Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 23:39-43, KJV
- Series: Alone (2017), no. 3
- Date: Sunday, November 5, 2017 (Morning)
- Venue: Trinity Baptist Church — Seminole, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
Listen Online
Text
Only One Way to God
We are going to be in Luke chapter 23 this morning. I was thinking last night as I was putting my chili on to simmer that I had to open some cans of Rotel to put in there. Don’t worry, it’s not too spicy. I used the mild.
That made me think of the first sermon I ever preached. I was fourteen or fifteen years old, and it was at a Friday morning before-school meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at our school. For some reason, I was brought in to be part of that in spite of the fact that there is nothing athletic about me.
As I prepared this message to preach to about two hundred kids, I decided to bring an object lesson about there being only one way to God, only one way to salvation, which is what we are going to talk about this morning. I don’t know that I really stole it, but I don’t know that I asked either. I swiped a can of Rotel out of my mother’s pantry and took it for my object lesson, fully intending to bring it back.
As I was showing these kids, I pulled a screwdriver out of my backpack. I am amazed I was allowed to bring these things into the school, but I pulled out a screwdriver and showed them that no matter how hard I tried, this flathead screwdriver could not open this can of Rotel. I said, “If you want what’s inside the can, there is a certain way you are going to have to get it.”
Then I pulled a hammer out of my backpack, put it on the table, and began lightly hammering this can of Rotel. Probably the only thing a lot of those kids remember from that is that it tore a small hole in the seam of the can, and a kid got pepper juice in his eye. It shot across the room. But you still couldn’t get the stuff out of the can.
Then I showed them the can opener. I said, “There is only one way to open this can with the food intact and get out what you want from it.” Don’t be a smart aleck and tell me there is another way. I said with the food intact. I could take a chainsaw and open the can, but you are not going to want to eat what’s inside afterward.
There is one way, and it was with the can opener. I was thinking about that last night as I was opening those cans of Rotel. Just like there is only one way to open that can with the food intact and get what’s inside out, there is only one way to come to God. He outlines for us what that is.
That is what we are going to talk about this morning as we look at Luke chapter 23. It is only through faith that we can stand justified before God. If you want to come to God, you have to go through Jesus Christ and come by faith, faith alone.
Luther’s Search for Peace
We have been looking at the Reformation and the life of Luther, and at some of the biblical doctrines that were rediscovered during that time. These are some of the things that we take for granted now. We say, “This is just what we believe, and everybody should believe it,” but almost nobody believed these things up until that time.
As I have told you, there were pockets of believers. There were pockets of faithful people who kept the flame of truth alive in the hills and valleys and deep in the forests. But for most of the Western world, the things we have talked about were almost unheard of: that the authority is from Scripture alone and not from church tradition, and that we are saved by God’s grace alone and that it has nothing to do with what we earn or deserve.
So too was the idea that we are saved through faith alone. We have talked some over the last few weeks about Martin Luther and his nailing of the list of ninety-five protests against the teaching of the Catholic Church to the door of his castle church. But it was earlier in his life that this whole thing got set in motion.
Luther spent most of his early life trying desperately to find peace with God. This was a man who, unlike so many in our day who just flaunt their sin, was acutely aware of his sin. It bothered him.
It seems like a lot of people today are immune to realizing their own sin. “Whatever I want to do is fine.” Luther looked at his own life and saw every sin he committed. He felt like each one dragged him further and further from God.
He saw God as full of judgment and wrath, and he feared falling into punishment. In some of his writings, I believe, he talks about seeing the stained glass and the paintings in his boyhood church, and seeing the monsters and the demons of hell, and being afraid of God’s judgment. He was afraid of falling into those things.
He was so overwhelmed by this that every sin he committed became part of this obsession with finding peace with God. He just couldn’t do it. His father sent him to school to become a lawyer. His father had struggled as a miner and wanted his son to go into a profession where he could make lots of money and support his parents in old age. So he sent him away to college to become a lawyer.
One day while Luther was traveling to school, he was caught outside in a thunderstorm. That thunderstorm changed his life. Lightning struck either a tree or the ground near him. It was one of those thunderstorms that, even in Oklahoma where we get thunderstorms all the time, would rattle you to the core.
Luther was already afraid, and when the lightning cracked and exploded near him, it sent him to the ground in fear. While he was there, he pled with God and some of the saints, and he promised that if God or these saints would spare his life, he would become a monk and serve God.
So he returned to school, but much to his father’s annoyance, he returned to school to study theology instead. His father wanted him to go and make millions as a lawyer, and Luther decided he was going to go where the big money is and go into ministry, which is not true unless you are one of the big TV preachers.
He hoped that this would help him find peace with God. That was what Luther was driven by. He realized what a sinful creature he was, and he realized the wrath and the judgment of God. He didn’t really understand the love and grace of God that go along with that, so he only saw half of God’s nature. But he thought, “Maybe this will help me find peace with God.”
The people around him at the time said he worked harder than anybody they had ever seen to try to find salvation. Luther even wrote of himself that if anyone could have earned heaven by the life of a monk, it was he. He was the hardest-working man in ministry in his time.
He gave away all of his possessions. He gave away everything he had, not that it was that much, but he gave it all away to the poor and lived on nothing. He would pray for hours every day, almost obsessively confessing every sin he could think of.
In Luther’s mind, if he forgot one sin, if there was one he had committed and forgotten, or even one he had thought and forgotten, and he did not confess it, then God would damn him to hell for eternity. So it became this obsessive thing. He had to pray for hours, trying to make sure he had come up with everything and had confessed correctly.
He would fast for long periods of time, hoping that would help him earn God’s favor. He would even punish himself for his sins, thinking that maybe if he punished himself, God would not punish him. So he would deprive himself of sleep and even subject himself to harsh cold, refusing to use a blanket at night, because if he suffered enough, maybe God would forgive him.
Folks, he would even whip and beat himself. There are still people who do that today. Luther would whip and beat his own body, hoping that his suffering would free him from his sins, but none of it worked. Most of you understand that. It didn’t help.
He grew more and more desperate, and he grew more and more frustrated. He tried everything he could think of, and it only made him more desperate and more terrified. He felt the weight of his sins even more, and he felt the condemnation and judgment of God even more.
Luther even said later on that during this period of time, his soul ate and drank nothing but eternal punishment. That is a pretty bleak existence, isn’t it? Imagine the guiltiest you have ever felt, multiply it by ten, and then say you feel that guilty over everything you have ever said, done, or thought. Imagine carrying that around with you every day.
Imagine carrying around the idea that God could never forgive you, or that you could never work hard enough for God to forgive you. That gives you some idea of what Luther was going through. But his life changed after he had graduated with his degree in theology, became a professor at the university in Wittenberg, and led a study on the book of Romans.
He encountered Romans 1:17, which is written on your bulletin at the back: “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” Those who were just before God were those who came to God by faith, Luther realized. This was also a quotation from the Old Testament, Habakkuk 2:4.
As he read this passage, it took him a while to wrestle with it and to understand it. But eventually God opened his mind and understanding to realize what this passage was teaching. Luther said he felt as though the gates of heaven had been flung open wide and his soul had been born again.
Have you ever had those times when you feel weighted down by something, either guilt or stress or worry or what have you? Something just presses down on you, and then in one moment it is lifted away, and you feel like a new person. I have felt that, when that worry is gone in an instant. It works out. That is how he felt spiritually. He felt that he was a new man, that he was practically born again in that moment.
Justified Through Faith Alone
As Luther studied this passage and began to study the rest of Scripture in light of it, he realized that all his efforts and all the work he did could not move him one step closer to God. The same is true for us. All our efforts, all the stuff we do, all the religious whatnot, cannot move us any closer to God.
As we read last week, the Bible proclaims very clearly that God offers salvation to undeserving sinners for one very simple reason: God himself is gracious. It is not because we deserve it. It is because grace is his nature. It is who he is. He is gracious, therefore he shows grace.
Salvation is offered by grace alone. And we receive that salvation by faith alone. There is not a shortcut. There are not several extra steps we go through. We receive it by faith, or through faith. We receive it when we believe his promises.
So the Bible teaches that it is by faith alone that we are justified. Don’t get hung up on the big theological words. Justification simply means that when God justifies us, he declares us right before him.
We know that people try to justify things to themselves all the time. To justify something is to make it okay. A policeman pulls you over for going ninety in a fifty, and you start making excuses. You are trying to justify going ninety in a fifty. You are trying to make it okay.
Justification for us means that God looks at us and says, “All right, you are off the hook. Your slate is wiped clean.” So don’t get too hung up on that word. It basically means that we stand with a clean slate before God. We stand forgiven before God.
That comes to us by grace alone, through faith alone. It means that God forgives our sins, that he chooses to no longer hold them against us, and that he deliberately views us as righteous. Not because of what we have done, but because Jesus paid for our sins on the cross, and because we believed God’s offer and God’s promise of salvation.
Through his sacrifice, Jesus paid for man’s sin, and his righteousness can be credited to our account. The Bible tells us that we have no righteousness of our own, even the best of us. Even Luther, with as much religious activity and as many good works and as much prayer and fasting and giving as he did, had no righteousness of his own.
It was the righteousness of Jesus Christ that was credited to Luther’s account, and it can be credited to yours today. It is the righteousness of Jesus that he puts in us and puts on us that allows us to stand whole before God, to be at peace with God.
It is through faith that we are justified, and this is taught throughout the Bible. This is not a new idea that was developed in Romans. It goes all the way back to Genesis. We look at one of the earliest men the Bible says much about, Abraham.
Genesis says, and I like the way it is written in the Christian Standard Bible, “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” Abraham was not a perfect man, was he? Abraham did some things that were really wrong.
God promises you a son, and you decide, “God has not moved quickly enough, so I am going to take matters into my own hands and have a child with the maid.” That is the kind of thing that could or should wind you up in trouble and out of office if you are a politician, and it is getting some guys sued right now in Hollywood. Abraham was not always a good man in every portion of his life.
But the Bible says that God looked at Abraham and called him righteous because of faith, because he believed God. So this is not a new idea. It is taught from the earliest pages of the Bible all the way through the last: that we stand righteous and justified before God for one simple reason, faith.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus taught the importance of faith. The day of his crucifixion, I think, gives us one of the clearest illustrations of the importance of faith, especially as it relates to justification. So if you haven’t already, turn to Luke chapter 23, starting in verse 39.
The Thief Who Had Nothing but Faith
In this passage, Jesus had been nailed to the cross, and there were two thieves crucified with him, one on either side. Jesus prayed for his accusers while they mocked him. After they hung him on the cross, that wasn’t enough for them. They mocked him. They beat him. They abused him in every way they could imagine.
Eventually, one of the men being crucified on either side of him began to mock him too, which is a bizarre thing to do when you consider that he was being crucified as well. Verse 39 says, “And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.” But the other answering rebuked him, saying, “Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?”
This thief who was mocking Jesus had enough problems of his own, didn’t he? He had been nailed to a cross too, and he was hanging there mocking Jesus. It is like I tell my children when one of them complains that the other one is not doing something right: “You have a full-time job just being Benjamin. Don’t try to be in charge of Madeline as well.” And really, more often it is the mother hen: “You have a full-time job just being Madeline. Don’t worry about what the other one is doing.”
This man had more than enough on his hands, more than enough on his plate to keep him busy without worrying about what Jesus was doing. But he decided to pile on as well. I don’t know what his reason was. Maybe he felt like it justified him a little if he could make Jesus look as bad as he was.
Maybe he thought, “Hey, I may be a thief, but at least I am not a lunatic who thinks I am the Son of God. I am with you people.” That was not going to do anything for him. Whatever his motivation was, he began to mock Jesus.
He says, “If thou be Christ.” That is not Jesus’ name. That is his title. It means the Messiah. “If you really are the Messiah, if you really are the promised one of God, then come down off the cross and bring us with you.”
But don’t mistake that and think it is a request for Jesus to take him off the cross. That is not a plea for mercy. It is more of an accusation. When he says, “If you are,” that “if you are” really means, “You are not.” “You are not the Messiah, because you can’t take us down off the cross with you.”
It is almost like he is daring Jesus while he is mocking him. He had forgotten who he was and where he was, but the other thief had not. The other thief had a little more sense about him, and he rebuked this man. He said, “What are you doing? Do you not even fear God? How can you sit there mocking this man when you are in the same boat he is?”
He asked him, “How can you not fear God?” They were receiving the physical consequences of a life of sin, and this thief realized they were about to receive the eternal consequences as well. This was a man who realized, “I have messed up.” He realized his life of sin had not gotten him anywhere positive, and it still would not.
Starting in verse 41, he says, “And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.” Then he said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” The second thief recognized that he was a sinner.
He was not throwing a fit about the consequences he was receiving. He was not saying, “This is not fair.” He admitted that he had done wrong.
When somebody does something crazy or evil nowadays, society likes to sit around and say, “They were a victim of their environment. It was their poverty. It was their lack of education.” No, it wasn’t. It was the sin nature.
When I do something wrong, it is not because my parents spanked me and hurt my little feelings when I was a child and now I am acting out. It is the sin nature. Let’s get clear on that.
I was reading Charles Colson’s book The Faith this week, and he was talking about this idea. Charles Colson, if you are not familiar with him, was one of Nixon’s hatchet men during Watergate and went to prison. And he said, “I deserved it.” He spent time in prison, encountered Jesus Christ while he was there, became a Christian, was born again, and spent the rest of his life in ministry to people who were in prison.
He has now gone on to be with the Lord, but he spent the rest of his life in prison ministry. He said that as he talked to people in prison about why they were there, more often than not, the answer he got was, “Because of sin.” They understood why they were in prison. Even if society wants to say, “It was lack of education,” or “It was poverty,” ultimately, our problem is the sin nature.
This thief recognized it. The thief on the other side was trying to make excuses and mock Jesus. This man said, “No, I am a sinner. We are here justly. We are here rightly. We should be here.” He says, “We receive the due reward of our deeds.”
In other words, “This is what we deserve,” which I would actually say crucifixion is not what you deserve for stealing. But in their legal system, it was. He said, “This is what we get. But this man has done nothing amiss. This man did nothing wrong.”
How can you mock him when we are up here receiving the same penalty he is? We are about to die, and we deserve it, but he did nothing wrong. How do you justify that in your mind? Are you that unafraid of God?
This was a man who realized what an awful human being he had been, what an awful life he had lived. He realized that it was a life tainted by sin, and that he deserved every consequence he incurred. That is a sobering point to come to: to realize your sin and to realize what you deserve for your sin.
Yet he admitted that Jesus had done nothing wrong. What this tells me is that he believed Jesus was who he claimed to be. The charge Jesus was crucified for was blaspheming by claiming to be the Son of God. The Romans had their own reasons for putting Jesus on the cross, but it was the instigation of the Jewish leaders who lost their minds because Jesus claimed to be the Son of God.
They pressured the Romans into crucifying him. Jesus was not there for being a revolutionary. Jesus was not there for any other reason but that, according to them, he had blasphemed and said he was the Son of God. That was the charge. And for this man to say that Jesus had not said or done anything wrong, he was admitting that he believed Jesus was exactly who he claimed to be.
Even in his sin, he believed that Jesus was exactly who he claimed to be. This is one of my favorite stories in all of Scripture. In one of the books I have written, I wrote a few paragraphs about it, and I have them here in my notes because I want to read them to you. I don’t think I could say it any better off the top of my head today than I did deliberately then.
In his desperation, this thief turned to Jesus with a humble but audacious request: “Remember me.” This man had lived the life of a common criminal. He was no one, nothing. He thus found himself caught, condemned, and despised by society.
This pitiful creature was facing the end of his earthly life, and he knew it. He had only one hope. He saw Jesus Christ about to suffer in the same manner as him, but he knew that Jesus was innocent and believed that he really was the Son of God.
With that, he cried out to the Savior. He had no good deeds upon which to bargain with the Almighty. He had no incentive with which to earn God’s favor, and he had no time left to reform his life, to serve God, or to do great things for the kingdom.
Empty-handed and with no other hope, he simply placed all of his trust in Jesus Christ. He called out to him in great faith, the faith of one who saw the gravity of his situation and clung to Jesus as his only resort for rescue. He asked with no right to do so, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” “Master, don’t forget me,” was his presumptuous request.
That is what he was doing. He was putting his entire faith in Jesus Christ. He was putting all of his eggs in one basket, as we like to say. What you need to understand this morning about this exchange is that the thief is expressing nothing but faith.
I talked to you last week about the prodigal son. He had this whole speech. He didn’t get to give it, but he had this whole speech rehearsed where he tries to offer his father a deal: “Maybe I can come back as a servant.” This man doesn’t even have that. There is no time left for him to be a servant of Jesus.
He has nothing. There is nothing for him to give but faith. He believes that Jesus Christ is his only hope for salvation, and he is placing all of his bets, if you can allow me to say it that way, on the Savior who is about to die for him.
You have seen on television shows—and I hope none of you have seen it in casinos—that they have the roulette wheel, and somebody says, “I want to go all in on this number.” They take the big stack of chips and put it all in. It is either win or lose. There is no going back at that moment. That is what he is doing here with Jesus. He is placing all his bets on Jesus.
Jesus said to him in verse 43, “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” That is a pretty amazing interaction. What did the thief have to offer him? Nothing but faith.
In spite of that, what was Jesus’ answer to him? “You are going to spend eternity with me. Not only that, but it starts today. Today you will start eternity with me.”
Notice what this conversation means. This man has been given the greatest gift any of us could ever be given. He has been given eternal life. He didn’t deserve it, but he was given it. His sins were instantly forgiven.
Jesus did not have to say, “Let me think about it.” His sins were instantly forgiven, and he was promised eternity with Jesus because Jesus’ blood was the payment for his sins. Jesus did all the heavy lifting here. Jesus did all the work. The only thing required on the man’s part was faith.
He came to Jesus completely empty-handed. Because of his faith, Jesus said, “Today you will be with me in paradise. You will spend eternity with me.” The man did not have to work for it. He did not have to jump through hoops. He did not have to play religious games. All he did was have faith, and his slate was wiped clean. Yours can be too.
Faith, Not Religious Performance
It still puzzles me why that is so difficult for us to accept and so difficult for us to receive. I couldn’t remember who said it at first, but Brother Greg said it in the last week: if the Bible told us that the way to salvation was to get out on I-40 and push a peanut with your nose all the way to town, you wouldn’t be able to get down the highway because everybody would be saying, “Yes, that is what I need to do.”
That is brilliant, and that is the truth. If the Bible said, “Get on one leg and hop up and down and turn around counterclockwise every Thursday until you pass out,” everybody would be trying to do that because we think there has to be something for us to do. It is a pride thing. There has to be something for me to do.
God has made it so simple. If we can get past our pride, realize there is nothing we can do, and realize Jesus has done everything necessary for our salvation, then we can simply take him at his word and believe. Believe that it is all true, and place our faith in him.
Say, “I am not going to try to trust in my works. I am not going to try to trust in the fact that I am a church member, or that I give, or that my dad was a preacher, or my grandpa was a deacon, or that I have done nice things, or that I have been baptized, or that I have taken the Lord’s Supper, or that I am kind to animals.” Whatever it is that you are thinking could get you into heaven, stop trying to put your trust in that and place all your faith in the fact that Jesus Christ died for you.
Take your faith and put it there entirely. It is that simple. This story illustrates for me, in a way I cannot imagine being any clearer, God’s treatment of those who respond to his offered grace with faith. God offers grace to us today. God offers to forgive us even though we do not deserve it.
Those who will look at that offer and respond in faith will find that God stands more than ready to forgive and to accept them into his family. Folks, you need to know this morning that sinners are justified by faith alone. Jesus didn’t come to justify good people. He came to justify sinners, and he does not do it through works. He does it by faith alone.
Here is the bottom line. We are incapable of doing anything so good that it erases the sin that we have done. Mark my words—actually, not my words, mark the Bible’s words: “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
There is nobody sitting in this room, and nobody who has ever walked the face of the earth and breathed the air on this planet other than Jesus Christ, who was without sin. We have all disobeyed God, and we have all disobeyed God many, many, many times. And when we come along and do something good, we do not get extra credit for that. We are only doing what we are supposed to do.
I give the example all the time that if I were to kill somebody and stand before Judge Ralph back there, and he said, “What do you have to say for yourself?” and I said, “Look at all the other people I didn’t kill,” I do not get extra credit for that. That is just what I am supposed to do.
So when we look at God and say, “Look at all the other good stuff I have done and all the bad stuff I have not done,” it does not erase the wrong we have done. We are justified not by works, but by faith alone. Galatians 2:16 says, “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ.”
It continues, “Even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” He said you can’t do it. You can’t follow the law. You can’t follow the Ten Commandments well enough for God to accept you.
That really is the point of the law: to show us something we cannot do. I forget how many pages long the federal code is, the list of laws and regulations that the federal government has, but I have heard a statistic that the average American, without knowing it, violates dozens and dozens of federal laws and regulations every day. I am starting to think that the point of the federal government is to show us that we can’t follow the law because it is so complicated.
That really is the point of God’s law in one sense. It shows us how far short we fall of God’s standard of absolute perfection. We can’t do it. We cannot be perfect enough or good enough for God to accept us. Sinners are justified by faith alone.
What Faith Means
The question we need to answer this morning, in the last few minutes we have remaining, is this: what is faith? What does that mean? Faith is not just belief that God exists, or that Jesus exists, or that he is real.
Those things matter. They are a start, but they do not get us all the way there. That is not all faith is. James tells us that even the demons believe there is one God and tremble. They believe God is real. They know it better than we do. They have been kicked around by him enough times that they ought to know he is real.
Yet there is not a demon in hell or on earth today who is going to be in heaven because of what Jesus Christ accomplished at the cross. It is not enough that we believe there is a God or that we believe Jesus was a real person. As a matter of fact, faith is not just about agreeing to any set of facts.
We need to believe that we have sinned. When I say believe, I mean know it to be true—not only in your mind, but down in your heart, in your gut, wherever you want to talk about it. We need to know and believe that we have sinned against God and that we deserve God’s wrath.
If God were to punish us, it would not be because he is unfair. We deserve it. I have quit telling my children, “I am going to give you a spanking.” I am not giving it to them. They have earned it. So that is the language we have chosen to use in our house. Sometimes I slip up and forget, but God doesn’t give us hell. We earn it. God doesn’t give us death. We earn it.
We need to realize that we have sinned against God and that we deserve the wrath and punishment that come for that. We also need to believe that Jesus paid for our sins in full on the cross. I hear people say all the time that they believe Jesus died on the cross. “He died for mankind.” That is half of it.
You need to realize that he died to pay for your sins, not just everybody’s sins in the abstract. He died to pay for your sins. We need to believe that Jesus is our only hope for forgiveness and salvation. He is not one among many.
I saw a statistic this week where they were polling different churches and denominations. According to this poll, either 56 percent agreed or disagreed—the number was way too close to the middle—that Southern Baptists believe there may be many ways to God. I don’t care if that means 56 percent believe there are many ways to God, or if it means 44 percent believe there are many ways to God. I cannot remember which way the question was worded. That is too many.
How is that possible? I don’t know if we are not preaching clearly enough, or people are not listening, or what is happening. There is one way. That is not my opinion. That is what Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
In Galatians, Paul just said that he was justified only by Jesus Christ in a way that he could not have been justified by works. We need to believe, down in our gut, that Jesus Christ is our only hope for forgiveness and salvation. He is not one of many. He is the only one.
Then we need to put our full trust in him. Once we know that these things are true, once we believe with everything within us that these things are true, the other element of faith is putting our trust in him. Many of us have probably heard people say, “Yes, I believe he died for me, but I am just not ready to trust him. I would have to give up too much.”
There actually comes a point where we have to throw our hands up and say, “I trust you. It is all you.” To use that analogy again, we put all of our bets on Jesus. I hate using that analogy because it sounds so trifling. It makes it seem unimportant, as though I am just going to put my chips here and see what happens. That is really not what I am talking about.
I am talking about going all in and putting your trust in Jesus, knowing there is no plan B. Here is the point of the message this morning: believing that the lifeboat can save you is agreement, but climbing in the lifeboat is faith.
If you are drowning and somebody at the Coast Guard sends out a lifeboat or a life raft, you can believe all day, “That thing is going to save me. I even believe that thing is my only hope.” But if you sit there and tread water, that is ridiculous, isn’t it? Agreeing all day that the lifeboat is your only hope does not really do anything. Faith is when you climb into the lifeboat.
This morning, you need to realize that God offers salvation to you already paid for in full. Your response to the offer God makes is either to reject it or accept it. But if you are going to accept it, you do not accept it and get it by doing good things.
You accept it by faith, by believing that God is telling the truth in his offer of salvation and by putting all of your trust in Jesus Christ and the offer that he makes. Folks, we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone. And next week, we will talk about the Reformation doctrine of salvation being in Christ alone.