Scripture Reading: John 14:15-24 (Please open your Bibles to this text)
Last week we took a look the most important question of any moment in time which is, “If Jesus returns or you go to meet Him, are you ready? Are you saved?”
And we found that it is not only possible but it is the will of Almighty God that you can know for sure that you are saved. You can know with absolute certainty that if you were to meet Jesus today that you would spend eternity in the presence of the Lord.
How do we know that? We know from God’s Holy Word.
John 3:18
“Whoever believes in Him (Jesus) is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
Romans 10:9-10
“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.
“For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.”
1 John 5:12-13
“He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”
John 6:47
"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.”
So, based on these Scriptures and many others we can say for sure that the Lord guarantees eternal life for those who place their faith and trust their very souls to Jesus.
Now before we go any further we probably should expand a little on this thought of why we need salvation and the provision that the Father and Son made so that we might have forgiveness and reconciliation and transformation.
God is a Holy God – there is no sin or deceit or evil of any kind in Him.
There was a time when humanity was sinless; all two of them. And they communed with God and walked with Him, “in the cool of the evening.”
Then they were tempted to doubt what God had told them and they disobeyed the Lord and became sinful.
Sin separated them from the Lord.
After that God instituted a sacrificial system for sins committed which had to be repeated year after year after year. But, a better sacrifice was needed.
We needed to be reconciled to God, but how? He is too Holy and we were too sinful. Was it hopeless??? No it was not hopeless? Why? Because God had a plan!
He sent His Son, who lived among us, who lived a sinless, perfect life and then the perfect, sinless, Son of God gave His life on the cross of Calvary and shed His blood as the payment for my sin and your sin and everyone sin.
Even though the sacrifice of the Son of God was sufficient and available for the forgiveness of every human who ever lived it was not applied to everyone.
Why not? Because we were too sinful to even know we needed it.
That’s where this thing called Grace came in. Grace reveals our sinfulness to us.
Grace draws us like a magnet to Jesus, the only source of forgiveness and reconciliation with God.
Grace helps us to realize that we must turn away from our sinful ways.
Grace helps us to place our faith and trust in Jesus for salvation.
We don’t deserve this Grace but the Lord makes it available to us anyway.
If we humble ourselves before God, confess and renounce our sins, ask for forgiveness and for salvation from the eternal death we deserve, He will save us.
John 1:9-12 NASB
“The true Light, who gives light to every person, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, and the world did not recognize Him.
“He came to His own things, and His own people did not receive Him. But as many as received Him - to those who believe in His name - He gave to them authority to become children of God.”
Now, there is one thing that is very important that we need to understand.
When a person who is truly born again says that they are absolutely sure that if they were to die today that they would go to heaven it is not because they think they are righteous enough in their own merit to deserve going to heaven.
It is because God is faithful! God has made a promise to us and God never lies nor has He ever gone back on His word.
OK. So now let’s go ahead and read our Scripture for today.
Scripture Reading: John 14:15-24
Why are we reading this today? Because, if we preach and teach only that you must be saved by faith alone it is indeed a truth but there is more.
Being truly saved is a huge transformation; actually into a new creation.
Yes we will look the same on the outside but our soul, our spirit has been reborn and our minds have been made new.
This transformation results in different behavior!
Look at these verses from today’s Scripture
John 14:15 NASB
“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”
John 14:21 NASB
“He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”
John 14:23b-24a NASB
“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words
So, if we are saved by God’s grace and faith alone why do we keep Jesus’ commands? Isn’t that like being saved by works?
No, it’s not.
Listen to one of our memory Scriptures which explains the relationship between salvation and obedience perfectly.
Ephesians 2:8-10 (recite from memory and explain)
Saved by grace and faith
A gift from God
NOT BY WORKS
We are God’s workmanship
Created IN Christ Jesus – Why?
To do good works which God has prepared in advance for us to do
This week I watched a video on how quarters are minted.
When the face of the coin is struck the back of the coin is struck at the very same time.
When a person truly comes to Jesus for salvation their desire to please themselves is replaced by a desire to please Jesus.
“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”
“He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me …”
“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word …”
The works which God has prepared in advance for us to do become the visible witness to the world of who reigns in our life.
Look at this short video … (from Sermon Central called Worthless)
So, just what is it that God wants us to do?
Love God. Love one another.
How does that play out in our lives?
Do you see evidence of such activity in your life?
How do you serve the Lord in the church?
How do you serve the Lord outside the church?
In the nineteenth century, lighthouses on the U.S. coasts were tended by lighthouse keepers and their families. If a man who tended the light took ill or became disabled, often the work was picked up by his wife or children. Such was the case of Hosea Lewis.
Having become, in 1853, the keeper of the light on Lime Rock Island at Newport, Rhode Island, Lewis suffered a stroke four years later, at which time his teenage daughter Ida assumed responsibility for the light. Each day included cleaning the reflectors, trimming the wick, and filling the oil reservoir at sunset and midnight, along with providing for her father’s care.
With long and demanding tasks, Ida was unable to continue her schooling, but daily delivered her siblings to class, whatever the weather, by rowing the 500 yards to the mainland. In the mid-1800s, it was unusual to see a woman maneuvering a boat, but Ida became well-skilled and well-known for handling the heavy craft.
The teenager gained a measure of fame at age sixteen when she rescued four young men after their boat capsized. She rowed to their aid, hearing their screams as they clung to their overturned craft. On March 29, 1869, Ida saved two drowning servicemen from nearby Fort Adams. Public knowledge of Ida’s courage spread as far as Washington, inspiring President Ulysses S. Grant to visit Ida at Newport later that year. Ida rescued another two soldiers in 1881, for which she was awarded the U.S. Lifesaving Service’s highest medal.
In early February of that year the two soldiers were crossing from Newport to Lime Rock Island on foot when the ice gave way. Ida, the lighthouse keeper, came running with a rope. Ignoring peril to herself from weak and rotten ice, she pulled one, then the other to safety. All told, Ida Lewis personally saved something like 25 people in fifty-plus years of keeping the light. Her last reported rescue came at age 63 when she saved a friend who had fallen into the water on her way to visit Ida on the island.
Asked where she found strength and courage for such a feat, Ida answered: ’I don’t know, I ain’t particularly strong. The Lord Almighty gives it to me when I need it, that’s all.’
Ida Lewis was a faithful steward. But the reason she was so faithful in her task is that she realized there were always people that would need to be saved.
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If we are truly servants of the Lord Most High then he has placed us where we are not to make us comfortable and happy but to work in the kingdom of God and to lead others to the One who can save from much more than drowning.
If our lives consist of sitting in our lazy-boy spiritual recliner while the rest of the world rushes to a lost eternity that is sin.
If our lives consist of pleasing ourselves with pleasure or possessions or power or popularity or whatever instead of pleasing our Lord and Savior and THAT is sin.
What is the wages of sin?
What is the gift of God?
Our lives were given to us for one purpose; our lives were given to us to be expended for the Lord and His Kingdom.
Jesus said, “If you love Me you will keep my commandments …”
Do you love Him?
Closing thoughts and prayer.
