Salvation in Christ Alone
A Sermon by Dan Absalonson
Introduction
- Introduce self
- Go ahead and grab a bible or get yours and turn to Titus chapter 3
- In the church bible’s it’s on page _____
- Tonight is the first in a two part sermon series on Titus 3:5-6
- My goal tonight is not to say anything new
- I’m not here to share with you some brilliant ideas I have
- I’m here to try and make our passage of scripture clear to you, and remind you of things you know
- Because we need to be reminded
- We need to be reminded daily
- If you’re here tonight and you’re not a Christian, first of all welcome!
- We are so glad you’re here
- You might be hearing things that are new to you, and I want you to know I’m not just going to be talking to the Christians here tonight
- I hope I can share some truths with you tonight that are very old and very impactful
- They won’t be my ideas, but what we read from the Bible
- That’s our book. We believe that God speaks to us through reading our bible
- So let’s get into it and read our bibles!
Read the text - Titus 3:5-6
5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,
Pray
1. He saved us
- When you ask someone: are you going to heaven when you die, what’s their answer?- What’s your answer?
- Do you think you will go to Heaven when you Die?
- Most people say yes
- When you ask them why, what do they say?
- Because they’re a pretty good person
- A pretty good person
- Sounds like they’re covered
- Let me ask you this:
- Does someone with that understanding of salvation believe they need a savior?
- No they do not
- Let me just tell you that’s not what the bible says
- Salvation is in Christ Alone, not in being a pretty good person
- Not even in being a really great person!
- Being a really great person will not save you!
- The bible says:
Matthew 5:48
You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
- The bible also says:
Romans 3:10
...None is righteous, no, not one;
- Sounds like we’ve got a problem
- Sounds like we need a savior
- For the Christians listening I want you to leave here able to explain to your non Christian friends:
- being a pretty good person isn’t enough
- And why that popular understanding of salvation is wrong
- And why it’s a really big deal even though we don’t often think of it
- For the non Christians listening I want you to leave here tonight knowing this:
- No matter how good of a person you are
- No matter how many good things you do before you die
- Unless you put your faith and trust in Jesus, and what he did for you dying on the cross, you will not be saved!
- Jesus is the only way
- That’s why I titled this Salvation in Christ Alone
- Unless you put your faith in Jesus, you will not be saved!
- What does that mean?
- It means you believe in the Gospel
- Gospel means good news.
- The good news that: though we are sinners, and are therefore enemies of God, Jesus died for us, in our place, the death we deserve for our sin against God, in that death paying for all our sins as a sacrifice to make peace with God for us, gifting us his righteousness
- So that when God looks at you instead of seeing your sin he sees Jesus’s righteousness, his right standing as someone who never broke God’s laws
- What is sin?
- If we are to be perfect you could say sin is missing the mark
- If we were all trapped on an island and some guy comes in a boat
- Says “I’ll take anyone to the mainland, but you have to pay me a million dollars”
- We’d say “none of us have money!”
- So he says, “Okay I’ll save you and take you to the mainland if you can throw a rock and hit a target.”
- “Okay what’s the target?” we’d ask
- The mainland
- So it’s impossible right? But we try anyway
- One person throws a rock 30 yards, another 20
- Someone even throws it like 65 yards
- But were any of us close?
- No we might as well have all dropped the rock
- We have all missed the mark
- We have all sinned against God, turned aside to our own way, rebelled against God, broken his laws
- Criminals can’t just get off for free, that wouldn’t be just!
- You wouldn’t want the judge to tell someone who stole your stuff, “it’s cool he can go without paying for it.”
- That wouldn’t be right, or righteous
- I know when someone stole my car it didn’t feel right for them to get away with it
- God is just, which means he won’t let sin go unpunished
- God hates sin because it separates us from him and he wants a relationship with us
- and sin hurts other people and God calls us to love others
- So God is just, but he’s also loving
- He knows we can’t perfectly keep his laws
- He knows we’re gonna sin a lot!
- So he made a way for our crimes to be dropped
- A way for our sins to be forgiven, while maintaining his justice
- He sent his son Jesus to be a substitute for us
- Jesus steps in and takes the punishment for our sin
- Substitutionary atonement
- Christians don’t tune me out right now because you already know this
- You need to be reminded of this!
- Let it soak in because if you really get this gratitude toward God can’t help but flow out of you!
- Substitutionary atonement
- Jesus substituted himself in our place to take on all of God’s just wrath for our sins
- He saved us, like it says in our verse
- Jesus atoned for our sins, or made things right with God for us with the payment of his death
- How did his death pay for all our sins?
- Could just anyone die for our sins?
- Nope, only Jesus Christ the promised savior
- Christ isn’t just Jesus’s last name, it’s a title for the saviour and redeemer who would bring salvation
- The Old Testament has many prophecies written about a savior to come that Jesus specifically fulfilled
This was written about 700 years before Jesus was born:
Isaiah 53:5–6
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
- So not just anyone could come and be our savior
- Only someone who perfectly kept God’s laws
- Jesus fulfilled the law of God
- He lived a perfect life, never breaking any of God’s laws
- The bible says the wages of sin is death
- Jesus died in our place taking all of our sins on himself
- He saved us
- If you have faith in Jesus as your savior you’re also admitting you are not your savior
- Do you need a savior? [pause]
Titus 3:5
He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness...
- Salvation in Christ Alone
- not works done by us in righteousness
- He saved us
- there is no other way to Salvation
- OK let’s take a step back
- I know that might sound narrow minded or even cruel to some of you
- But I really believe there is only one way to be saved from your sins and if I didn’t do my best to explain that to you,
- and I just said things that made you feel good about yourself, that would be cruel
- I want you to leave here tonight knowing the truth about what happens to you when you die
- There are only two destinations when you leave this world
- It’s either Heaven or Hell
- You’re either with God for all eternity or you’re separated from him
- There’s only one way to get to Heaven
- And that’s through Jesus Christ
- To tell you otherwise would be unloving
- You hear the opposite from the world all the time
- “You do you!”
- YOLO! You Only Live Once
- That’s not true!
- Your life here on Earth is like a breath
- And the life to come never ends!
- “Do whatever seems right to you!”
Proverbs 14:12
There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.
Luke 16:15
And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.
- The world says “Do whatever makes you feel good!”
- “It’s all about you!”
- I’m here to tell you that it’s not all about you! [pause]
- it’s actually all about Jesus and what he did for you
- and when you get that you will find Joy found nowhere else
- the highest high you can get is found in a relationship with God
- nothing can beat it
- nothing can bring you more joy
- nothing can bring you more fulfillment
- nothing can satisfy you more
- but there’s a problem
- our sin separates us from God so we can’t have a relationship with him
- that’s where a saving faith in Jesus comes in
- He Saved Us making the only way for us to be forgiven of our sin and have a right relationship with God, not because of works done by us in righteousness
- If true joy is found in relationship with God and sin separates us from God,
- Can’t you see that he wants what is best for us?!
- When we rebel against God and break his laws we break our relationship with him
- We sin because we want to be our own God
- We think we know what will make us happy better than he
- The Creator
- So we chase after created things rather than God the creator
- This is what we should chase after:
- The bible calls us to do two things
- Love God, love others.
- When you pursue these two things instead of selfish gain you are going to find more joy and fulfillment than you can find anywhere else
- lasting joy that doesn’t fade
2. Not because of works done by us in righteousness
- If our identity is all in what we do or what we have, like the rest of the world, we’ll never be satisfied
- It will always fail us
- If your identity is in Jesus and what He did for you, He Saved You, then you will be satisfied
- Not because of works done by you in righteousness
- If you spend your whole life earning one goal, one huge dream you have
- Let’s say you want to be the best soccer player in the world
- It’s all you think about
- It’s your dream
- Then one day you’re on your way home from soccer practice and you get in a horrible car accident
- You wake up and one of your legs are gone
- It’s your dominant leg, the one you kick goals with to score on the other team
- Now the thing you put your identity in is gone
- You might say things like “now I have nothing”
- If your identity is in Christ, it can not be taken away from you
Romans 8:38–39
38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
- you can earn all this world has to offer and it still won’t be enough to bring you lasting joy
- earning anything with works, including an attempt to earn your salvation, end in disappointment and unfulfillment
- look at all the celebrities that seem to have it all
- fame, wealth, and their lives are a mess!
- they have worked hard and sacrificed and spent years getting to where they are and then when they finally made it they came to find something out
- it still wasn’t enough
- it didn’t bring them lasting joy
- That may seem hard to believe, but let’s see what the richest man in history, John D. Rockefeller had to say
- By the time Rockefeller died in 1937, his assets equaled 1.5% of America’s total economic output. That’s like a net worth of about $340 billion, more than four times that of Bill Gates
- When a reporter asked him, “How much money is enough?” He responded, “Just a little bit more.”
Ecclesiastes 5:10
Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income…
- OK so He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness... means we can’t save us
- We can easily have the wrong idea about this
- We might think when we come to God:
- God is holy and I’m not so I better get my life cleaned up before I can become a Christian
- No! That’s not true!
- We can’t clean our lives up enough to come to him
- That’s why Jesus came to die!
- For the Christians listening, you might be in this place because of some sin
- You feel so bad about it you’ve been avoiding God
- The devil, our enemy, loves to use this lie to keep you from running to God who is waiting with open arms to forgive you no matter how great your sin
- Don’t let sin continue to separate you from God!
- If you’re not a Christian:
- Please don’t believe the lie that you have to somehow first clean up your life and then come to Jesus
- Don’t believe God could never accept you because you’ve done too many terrible things in your life
- We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God!
2 Corinthians 5:21
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
- He saved us
- but what about that popular lie, “I think I’ll go to heaven because I’m a pretty good person.”
- Let’s look at where these false answers about salvation come from, because they don’t come from the Bible
- So, our culture.
- We live in a culture of the now
- What’s new?
- What’s going on RIGHT NOW?
- I ordered something from my couch on my phone and I have to wait DAYS for it to come in the mail?
- I want it now!
- If we value the newest latest stuff, and are only interested in the NOW
- We won’t care about what happens to us when we die
- We won’t even think of it!
- That’s like, forever from now, I don’t care about that
- Someday when I’m like super old I can deal with that
- We live in a culture of convenience
- Everything is quick and easy
- You know what else is quick? This life.
- We are not promised tomorrow
- The bible says this life is like a breath and the life to come never ends, it’s eternal
- He Saved Us so that we can have peace with God now, today, and know him
- So even if I can’t convince you that you should have your mind set on more than what is going on right now, it is in Christ and his sacrifice for us that we can know God right now!
- Are you going to heaven when you die? [pause]
- Salvation is in Christ Alone, He Saved Us!
Titus 3:5
he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness...
- NIV translation says [SLIDE]:
...not because of righteous things we had done,
- We can’t do anything to earn righteousness, or a right standing with God, peace with God, forgiveness of our sins
- We’re told “Work hard! Earn your dreams!”
- We’re taught that if you want something you’ve got to earn it, so get out there and work!
- Just work long and hard enough and you can earn whatever it is you want!
- We praise this!
- Hear me, I’m not saying hard work is bad. It’s not.
Colossians 3:23
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,
- The bible says hard work is good, but look at what is driving that hard work
- are you working hard as for the Lord, or for you?
- So we’ve seen ways our culture seems to lead us to thinking we need to earn salvation, what about other sources?
- other religions that claim to be Christian
- there are some religions, who claim to be Christian, who would say yes! You can earn righteousness!
- they would say “We saved us!”
- or “I saved me! By works done by me in righteousness!”
- I have Mormon friends
- They use the bible, but they have another book that they hold up above the bible which says:
- “We believe that we are saved by grace after all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23)
- I have friends who are Catholic
- they use the Bible
- with them you get baptized and you’re good
- but then if you sin after that you need to perform the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation
- pretty much it’s on you to do what you need to do to get your forgiveness
- and you need to get it from a priest
- but Jesus is our great high priest and we need no other to get forgiveness of sins
1 Timothy 2:5
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
- My Jehovah’s Witness friend believes that salvation is a free gift from God, but it is unattainable without good works that are prompted by faith.
- let’s look at our text again
Titus 3:5
he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy,
- Paul who wrote this scripture we’re studying was once a Jew and he once tried to earn his salvation
- As a Christian trying to share the Gospel with Jews he said this:
Romans 10:1–4
1 Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them (Jews) is that they may be saved. 2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
Titus 3:5
he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy,
- Even if we know this doctrine is true, what are some ways we still act that say otherwise
- Do we ever compare ourselves to others and think, we’ll at least I’m not that bad
- My sins aren’t as bad as their sins
- We all sin!
- In comparison to God we’re all the same
- We can’t justify our sin by comparing it to the sin of others
James 2:10
For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.
What are the ways you are trying to earn salvation with your works of righteousness?
- OK before I finish, let me just say after putting down works, how we should view works
- are works bad?
- should we just abandon them and pray and read our bibles all day and never do anything for others?
- no!
- in fact look at some verses right around our text in the same chapter:
Titus 3:1
Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work,
Titus 3:14
And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful.
Ephesians 2:8-10
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
- We need to know that we never do good works in the hopes that it is earning us anything before God
- It isn’t
- To think that we can earn righteousness, or a right standing before God, is arrogance and pride and not what the Bible teaches
- So when we do anything, devoting ourselves to good works, it’s not to earn something but we do it out of a heart of thanksgiving to God and love for others
- we do good works because Jesus first loved us and did the best work of living the perfect life, dying the death we deserve in our place, and rising again to new life defeating death for us so that he can bring us to his father someday.
Titus 3:5-6
5 he saved us…
- Salvation is in Christ Alone, not because of works done by us in righteousness
Let’s Pray
- have questions, come talk
- love to pray with you
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