Word of Salvation – Vol.38 No.19 – May 1993

 

It’s All In Jesus

 

Sermon by Rev. W. Wiersma on Lord’s Day 11

 

Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,

Everything we need for salvation is found in Jesus.

Everything we need to be right with God and to live a godly life of love and hope is given to us in Jesus.

So we must look to Jesus for everything.

We must depend on Jesus for everything to do with Christian faith and living.

Now, however simple and straightforward what I have just said may be, many people, also in the church, who hear it find it hard to grasp and even harder to accept.

Not long ago, someone who has been brought up in the church, (in other words someone who has heard this simple truth that we must look for everything in Jesus because God gives all we need for eternal life in Jesus) was asked, ‘What do you think it means to believe in Jesus?’  In answering that question she kept talking about what she did and tried to do, instead of talking about what God has given or of what Christ has done.

Without realising it, perhaps, this lady was looking to her own actions and feelings for salvation.  She kept saying, ‘But I love God.’  And then she made a very significant little comment.  She added, ‘But I don’t know whether God believes me.’

Why?  Is it because she knew she didn’t love God as she ought?

This is a very common problem.  Instead of looking at Jesus, we look at ourselves for salvation.

This is a problem which has all kinds of sides to it.

There is, for instance, the common idea that we humans have to save ourselves.  We hear the law of God and we realise?  This is what we have got to do.  We have to obey God.  That’s what God’s Word says.

But we don’t realise how incapable we are of doing what God commands.  We perhaps tell ourselves how hard we are trying – much harder than we used to, or much harder than so many other people we know.  But if we are honest, can we truly claim to love God with all our heart?  Can you?  Can you claim to love God with all your heart?  And do you really love your neighbour as yourself?  Anyone who says, ‘Yes,’ to that question, doesn’t know themselves very well.

There is another side to the problem of looking to yourself for salvation.  You don’t appreciate the grace and love of God.

You probably think that you have to do something to deserve the love of God.

Is that not why that lady was talking about how much she loved God, though deep down she knew she didn’t?  It’s the idea that you have got to make some contribution; you have to be worthy of God’s love.  And you probably equate love with approval.  You think that for God to love you He has to approve of you.

Well, let me tell you something.  God loves people He can’t approve of, and He doesn’t approve of.

God actually loves the totally undeserving.  That is the love of God.  That is the miracle of the love of God.  Will you get this, please?  God loves the undeserving!

God loves horrible people, despicable people.  Do you hear that?

Don’t ever think you have to make yourself worthy of the love of God.  Because by that very attempt you are denying the love of God.  You are saying that God cannot love us, unless we make ourselves worthy, unless we make some contribution towards His love to us.  However small our contribution may be, we have to present something.  If you think that God only loves the deserving, you do not understand the Gospel.

God loves the totally undeserving.

You see, His love is not based on something in us.  It is not God’s reaction to something in us.  Love originates totally from God himself.

Jesus himself puts it this way: – I came to look for and to save sinners.  I am the great spiritual doctor who brings healing to the sick.  I came not for healthy people but for sick ones.  That is the Good News.

To benefit from Jesus’ saving work we have to admit that there is something wrong with us.

This pretence that we are trying so hard, and the prayer: ‘Please God will you accept us because we are doing our best’, we are, honestly Lord, we are doing our best.’  God says, Forget it!  Forget about trying to pay for my love.  Can’t you see that I have so loved the world that I have sent my Son get hold of sinners and to bring them into my family  and to make them my children?  That is my work.

The name ‘Jesus’ means GOD SAVES.

To benefit from Jesus’ saving work is to admit that He has to do the saving.  He has to do the healing.  He has to do the changing.  To believe in Jesus is to place ourselves in his hospital for the operation which only He can perform.

We have to confess that we are not right and that we can’t make it right, no matter how hard we try?
Salvation is a GIFT.
Salvation is the gift of God.
Salvation is given to sinners in Jesus Christ.

This is what make the Christian message Good News.

Salvation – being blessed with all the blessings of God – is a gift for which all the credit goes to God.
No credit to us.

That’s why the church doesn’t mind talking about that dreadful subject of sin.  It is a terrible and terrifying thing to hear that you are a hopeless sinner.  That is a shocking thing to hear and to have to come to grips with.

It is something that John Bunyan, that famous author of the Pilgrim’s Progress, took a couple of years to wrestle with.  He battled with the fact that he was a sinner before the Holy God.  To his consternation he found that it was hopeless to attempt to buy the love of God.

Only after a long struggle did he come to the strong conviction that salvation is a gift of God, and none of man’s doing.

So you see, when the church, in the name of God, says that you are a hopeless sinner, it does not mean to say that there is no hope for you.  In Jesus there is hope for sinners.  Rather, it just means to say that there is no hope of salvation to be found in yourself, in your own abilities or in your own spiritual reserves.

The only real hope for you is to be found in Jesus.

The Gospel is the message of hope for sinners.  No matter how bad and hopeless they are in themselves.  Sinners are hopeless, only in the sense that they obviously cannot save themselves.  They are trapped in their sin.  Jesus has come to untrap them; to set sinners free from the bondage of sin which they can’t shake off.  He has come to fulfil God’s promise of salvation.

He is the mediator of God’s Covenant.

Now that is a big subject, but let me try to introduce it to you as simply as possible.

Long ago, God established the Covenant of Grace.  It was a covenant, an arrangement, in which God expressed His desire and decision to choose and save a people for Himself.  Out of the whole human race which had fallen into sin God decided to draw a people to Himself, so that they would know Him in His goodness and love and enjoy his presence forever and all His gifts that go with His presence.  He promised that He would  do everything for them in order to make them His people and to enable them to live as His people forever.

He said, ‘You shall be my people and I shall be your God.’

And I am determined to make that not only possible, but a reality.  Now this gracious promise of God is often referred to as the covenant God made with Abraham.

Perhaps it would help us to think of it as the Covenant which God made with Christ and made known to Abraham.

The apostle Paul, for instance, writes in his letter to the Ephesians that God has chosen his people in Christ from before the foundation of the world that we might be holy and blameless before him.  God has chosen a people to be His people, in Christ.

The point I wish to make is that Jesus Christ is our covenant representative.  He acts on our behalf in this Covenant of Grace.  You see, when God makes His Covenant with people, God not only makes promises of what He will do?  He also places obligations on the people with whom He makes his Covenant.

Now, when the Bible teaches that Jesus is the Mediator of the Covenant, it means that Jesus fulfils the promises of God and also that Jesus performs the obligations we have towards God.  Jesus acts on behalf of God and Jesus acts on behalf of us.

In Jesus, God and his people meet together; that is what Jesus has established, this contact between God and us.

Jesus represents both God and us.  He is both God and man.

The Bible is very clear and strong about the fact that the good news is about what God has given in Jesus the Christ, and what Jesus has done for sinners.  The preaching of the apostles and of all ministers of the Gospel, lays great emphasis on the truth that what Jesus has done is the basis of our salvation, that is, the basis of a good relationship with God.  That is not found in you or me, but is only found in Jesus who is our Mediator and covenant representative.

In the Gospel we read about the blessings of the covenant – we read of sins forgiven, of peace with God.  Jesus obtained that for God’s chosen people by dying on the cross for them.  By shedding his blood, Jesus made atonement for the sins of God’s people.  Those sins are atoned for.  Jesus has died – died once for all.  The thing has been done.  That’s what the Bible says.  By shedding his blood Jesus made atonement for our sins.  Jesus bore the curse of sin and the punishment of sin on the sinners’ behalf.

He was judged, He was condemned.  God turned His back on Him, in order that we might be declared ‘not guilty’ before the throne of God.  Now think about that, try to imagine that.  That before God, the Holy Judge, you, because of what Jesus has done for you, are not guilty; innocent!  God says to everyone in Christ, You are not guilty of any sin.  Someone may now be thinking?  Wait a moment, that can’t be right.  How is that possible?  Have you not just told us that we are all sinners.  I say it again?  This is the marvel of God’s grace and the arrangement of his holy covenant.  All those people whose sins Jesus has taken upon Himself and died for on the cross, are ‘not guilty’.  That is the heart of the Gospel.  Not that you try to deny your guilt, but that God says that your guilt is wiped out.  There is no other way of God saying that, than Jesus taking our guilt upon himself and making atonement for our sins.

God is very radical.  Very truthful.  He says, Your sins are bad.  Far worse than you like to think.  But God’s grace is good – much better than you think.  And He says to rotten sinners who trust in Jesus’ work: Not guilty…!

Now, if that does not revolutionise our thinking and our living, then I don’t know what will.  If that does not make you thankful to God, I don’t know what ever will.

And if you still think that somehow you can make God say that about you by the efforts of your life, then I don’t know what will ever convince you to think differently.

You see, it is all in Jesus or you don’t have it at all, no matter how religious you are, no matter how much you give, or whatever you do.

“There is salvation in none other than Jesus alone.”

We read, as a promise of the Gospel, of the believer dying to sin and rising to new life.  Jesus died that death.  He rose victorious from the grave, for us, for sinners whom God calls to accept and enjoy what He gives: Jesus.

So stop looking at yourself.  Stop asking yourself, what do I feel like?  Stop looking at your own spiritual navel all the time and look to Jesus, for only in Him will you find the answer and only with Him will you find peace.

That makes you humble.  It cuts you right down to size.

And that is something which we generally do not want.  We don’t want to declare ourselves bankrupt, to admit that we can’t do anything towards our salvation.  That is why we are always trying to contribute something.  We are always saying that we have got to do something.

I say it again, forget about your trying.

Look at what has been given, look at what has been done by Jesus.  All that Jesus has done and achieved He has done for the people God has chosen in Him before  the foundation of the world and whom God will bring to faith in Jesus at His appointed time.  In Jesus God has given us his blessing, because in Jesus God has given us faith, obedience and victory.

Jesus has believed,
Jesus has obeyed,
Jesus has won
on our behalf.

You see, when you are battling with your faith (or rather with your doubts) and you ask yourself, ‘Is my faith strong enough?’ then it would be terrible if your salvation would depend on your faith, wouldn’t it.  And it does not depend on your faith, it depends on the faith of Jesus, who believed for us, and obeyed for us, and won the battle for us.

We don’t have to win the battle anymore; it has been won for us.  Can you see it?  In Jesus.  That’s also what the sacraments which we celebrate in the church say.  They point to what Jesus has done for us.  They declare that in Jesus God has given us everything we need for salvation, for life and godliness.

And if you can see that, then you will also be willing to say?  Lord that is exactly what I need!  This is where I am at.  I am an undeserving and despicable sinner, and I can only have hope because of what you have given in Jesus.

When you begin to see something of the Gospel, of the Good News about Jesus the Mediator of the Covenant, then you can even afford to be honest with yourself.  It reminds me of something that I was taught by my friend and mentor the Rev.  John VanderBom when I was in my first congregation.  Somehow he had found out that I was preaching: You should do this, you are not allowed to do that – the law all the way.  He said?  Bill, you will not get people to repent till you preach the gospel to them.

I thought he was going a bit soft.  But it is true.  Because a sinner cannot afford to be honest with himself till he sees the hope which Jesus offers.  We need both the law and the Gospel.  The Gospel and the law.  And we may look to Jesus and trust that in Him God is saving sinners.

Lord, grant that we and our children may grasp this truth and rejoice in Jesus in whom we too may be your people.

AMEN