-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the cafe today.
00:39 Hope you’re having a great day. Sit down, relax, or maybe you’re in the car already sitting down. But either way, relax, kick up your feet, think about the Bible, focus on the Bible, and watch as the things of this world grow strangely dim.
00:56 Amen. God’s Word is so good and so powerful and we’re here today to study His Word, to grow in knowledge and wisdom through His Word. It’s nothing I can do.
01:06 It’s only by the grace of God, the Holy Spirit working within me, preaching to you what the Holy Spirit wants you to know about His Holy Word. And today we’re talking about something very important, as we always do. I feel like I say that on every episode.
01:19 We’re always talking about something important here. Today we’re talking about salvation being by Christ alone in the context of we can’t work for our salvation. We can’t earn our salvation.
01:30 And I titled this message, Weeping Will Not Save You. There’s a hymn, and the hymn has multiple titles attached to it, but it’s by Robert Lowry. And I love this hymn.
01:43 I heard it on some record or online streaming, I should say. I don’t have a record player. Online streaming album, I heard it.
01:54 And I never even heard of the person performing it. But it’s from the long, long past, Dr. Lowry, Robert Lowry, from 1867. And it looks at none but Jesus being the author of salvation.
02:14 Weeping will not save me, though my face were bathed in tears, that could not allay my fears, could not wash the stain of years. Weeping will not save me. Jesus wept and died for me.
02:27 Jesus suffered under the tree. Jesus waits to make me free. He alone can save me.
02:33 Working will not save me. Purest deeds that I can do, holiest thoughts and feelings too, cannot form my soul anew. Working will not save me.
02:43 Waiting will not save me. Helpless, guilty, lost I lie. In my ear is mercy’s cry.
02:49 If I wait, I can but die. Waiting will not save me. Faith in Christ will save me.
02:57 Let me trust thy weeping son. Trust the work that he has done. To his arms, Lord, help me run.
03:01 Faith in Christ will save me. That’s Dr. Robert Lowry’s hymn. It’s so beautiful.
03:07 And he’s mentioning that weeping, or working, or waiting, all W’s, quite an alliteration there. Weeping, working, or waiting won’t save you. And yet we see a culture full of emotion and full of people wanting to do something.
03:23 Wanting to take things into their own hands. Or people just trying to put it off and waiting for the end to see if they could maybe weep in front of God or work for God. And they can’t.
03:34 And the Scriptures so plainly point this out. And what I try to preach to our congregation, our churches, if we’re not in the Scriptures, how can we understand these truths? We have to be in the Scriptures. 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 is the clearest presentation that I’ve seen of the gospel in the Bible.
03:53And I’ve learned that from other preachers, and I believe it’strue. 1 Corinthians 15:1-4. Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you’ve received, and wherein ye stand, by which also ye are saved, if you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.
04:22 And so we see in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 a picture of the gospel. That Christ died for our sins, Amen, on the cross at Calvary. And he was buried three days in the ground.
04:36 And He rose again on that third day, that miraculous resurrection, Amen. And that is a truly the sign from God that Jesus Christ is God, as He’s raised from the dead, Amen. And He walked the earth 40 days and 40 nights, was seen by over 500.
04:52 And we realize that that right there, what happened on the cross and thereafter, and really was thought about and contemplated and planned before the earth was even formed, because we know Jesus was there before the earth was even formed. But that right there, that moment there at the cross on Calvary, when Christ bled a brutal death, when he had those nails in his hands, and he was bleeding and stabbed in His side, and it was spit upon, and His beard ripped hair by hair out of his cheek, and He was mocked and ridiculed and humiliated on that cross, and died the most brutal death anyone could ever die on this earth, anyone that ever did die on this earth, would not live up to the Christ’s death. That right there was the payment for your sin and for my sin.
05:45 And that right there is how to be saved, when we believe on what Christ did on the cross. And I said did, as in past tense, because it’s already been done, friend. This has already been done.
05:55 And you say, Brother Clark, I’ve heard this before. I always hear preaching on the cross. Well, let me tell you, it doesn’t hurt to hear it again, Amen.
06:05 And the reason why it doesn’t hurt to hear it again is because this is the foundation of how we’re saved. And this should inform us and define how we view salvation in all other contexts, right? If you can only be saved by Christ, if you can only be saved by Christ, can you be saved another way? No. Well, then why, friend, are you working to earn your salvation? Working to earn favor with God? Why, friend, are you living in fear that you don’t have salvation or that you wouldn’t be saved from hell and the flames of hell and eternal torment if you truly have accepted Christ as Savior? See, when we have an understanding that Christ died for our sins, we have an understanding that salvation is by Christ alone.
06:50 We have an understanding that our emotions, they’re not gonna save us. That our works, they’re not gonna save us. That our waiting and our kind of just ignoring it, that’s not gonna save us.
07:01 We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. Ephesians2:8-9, for by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast. Well, I love how the Apostle Paul first gives us in 1 Corinthians 15 the gospel and then here in Ephesians He gives us the truth of the gospel, that it’s not anything that we can do.
07:27 That it’s truly a gift of God and from God, right? And so God took human form. He said they have a problem that they can’t solve and that problem introduced itself in the Garden of Eden when the Adam and Eve are beguiled, they’re tricked by the devil, they eat of that forbidden fruit, Amen,
07:47 and that sin problem entered the world then and has not left the world since and everyone born in the world, everybody here today is born of a sin nature, they’re spiritually dead, they don’t have Christ living within them,
07:58 they are God’s creation but they’re not his children, Amen, in order to be his child we need to be born again, we need to accept him as Savior and when we accept what Christ did on the cross, what are we doing?
08:10 We’re believing, we are activating our faith, we are using our faith, amen, and we are justified only by our faith and so we can’t work, you know, and the reason why I bring this up is because a lot of people think that they can,
08:24 they say well I gave to UNICEF this year, I gave to charity, I helped an elderly woman across the street, I check on my neighbors at night, I do good deeds, well this narrative doesn’t fly in concert with the Bible, this narrative is disputed by the Bible and this narrative is proven wrong by the Bible because the Bible tells us that it’s not our works and so if it’s not our works how can we be saved?
08:52 We believe on Christ and what’s the operative word? Believe. We are justified by faith.
08:56 Abraham’s a great example of that in the Bible. Abraham was justified by faith, he believed God and if you look at the story of Abraham and what God called him to do, to go to a foreign land, to abandon the large part of his family, to have a child at a very old age, to put that child on an altar,
09:12 potentially killing that child, all those things that Abraham was called to do that Abraham did do exhibited great faith and that faith was imputed to Abraham as righteousness and when we believe on Christ,
09:27 when we truly believe, right, it’s one thing to have a head knowledge, it’s another thing to have a heart knowledge, when we believe in our hearts that Jesus Christ saved us, that we being a sinner, you being a sinner, me being a sinner, it’s a lot easier to look at someone else and say oh they’re a sinner, it’s a lot harder to look inside and say you know what I am too.
09:46 Yeah that’s sin nature, it runs in me as it runs in everyone else, I’m no different, that’s real difficult to do but when we realize our sin nature and we believe Christ is who he says he is and he’s a rewarder of them that diligently seek him, amen, we believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah,
10:03 we believe that Jesus Christ really did die on the cross and really was raised again by God and really did walk this earth 40 days and 40 nights and really is ascended up into heaven, really is at the right hand of the Father.
10:15 When we believe these things in our heart then we’re saved, we’re justified by our faith and that salvation, I’ll tell you this, it’s eternal. This is the Bible term eternal security or I guess the theologian term or whatever it’s called, eternal security. You have eternal security in Christ, you cannot lose your salvation.
10:33 Nowhere in the Bible do I see that pointed out at all. Salvation is eternal, John 10:28, and I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. And so how on earth could Christ say this and not mean it? He cannot lie, He is perfect, His word is true.
11:03 I give unto them eternal life, that’s forever life, they shall never perish. Again just so God’s like okay I’m gonna say eternal life here in John 10:28 and in case they didn’t get it I’m gonna go ahead and put in that same sentence they’ll never perish. Okay that again eternal life never perish, that makes sense.
11:21 And then just in case you thought some person could come and do something, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. See God is stronger than man, God’s stronger than the devil, God is sovereign, his will will be done, and He’s not a liar. And so when we’re saved that’s eternal, Jude 1:24.
11:39 Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. See God is more than able to keep us from falling. Now of course we’re still in this flesh, we still have a sin nature, we will mess up because we are human and we are not yet transformed in our resurrected body, we’re not yet in heaven, we’re not yet without sin, and so we are in this flesh and we are fighting against the flesh.
12:15 That’s why the Bible talks about taking up the cross, about denying our fleshly lusts, about cleansing our hands as sinners. I mean all of this deals with the idea that we have a sin nature still even after being saved, but our salvation is secure. And so you say I could be saved today and tomorrow commit a grave sin and I don’t lose that salvation? I would say absolutely.
12:34 Now first if you’re saved today and you’re truly saved, you have the Holy Spirit living within you and I believe that Holy Spirit would convict you to not do that grave sin, but it is possible. I mean are there backslid Christians out there that will end up in heaven?
12:46 Yes, because God is a God of his word. And yet we realize we should never ever want to live in sin, we should never look at this as a license to sin, because those that are truly saved understand what Christ did on the cross and understanding the brutality that Christ had to endure as God in the flesh having all power and all knowledge could have absolutely wiped out all his captors in one blink of an eye.
13:13 That He endured it for you, that you were on His mind as he suffered so greatly on that cross. And that now he’s been raised again and He’s so highly exalted and that we thank Him with just great adoration and love saying thank you Jesus for saving me. You won’t want to sin.
13:30 You want to tell other people about this salvation. You want them to have what you have. You don’t want them to suffer anymore.
13:39 You don’t want them to be in the bondage of sin and most importantly you don’t want them going to hell. So you’re more focused on that than living in sin. But regardless salvation is eternal friend.
13:47 Salvation is eternal and it’s by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. I gave you several verses here and that’s enough really to hammer the point home that salvation is by grace alone. We cannot earn it.
13:59 Our works don’t save us. Weeping won’t save us. It’s only by the blood of Christ that we’re saved.
14:05 I thank you for listening. Take care. God bless and Amen.