sermon: Are You Saved?

In Honor of Roger Delaney (1959-2013)

(Preached at Brook Hill United Methodist Church – Feb. 17, 2013)

Romans 10:8 -13 (New Living Translation)

“The message is very close at hand;
    it is on your lips and in your heart.” (Deuteronomy 30:12-14)

And that message is the very message about faith that we preach: 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. As the Scriptures tell us, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.”  Jew and Gentile are the same in this respect. They have the same Lord, who gives generously to all who call on him. For “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

My friend Roger Delaney died unexpectedly on Friday. I am so glad that I was there in the hospital with Roger and his wife when he died. His death makes this morning’s message even more timely.

There’s a question asked by this morning’s sermon title: ARE YOU SAVED?

The word saved is related to the word salvation and to the word salvage.

When I grew up in eastern Canada, there was a man who lived in our city whose job was salvage. I don’t know what his real name was, but he was called Red Fox. He had long red hair in the days before hippies, and he dressed in rags. He walked through the streets with his old white horse, and the horse pulled a big red tumble-down wagon with sideboards. This man worked in salvage. He collected old scrap metal and other things that were eventually recycled. Even though he looked like a tramp, everyone said he was the richest man in the city.

His work was the work of salvage. He was in the salvage business. He was collecting old and broken things. He was saving those broken things from uselessness, saving them to be re-purposed so they could be useful again.

God is also in the salvage business. His business is collecting old and broken souls and lives, saving them to be re-purposed so they can be useful again.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE SAVED?

It means to be rescued, to be reclaimed, to be gathered by God, the great salvage-master.

Where we see junk, God sees something of value. When God created us, we were made in His image, after His likeness. We were made to be connected to God, to be in relationship with God. When God looked at the first humans, He said, “It is very good.” We are cherished by God. He sees something of worth, something of value within us.

But our first parents sinned, and all of humanity became estranged from God. God’s image in us became broken and scarred. To a large extent we lost our way. There was still an aching within many of us to know God, but we became disoriented. We were distracted. We were confused.

The GOOD NEWS of Jesus is that God has mounted a massive salvage operation. The death of Jesus on the cross is the pivotal event in history. Jesus is God Himself, and on the cross He exchanged His life for ours. The Bible says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”(John 3:16-17)

To be saved is to welcome Jesus Christ into our lives.

To be saved is to be rescued from our broken relationship with God,

To be saved is to be forgiven of our sins.

To be saved is to be set on a right path of walking with God.

To be saved is to be rescued from hell, rescued to serve God as He restores the world. This is why we pray, “Let Your kingdom come, let Your will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.”

And then there will come a final day when God will usher in a new heaven and a new earth, and we will be welcomed to live with Him in that glorious kingdom.

So that’s what it means to be saved.

Early last week I asked for input on Facebook, and my friend Jenni Hess responded. Jenni speaks of a time of trouble last summer when she needed God’s rescue. She says:

“God rescues me everyday, but I can honestly say that last summer I let God lead the way. I didn’t know how to do what I needed to do. I let God take control of where I needed to be. And I remember after I let God lead me and trusted in His plan for me, I was driving in the car, and looked up and saw a church steeple above a tree line, and I felt truly saved. I have been on that road many times before and never saw that church steeple, but I saw it that morning, after I decided to trust in God. His Salvation is everywhere, everlasting and ever sure. But we have to stop trying to save ourselves and abandon our ways and let God do the saving and leading. It wasn’t hard at all to let Him rescue me.”

That’s a great word. Thanks, Jenni!

In the scripture passage which was read, Paul is thinking about his Jewish brothers and sisters. His heart’s desire is for them to saved. But they are trying to be saved by doing good things, by being good.

It’s human nature to think “I must do something good to get to heaven.” Hinduism teaches this. Islam teaches this. Judaism teaches this. “I must try harder. I must be more self-disciplined. I must spend more time in prayer and Bible study.”

But that is not the Gospel of Jesus. That is the Gospel of Try Harder. And the Gospel of Try Harder is a false gospel. There will be many people in hell, even from Christian churches, who followed the Gospel of Try Harder.

The Gospel of Jesus is scandalously simple. Do you remember the words of Jesus? “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

SPEAK AND BELIEVE

Here is the Gospel of Jesus: SPEAK AND BELIEVE – “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.” (Romans 10:9)

It’s not magic, and we must speak with honesty and believe with sincerity. But the Gospel of Jesus is simple: Speak and believe.

I want to read you a short passage from Brennan Manning’s classic book “The Ragamuffin Gospel”. Some of us will have trouble with his words:

Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last 'trick', whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.

“But how?” we ask.

Then the voice says, 'They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'

There they are. There we are - the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life's tribulations, but through it all clung to faith. 

My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.”

(Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel)

So will that prostitute make it to heaven? Will the woman who had the abortion make it to heaven? Will the crooked businessman and the spineless pastor make it to heaven?

Jesus said to the Pharisees: “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” (Matt.21:31)

THE “SALVATION EQUATION”

God is interested in our good works. But we don’t have to do more good works so that He will love us.

Here are two “equations” that help to explain this:

The Gospel of Try Harder: Faith + Works = Salvation

The Gospel of Jesus: Faith = Salvation + Works

This was good news to Martin Luther. He tried to remember his every sin so that he could confess it. His confessor was exasperated with him. Then he read in Romans that salvation comes by faith alone, and his life was changed.

This was good news to John Wesley. For 35 years, he was the biggest doer-of-good-works in England, but he lived under the guilt of sin. Then in May of 1738 he heard that salvation comes by faith alone, and his life was changed. When he began to preach about salvation by faith, he was turned away from preaching in churches. He began to preach in the fields, and this was the beginning of Methodism. 

Today could be the day in your spiritual journey when your life is salvaged, the day you are rescued and step into God’s new life. SPEAK AND BELIEVE.

“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.”