“I Am Saved”
(Eph 2:1-10)
True or false, is this is a verse from the bible, “God helps those who help themselves”. False, in fact the bible says the exact opposite, God helps the helpless. And according to our passage in Ephesians today we are all helpless and hopeless without God.
Our faith is all about Jesus. If it isn’t for you, or if you’re not interested in knowing more about Him, then you’re in the wrong place. The Bible is primarily about God, not us. Jesus is often thought of as this all loving sacrificial being who sprinkles fairy dust on everyone and makes everyone happy. And that the Bible is really a handbook for us. This belittles Him as the mighty, sovereign God of the universe who has all authority.
Look at how the prophet, John the Baptist introduces Jesus in Matthew 3: “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear the threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire”. Ahhh, isn’t that sweet?
My friends, Satan and the world are successfully belittling Jesus and putting pressure on His church to belittle him as well, and we are tolerating it, and even in some ways participating in it. Everyone wants Jesus to be a nice teacher from the ancient past who just came to love us and make the world a better place, and all those things are true. But the real Jesus who is coming is described this way in Revelation: “His eyes are like a flame of fire, he has many crowns on his head, He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the armies of heaven follow him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. His name is King of kings and Lord of lords.”
There’s a verse in Habakkuk 1 that we like to put on t-shirts, and it says, “Look amoung the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.” We like to take that verse and many others like it in the prophets especially, and make them a wonderful encouraging thing.
But if we read on, this is what he’s talking about, it continues, “I am raising up a bitter and hasty nation who march through the earth, to seize dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome.” The rest of the book goes on to talk about how he is going to let Israel’s enemies kill them, their families, their donkeys, cattle, businesses, and he’s going to burn the earth they walked on”. That is the awesome thing he is about to do, what he is going to allow his people to go through because of their disobedience, and we put that little verse on our coffee cups for encouragement completely out of context.
My point is that we have completely forgotten about God’s severity and the seriousness of sin and its consequences. We have forgotten Paul’s warning in Romans 11 to note then the kindness and severity of God.
Do you know that the Bible never records Jesus telling anyone he loves them? The people who write about Jesus in the Bible tell us he did. But what Jesus talked about more than heaven was what he came to save us from. And today I’m going to get a little graphic so that we can see what an incredible gift this salvation is. To say I am saved, is beyond comprehension when we truly understand.
Jesus uses the word Gehenna which we translate as hell 12 times in the gospels. This refers to a ravine on the south side of Jerusalem at the time. It was an area that was viewed as cursed and it had become like a garbage dump, which was constantly burning and smouldering. Their garbage, raw sewage, and their dead bodies that didn’t get buried, were thrown in there, and it was unquenchable, there was so much stuff burning in there it couldn’t be put out.
I remember not too many years ago in BC where we lived, they had shut down a dump years earlier that had started to smoulder on its own somehow. No matter what they did they couldn’t stop this. They bulldozed it, had sprinklers on it constantly, but this closed down dump smouldered for almost 2 years before it was finally quenched. Gehenna is a smouldering, smelly place of destruction and neglect.
This is where every person deserves to be according to God. Hell is essentially a place where everything that is good, right, comforting, happy, and peaceful is absent, and Jesus let’s us know several times that it is a place of gnashing of teeth. It is eternal torment. Revelation 14:1 says, “And the smoke of their torment goes up forever”.
“Oh pastor please don’t go there, we are done with fire and brimstone sermons, tell us how Jesus can improve our lives please”. That’s what I’m doing, because much more of your life is going to happen after you die than while you’re alive. “But how can a loving God create and fill a place like that, the bible says God is love?”
Yes it does, and that same Bible says there is great wrath awaiting those who don’t accept his love. His love is so extreme that we can’t fathom it, and so is his severity against sin and unholiness, that’s the only way he can recreate goodness and overcome the corruption that has come into the world. We can’t do that.
Jesus isn’t being literal when he says it’s better to mutilate yourself than to be thrown into hell, but he’s also not kidding around. He’s basically saying that anything good you can imagine doing, holding your children, kissing your wife, driving a car, having use of your limbs, seeing a sunset, watching your children play. It is better to never have been able to do any of those things than to have enjoyed them and end up outside the kingdom of God.
Jesus makes it very clear that we should fear God over man. He says, “Seriously? You’re afraid of what people think more than what I think? You’re afraid of what people can do to you rather than what I can do to you? The worse they can do is kill you. Are you seriously more afraid of a kitten than a lion?”
Now this is great information, we need to have a knowledge of heaven and hell whether it’s popular or not. But this knowledge itself will not create worshippers of God. You can’t scare someone into the kingdom. I’m sure Satan knows there is hell coming that is going to be his home. You can scare them into better, more moral behaviour, but not love and worship of God. Everyone is guilty and everyone’s default destination is hell, until Jesus bridges the gap.
Our fear of God should come from our love of Him. We should be attracted to God rather than afraid of hell. So why does Jesus highlight hell so often? Because you can’t understand His love and the cross of Christ, without understanding the weight of the glory of God and the offense of belittling his name. Thomas Watson said “Til sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet”.
Do you get passionate and nervous about your child playing a sport? If you’re a football fan and one of your teams is in the super bowl, are you feeling something? March Madness is coming in Basketball, and it’s truly madness down in the states. God has given us affections, passions and emotions that are meant to be for him first of all. Where is the nervousness or excitement or trepidation about coming into the presence of God when you come to church or go to pray?
Where is the elation that compares with our team winning a championship, when we hear of Christ’s resurrection? I know myself, that I will be yelling at a TV and cheering when my team scores a touchdown, but do you hear many of us cheer anymore when we hear that we are saved from hell?
Alright, so what about this cross, what about what Christ has done? “Yeah that’s pretty cool”. Are you kidding me? The wages of sin is death and in Hebrews 9 we read that without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness. The place where all of God’s severity and love meet is at the cross.
Jesus took upon himself all the eternal wrath of hell at the cross so that we wouldn’t have to. But so many churches and even denominations are leaving it there and spout the universal doctrine that because of what Jesus did, hell is no longer an issue for anyone. The gap has been bridged for all people regardless of their belief. That is far from what Jesus and the Bible teach.
We are going to respond with communion after this message, and listen to what Jesus says, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood”. Note the word covenant there. By taking communion you are taking part in this covenant that says I have died for you, I have paid the price you should pay, remember that.
Then he takes his disciples to the garden to show them. And he asks them to pray with him because he is overwhelmed with sadness about the torture and death he is about to experience. And he has to do this because we, loved by God, created by God, set in motion and kept alive by God – betrayed God and preferred his stuff to Him.
And I know this sounds harsh, but what Judas Iscariot does, illustrates what we tend to do. We say we worship him, we say we are his disciples, but we betray him with our disobedience and then give him a kiss. And Jesus is giving his life up freely even though he could have smited Judas on the spot.
We know what comes next, gruesome torture which the Romans had perfected and made very public, to keep people in line. Their goal was to make it as long and drawn out as possible, with as much humiliation as possible, so onlookers would think twice about going against Roman rules.
God the son was exposed to all of this and even the high priest responsible for all the blood sacrifices in the temple, who knew the Law inside and out, was mocking him, the one who was to become our high priest forever. And all of this was planned before humans were even created. It was no accident, no plan B. This was an agreement the trinity had before time began.
The cross represents God’s love yes, but it also represents a brutal slaughter of the son of God to deliver us from the wrath that is rightfully ours to bear. What greater love is there?
So what do we do with all these gruesome facts? Say a little prayer of acceptance and get on with our life, grateful we are free from hell? That is not the response the Bible gives us to this catastrophic event in history. A person cannot be ambivalent about the gospel and the events at Calvary. It will either awaken a person, or harden them. There is always a response to these facts. And it seems more often than not people choose death instead of life.
A great percentage of the Old Testament has God saying I am going to destroy you if you don’t stop doing what you’re doing. So what was the response by them, that they would say, “Well, God you told us to do this”, talking about the sacrificial worship system where they somehow had enough animals to bleed and cook every day to appease the wrath of God. But why did God put this system into place in the first place? Because his people would not obey him.
Scripture even says he never wanted these sacrifices, he wanted our love and trust. And none of those sacrifices ever gave them permanent forgiveness, they had to keep doing them because they kept rebelling. But this is what the church has done a lot of as well. Rather than do what he says, live to please Him, and obey his commands, we turn to works that we choose to get his approval. We are often moralistic rather than transformed.
We don’t drink to excess, we go to church, we read the bible a bit, we sorta pray. But have we been changed, are we in love with Jesus to the point of sacrificing our lives for the one who sacrificed for us because we are so grateful for his love that he first loved us with.
There’s a big difference between saying you’re saved, and being saved. And the bible defines this very well. Hearing the gospel demands a response one way or the other, and the primary place we see the response is in Acts 2. Once we hear about sin, hell, and Jesus on the cross, the next question if we are convicted by this is, what shall we do then? And Peter very clearly gives the appropriate response, which is to repent and be baptized, and that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. But then Paul in Romans 10 says we are to confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead and you will be saved.
Jesus himself says at the end of Mark that whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. We know for sure that we are not saved by our works, it is the work of grace that saves us. But if it were that simple, everyone would be saved. So we see essential things required as a response to Jesus’ offer of grace. Repentance, baptism, confessing (which essentially means agreeing) that Jesus is Lord, and believing that he was raised from the dead.
Now because these things are all mentioned by different people more than once, I am willing to say that all are necessary for salvation. You might say, well baptism doesn’t save us, and I would agree that baptism alone doesn’t save us, but it is mentioned with these other things and an unbaptized Christian would essentially be like a common law couple. I know many couples that call themselves married, but they have never gotten married. Same difference. The government might say its legal, but God doesn’t.
So if a professing Christian claims to be saved and has not been baptized, we have to question the other things that nobody would argue are necessary for salvation, especially confessing that Jesus is Lord. If Jesus is Lord and he says get baptized, you get baptized. If Peter combines it with repentance, then one has to wonder if a person has really understood the seriousness of sin and truly repented, if they are not willing to be baptized. In fact you could make an argument that being baptized is an act of repentance, because you want to obey God, and be changed and cleansed by God through the waters of baptism. You want to die to self and be reborn in the Spirit if you have repented.
Now our passage in Ephesians today tells us very clearly what we are being saved from, and I went into detail earlier. We were dead in our sin, following the world and Satan, living in disobedience to God, according to our fleshly passions and desires, and were children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. We heard about that wrath earlier.
If you listen to that, you hear a very clear implication that that is no longer how we live. And that is what repentance is. It is sorrow yes, but it’s not worldly sorrow. Worldly sorrow is about getting caught and punished and the bible says that that kind of sorrow leads to death, it has nothing to do with God. Godly sorrow has to do with realizing that we have offended and rebelled against almighty God, and desperately want to change or repent because he has given us salvation through his great mercy and grace. Godly sorrow leads to repentance.
Yet the passage concludes with, “We are his workmanship, we were created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
So we are not saved by our works, we are not even saved by our repentance and confession and all that, we are saved by the sacrifice of Jesus. But we have to claim that salvation and we are saved for good works. Created in Jesus means two things here I believe. First that we were originally created in Christ Jesus at the beginning of creation, but sin took us out of him so to speak. Second that when we are saved, we are restored or recreated in Jesus for the sole purpose of good works that were prepared for us to walk in before we were saved.
What are those good works? Simply the things has God has told us to do and not to do from the beginning of time. They can be summarized by Christ’s own great commandment to love God with every fibre of our being, which he says is expressed in obedience, and to love our fellow humans as he loved us.
In Christ our identity is that we are saved. The proof of this identity is that we have repented, confessed, believed and been baptized. That we are walking in good works or obedience to Jesus and his commands as disciples, and that God is the most important thing in our lives by far, and this is expressed in our love for him and for all the people he created.
So I am going to ask you straight up today, are you saved? Are you in Christ? If any of those things is missing, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to repent and keep on repenting? Matthew said that Jesus after his temptations in the wilderness and his baptism, began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” That’s the first thing he preached.
He said, “I have come to save, so repent or change your mind and all that you do”. I like the literal English translation of repent which is pent again. Pent means to be confined, so to repent means to be once again confined to live a life under the authority and Lordship of Christ. But the paradox is that this is also freedom. We strayed from that and we must at once, consciously, and continuously be reconfined by His will. That is what it means to be in Christ, in the Spirit. That’s why Paul talks a lot about being willing slaves of Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Now just in closing, if I were to offer a guess at the major cause of problems in the church and in people’s Christian walk, as I said last week it is a lack of knowledge of God, and I think this is demonstrated most often by a lack of true biblical repentance. Maybe it isn’t even their fault, maybe like in many churches, repentance isn’t even mentioned in terms of salvation, only belief. But one thing I am absolutely sure of, is that there is no salvation without repentance. Jesus makes this clear in Luke 13 where he says twice, “…unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”
Then in Acts 26 Paul says that the Lord told him to go to the gentiles so that they may turn from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God (that’s repentance), and then receive forgiveness for their sins. Then he says that in obedience to what Jesus told me to do, I preached as per the Great Commission, to those in Damascus, Jerusalem and all through Judea, that all must repent of their sins and turn to God – and prove that they have changed by the good deeds they do.
I want us all to claim the identity of saved in Christ, but we can’t trifle with a very serious, loving, and severe God. Saved children of God are known by their fruit, and if your fruit is looking kind of like some of the fruit at the Coop, maybe you need to spend some time alone with God and go over the things we talked about today. Primarily focussing on confessing that Jesus is Lord, not just a little bit Lord, but complete master of my life; and repenting in the biblical sense.
Let me just say that if you aren’t deeply affected by what you heard today no matter what stage of faith you are in, whether you react with anger and rejection, or repentance and recommitment. If it was just another sermon to you, may I suggest you go home and tap your heart with chisel, because I say this from the heart with love, that your heart might be a little hard if you don’t hear these words of God and have a strong reaction.
We are going to go into a time of communion at the Lord’s table now, and before we do I want to have a time of silent prayer just between you and God and just ask Him, everyone of you, am I saved? Then just quietly pay attention to the feeling and anything else you might experience as the Holy Spirit responds to you….
Now if there is no doubt in you that you are saved, and remember the four aspects of this that we learned today, we have repented and been baptized, we have confessed with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, not just Saviour, and we believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, take communion freely.
If you experienced some doubt or conviction from the Spirit, but today you know that you are fully ready to make this commitment to God and live in this covenant relationship with Jesus, take communion. If you are not sure about whether you are saved, and not sure if you are ready to make that commitment, I encourage you to just let the elements pass you by until you are sure.
Now don’t worry about other people watching to see if you take something or not, and people pay attention to yourselves. This is serious business. Paul says in 1 Cor 11 to examine yourself, judge yourself, and if you take this blood and body of Christ in an unworthy manner not honouring the body of Christ, both his church and what he did, you are eating and drinking judgement upon yourself and some of you will even get weak, sick, and possibly die because of it.
So let’s distribute the elements and when everyone has received we will eat and drink together.
Jesus says here’s my body covered in spit and blood caked with dirt, my back is shredded down to the bone, this thorn of crowns is causing blood and sweat to pour into my stinging eyes. And I’m doing this for you, are you going to reject that? Please remember what I did and eat.
Then he says essentially, I am going to bleed to death as I hang on this cross, I will suffocate in my own fluids. This blood had to be shed, and I had to live a perfect life in this human body just like yours. This is how my Father makes an everlasting covenant with you, will you take part in it? I sure hope you are here when I drink this stuff again, will you follow me to where I am going? Then go ahead and drink it in remembrance of me.
