TITANTIC sank: passengers traveled some with simple accomodations while others had very expensive. Extreme difference between but when tally came into NY office it had two catagories: SAVED & LOST Some people are going to hell in first class.
LITTLE BOY in school: teacher asked, ‘what is the opposite of LOST, SAVED!, not it is ‘found’, not what God says. Live by the dictionary or the Bible.
*Probably not a more uncomfortable word in the Christian vocabulary. ‘Is this seat saved? No, but I am!’ See where they end up sitting
(1) Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation.(they be saved).
*Of Whom do you feel this concern?
a. Desire is evidenced by constant prayer.
b. Pray for many things: good job, nice home, safe car, good friends, SALVATION.
1) Legs on those prayers: Faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word of God.(17) Invest God’s Word in their lives.
2) VISION: Word of God in people’s lives(children & adults-boy’s salvation Wed night) Radio – preach through the Bible verse by verse(power and clarity of context)
c. My ‘hearts desire’ is a genuine salvation
PILGRIM’S PROGRESS: Christian on path to celestrial city when he encountered along the way Presumption & ___________ ‘How did you get here?’ We jumped over the wall. But Evangelist said you must come through the narrow gate. What’s the difference, if we are in we are in. Soon they went astray and fell into a ditch where the blind leads the blind. Encounter along our path wheat & tares.
J.V. McGee estimates that 75% of the members of the average church might not be genuinely saved.(religious club) Billy Graham states that 80% of those who make salvation decision in his crusades are already on a church roll somewhere.
YOU CAN BE RELIGIOUS AND LOST. World is filled with religious people some who are as busy as termites, it is human nature but is it a genuine relationship with God the Father through the merits of God the Son.
Q-Have you accepted the righteousness that God offers in Christ Jesus?
DANGERS OF A FALSE CONFIDENCE 10:2-5 For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. For Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on the law shall live by that righteousness.(10:2-5)
*Paul, under oath, his assessment of the Jewish people.
1. THEY ARE A VERY COMMITTED PEOPLE zeal for God
a. That is not a charge that could be made against most professing Christians. I look at the lives of some who have been professing believers for ten to twenty years and have seen little growth in their lives and even less passion.
b. Gentiles are unique in that they often compartmentalize their relationship with God. Confine it to a place and time. With Jews & Muslims it effects every aspect of life. No passionate Jew would ever allow some of the rulings we have seen in this country: School prayer and such. We have a casual attitude towards the things of God. It is part of life but not the center.
MAYOR in Jerusalem: some time back beaten by zealot Jews because of a ruling regarding the Sabbath Day. He only shut down certain sections of the city and allowed cars to be driven in other sections.
WAILING WALL: little box(phylacteries) bound to their foreheads, prayer shawl, bobbing up and down as they go through intense prayers. zeal
TULSA YWCA: Dropped me off while shopping. Finished and walked out to a street corner and sat down to read my Bible(read while on treadmill). A car with two women stopped, one got out and walked over, ‘Are you reading a Bible?’ An hour passed as we discussed issues like: false prophecy of Jesus coming in 1914, 192?, 1933. False teaching that Jesus is Michael the Archangel, 144,000 who are Jews and not Jehovah’s Witnesses. Mistranslation of John 1 and other passages by so-called scholars none of which knew Greek. VERY ZEALOUS WOMAN BUT
2. THE HAVE A COMMITMENT WITHOUT TRUTH they have a zeal for God, BUT not in accordance with knowledge.
COLLEGE TRACK team in Mexico City: On of sites we visited was a very large catholic church. We got off the bus and walked for ½ mile. Passed people doing something I have never seen in all my life in Baptist churches: making their way to church on their knees(people of all ages)
MUSLIMS: 3-5-7 times a day life stops to pray/False teachers on TV and who hold crusades who fill stadiums with fanatical listeners/follow Jim Jones, a David Karesh, commit suicide at the coming of a comet.
COMMITMENT W/O TRUTH
a. THE TRUTH ABOUT RIGHTEOUSNESS For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.(3)
1) Key word in these verses is ‘righteousness’. It is the point the Paul is striving to make.
a) Two kinds: Works righteousness or faith. Works attempts to establish right standing before God apart from Jesus Christ.
PASTOR approached by Jewish young man: My father is very religious, he says prayers daily, observes Sabbath, loves God. You saying that if he doesn’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah that he is lost? No doubt loves God(Cornelious a devout man) QUESTION: “What is he doing about his sin?’ God’s covenant demanded a blood sacrifice as established through Moses. Young man explained that today they feel that good works will make them acceptable to God, thus their good works must outweigh their bad works.
b) What they think will save them is actually what keeps them from being saved. Something good becomes something bad when it keeps us from the best.
c) Phil 3:4-7 Paul states credential that demonstrated that he had more ‘blueblood’ than any of them and could win any ‘bragging contest’ BUT he ‘counted it all but loss for the sake of Christ’. Even Isaiah said, ‘All our righteous deeds are like filthy garments’.
d) Move from the positive side of the ledger to the negative and leave Jesus alone as our only hope.
b. THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.(4)
1) Jesus in Gethsemane, ‘If possible let this cup pass by Me’ Any other way that man can be saved, law? Good works? Own efforts? Sincerity? The Cross is the greatest evidence in the world that Jesus is the only way. If there were any other way God would have spared His only Son.
a) JN 14:6(no other way) & Acts 4:12(no other name)
2) Jesus is the end of the law. The GOAL
SOCCER: takes getting used to because you can continually kick the ball up and back and side to side for an hour and end us 0-0. Pick the ball up! Go throw it into the goal, somebody score please! No matter how busy we are if we don’t get people to Jesus Christ we have played the game in vain. That is the purpose for the law.
c. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE LAW ..the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. For Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on the law shall live by that rightousness.(5)
Law reminds me of Joe Montana: No matter how much time left, no matter where the ball was on the field, he had one focus: SCORE, cross the goal line. The law is a schoolmaster who leads us to the goaline
1) The only righteousness in the law is found in Jesus.
a) Jews tried to use the law by keeping every point to establish righteousness. But James 2:10 ‘Whoever keeps the whole law and stumbles at one point has become guilty of all’.
b) Righteousness in the law is that it shows us our sin and leads us to a Savior.
2) Moses says that the law does give us a righteousness to live by but not to be saved by. It established a godly conduct but doesn’t provide saving grace.
3) Based not on works but to everyone that believes
DISCOVERY OF A TRUE SALVATION 10:6-10
70’s Bumper Sticker: I FOUND IT
1. WHERE CAN IT BE FOUND? But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows: Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is to bring Christ down), or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).’ But what does it say, ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ – that is, the word of faith which we are preaching.(6-8)
a. Nothing more has to happen for you to be saved. The Incarnation and Resurrection are settled issues. The truth is here and the question is what will you do with it?
b. The very Word of God they study holds the truth ‘in your mouth and in your heart’. ‘search the Scriptures because in them you believe you will find life…they testify of Me.
2. WHO CAN IT BE FOUND IN? That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.(9-10)
DIRECTION OF A TREASURED RELATIONSHIP 10:11-13
1. WHAT DIFFERENCE WILL IT MAKE? For the Scripture says, ‘Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.’(11)
a. Part of one body: For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek.
b. Body has one Head: for the same Lord is Lord of all
c. Joy of His boundless resources: abounding in riches for all who call upon Him;(12)
2. WHO CAN RECEIVE IT? For ‘whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved’.
a. YOU CAN – nobody so good that you need not be saved and nobody so bad that they cannot be saved.
EDUCATED PREACHER: had a good heart, went about helping people but had fallen prey to what we would call liberalism(doubted the virgin birth, incarnation, blood atonement, crucifixion, resurrection).
Knock at door one night, opened to little ragged frightened girl. ‘Sir, are you a minister?’ Yes I am. ‘Are you a man of God?’ I like to think so. Please come and help my mother get in. What is wrong? She is dying and doesn’t know how to get in to heaven, she says she doesn’t have long to live and sent me to find a minister, come help please.
Followed to back part of city, hubble of home, found woman all alone(no doctors or nurses) on deathbed. Are you a minister? Are you a man of God? Tell me how to get to heaven. Gave here platitudes about the goodness of God, beauties of heaven, how it pays to live a godly life. She shook her head, you don’t understand, I am dying and I can’t do any of that…He realized for the first time in life that he had no message for a dying woman.
He told her the story that his mother had believed and told him when he was a child: Jesus came into the world, lived a sinless life, died a cruel death on the cross, and my mother believed He rose from the dead. Then he shared John 3:16.
Years later he spoke of that night in a church service. THAT NIGHT SHE DID GET IN AND SO DID I. Religion is not enough, you need Jesus. He is the end of Law for you and for me.
