SOS
April 4, 2010
Psalm 121:1-2 I will lift up my eyes to the hills-- From whence comes my help? My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth.
SOS is the title of my sermon and a term we all have heard of. It is the international Morse Code Distress signal. It also became associated with the phrases, “Save our ship, or save our souls”. It is a cry for help. People go a lot of places looking for help.
It's funny how when you need help a lot of times you can't find anyone and when you don't it, you get overwhelmed. For example, I deal with a local furniture store, selling them their office equipment and I can't get two feet in the door without some, usually several, sells people approaching me and asking me if I needed any help.
Then I can go down the road a little at one of the local chain lumber stores and I feel like sometimes laying on the floor, faking a heart attack, to get someone to help me.
People everywhere are looking for help. There is hardly a day that goes by that you don't see or hear of someone looking for help. You see the people hold up signs along the highway looking for help. We have people who contact the church all the time looking for help. Some go from church to church, much to the shame, scaming them. They usually have a sob story to back up the reason they are in the shape they are in, making it hard to determine who really needs the help and who is just wanting.
Often times people look to God for help. They say, that other than church, the hospital emergency room is where Gods name is used the most. People in times of emergencies cry out, “Oh God...Help me!”
The good news is that God wants to help each and every one of us. As our text states, “Our HELP comes from God!” Today I want to tell you how to get the help everyone needs. But to have the peace and joy that Jesus intended for all of us, there is a process. The first and most important thing that you need to do is...
You need to be SAVED!
Now I am not saying that God only helps His own. When I say “His own”, I am talking about those who are Christians, those who have a relationship with Him. But I am saying that if you are not a Christian, you may believe in God but you have no personal relationship with Christ; Then you may ask for a million dollars and God could give that to you. Or you may ask God to help you out in a time of need, and He may do that. You can ask Him for anything and He may give it to you, but without Him, you have nothing.
Mark 8:36 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?
What good does it do if God or anyone else helps you if you lose your own soul? What does that mean when it says lose your soul? Christians and church are known to have their own language. I sell copiers for a living and almost all of them now are what we call “connected”. They are you printer, maybe your fax, they are connected with your network. And our company has three what I call “Propeller Heads”. They are the ones who come in and talk to your IT people and connect the two. They may sound like everyday people but get them together with someone who knows IT and they speak a language of their own. “IP, USB's, want to be's”. They understand each other but I sure don't.
Christians often do the same thing.
One of the most well known verses in the Bible is found in John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
But in the verses prier to that, we read about a Pharisee named Nicodemus who came to Jesus by night and when he questions Jesus about all the things that He had done, Jesus responds with John 3:3 Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
Nicodemus probably scratched his head like I do when the propeller heads talk. How can a grown man be born again? Then Jesus tells him in John 3:5-6 Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Born of water is talking about the physical birth. A woman will say, “My water just broke, time to go”. Born again is born in the Spirit. It means a new birth into a personal relationship with Christ.
So let me tell you real plain how to help yourself by being saved. I'll put it in tator creek for you.
Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
We all have sinned. There is no one who is perfect. We may have some who are better than others , but it only takes one sin to separate us from a righteous God. They say the first step to many addictions is to admit that you have a problem. You must admit you are a sinner. You must see your need for a Savior.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, When I think of wages, I think of a something we have earned. We work so we earn a paycheck. We earn our wages. So when you think of it like that, we deserve to die. And the death that it speaks of here is not the physical death we all will experience one day. Unless the Lord returns, one day I may be doing your funeral or you may be attending mine. We all die. Hebrews 9:27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,
The death that is the wages for our sin is a spiritual death. That is the judgment we all must face. Spiritual death means to be eternal separation from God in a place called hell. Hell is not some big party with your fiends. It is a place of eternal torment. But the verse does not stop there. “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The alternative to spending eternity in hell is to spend eternity in heaven with Jesus Christ our Lord. To do so then we read in Romans 10:9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
It does not say, try to live a good life and make sure that your good out weighs the bad. It does not say to go to church or pray or read your Bible. It's simple. Admit you are a sinner. Believe that Jesus is who He said He was and that He did what He said He would do. He came and willingly gave His life to pays for the punishment of our sins. And we accept that gift. And then Confess our sins and ask Him to come into our lives. That leads to the next point. The first step to help is to get saved. The next step is...
Be OBEDIENT!
Not only do you need to be saved, but you also need to be obedient. Here is the reason why. Once you enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Then you receive a helper.
John 14:15-16 "If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever--
That helper is the Holy Spirit. When you enter that personal relationship then you love God and you try to be obedient by keeping His commandments. Not that you will be perfect, you still will sin. But that you receive the help to live the life that is pleasing to God.
Becoming a Christian does not mean that your trouble will all go away. It means that you will have someone with you to HELP you through those troubles. And when we are disobedient, then we grieve the Holy Spirit. We make it hard for Him to do His job.
The person who knows that no matter what happens to them; The phone call in the middle of the night: The news from the Doctor: Everything will be OK because God is on their side. Hebrews 13:6 So we may boldly say: "The LORD is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?"
Sometimes people cry out for help when they are the ones that got themselves in the mess they are in anyway. Sometimes the trouble that you are experiencing may be the result of God allowing it to bring you back to Him.
Think of it like you would your own kids. When we get saved we become adopted into God's family. If you have two kids, one tries to do right and please you and the other one is always giving you trouble and will not listen to a thing you say...and both of them come and ask you for something...who are you more likely to give them what they ask for.
Hebrews 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
We need to be saved, then we need to be obedient, and one of the most important ways that we can do so is by my last point. We need to...
Be SERVING!
Once you become saved, you are not saved to sit...you are saved to serve. If the only purpose of getting saved is to be able to go to heaven, then why doesn't He just take us when we do? No we are saved to serve. Hebrews 9:14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Once we get the help we need be being saved, and we begin to build that relationship but being obedient, then we need to be serving Him. Now there are excuses a mile long as to why you can't but we have that helper the Holy Spirit who enables us to serve. He does not ask for our ability, only for our availability.
1 Peter 4:10 As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
You have received help, now you are to help others. You are to be the hands and feet that leads others to Christ. Every 11 seconds, someone in North America dies. Three out of four without the Lord. What are you doing to win them to Christ?
