ONE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS - S:02 E:01

RECORDED IN THE STRONGHOLD STUDIO IN PALM BAY, FLORIDA

THEME SONG "STAY IN MY LANE" - WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY BURKS

AUDIO EDITED BY U-DIRECT VIDEO WORKS IN AUBREY, TEXAS

PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY JAMES EDWARD BURKS FOR ONE VOICE MINISTRIES

https://www.onevoiceministriesinc.org/

https://www.onevoiceministriesinc.org/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Greetings, friends, and welcome back. This is season two, episode one of One Voice in the Wilderness. We're glad that you joined us. This is One Voice in the Wilderness. All right, my friends. Welcome back. We are so glad to have you with us. We are launching season two of One Voice in the Wilderness. I am James Burks, and I'm your host for this podcast. We are so delighted to have you join us. We're so excited because what we're going to do in our time together is we're just going to share with you some encouragement from the Word of God. We hope that the Word just speaks to you, challenges you, stirs you, and draws you closer into a relationship with Jesus Christ. And so we are happy. We had a great first season. And we are just so thankful for all of you watching and joining in with us. And so now we're excited about season two to see where the Lord takes us in this upcoming time together. We always want to thank our son Jesse and his ministry, which is U Direct Video Works. He is the one that does the editing for our podcast and even for our sermons for our Church Body of Christ Fellowship. And we're just we appreciate him. He really is the catalyst behind making season one possible and successful, and uh along, of course, following with the direction of the Holy Spirit. But we we just thank him and we appreciate him and his family so much. And uh we're staying with our theme song because we love it so much. It's from our son Caleb, goes by the music name Burks. The song is Stay in Your Lane, and that's what we are trying to do here. Our lane is to walk this out, share the good news of Jesus Christ from the Word of God, in the hopes that that one lost sheep will hear the Father's call and draw and come into a saving uh relationship with him. That's that's all this is about. This is not um about comparing it with anything else, it's not about debating about anything else, it's just having the opportunity to just come and share with you what the Lord has laid on our heart, and we want to do that uh in season two as well. And so thanks for joining us. Uh, we want to dive in. So let's go to the Lord in prayer and again ask him to direct and lead all of what we do in this podcast. All right, Father, we thank you and we praise you and we give you glory and honor. Just to have this privilege is such a blessing. And so thank you. Thank you for uh putting it on our heart, inspiring it, putting the pieces together, uh the uh tools and the help needed to make this happen, the resources. And we're so thankful. We thank you for One Voice Ministries as our opportunity to be that one voice crying in the wilderness, the work that you're doing here through this podcast, the work that you're doing with our ministry on the ground in Malawi, Africa. Again, we're so thankful for all of this because all we want in this is for you to receive the glory, for you to be magnified, and for you to be praised. So we thank you especially, most of all, for the precious gift of your son Jesus, who died to pay for our sins, who is our Savior and our Lord. We thank you and we praise you. Be with us in this time, and we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, folks, we are again just so excited uh to be here to share with you. And I want to talk a little bit about the complete work of salvation. Um, because oftentimes when we think about salvation, we think about simply someone being saved, if you will, uh, from the punishment of sin, getting a chance to go to heaven. That is a beautiful piece of it. But that work is so much more than that, is so much fuller and so much richer than that. That we want to spend a little bit of time talking about this. This may flow into a couple of episodes, uh, but we just want to really get this seed into the good ground uh of your heart and let God give you the increase in really knowing what he is doing, what is he calling you to, what is he drawing you to, and what does he want you to share with others when it comes to sharing the gospel and the good news of what his son Jesus did for us? So we really want to uh take a look at that uh this morning, just looking at uh the complete work of salvation. So let's start off uh with a very familiar scripture uh that we're gonna start reading in John 3, 16. And uh for this portion of it, we're going to read from uh our King James. Um and it says this it says in verse 16, chapter 3 of uh the book of John. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. That name is Jesus. And this is the condemnation that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. Alright. John 3 16. God loved us so much that he made the ultimate sacrifice. He came down in the flesh, Emmanuel, as the only begotten of the Father, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, died, lived a perfect sinless life, but then died on the cross to pay the punishment, pay the penalty, pay the debt for our sin. The Father put all of our sins on him and he bore them on the cross. And by him dying and making that ultimate sacrifice as the final sacrifice, the Lamb of God, so that we no longer had to uh kill lambs and bullocks and oxen as a sacrifice, but he came as that one blood sacrifice that we would then have the opportunity for salvation. We would then receive from him the gift of forgiveness for our sins and transgressions, and we would also receive the gift of being able to rejoin him for all eternity and have everlasting life through Christ Jesus. Okay? And so we're excited that we get to talk about that for a few minutes. So uh we just want you to kind of come along with us as we really look at this. So, what we're gonna talk about when we talk about the complete work of salvation, we we want to can have you consider that there were multiple pieces that were happening in salvation. And the three that I want to talk about in particular, and you can probably flush this out so much more with so much more content to it, but just to give you a brief snapshot, I want to talk about justification, I want to talk about sanctification, and then I want to talk about glorification. Okay, and like I said, this may spread over a little bit of time, uh, and we're okay with that. We're not in a hurry, we're starting season two, we're gonna be here a little while, and so we're excited about that opportunity to share with you. Okay, so just in a quick nutshell, what was God doing in the complete work of salvation when it comes to those three areas? All right, so I'm gonna dive into this deeper, but justification is where we are set free and released from the penalty of sin. Sanctification is where the Holy Spirit now indwells us and does a work to give us freedom from the power of sin, and then glorification is that final state that we will be in when we are in the presence of God and we are then free from the presence of sin. Alright? And so all of those pieces go together to make up salvation, and so that's what we want to tackle and talk about a little bit today, all right? So, the complete work of salvation through Jesus Christ is justification, sanctification, glorification. So let's start off with justification, alright? So let me give you just a snapshot of the meaning of that particular word, okay? So justification is God's act of pardoning a sinner and declaring them righteous in his sight. Okay? God's act of pardoning, or by pardoning, we mean uh formally forgiving us of the criminal conviction and then relieving us of the penalty that comes with that conviction and then restoring rights to us. Okay, listen. In Genesis, we are made in the image and likeness of God. We are made in perfect form, we are made to have fellowship and worship and continual relationship with him. We violated that by going against his will, pursuing our own will. We rebelled against him, we rejected what he offered, rejected his truth, and got caught up in our own uh rationalizing of why we should do it our way. And you know what? When we repent, when John the Baptist uh came preaching repentance, when Jesus talked about repenting, that's the first and most important thing we're repenting from is for our rebellion against God, our choosing to reject Him and His truth, and trying to take the authority ourselves over our lives. Uh taking taking the taking God out of the position of being king and lord of our life and us assuming that throne ourselves. That's the first and most important thing that we are repenting of. Okay? And so what happens in justification is that when God sent his son and his son died on the cross, then what happened as a result of that is that if we believe, John 3.16, whosoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life. Now, let me just make a quick distinction. We use eternal life and everlasting life interchangeably, oftentimes as synonyms, and that's okay. Not a problem. But I want to give you just a slight distinction. Eternal life is a life that's God. God has eternal life. He is eternal because he has no beginning and he has no end. He has always existed. That's eternal life. We have everlasting life, which means as we receive Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God, into our heart, then we are given the gift of eternal life, which means our life had a beginning, but it will have no end, because we will spend eternity with him. It will be everlasting. Okay? Again, not trying to, you know, fight over words or anything like that, but I wanted to bring that clarity to that because of the fact that when we put our faith and trust in Jesus, what happens is he forgives us, and we were talking about that, he forgives us of our conviction because we are guilty of sin. Okay? Let me turn with you real quick to uh uh Romans chapter 3, all right? And we want to look at that uh really, really quickly, and kind of help you get that picture in your mind a little bit. Um listen to this. Romans 3, chapter 21. We're reading from the King James, it says, But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all that them that believe, for there is no difference. Listen to verse 23. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Every single one of us is guilty as charge. And in the judgment of God we are convicted of that. But what he does in justification is he pardons us, okay, and in pardoning us, he drops those formal charges against us. He takes away the punishment and the penalty that would come at the end of this earthly life, which would be permanent separation from him. It would be us finding our place in the lake of fire. He takes all that away, and then he declares us righteous and basically restores to us that original status that we had in the garden as Adam and Eve. He puts us back in that place where we are now fully in the image and likeness of God. We even get a new body when we enter into his presence, which is so exciting for us to consider. Okay? So let me let me keep reading here in Romans 3 so you can get just a little bit more of this. Verse 23 again says, For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God. Listen, to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Did you hear that? Wow. God himself is the righteous judge, and in his position as a judge, back to that pardoning, we are guilty of rebellion, lawlessness, sin against God. What he then does is by his grace and by his mercy, he pardons us and takes away that penalty that we deserve for sin. Well, how can he do that? If he's a just God, then he should be just when it comes towards uh sin. He shouldn't look away from it, he shouldn't turn away from it, he shouldn't allow it to happen, he shouldn't allow it to go unpunished. Well, he doesn't. What he did is he poured out all of that sin and the punishment that was due and the debt that was old. He poured it on his son Jesus, God himself in the flesh. All right? And by doing that, he gets to remain just because he is dealing with the issue of sin, but then he is in the position of being the one who can be the justifier, the one who can set it right, the one who can in and of himself pay the debt that was owed. God satisfied his own justice by laying the penalty on Jesus Christ. So he can be just and punish sin, but he can be the justifier, redirect that punishment onto Jesus, and by Jesus being the perfect sacrifice, he died. Our scripture verse has said he's the propitiation. That means he was the satisfaction for the debt that was owed for sin, and in that satisfying, God was able to forgive sin for us because that debt was paid by Jesus. Okay? That is allowing him to be just and the justifier of our sin so that we can receive forgiveness and we can receive everlasting life through Jesus Christ. Okay? Let's talk about this just a little bit more because I really want to nail down this uh justification piece, and then as time permits, we'll move on to uh sanctification and glorification, and those may be additional episodes. But I really want us to get a hold of what it means fully and completely to be freed from that punishment, to be considered justified by God. Alright? Okay, this is getting good. I'm loving this, digging into this. So listen to this, alright? So, what Jesus does in justifying us is he makes a one-time permanent declaration of our being righteous. Okay? And what does that mean for us to be considered righteous? Well, it means a couple things. Righteousness is about the moral, justifiable behavior of being right before God. It is the contrast between being righteous and being wicked. It is it is moving from being selfish to being selfless. It is about our sin versus his perfection. Uh, and that perfection is credited to us by the work that Jesus did when we are redeemed by his blood being shed. We are forgiven. God is satisfied with that offering. And in that we are then able to stand before God and stand before him, accept it, and not reject it. Okay? Let's take a quick look at a couple verses related to that. Matthew chapter 25, and I want to go to the uh ESV for this one. Uh Matthew chapter 25, verse 21, says this. And this is the the uh story, the parable of the talents, okay, where talents were given, and uh one that had five, one had two, one had one. The one with five and two, they used those and they had more of an increase to bring back and give back to the master. The one with one uh buried it, got fearful um of what the master might do if he lost it, and so he didn't um he didn't operate in faith and trust what the the master wanted him to do. Okay, and so out of fear, he hid it and even accused the master of, you know, you're you're you're a hard man and you you reap where you haven't sown or where you haven't scattered seed, and so, you know, I was afraid. And the master even told me, well, then you should have just invested my money. If you couldn't go out and do that, you should have put it in the bank, you should have gotten interest, usury, something like that with the banker, and so that I would have some return, but you were not faithful to me. But here's what he says in verse 21 to the one that has five talents, and he says it again later for the one that had one talent. He says, Well done. The master said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much. Listen to this enter into the joy of your master. Okay? When we are seen as righteous before God, because of the work of Jesus on the cross, we are accepted. Okay? But when we act in wickedness, turn to Matthew chapter seven, we'll stay in the ESV since I have it open here. Uh verse 23, okay, Jesus is saying to them, Um, well, let me back up to verse 21 so you get the context of this. He says in verse 21, chapter 7, Matthew, uh, the book of Matthew, chapter 7, um, 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, on that day will many say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do mighty, many mighty works in your name? And I will declare to them, I never knew you, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness, or the King James says, workers of iniquity. Okay? If you are pardoned, forgiven, um, seen as the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, then you are accepted. If you come to him faking the works, but not surrendering your heart, not truly believing and putting your faith in him, then he says, Depart from me, because I don't even know you. You're a worker of iniquity because it's all about you and it's all about your agenda. It's not about me. It's not how I've loved you. It's not what I did for you. It's about you thinking that your works are sufficient to earn you status with me or that you can earn your way into the kingdom of God. Okay? And so what God does is he justifies us through faith in Jesus Christ on the cross and he gives us victory over the penalty of death. Alright? And what he does in doing that is he makes it so that we would receive the gift of salvation. Okay? One time act one time declaration. Alright let me quickly turn to 2 Corinthians. Alright? And I want to look at chapter 5 to to wrap up our time here together. I knew we wouldn't make it far. This is so good and it's so rich and it's so full. But I want to be thorough with it. Okay? Because I really want you to have truth because truth is what will set you free. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21 from the King James it says for he hath made him and he's talking about God the Father and Jesus Christ he has made him Jesus Christ to be sin for us who knew no sin. Don't lose sight of that Jesus when he came in flesh he did not sin. He never violated the will of God the standards of God the principles of God he was sinless. That's how he lived his entire life he knew no sin but God made him to be sin. He heaped all of our sin, the penalty for our sin on him that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Don't miss that last two words in him. We become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus not by our works not by anything that we've done not by anything that we could possibly obtain on our own our thinking our rationale our judgment our wisdom none of that we are declared as righteous before God as the righteousness of God because of Christ Jesus. It's in him that we get that declaration and then because of that then we are seen as forgiven we are seen as transformed we are seen as accepted not rejected God sees the good works he loves us and because of that his grace can pour out on us and we can then be justified we can be no longer charged with those charges of our sin because Jesus paid the debt for those sins. Alright? Oh I love it. We got more to do with justification then we'll get to sanctification and to glorification. But as always uh because of our work in Malawi we'd like to give a shout out to that work. So let's go ahead and have a Malawi moment at this minute okay all right for our Malawi moment today as we're starting season two I just want to bring you back around and ask you our viewers and our audience to be prayerful for that work in Malawi. In particular I want you to be praying for our ministers who are on the ground there in Malawi and their families. We have uh Gladstone Pastor Gladstone and Pastor Moses these men are amazing men of God. We just love them. We love their heart and their commitment to the work of the kingdom. They love the people of Malawi and they love being able to go out and minister to them to pour out on them to bless them to love them the way God wants us to love one another. He tells us to love others as he loved us. And so these brothers demonstrate that with such a heart that is full and overflowing. And so I just wanted to start season two by just asking you to put them on your prayer list remember them in your prayers lift them up lift up Pastor Gladstone and his wife and his family be praying for them his wife's name is Violet be lifting them up and their children he has such a heart for ministry with the evangelism ministry all the things that he's doing to caretake and deliver food and things for our families and then also lift up Pastor Moses his wife Eliza their little one be praying for them. Moses has such a heart for people in the prisons in the hospitals all of those types of things he just pours and pours and pours out while pastoring church as well and and being involved in other things in the Malawi Christian community both of these brothers and they are just such a blessing to us. We love them so much and if you knew them personally you would love them the way we love them. And so take our word for it and love them through prayer. Be praying for them lifting them up and lifting up their families and we're excited our hope and plan as God allows as we want to get back to Malawi this year. We're hoping maybe in August to be able to go and spend time in fellowship with these brothers and things like that and see their families and their kids and do ministry with them together while we're there in Malawi. They carry the lion's share and they do so much in our absence while we're here in the states but they are such a blessing to us and they are advancing and increasing and building the kingdom of God over there in Malawi for the Lord Jesus Christ. So that's my Malawi moment pray for those brothers and their families and for that work of One Voice Ministry through Christ Jesus to continue over there to be a blessing to the people of Malawi. Alright folks thank you again for rejoining us for season two we're so excited we want to continue talking about the complete work of salvation we will wrap up a little bit more about justification and then dive into sanctification in our next episode so we are glad that you uh came out to support that you're viewing this please share this with others so that others will hear some of this as well and so it can be an encouragement to them. And again there may be that one that God is trying to reach as he's drawing and so we want them to hear the gospel hear the good news hear what God did for them that he gave his life and he paid the penalty for their sin if they would just put their faith and trust in him they would repent turn their heart towards him turn their heart away from their sinfulness repent have a different mind about who he is a different mind about the reality of their sin and that they would believe put their faith and their trust in him okay we can say that we have faith in something but then we don't walk it out and show that we actually trust in it. I pray that those that hear this that need to hear this message would repent, put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ and receive the gift of salvation that he's giving so that they too can be justified through the work of Christ by the blood of Christ from the gift of the Father. Alright? So thank you folks for joining us we'll see you next time