Jesus is: Jesus is Savior

Join us at Salt and Light Church as pastor John kicks off the new sermon series on Jesus is. Pastor John speaks on Romans 5, Jesus our savior.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

All right. Hello. So good to see you guys. Well, last the last couple of weeks, we did a series on crossing the Jordan where we really took a moment for us to consider what it means to move into something new. How many of you have ever moved into a new season in your life before? Right? Well, as a church, as you know, we're moving into a new season. And last week, Pastor Gina preached, and we had this little board where we asked people to write down different memories or different things of what meeting in the previous building meant to them. This has been sitting in our living room all week. And every single time I've read it, I was kind of met with tears about all the things that God has done. And I know that there are many more things that are there. But we'll go ahead and just set this up right here as a little reminder. We uh last week we looked in Joshua about how as they crossed in over across the Jordan River into something new, they set up stones as a reminder of what God did in that place. And this is our reminder, and we brought this. This is testimony, right? We as we move into this new season of church and we're excited in this new space and our new time, praise Jesus. If you've been around for a while, you know I used to preach on one of these tables, and I preach on one of these tables again, um, versus the other thing, like we're we're moving, but it's important for us not to forget where we came from either. That we hold on to the past not just with reverence or nostalgia, but we look back and we celebrate, but we also look forward. Well, we are in this new series. We thought about, like, hey, where do we start, right? We're in a brand new building, a brand new season. Where should we start for a sermon series? And we have a new sermon series that we're gonna take a look at. We thought it would really be good to go back to the basics of where we're at. We are Salt and Light Church, but we're part of a denomination called Foursquare. And some of you may wonder, like, some of you may know what Foursquare means. Other viewer, like, I remember playing that as a kid on the field, right, as we go. Um, can we get our slide up? Um so this right here, what Foursquare means is where it comes from, is four different elements of who Jesus is and what Jesus does. And there's different symbols here as you look on this screen that are there. Four different symbols you see a lot of the times in some of the stuff it's branded in a square, and that's where it comes from. And each one of these symbols means something different. It's that Jesus is our savior represented by the cross, he is our baptizer, he is our healer, and he is our coming king. These four different areas. You know, he is our savior, which means he rescues us, which by itself is great. How many of you want to be rescued in life, right? We need times of rescue. If Jesus stopped there, that would be amazing. But he doesn't stop there. He then afterward is our baptizer, he opens up the door for us to be filled with the Holy Spirit. That means that God doesn't just, he's not just out there as we look into the heavens or this big presence. He is in our hearts inside, that through Jesus He baptized us. He also heals. And if that stopped there, if God residing with us, that would be great. But he doesn't stop there, that God also heals us. How many of you have been touched by the Lord? That you felt that God has physically, in some way, physically, spiritually, emotionally healed you in some way, right? We know that he heals us today. We believe that. But we also believe that we live in a now and not yet, that one day when he comes again in our soon and coming king, that one day all things will be made new. We are healed now, but we will also be healed in full later. Well, over the next four weeks, we're gonna take a look at one of these aspects. And what I love about this is it's it's really about kind of about our denomination, right? We're a part of. But what I love about a denomination is the more you learn about where we get our name from, the more you learn about our denomination, you're really just learning about Jesus. It's this sermon series is really about who Jesus is and what he's done for us. So today we're gonna start one with the first one, which is Savior. And I think of the four, this is the one that I think is the most familiar to us all. Even if you don't know, if you know very little about Jesus, if someone doesn't have a relationship with Jesus, more than likely somebody has seen a bumper sticker or heard the term Jesus saves, right? It's like I don't know much about Jesus. Something about a cross, and then he's come to save things or people or me, right? Like we know that it just kind of comes naturally to us. And it's familiar. But the problem with familiar things is that after a while the meaning can become very thin. It's the familiarity that breeds contempt, that saying that as we maybe understand and we know, I don't know much about this person, Jesus, but I know he saves, that it can just become common to us. But savior is kind of the ultimate. It is the top. If we don't have the view that Jesus is our savior, we what we're in danger of doing is reducing Jesus into something less than who he really is. We can think of Jesus as like a great teacher. Jesus is an amazing teacher. But he's not just an amazing teacher. We can reduce Jesus to just an example for how to live our lives. Jesus is the best example of how to live our lives. But that's not just what he is. He can be a guide for us. He's an incredible guy, but not just as a guide. Jesus can make us more patient and loving and generous, more peaceful, more forgiving in all these things as we study him. And all that matters, right? Following Jesus should change the way that we live, but at the end of the day, Jesus just didn't come to improve us. Jesus isn't just a self-help guru. Jesus came to save us. Amen? See, the gospel message of Jesus reveals this deeper truth. We didn't just need to prove it. We need rescue. We don't just need advice, we need salvation. Today we're going to take a look at a passage in Romans chapter 5. I think that this to me resonates most with me about what Jesus did and how he saved us. So in Romans, Paul is writing to an early church. You know, there's disagreements, and sometimes even today, we have arguments between churches. But the reason the New Testament was written after the Gospels is because churches just kept doing all the wrong things. We as people, right, we just tend to mess up. We are not perfect. Can I get an amen? So Paul is talking about who Jesus is to this very young and early church. And he's building this case that, hey, no matter who you are, you need the grace of Jesus. If you no matter your ethnicity, if you are Jewish, if you're Gentile, if you're man or woman, if you're religious, if you do all of the things or you just show up, y'all need Jesus' grace and mercy. You're not better than anybody else. And he's building this argument here that he's going. And his point is that, hey, sin has affected all of you. Y'all are sinners. So get off the high horse and just have a measure of humility with each other, for goodness sake, a message that I think all of us need to hear, right? And he tells us that the good news of Jesus is that we're made right by God, not by anything that we do, but because of a gift, not by our own effort or ability, but all because of Jesus through our faith. So we'll see here, we'll start reading in verse 6. Romans 5. It says, at just the right time, Christ died for ungodly people. He died for us when we had no power of our own. It's unusual for anyone to die for a godly person. Maybe someone would be willing to die for a good person, but here is how God has shown his love for us. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He starts out by saying, at just the right time. I love that Paul doesn't say, you know, at just the right time when you've cleaned yourself up enough, Christ came to die for you. At just the right time when you really finally got serious about God. At just the right time after that sin or that attitude that you've been working on has fixed itself. Or at just the right time, when you finally become the person that God can be proud of, sinner. Instead it's the opposite. At just the right time, when we were still powerless. Have you ever been in a situation where you have been powerless before? How vulnerable is that? When no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, there's just nothing you can do. Powerless isn't a word that we like to think about ourselves being in, right? I think we like to think ourselves in the best. We do that. And maybe even at church, you ever like get into a fight with your spouse on the way to church, and then all of a sudden you get here and you're kind of like, all right, we need to like fix whatever's going on here, right? This idea that, hey, we need to put our best foot forward, right? We need to get this perfect version of ourselves, even the social media presence, right? It's like you look at life and you're like, is this how other people live? Because I don't live this way. Like we see constantly this thing, this idea that we put ourselves. We like to think that, like, hey, we can handle it, that we still believe it. I, when I think about the Lord, even I like to think about myself as a pastor and all the good things that I've done. Like, God, you know, I went to Bible college, like I'm pastor of a church, and you know, I've helped people. I haven't always made the right decision and everything else. I love to start and try to imagine myself that somehow Jesus loves me more at my best. Instead, Paul says, God demonstrates his own love for us while we were still sinners that Christ died for us. God doesn't wait until after you fixed it. He doesn't wait until after you become spiritual. He doesn't wait until after you have read through the Bible in a year. He didn't wait until you've gone through the worst, hardest season of your life and become a better person because of it. It's while you were still a sinner. He didn't come for the impressive version, the churched-up version, and the buttoned-up shirt and all of that. A lot of us carry, I know I carry this belief, that somehow I get a greater measure of God's love if I put that version out into the world. That somehow, if I look at those dark painful moments in my life, that somehow if I just pretend those don't exist, God will love me more. I think all of us deep down, we feel that. That somehow God loves us more, but if we pray more. You know what I'm talking about? Romans 5 says that God loved us while we were still sinners. Not that sin doesn't matter, not that repentance doesn't matter, but what he's saying is that God moved towards you before you had the ability to move towards him. You were stuck and God saw you and moved towards you, and we moved towards him. Take a moment. Maybe your spouse or kids, your parents, or what's the thing that you tried to forget or bury or explain away? Maybe for some of us it's not one thing, it's a whole lot of things. Think about it, where where is that? Don't just move off of it. Because it's uncomfortable. Right there, that's when Jesus saw you and said, I'm coming for you. Right there. I am coming for you. The worst you ever were. The deepest moment of pain you've ever experienced. Christ died for you in your sin and your powerlessness in the moment of biggest vulnerability when you just, there's just nothing else I can do. He died for you in the moment when you had nothing to bring to the table except for your own need for his mercy. God didn't love you because he was unaware of the sin. I treat my own sin and my own human nature that way. Well, if as if I just don't think about it, close my eyes and do my ears loud enough, maybe God won't think it's there either. Right? It's not like, oh man, I saved Brandon. We're gonna pick on you because you're here. I would have saved Brandon, but then all of a sudden, now that I've gotten into it, I didn't realize how messed up Brandon was. Shoot. I kind of feel that way. I kind of feel that way sometimes. God, did you know what you were doing when you called me into ministry? Did you knew you? Did you know all of this? God, did you know all of this stuff before you asked me to say yes? To come to church, to volunteer, just to wake up. He loved you. He saw the whole story, he saw all the parts that everyone else didn't see. He also saw the future you. He saw the hidden motives, the secret shame, the pain. He saw the wounding that you've inflicted on others, but more importantly, he saw the wounding that other people have inflicted on you. When you were the victim. When you were the one who was hurt, and saying, God, where were you? His answer in that moment of the deep shame, of the pain, isn't to move away from you. His answer was Jesus. I love the fact that if Jesus moved towards us in our very worst, we can trust him in the places of our lives where I still need God's grace. Let's keep reading Romans 5, 9 through 11. The blood of Christ has made us right with God. So we are even more sure that Jesus will save us from God's anger. Once we are God's enemies, but we have been brought back to Him because His Son has died for us. Now that God has brought us back, we are even more secure. We know that we will be saved because Christ lives. And that's not all. We are full of joy in God because our Lord Jesus Christ, because of him, God has brought us back to himself. I love this phrase he puts in here. How much more a couple of times. Paul talks about being justified by his blood. And justified is a really word that I don't think I've ever heard, like in the real world, only in like church world. It's a very churchy word. But it's a very important word. It means that we are right with God. And I think that's important for me because many times in life and in our sin, we could feel not right with God, right? We could feel that there's some brokenness. I've invited people to church before, invited people to come along. And people will say, I'd love to come, but my life is too much of a mess to come. I gotta wait until I figured some things out to come. And that messaging, I think, is our fault as the church. I think we've done a poor job of explaining that. Like when you are at your worst, the one place you should be most loved, most secure is in a church. I think a lot of it is on us that we've not always done the best, not only in explaining that, but also receiving people's pain and being in the container for the pain. See that word justified, it simply means that whatever standing you think it is, you are you are completely good. We have a trailer uh that we are using for all of this equipment that we have and everything else. And I bought the trailer a couple weeks ago, but I just got the title like two, three days ago. And I've been driving the trailer around like without a license plate. And that's a little scary, you know what I mean? As I'm driving, I'm like, as as you know, I've been going and picking up equipment, but even this morning I'm driving without a license plate. I have the title in my car, it's on my insurance, but there's a little bit where I'm looking a little bit more at four cops on my way here. Because I have like this this like fear that I'm gonna get pulled over, and please say, nope, drop the trailer, it stays here because you don't have a license plate, right? And then it's like, hey, all everyone show up. Hey church, come meet me at the corner of like Stirk and 67th, and we're just gonna unload the trailer and drive everything over. Like, I have this fear, but it's this thing where like I didn't feel legal driving this thing. Like, I felt like it's kind of like I'm breaking the rules, you know? Because it's like I'm not technically all there. You're supposed to, within three days of getting the title, you're supposed to register it. And it's been, I don't know, I don't know if that counts weekends. I didn't do all that research. But the point is, I felt vulnerable. I felt in this space because of this license plate. I'll feel a lot better this week when I go in and I get the temporary plate, you know, that you see and you put on there. It does feel differently. It's amazing how this little piece of paper can just make me not worry as much. It's a little bit of an absurd example, but we treat God the same way that sometimes we'll be in front of him and we will just feel like there's just something not right. I feel like because of me, because of everything else, I can't receive your goodness. And I remember that. I remember as a young before I even understand this. I'm as like young as a pastor of everything else. I would look at like the beauty of God's creation, but I had a hard time receiving the fullness of God because I was afraid of the sin inside of me. Like I couldn't receive the fullness because I'm like, I'm I have no temporary play here. I don't think that God really understands that I'm not quite legal. You know what I mean? Justify means we've got that license. We're we're good. There's no reason to pull us over. We've got the license plate, we got the registration, we're in the speed limit, we got the CPU on. Like, we don't have to live in fear of that. How many of us are driving around feeling like we're doing we're not justified when actually we are? That we're driving around in life, we're just walking through life. Come here before worshiping God and spending time in worship, but yet there's a side of me that says, Well, I'm just not. It's hard sometimes. Our salvation. When Christ died with us, our salvation isn't hanging by a thread by how good our week was. Our salvation is held by Jesus. I love this last passage the We are full of joy because the Lord of Jesus Christ. Because of him, God has brought us back to Himself. God. We don't climb our way into it. If we really understand this concept of salvation, if we really think about what it means, Jesus is Savior in our life, it really changes the way we view everything. We stop trying to prove ourselves to God, we stop trying to pretend that we're better than we are. We can even stop looking down on other people as if grace is something that we've earned and they've not. And act as if they are better than they are, forgetting where we've come from. Ain't nobody else doing anything else in the world that any of us didn't do before. Right? When we really understand what it means that Jesus is our savior, we can simply stand in the mercy of God and say, God, look what God has done. We stand and we worship, and it's just a testimony about what God has done in our lives. As we think about this, Jesus is Savior. This can hit us very differently depending upon where we're at, right? Some, maybe hearing this online or here, might realize it's like, I don't know if I've ever really tried to stop trying to save myself and fully admitted to myself and to Jesus that I don't have what it takes. Maybe today's the day that you're like, Jesus, I'm tired of striving and I'm tired of trying to unlock some type of achievement in life. I just simply need you to come near to me. And maybe today's the day that you say, Jesus, I need your grace, I need your forgiveness, I need what I cannot do myself. But I also know that there's others who hear this message and it can almost like dismiss it. Like, well, I've kind of already done that. You know what I mean? If we pull up Larry the slide, the four, oh, the four-four slide. No, you were right there. Sometimes it's kind of like, I've already kind of got the cross done, right? I did that when I was seven years old. You know what I mean? If I kind of did that earlier this year, I'm ready for like the other symbols, and we can kind of easily forget it. Like, you know what I mean? It's kind of like in, you know, in video games, Margaret Brothers, I've already beaten level one. I'm already, I'm already past that. And it's how easy and quickly it can be for us to kind of move past Jesus' savior. But the Christian life is not one where we're moving on to something more advanced. What it looks like is that the Christian life is learning to come back again and again to the grace that saved us in the first place. We need it more. Because like we begin to realize, like, oh man, so you spend more time with Jesus, you're like, oh, I didn't, I didn't realize that was in there. Like, discover a sin that you've been doing, you didn't realize you were doing. And all of a sudden you're like, oh man, I am a horrible person. I've been complaining about that person, that thing, that whatever it was, and all it's like, it was me the whole time. We need Christ as Savior every single day. This isn't 101, we've graduated to 201. This is like, oh my Lord. You never graduate past grace. You never graduate past grace. You never get so mature that you forget that you are powerless. The more time we spend with him, the more aware that we should realize that every single part of our life is dependent upon his mercy. If we stop coming back to Jesus our Savior, if we stop move past that, what happens is we begin to slowly start making something else of our own confidence. We begin to then slowly trust in our consistency knowledge, our service morality, church attendance, all the little stickers and you know, all the little like accolades that we get, we begin to rely on those things in order to determine our standing with God. And that is wrong. If we start thinking about how much better we are now than what we used to be, Paul reminds us that our boast isn't in ourselves, it's in God. It's not who we are apart from him, it's who we are in him. The invitation for every single person here is come back to Jesus. I love the fact our first week here in this new place, we are starting at the very basic. Jesus is our Savior. And my prayer is that this message, no matter how many other great sermon series we can do, and you know, we've kind of started with this tech, we're still figuring things out, where speakers go, what chords we need. Although James did a great job figuring it all out. You can see it everything else. Our team, our team did a great job. Everyone was here at 8 a.m. figuring out where we put benches and signs, like all of that stuff. It's like we'll we'll get better at it, we'll get quicker at it, we'll all those things, but my prayer is that no matter what, we're still here a year from now, 10 years from now, or whatever else, that Christ our Savior will be every single week. That we will recognize I am powerless, Jesus. That in my worst you're here for me. That we are held by Him. Let's stand as we close. I want to give an invitation today. I think sometimes we get into this idea of like two invitations. One, you have an invitation to accept Jesus for the first time, and one you have an invitation if you've already done it. I want to give the same invitation for all because we all need it. And if this is your first time ever truly accepting Jesus, what a party. We have cake just for you. But if this is your 10,000th time coming back to Jesus, we have cake for you also. Because we all need them, amen. So put your hands out as we receive it. So, Lord, I pray for those right here in this room. I pray for those watching online, I pray for those who stumble upon this message. I pray for every single person who has chosen to receive that message from you that admits, I am powerless, Jesus. I pray that this message will never become common for any one of us. I pray that it'd be the first thing we think about when we wake up. Thank you that at the very worst time in my life when I was the worst human being possible, it was that moment that you said, I'm coming. That right there is when I'm coming for you. And in the middle of that, you don't ask us to come to you, you move towards us. What an incredible gift. Let's just take a moment and ask every single person, thirty seconds, just personalize that prayer. Invite him into your darkest place in your life. Jesus, we love you, we need you. Move towards us into our darkness, into our pain. Allow me to stop resisting the free gift. In your name we pray. Amen. Amen. Well, with this, I want to leave you with this blessing as we go. I just encourage you, we'll have some donuts and cake and things like that. Also, take a moment, we'll leave this board up here for a little bit. Just take a look. As again, this is this board here is a reminder for us, the testimony of what God has already done for all of us here. So, with this, let me bless you. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord causes his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face towards you and give you his shalom. Shalom. God bless.