INTRODUCTION
• SLIDE #1
• TWO ITEMS ONE FOOD ANOTHER NO-FOOD. GUESS THE EDIBLE ONE.
• Last week we started looking at the ingredients of salvation.
• When you ask the question, “What must I do to be saved,” you will get a variety of answers.
• I believe that when we are asked that question, we need to be able to give people an honest biblical response.
• Last week we examined ingredient number one, faith. But does faith alone make salvation?
• I like for us to explore the ingredient of confession together today.
• I would like to start us out with a definition of the term “confession”.
• SLIDE #2
• To confess means, “To say the same thing, to speak that which agrees with something which others speak or maintain.”
• In the context of our passage and regarding salvation, it would mean to say the same thing about Jesus that God says, namely that Jesus Is Lord!
• Let us turn to Romans 10:9-10
• SLIDE #3
• Romans 10:9–10 (ESV) 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.
• Let us begin by looking at…
• SLIDE #4
SERMON
I. What is the ingredient of confession?
• What is the nature of confession?
• We defined it earlier as….
• SLIDE #5
• To confess means, “To say the same thing, to speak that which agrees with something which others speak or maintain.”
• This confession is an initial confession made at the time of conversion.
• Confession is a definite ingredient in God’s recipe for salvation.
• In one of the greatest confessions recorded, Jesus asks Peter who Peter thought Jesus was.
• SLIDE #6
• Matthew 16:16 (ESV) Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
• To get the full impact of this ingredient it is important to for us to understand that confession is not just about parroting a statement, but it something said that come from the heart.
• Peter was not parroting something, he was convicted.
• The confession is a statement of belief of faith that comes from the heart.
• Confession is a conviction that is verbalized for others to hear.
• When we make a public confession of our faith, we are telling the world that we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He was crucified died and was buried and on the third day He rose from the dead.
• The confession we make has content, we believe that Jesus was raised from the dead by God.
• Convictions should change our life; convictions should what we build our life on.
• We are saying that we know that Jesus is the way the truth and the life.
• We are saying that we know that without Jesus we are lost that without Jesus our lives have no meaning and purpose.
• We are saying that we know that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father!
• Paul understood the importance of the reality of the resurrection!
• SLIDE #7
• 1 Corinthians 15:14 (ESV) And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
• We must boldly and unapologetically proclaim that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God!
• In Matthew 16:16, Peter made this statement of faith and Jesus told him that upon that statement, the church would be built and the gates of Hades would not prevail over it!
• SLIDE #8
• Matthew 10:32–33 (ESV) So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.
• In Matthew 10:32 we are told that if we confess Jesus before men, Jesus will confess us before God, but in verse 33 He tells us that if we deny Him, He will deny us also.
• An initial confession of faith the bible speaks of is verbally proclaiming that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. It also involves this proclamation being made from a heart which is convicted that Jesus has been raised from the dead by God Himself!
• SLIDE #9
II. What does an examination of the ingredient of confession reveal?
• Our confession ultimately reveals our true allegiance. It reveals who we trust in for our salvation!
• Look at verse 9 in Romans 10 again.
• SLIDE #10
• Romans 10:9 (ESV) 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.
• When we make our confession, we will be on the path to being saved!
• Our confession reveals our desire to be obedient to God because as stated before confession is one of the ingredients of God’s plan for salvation.
• We see that the initial public confession was something that can carry us for a lifetime!
• SLIDE #11
• 1 Timothy 6:12–13 (ESV) Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession,
• IF our confession comes from the heart, our confession will reveal our desire to hang strong until the very end.
• SLIDE #12
• Hebrews 10:23 (ESV) Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
• When we make the confession publically we reveal that we are willing to make ourselves accountable to other people and to God.
• When we make our statement of faith in Jesus we are telling the whole world that they need to take note of our life and how Jesus will change it to His glory.
• When we make a public statement, we are making ourselves accountable to other Christians, to the lost and to God.
• We cannot be secret service Christians, we cannot be undercover for God, our faith should shine through everything that we do.
• We will also see that God will be praised through our confession.
• When people see that we are willing to give our lives to Jesus, God is praised.
• When people see how God is working in our lives, God is praised.
• When we reach out to the lost and share the Gospel with them, God is praised.
• We are telling God and others that we cannot make it to heaven without God’s grace, we are saying that we cannot make it without being covered by the blood of Jesus.
• God is praised because we are admitting the God was right about life and we are not.
• Let us look at our final thought.
• SLIDE #13
III. Is there more to the ingredient of confession than meets the eye?
• We must understand that there are really two parts of our confession. There is the initial public confession, but there is another aspect.
• We make a confession every moment with our life. The initial confession is a one-time act with continuing results.
• The way was live is an ongoing confession.
• SLIDE #14
• Titus 1:16 (ESV) They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.
• One of the part of the ingredient that we need to grasp is the fact that our confession requires some tenacity.
• We need to be able to stay strong no matter what.
• SLIDE #15
• Hebrews 4:14 (ESV) Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
• What does it mean to “hold fast” to our confession?
• It means that we will meditate on it, that we will anchor ourselves to it in times of temptation.
• If we hold fast to something, we are holding on to it for dear life.
• It would be like clinging to a piece of wood that is holding you afloat in the water if you ship goes down. Hebrews 3:1 bears this thought out.
• SLIDE #16
• Hebrews 3:1 (ESV) Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession,
• The Hebrew writer was trying to encourage the Jewish Christians not to go back to their old way of life and their old system of religion.
• He is telling them to meditate on the initial confession of faith they made concerning Jesus and what that statement meant.
• In reality, our life reflects the true confession of our heart.
• In Hebrews we are told to hold fast our confession, why?
• It is because there is more to our confession than just the words out of our mouth, our conduct will reflect our true heart.
• The Romans 10:10 tells us that the mouth is to confess what the heart believes, and our actions reflect what is in our heart.
• SLIDE #17
• 1 John 2:4 (ESV) Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him,
• We have to understand that confession is something more than verbal.
• SLIDE #18
• Matthew 7:21–23 (ESV) 21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
• That passage is one that should really cause us to take notice if we are not fully giving our lives to Jesus.
• That passage says that the ones who do the will of the Father will be the ones who get to enter the kingdom, their practice matches their confession.
CONCLUSION
• So we have seen there are at least 2 ingredients that go into God’s recipe for salvation! Is that all there is? Next week we will examine a third ingredient.
