Question 29
New City Catechism • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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How can we be saved?
How can we be saved?
Recap of first two weeks of this block:
Question 27: Are all people just as they were lost through Adam, saved through Christ?
Answer 27: No, only those who are elected by God and united to Christ by faith.
Question 28: What happens after death to those not united to Christ by faith?
Answer 28: They will be cast out from the presence of God, into hell, to be justly punished, forever.
Who is familiar with the Chilean coal miners who were trapped in 2010?
On August 5 of 2010, 33 men were trapped 2,300 feet below the surface after a cave in on the 4.5 mile mine shaft. They were down there mining copper. As the cave in happened one man was able to get out but the other 33 were trapped. They attempted to get out via the ventilation shafts but the ladders were missing. Black dust from the cave in blinded them for over 6 hours. Finally the group leader gathered them in a refuge that was 500 sq ft and came up with a plan to survive.
They had to drill holes down some 2,000+ feet to find the miners and the miners made 2 days worth of emergency rations last over two weeks running out just before being found. Once they were able to drill a hole and find the miners, they were able to send down supplies and food, water, etc.
Now they had to figure out how to get them out. They came up with three plans to try and rescue them—all of them involved drilling a hole deep enough to then pull them out. 1 plan was developed by the Austrialians, one by the US and one by the Chileans.
The US plan, which was plan B, is what worked and it took everybody on board to figure it out. Everyone stepped up, including UPS who donated many plans to fly equipment to Chile ASAP to develop this system.
Imagine being stuck in that hole and waiting for rescue—what would you be thinking? What would you be most scared of? What would be the worst part?
They were stuck down there for 70 days, over two months over 2,000 feet below the ground with only so much space to go.
Imagine being saved out of that—how would your family respond? How would you respond? Why would that be your response?
You can watch the videos online its fascinating how they saved them—they drilled a hole about 30” wide and then lowered a capsule down into the earth all the way down, and one my one loaded a miner and brought them up. It took about 15 minutes in the capsule which only had about 24” of space in width to get to the top. Hope your not claustrophobic.
You can imagine there reaction and their families reaction as they are saved—pure joy, tears, embraces.
Have you ever been saved from a terrible situation? Maybe as a kid being lost in the mall or at an amusement park. Falling and someone catching you, rescued from a car accident, etc.
In the Chile example, who was it that rescued there miners?
Did the miners have any choice if they would be rescued or when they would be rescued?
Is there any way they could have climbed their way out of the coal mine?
How do people around us, Americans, think they can save themselves? What about even those in the church?
Good works, giving, communion, baptism, church attendance, etc.
Question 29: How can we be saved?
What do you think?
Answer 29: Only by faith in Jesus Christ and in his substitutionary atoning death on the cross.
This may be silly but lets see if you can get these:
I work on a team with other people
I wash my hands often
I often use a blade in my work to save people
i’m used to see lots of blood
Nurses work with me
I am a surgeon
2. Sometimes I sit for hours without doing anything
I wear a helmet
I have an axe in my case
I use a large hose
I drive a red truck
I am a firefighter
3. I work in the summer months
I don’t get out of my chair much
I wear sunscreen
I watch people
I swim really well
i am a lifeguard
4. I am a good driver
I don’t follow normal traffic rules
I use a siren
I respond when you call 9-1-1
Paramedics ride with me
I am an ambulance driver
5. I wear a uniform
Sometimes I work internationally
My job is very dangerous
I am trained to fight
My uniform is camouflage
I am a solider
6. I save lives without leaving my office
I tell other people what to do
I answer the phone all day
I can trace your call even if you don’t know where you are
My phone number is easy to remember
I am a 9-1-1 dispatcher
What do these people all have in common? They are life-savers, there job is to help others and try and save them.
Let’s go a little different direction.
Who has ever gotten lost before? Why is it so scary to be lost? What don’t you like about it.
We don’t like the feeling of being alone, not knowing where to go, not knowing how to find your way.
The problem of sin has not only affected us as individuals and our hearts, but it ruined a relationship that we had.
(Draw on white board)
In creation their was unity with God and man and they had a relationship.
How do we know there was some sort of relationship?
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
You know the story, we don’t need to focus on the specifics here but notice this conversation with God speaking to man.
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”
They hear the sound of God walking, he was in some sort of physical form, perhaps in Shekinah light as he appeared in Exodus but regardless Adam and Eve could hear him walking about and they hid.
There then is a conversation between God and Adam.
Prefall there was communion and relationship with God & man
At the fall this was broken, there was separation between God and man and no way for us to fix that.
But Jesus by his substitutionary death, through the cross, we can have relationship and this has been restored.
All of us have to be saved, we can’t do it on our own.
Turn to Ephesians 2
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Not only are we not able to save ourselves, we are heading in the total wrong direction. Lost in the woods—not only do we not know where the trail is, we are heading in the complete opposite direction of the trail.
How are we described, those who are living in sin, according to these verses?
Following the course of this world
Following the prince of the power of the air
Living in the passions of our flesh
Carrying out the desires of the body and the mind
By nature children of wrath
Before we are rescued, we are dead in our sin.
We are not physically dead, but spiritually dead. We need rescued and made right with Holy God.
On top of that we can’t do anything to fix the situation.
We have rejected God’s rule and failed to live according to God’s perfect law—we have to be saved.
Write on your paper in the heart there some sins you have committed in the last couple days. Don’t let anyone see yours, keep it to yourself.
There is great hope in the gospel though. As a matter of fact just continue with me in Ephesians
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
Who has made us alive? God
Why did God make us alive? Because of His great love
When did God make us alive? When we were dead in our sin
How did God make us alive? With Christ and by grace
6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 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.
God has to punish sin and he did punish sin through Jesus. By His only son, Jesus, he took on the punishment for our sin. The only person to ever live that did not deserve punishment took on God’s perfect wrath and paid the price we were required to pay.
If we trust in Christ alone as the one who paid the price for your sin, died on the cross and rose again, defeating death, then He gave you His righteousness.
You now, by faith, have a right standing before God through Christ
You had a heart transplant—your heard of stone was removed and you were given a heart of flesh
26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
This is the good news of the gospel that we are given this new heart.
This is the great exchange—Christ took on our sin, we took on his righteousness.
Those sins you wrote down in your heart, those are forgiven, made new through Christ.
As we talked about last week, those who do not put there trust in Jesus are still considered death in their sin and will pay the price for their sin for eternity in hell.
Before we end I want to ask some questions for us to think through together.
In what ways do we as Christians still struggle to embrace salvation through faith alone?
How can we experience “good works” without relying on them to gain favor with God?
How can we be sure that we are saved? Those who are alive in Christ will have a desire to live for God and to stop sinning. Our confidence is not in how strong our faith is but in how strong our Savior is.
Can we lose our salvation? No
37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.