your life? Do you believe he has the power to give you what you could not achieve on your own? And if so, you will have faith in him and you will trust him and you will sell what you have, give it away and come and learn how he wants you to live. The man was very sad, very sad. The idea is he was crushed with sadness, overwhelmed with sadness. He knew that he needed more than he had but he could not turn loose of what he was holding on to. Even knowing that what he was holding on to was not bringing him the fullness of life that he knew he needed to have. It was his inability to really trust God. He was a religious man. Everybody who knew him thought he probably was the best follower of God in the community. He was generous probably to giving to the temple and tabernacles of synagogues and yet when it came to this point he said to God, no, I cannot trust you. The story is not about money, it's about whether or not a person has faith that God's plan is really what you ought to have. The sad story. I want to read another story. This one's from Matthew. It's the story of Jesus. He's gone out into the world in his ministry, Matthew 26. The end of his ministry has come. He's done everything the Father wants him to do. He's taught what the Father told him to teach. He's lived with his disciples and told them the things that would make their lives different. And the Father's already told him that he's going to die. He's come to Jerusalem knowing that he's going to die and he's faced this terrible situation to know whether or not he's really following the will of the Father. If you know that God wants you to die at some point, you want to be sure that you die at the very point God wants you to and not before or not pass it by and go past what God wants. He's struggling with the will of God like all of us do and we're faced with choices, difficult choices. He's had the Last Supper and he already knows that Judas has betrayed him and the soldiers are going to come to get him and he's going to die. His ministry on this earth will be over. Not one of the disciples wanted his ministry to be over. No human being he knew thought it was a good idea for him to die. He was alone in feeling this was what God wanted for him. We don't know if he knew the suffering death on the cross that he would have. We don't know how much God had revealed to him at this point, but here is Jesus facing his death. Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane. He said to them, sit here while I go over there and pray. He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. This is another place in which he was crushed with sorrow. Just like the rich man, crushed with sorrow because he was looking at this terrific request that the Father was going to make of him. He was going to face death, the end of his life on earth. He'd only had three years to do this ministry. Is this the right time? Can I endure the pain and suffering that death will bring? He said to them, my soul is overwhelmed. You know what that means to be overwhelmed. Something is dumped on you in such a way that you have no idea if you can do it or if you can handle it or if you can take care of it. You don't often think of Jesus as being in a situation where he's crushed and overwhelmed. But here he was, overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. This is killing me, Jesus is saying. I feel like I can't go on. The pressure is so powerful. Stay here and keep watch with me. Going a little further, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, my Father, if it's possible may this cup be taken from me, yet not as I will but as you will. I don't know if you've ever felt the need, overwhelmed with your own sin or your desperate need to have an answer from God that you just fell flat on the floor and prayed with your heart torn. There have been a few times in my life where I felt like I couldn't even sit up and pray. I couldn't even kneel and pray. It seemed too audacious. It seemed as if I was in such need of God's presence that the only proper thing was me to lay flat on the ground with my face in the floor. God is so majestic and so overwhelming that I don't even deserve to stand up in his presence. I understand something of what Jesus felt, flat on the floor, his face buried in the ground, urgent in his need for God. My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. What he wanted was to be relieved of what he was facing, the death that he was facing, the terrible end of his life, and yet, not as I will but as you will. How different he is, see, from the rich ruler. Jesus didn't have anything to give to God other than just his life now, but even that he was not willing to withhold. Why was he willing to say, not as I will but as you will? He believed in the wisdom of the Father. That's why he listened to him all the time and did what he said. He believed that the Father loved him so that in asking him to do this, it was really in his best interest and everyone else's. He believed that God had the power to be able to give him life even after he died. The rich ruler, God didn't say he would live in poverty the rest of his life, but he couldn't see any way if he sold what he had that he'd have any more. He didn't trust God for the provision in the future for him. Jesus has such confidence that I think that you can do this, and you can even give me life when it's over. Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour, he asked Peter. Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak. He went away a second time and prayed, My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done. Jesus was praying a prayer of surrender to his own death. He wasn't asked to give up his money. He wasn't asked to give up his job, his home. He was asked to give up his life, the end of his life on this earth. Here's what faith is. I don't want to die. I'm overwhelmed with the thought of dying. I'm crushed with the idea that I have to give up this, my life in this instance. But I trust you because you wouldn't ask me to die if it wasn't in my best interest, your best interest, and the best interest of the world. I know that you're asking me to die, and I would feel like if you were asking me that that you had something against me. But I know you love me, and you're asking me to do this because it is the best thing for me, for you, and for the world. It's hard to feel loved when you're being asked to give up your life. But he never lost the awareness that the Father had his best interest at heart. And even though I give up my life, I believe that you have the kind of power that can take a dead body and raise it from the tomb, not only to raise it from the tomb, but raise it so it will live forever. I know no one has ever had this experience in the world before, but I believe you have that ability. So I believe you have that ability, and I have faith in you. This is the power that God gives to you when you say to him, take my life. The ability to be able to face life with courage because you trust God, and you're willing now to do whatever he asks you to do. You're willing to put aside habits that are in your life. You're willing to change your schedule to read the Bible every day and to pray every day. You're willing to come to church, and you're willing to teach a class when you've never taught in your life before. You're willing to invite people to come to church with you to hear the message that's changed your life. All these things you've never done before because they're not your nature or your character, but you say to God, I give you my life, and I'll do whatever you ask me to do. I will love those that hate me. I will forgive those that hurt me. I will not be cross or angry with people. Instead I will respond to them with love, compassion, and submission. Why can't I do all that stuff? Because if I do that, people will take advantage of me because my Father told me to. And He's smarter than I am, more wise than I am. And He loves me. He's not wanting me to be hurt. He loves me. He wants me to find a better life. And even though I submit to the people around me, and I'm nice to them when they're nasty to me, and they could hurt me, my Father has the power to protect me so I'm not afraid. I'm anxious because I've never had it happen before, but I trust Him. You see, you can come to church, and you can be very religious, keep half of the commandments or two-thirds of the commandments or 80% of the commandments and still not trust God. But what God is going to do in your life is He's going to look at those other two commandments, and the first thing He's going to say is, these are the things I want you to do. And He's going to ask you to do something that's dangerous, that's out of character with you, that you've not done before. It's going to be costly, and maybe even dangerous, because He wants to know if you trust Him, if you really believe in Him. And if you do, you will find life in all of its fullness. You can come to our church and be baptized, make a profession of faith, come to church every Sunday morning, night, and Wednesday, and never trust God. You come because you know it's the right thing to do, and you're going to do it because you want to, not because you know God has asked you to. It's when you know what God has asked you to do, and you see the cost of it, and you do it anyway, that your faith becomes evident and real. Maybe I'm talking to a lot of religious people, like the first man. You can reel off all the things you've done that are good, but deep inside you know there's some things you're not going to do, no matter what God says. You come to God that way, and you have a list of things that God doesn't want you to do, He writes them down, and He immediately begins to ask you to do them. He just wants to know if you trust Him. I know you wrote these down because you know you can't do them, and you don't want to do them, but if I ask you to do them, would you? Would you come to Bible study on Sunday night if I asked you to? Would you do it on Wednesday night if I asked you to? Would you read it every day if I asked you to? Or are you saying, God, here's the part of my life I'm going to give to you, but don't touch this stuff, that's all mine. That's what the rich ruler was, and gnawing inside of him, he knew that his life was not full and complete. You never find the fullness of God until you kneel and say, whatever it is, God, you tell me and I'll try to do it, because I trust your wisdom and not mine. I know that you love me, and you'd always ask what's best for me, and whatever you ask of me, you'll give me the power to do. And then your faith will make you whole. Would you bow, please, for a moment to pray? You have the courage to say to God now, is there anything in my life that needs to change? What I do with my money, what I do with my time, where I invest my life? If when you ask God that question, he says, well done, my good and faithful servant, you should have the great joy of knowing your life is what God wants it to be. But if there is in your mind something that hangs on, that seems real to you from him, take this with utmost seriousness. It is a matter of spiritual life or death. Now it will be hard, you won't want to do it, and your test will be here. Maybe God's asked you to work in the church, and you consistently said no. Did he tell you no, or did you say no? Maybe he's asked you to give money in some way to another, to his kingdom, and you said no, and you have good reasons, but you know he asked it. Maybe he's asked you to commit yourself to him, completely, not partially, but completely. You've been willing to give him part of your life, but not everything. Trust him. Like Jesus and the rich man, we stand before you knowing that you have something to ask of us, and we have a choice to make as to how we respond to what you ask. So we pray now for all of us, myself included, tell us what it is you want. Give us faith to say yes to you. If it's foolish, if it's dangerous, if it even seems impossible to us, give us the faith in you to say, your will be done, Lord. I'm going to ask the pianist to come and play a song, give you an opportunity to reflect on what God has been saying to you this morning. If there's a promise you need to make to God, and you want us to pray with you, I'll be here at the front. Ozzie will come and stand here, too, with me. And we will pray with you that you'll be able to keep the promise you make to God. If you've never committed your life to Christ, this is the most urgent thing you can do. Come today and say, Lord, I trust you with my life, whatever it is. Maybe God's told you this is the place you ought to be a member of church. But God is asking this for you to say, okay, I'm ready now to become a part of this family of God. Whatever God wants from you, this is the time in which you do it. In the name of Christ.