Salvation
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Hey everyone, and welcome back!
For anyone who is new, my name is Cody…if you need anything at all…
So, if this is your first time here…or it’s been a while…let me tell you what things are like around here on a Thursday night.
Cafe
Worship
Teaching
Community Event
This is just the tip of the iceberg…and that’s how we want it
C-Groups, pockets of friends hanging out, sitting together on Sundays, retreats, missions trips…If you’re coming here hoping and praying that God will grow you in your faith…This is me…promising you, that that can and will happen here if you show up to grow up.
So that’s a little bit about College Night here at Coram Deo, but let’s get into what we are here to do right now. Get in God’s word together.
Tonight we start our series in the book of Jonah. An amazing Old Testament book found in the minor prophets. And we are going to spend this week and next week going through a bit of an introduction. So you ready for it?
Good.
I’m gonna pull a fast one on ya…open your bibles, to the book of Romans. That’s right, we are starting our series in Jonah…by starting in Romans. You’re gonna get it once I start explaining it…but I promise..everything that I am preaching through tonight will lay the foundation for all that we will experience in Jonah.
9 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. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
So the book of Jonah is a story of God calling an unwilling prophet to go to a foreign country and preach to this city of people to repent and turn to God.
At the start of the book is a call to evangelize, a call to preach, and at the utmost center of the book, it’s main theme…is the focus and revelation of God as a God of all nations, and a God who is compassionate and concerned for the sin of not only the Jews, but the whole world.
The book of Jonah is an Old Testament book that shows us the compassionate, saving nature of our God.
And I feel, that it would be an absolute shame and disgrace upon my preaching ministry here to not walk you through the concept of a saving and compassionate God.
It would be wrong of me, to preach for the next several weeks of Jonah going to the Ninavites that they may be saved, without giving you a chance to be saved…or without giving you a chance to grow in your appreciation and understanding of the salvation you have received.
So that’s what God wants for us tonight. To grow in our salvation…whether it’s to step into it for the first time, or grow up further into it.
Tonight, I’m calling the message:
Salvation
And I want to answer three questions in regard to the topic of salvation. And here’s the first one…
Why do I need it?
Look back with me at our passage tonight…
Look at how many times it says the word saved in the first few verses.
Read Through It
There’s all this talk about how to be saved, which in itself is implying that there is a need to be saved.
If you’ve read through the book of Romans at all, you might know that Paul spends a large chunk of the first part of the letter explaining how we need to be saved because we have all sinned and fall short of the Glory of God (Romans 3:23)
But instead of reading Paul’s explanation of things…let’s go to the source, I want to show you from the original text itself why we need to be saved. Turn to the book of Genesis.
Read Gen. 3:14 to the end after explaining context
I think most of you are familiar with this story.
Especially in America, almost every citizen is aware that Christians believe we are sinful because Adam was sinful.
How many would agree with that statement?
We are sinful because Adam sinned?
Cool. So we’ve answered the question…sorta, but I want to ask you, how exactly does that work?
I want to explain it in two ways to you today. One that I think is more common for us to have thought through…and one that I pray brings fresh perspective to you…
It’s really, two ways to think about the same concept. And it’s two ways that scripture talks about it.
Federal Headship
12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—
Explain
2. Sold into Slavery
Explain this passage as you go along
16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So, why do you need salvation? Because you need freedom.
Because we are slaves to sin.
Because you need someone to break your chain of bondage to sin. Because our father Adam sold us into slavery and bent us towards death and sin.
And I know you know what I’m talking about…you feel it…you feel the shame…the guilt…the disgust of doing the things you don’t want to do and yet you do…
For some of you you’ve never felt that freedom because you’ve never turned your eyes to Christ…for others of you, you have been set free but you keep on going back to your chains…setting them back on your wrist and acting like you were never set free in the first place, serving the same master that you have since you were born, the same master that Adam sold us into…
So do you feel it? Do you feel why you need it?
So if you’re feeling it, the natural question is…how do I get it?
How do I get it?
Back to Romans 10 with me.
How do you get saved?
Confess with your mouth
Notice how this is an action. To speak to is to do. This isn’t something that you just think…this is something to be done, something to be declared.
And what is to be declared?
That Jesus is Lord
Lord here in the greek is Kyrios, which literally means Lord and Master. Do you see the connection? When scripture says to declare Jesus as Lord, we are to declare him as master of our lives!!
We are not slaves to the master of sin, but rather we are slaves to righteousness under the master of Jesus.
When we declare him master we are saying that we will follow him, our actions will reflect him, our heart will yearn for him.
When we confess him as lord we are also confessing that we use to have sin and death as our lord, but now we want him.
But it doesn’t stop there, there’s a second part. We also need to..
Believe in your heart
This is so crucial, because this part of the passage shows us that our salvation has to be so much more than just what we say and do…but it needs to penetrate the heart.
“According to scripture, the heart is the centre not only of spiritual activity, but of all the operations of human life”
For us to believe something in our heart means that the belief has fundamentally, changed us to the very core of who we are.
So this scripture is saying that at the very core of who we are as a human, we need to believe this next thing, and what is that?
That God raised Jesus from the dead.
That God did the saving work in your life. It wasn’t you that raised Jesus from the dead, it was God. It wasn’t you who has the power to overcome death and sin…it’s God who has the power to do that, and he did that through Jesus.
To believe that God raised Jesus from the dead is to believe that Jesus is more than just a master to follow, but that he’s your literal savior. He’s the one who makes salvation possible, he’s the one who overcomes sin…
To believe that he’s been raised from the dead to believe the miraculous truth that you are saved by the grace of God through faith in the son of God…
Don’t believe me? Look at verse 10.
10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
Your belief is what justifies you, it’s what makes you right before God in the eternal courtroom. Where he is the judge and you are on trial.
And your confession is what confirms it. Your confession is what deems you saved, because your confession stems from your belief because…
34 You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
Give them a moment to be saved, or to recommit.
Alright, now, lastly…the question that must be connect to how do I be saved…
What do I do with it?
11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
Preach it.
Let’s go verse by verse.
Romans 10:14 (ESV)
14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?
So, people can’t call on Jesus if they don’t believe in him.
And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?
People can’t believe in Jesus if they aren’t hearing about him.
And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
People aren’t going to hear about him if we aren’t talking about him.
15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
And people aren’t going to talk about him unless they are commissioned and sent to do so.
This certainly applies to us as a church to send out missionaries to the unreached nations for the glory of Christ among the nations…
But this also applies to you right now, as I am calling you, commissioning you that if you’ve been saved that I am sending you. I am sending you to the QCA, to change it.
I’m sending you out into Ambrose, and Augie, and Scott, and Blackhawk, and your work places to share Jesus Christ, and bring people here who want to know him more.
I’m calling you, each and every one of you…to not let Coram Deo be a bubble that you retreat to to make you feel safe, but rather let it be a beacon of light that you find peace in but want others brought to it as well…
I’m calling you to not only rest in trying to get people here, but to physically and consistently speak of Jesus to people outside these walls. To open the bible with them and show them who your Lord and Master is…and how he can be there Lord and Master.
I am calling you…to be the opposite of Jonah.
I told you we’d get back to how this all connects.
Let’s end our time in the book of Jonah.
Jonah 1:1–3 (ESV)
1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
God called Jonah to preach, sent him to preach, to evangelize, to bring the good news of God’s compassion and love and salvation to all who call on his name…
And Jonah refused.
Jonah disobeyed.
And we will get more in this next week…but guys…if there’s anyone in the bible you want to be like…it’s not Jonah…
Jonah is not a man to follow after, so don’t start be sitting in your chair all semester and never leaving it to bring the light and life of Jesus to others.
Illustration about black soldiers fighting?