Jesus is the Savior

We continue with our Lenten sermon series this week where we are looking at who Jesus is. We have seen him as our redeemer, how Jesus was the one who paid the price for us on the cross; the righteous one, who not only made us righteous but offered us an example of how to lead a righteous life. and last week it was revealed that he was the giver of life. You can check out each of these sermons on our You Tube channel. This week we are looking at one of his names that he is probably best known for, we are focusing on Jesus as our Savior. Our scripture for today comes from Ephesians chapter 2:1-10.

2 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh m and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Please pray with me…

Have you ever been saved from death? Have you ever had a moment in your life where you literally believed that you were not going to make it? For me, I thought that moment was when I was little and ended up in the deep end of a swimming pool by mistake and sank to the bottom before I was scooped up and saved.

I say that I thought because I found out later that it was a recurring bad dream. As far as anyone knows, that event never took place. But it impacted my life for many years because I literally was afraid of the water until I finally came to the realization that what I thought had happened was just a dream. I had never actually faced death, but I had faced the realization of death.

Jesus saving us is not a dream. It is a reality. It is us being willing to turn our lives over to someone else. It is us being willing to come to the realization that we no longer want to try to make it on our own. It is us reaching up our hand and saying to God help me because I can’t get out of this on my own.

It is Jesus saying yes to our request. It is Jesus saying come and join me. It is Jesus saving us from the agony of the power of sin and releasing us into a peace that passes all understanding. We are living in a world where death is real and many of us have faced it in some way through the loss of loved ones.

But as our scripture points out we have also faced death through living in our broken world. We faced death because we had sin within our hearts and our minds and we were unaware of a way to be relieved of its burden.

We were stuck between a rock and a hard place much like those alive before Jesus’ death. We were living a life without any chance of relief. The message of today’s scripture is that Jesus changed that for us. Jesus brought life out of death through his death. He allowed humankind to be able to be alive again.

You may be in that situation right now. You possibly have not yet believed Jesus as your Lord and Savior or that he died on the cross to forgive your sins. If that is you, I want you to know that there is another way.

When we follow the ways of the world our focus is on ourselves. We are selfish. We choose our ways over the ways of God. We may choose to do things for others, but it is for our own self-gratification.

It is us wanting to feel good and so in order to do that we do things for others. This is not a bad thing, but it is not a God thing. It is a thing of the world. When we give our lives to Jesus, we should now want to serve others because we want to serve God.

We do this not to get people to become like us and believe what Jesus did for them. We do it to show the same love for others that God showed us through the death of Jesus on the cross.

God is always at work attempting to lead us towards a relationship with him. He is doing his part; it is just that some of us are unwilling to accept what he has done and is doing for us. It is choosing to follow the ways of the world.

The ways of the world say for us to gather as many things as we can. The ways of God says to love as many people as you can. The ways of the world says to do whatever you have to in order to succeed. Your success with God is based off of the good that you are doing for others.

There is a difference between the ways of God and the ways of the world. The difference is that it should not be about you. What you do should be about the one who first loved you. What you do should be about you deciding to serve God and serve those around you.

This is one of the reasons that many people believe that the church is failing the world. Christians believe what God has done for them, but we aren’t showing or sharing God’s love with others.

You could say that we are being humanly selfish with the grace given to us by God. We want to keep it for ourselves and aren’t willing to share it with others. John 3:16 does not say that Jesus came for this specific group of people.

It says that Jesus came to save “the world.” He came to save your best friend. He came to save your worst enemy. He came to save the neighbor down the street. He came to save the person who is in a Muslim country across the globe. Jesus loves us all and died in order to save us all.

This is so everyone can become alive in Christ. One of the reasons that God was willing to allow for us to live again was due to his mercy. God shows mercy to those that need mercy. Since the fall due to Adam and Eve humankind has been in need of mercy.

God showed especially the Jewish people his mercy time and time again. From the exodus when they didn’t trust him. To the times of the kings when they chose to have a human king reign over them instead of having God be their king. God always left a remnant. A chosen people to continue on in ministry with him.

It is through Jesus that God showed mercy to the gentiles. The Jews were God’s chosen people in which he hoped to reach the rest of the world. It took his son to die on the cross to make that possible. He allowed all people to be able to become a part of his beloved family. Jew and gentile both became heirs to Christ. All because of the mercy shown to us by God.

We are saved by grace. Verse eight reminds us that all we had to do was show faith in God through Jesus and ask for forgiveness and he did the rest. We are unable to work our way to heaven. We are only able to attain eternal life through grace. God does all the work we just need to believe that God’s work within us is possible.

We can discover that God had promised humankind this gift during the Old Testament times. Our first reading speaks of what would have come to fruition through Jesus when it says.

“I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. 16 In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior.’

This gift is given to us by God without any expectation that it will be reciprocated in any way. God wants us to know how much he loves us by allowing us to be loved by him. Jesus is the gift that keeps on giving.

Verse seven of our sermon scripture shows this when it speaks of God’s grace and how God “might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

God loved all of us so much that he wanted to be able to be in communication with us while we are on the earth but also when are time on earth ends. It is at this time that we can reside with God in heaven. God shows us both mercy and kindness through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

In chapter nine of the book of John Jesus speaks of spiritual blindness and that he came so that those that cannot see can see again. Until we are able by grace through faith to acknowledge Jesus as our Lord and Savior than we are blind to what Jesus did for us.

Believing in Jesus takes faith. It opens our eyes to new beginnings. Believing in Jesus clears our path for new journeys. Believing in Jesus awakens us to a life without death, to a life which includes eternal life.

We may not have to serve God, but we should choose to serve him because of what he has done for us. Verse ten tells us that we are God’s handiwork. We were not only saved by God through the death of Jesus, but we were created by God. We were created with a purpose. We were created in order to do good works. Again,not because we have to but because we want to.

We show this at Kirkersville by desiring to become closer to God, through a willingness to receive a greater understanding of God, and through going out into our communities and serving God. God deserves having us use our gifts to serve him.

We should desire to be in relationship with God and to serve him as our Lord. We were created with a purpose in mind. Verse ten ends reminding us that the good works that we do were prepared by God in advance.

We don’t end up serving God the way that we do by happenstance. We end up serving God the way that we do because we were created with the correct gifts to fulfill the calling that he created us to complete.

The saving grace offered to us as a gift from our God offers us mercy and shows us the love that God has for his creation. It also offers us hope where hope did not exist.

I heard a story of a man who got involved in a company right out of college and became very successful within that company. He worked his way up the corporate ladder very quickly. With each step he moved up the ranks. But each step up the corporate ladder included more stress. He dealt with that stress through going to the bar after work and as he would call it “destressing.”

This quickly became a destructive lifestyle, and it was not very long before he realized that he was going down the wrong path, but he also didn’t know how to change it. This was when he ran into a high school friend and they started talking about their lives and catching up since they had last seen each other.

It began with a discussion of this man’s successes, but he eventually brought up that he was beginning to struggle with where his life was going. This was when his former high school classmate began telling him about what Jesus had done for him and how through everything that has gone on in his life, he knows that he has someone that he can trust and can rely on.

That man gave his life to Jesus that day. His life of course didn’t change overnight but over time as he spent time with God and attended Bible studies so that he could receive a better understanding of God’s word his life things began to turn around.

Climbing the corporate ladder was no longer his priority. How much money he made was no longer the most important thing in his life. He didn’t leave the company, but he had found something to focus on outside of work besides the company. The one who ended up saving him, his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

There are many people out there in the world facing the same struggles. They have turned to alcohol, or drugs, or some other vice to help them deal with their problems. What we need to do when we are able is to let them know about Jesus.

That is where our Jesus stories enter in. We need to tell them how following Jesus has affected us and how Jesus wants to also be a part of their life. Jesus loves them as they are and desires to begin a relationship with them today.

We have a Savior that loves us named Jesus. Let us praise him and thank him today and every day. But let us also be ready to let those we meet know about the one who also desires to be their Savior.

Please pray with me…