Let’s Be On The Same Page
Tom Shrader presents the foundational gospel message, tracing humanity's sin problem from Adam's fall in Genesis 3 to God's solution through Christ's death. He emphasizes that salvation comes not through human effort or goodness, but through faith in Christ who died for sinners while they were still God's enemies.
“God saved you in spite of you, not because of you.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Afloat in a World Circling the Drain (2013)
Recorded: 2013 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 54 min
Themes: salvation, sin, grace, faith, gospel, redemption, forgiveness, hope, new believer, questioning salvation, struggling with guilt, seeking forgiveness, doubting faith, young adult, feeling unworthy, searching for meaning
Scripture: Genesis 3, Romans 5:1-12, Ephesians 2:1-9, John 10:24-29, 1 John 2:14-15
Theological Themes: soteriology, salvation doctrine, justification, imputation, original sin, fall of man, atonement, substitutionary death
Full Transcript
Good to see you this morning. I'm glad that you're here. We are really glad to be here. It wasn't part of the plan. As you know, when the summer started, you had a speaker scheduled this week, and something happened. I never did hear what, but he had a shoulder injury. Well, see, there's another reason you don't go jet skiing. I mean, how foolish is this? I'm not an adventurous guy. I have the Discovery Channel at home, and that's about all the excitement that I need.
So he had an accident. Sandy and I were here the 4th of July. We had a great time. Have you ever been here on the 4th of July? It's awesome, because you go right out here, and there is a parade. Everyone who lives in this town is in the parade. They put on red, white, and blue, and they throw candy. Bruce's has a truck, and they throw candy. I was fine until Bruce's truck came, and then I'm knocking these little kids out of the way to get the taffy that I like.
Our Summer Journey
So we were here on the 4th of July, and then we left. We live in Phoenix, Phoenix area. If you know anything about Phoenix, even if you don't know hardly anything, if I say Phoenix, you say what? Yeah, so you don't need to be very smart to figure that out. In fact, J. Vernon McGee was offered the pastorship at Bethany Bible Church in Phoenix. He said no, and they said why? He said, "I'll give you three reasons: June, July, and August." That's exactly what it is.
So Sandy and I tried to be out of Phoenix in July and August. God is good, and we're grateful, and He allows us to do that. We were here, and our plan was to be here next July, but we got a call. We were in Laguna and got a call and a voicemail from Patrick saying something's happened. "Can you come and fill in this week?"
Literally, I had my phone, I went to the voicemail, and then I went to the weather. On my weather, I have Phoenix, Flagstaff, which is the mountains a little north of there. Coronado, which is San Diego and our favorite place. Davenport, Iowa, that's where I'm from. Any of you from Iowa? Last Fourth of July, I said, "Anybody from Iowa?" And there was a lady right down here who was born and raised about a mile from where I was born and raised in Iowa.
A Simple Decision
So we got the voicemail, and I went on the weather. At that moment, it was 111 in Phoenix and 61 in Cannon Beach, 50 degrees different. So I said, "Well, we need to pray about which airline to take." It's a no-brainer. Right after that, God has been incredible. He's incredible all the time. But the last three weeks, right after that, a guy called and said, "I know you guys like Coronado. We have a condo down there that's empty. You want to go down there for a couple weeks?" So we've been really on the road for two months.
But the chance to come up here, our grandson's sixth birthday was Saturday. So we couldn't be here. I said to Patrick, "I'd love to do it, but I can't be here." He said, "Well, maybe we'll split the week," which was awesome. So you're the recipient of that.
There are some challenges in that. Patrick called and said, "Art's curious what you're going to talk about." I said, "Well, I'm curious what Art's going to talk about." So I said, "God will put this together." But I figured God might need some help. So we came in Sunday night. Sandy and I had a chance to be here for the last three sessions.
Setting Our Foundation
What I want to do today is kind of tie together what Art's talked about, put really a stake in the ground, as far as I'm concerned, of the sessions you'll sit through, which are 10 or 11 or 12. This is the most important one. If you don't get this right, the rest of this is a waste of time. So I want to get us all on the same page.
One thing that happened, Kevin mentioned it, ladies, there's a tea. I think guys, we meet on Thursday morning. We do a guys' session. There's a ladies' session today at 3:30. We hadn't planned on it, but I thought this will probably mess you up.
Sandy, why don't you take like maybe a half hour, 45 minutes and tell the ladies what you're going to cover.
A Word for the Ladies
This afternoon I had thought about what should we talk about. We have time. We have an hour and a half or so to be together. As I thought about it, and I've been doing a lot of reading this summer as I'm preparing for the fall and for our women's ministry at home and those sorts of things, an issue that continues to crop up over and over again, and stats and everything just are pointing to this big time, is the issue of worry and anxiety, specifically for women.
As women, I get it. We are worriers. This is kind of, in a certain sense, how God made us. But at the same time, this is not how it needs to be. So this afternoon I'll share a little bit about my struggles with worry and anxiety. At the same time we'll look at Scripture, see what Scripture has to say about that. Then, of course, we know that our hope is in Christ. So this afternoon that will be our journey.
Hopefully you will walk away with some encouragement. At the same time, some strategies for dealing with worry and anxiety and stress and your families and all of that, everything that you deal with as a godly woman. So I hope that you'll join us, and it'll be fun. What have you got to worry about? You've got it made.
Sandy and I have been married 15 months. So we're kind of newlyweds in a way, figuring stuff out. And I talk a lot. In fact, I think we're going to do a session in here on anxiety. But there's a uniqueness that Sandy brings to the discussion with you ladies. So as she said, she's preparing for the fall. She teaches at one of our campuses that's near Arizona State University. So she deals with a lot of college ladies and post-college, and it's all the same. So you need to be in there today at 3:30 if you can, ladies.
What we're going to do today, the first night we were here, Patrick talked about it. He brought enough excitement for the week. I can just relax. But he talked the first night about the cross. And so we want to go today, and we want to talk about salvation and deliverance. And salvation from what? And why do I need that?
The Basic Question
There's a question that I want to pose today, and it may seem so basic to you. You may even think it's an odd question given the setting. But the question is, are you a Christian?
Now, I've asked that. God saved me in 1980. So what is that, 33 years ago? I've asked that question to hundreds of people and had some very interesting answers. A very good friend of mine, a mother was dying, and he was so concerned about her salvation. She was not a believer, and he's an interesting guy. He's a great guy, and he's in there, and he's pouring his guts out to his mom. And she said, well, I am a believer. And that was not what he expected. And she said, I am a Christian. And he said, why? And she said, I have paid my taxes every year.
Here's my favorite. This is the all-timer. This is perfect. I'm sitting with a guy. We're in a restaurant. And I said, are you a Christian? And he said, here's the classic now. He said, not in the biblical sense. I'm not sure what that means.
False Assumptions
But what we want to do today is to ask you the question, are you a Christian? And I guess for sake of clarity, in the biblical sense. And I say, it may sound odd, because you're at a Christian conference center. But I've been doing this for about 25 years. And I started with the assumption, and it only lasted about 15 minutes, that people who came to this stuff were all Christians. And that may be true in a sense that maybe the majority are. More are maybe here Christians than at a concert somewhere or at the mall. But even then, there's that assumption that you're kind of all Christians, probably growing well, thrilled with where God has you. Maybe some troubles, but they're bouncing off you. And I've just learned that's not the case.
I spent maybe one of the most frustrating conversations I've ever had in my life was on one of these picnic tables back here with a young man a few years ago. And it was after five or six sessions. And he said, I believe this stuff, but I don't believe it. I can't accept it.
So I know there's some of you that are here. Some of you are here because your spouse drug you along, right? And you're throwing him a bone. You get to do this, and then you get to go to the Washington. Who's Washington playing this week? I'm sorry, Boise State. Yeah, I was just looking at that this morning. There's one thing in life that trumps everything else, and that's college football. And we are there, finally. I'm a University of Iowa guy and a big fan, which is the football equivalent of being a Cubs fan. It's just very frustrating. There's not a lot of success in your future. But Sandy and I will be at Iowa City. I try to pick a game that they can win. So we're going for the Western Michigan game, but I'm not sure that's going to work.
Different Groups of People
You get people. Some of you are here to placate it. I'll come. I'll go to this. Now I get to go watch Boise State. Or I get to go to Eugene. Do they still play football at Corvallis? They do, don't they? Anyway, you're here, but you weren't a Christian. You know it. You'd acknowledge it. And I would say, how do you know that? And you would start to articulate activities. Well, I don't do this. I don't do this. And so that's one group.
There's another group that would say, I'm just not a Christian. Frankly not interested. I hope you hit the mark. And that's the group that's the easiest to deal with. They're kind of openly hostile. And that's an easy group.
The group of you that's the hardest are those of you that have been around this a long time. You're church people. Born and raised. That was one of the fears I had for my girls. I became a Christian right as my oldest daughter was born. And my fear was that all they ever saw was their dad converted, their mom a believer, that they were raised in this environment, that they'd never see their own sin or need for a savior.
One of the things that happens in our church a lot is people will say, I came here thinking I was a Christian but discovered I'm not. So there may be some of you in the room today. Some of you that are going, I think I am, I'm not sure, but life is so screwed up.
Getting Back to Basics
So here's what we're going to do. We are going, it cannot get any more basic than this, but it cannot get any more important than this. Football season, it's that when Vince Lombardi used to do, right, with every practice, first practice of the year, he would say, what, gentlemen, what? This is a football. And then finally, knowing this was coming, one year Max McGee said, not so fast, coach. So, gentlemen, this is a football.
This is the gospel. This is your life. By the time you're 12, you can pretty well look around and go,
The world's screwed up. And then you go, gosh, the country's kind of screwed up. Then you go, the state's kind of screwed up. The city's kind of screwed up. My school's screwed up. Business is screwed up. Life's screwed up. Well, our family's screwed up.
And then there's this moment in time where you say, what? I'm screwed up. I'm a mess. And the minute that happens, two things kick in. One, I'm curious how did I get this way. And two, what can I do about it?
Back to the Beginning
So we're going to go as basic as it gets back to Genesis. Open your Bibles if you have them there. Genesis chapter 3.
I years ago did a one-off on Genesis 3, and I called it the most important chapter in the Bible. That's probably a bit of an overstatement. But it's a chapter in the Bible that when you understand it, all of life starts to come into focus.
So how did the world get screwed up, and the country get screwed up, and the state get screwed up, and the city get screwed up, and your business get screwed up, and your family get screwed up, and how did you get screwed up? The answer is in Genesis 3.
The Setting of Paradise
Adam and Eve have been created, and we see at the end of chapter 2 that the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed. They're in this place called paradise. Why is it called paradise? One law, no lawyers. So that's why it's called paradise.
It's very simple. And they're in this place, and they're naked. And you'll see nakedness through this, and the idea is there's this nakedness and openness. There's no reason to be ashamed. There's no abnormal behavior.
And then there's this encounter. You know it, right? There's a serpent more crafty than any of the beasts of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden?" And the woman said to the serpent, verse 2, "From the fruit of the tree we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said you shall not eat from it, nor touch it, lest you die."
Understanding the Temptation
Now, make sure you get the setting here. Because for a long time, and this is before I really even read a Bible, I just heard this story. For a long time, I had this image that they were in a desert place, and here was this tree, and God's saying don't eat from it. That it was kind of a nutritional hunger challenge.
But that's not it, right? They're in this lush land with vegetation and fruit and food all over, but there is the one tree. The one tree, and God says I don't want you to eat from it. And the minute He says that, something seems to well up into us.
You know what? It's the old illustration. If I put a sign on here that said wet paint, here's exactly what's going to happen. Yeah, sure enough, it's wet paint. Driving up, there's a place up in the mountains called Payson, and driving up there, you can go to the back roads, and you go to these back roads, and here are these pristine yellow signs. Curve ahead. It's like they just hung the sign. Speed limit 45. Deer crossing. Pristine signs, and then there's one that says no shooting, and it's full of bullet holes. I mean, it's like, no shooting. Nobody's going to tell me what to do.
The Question of Authority
That thing seems to be in us, and all of a sudden, there's this don't, and the serpent said to the woman, "You surely shall not die." He's come, and really this becomes a question of authority in your life, and a question of believing God. Did God, that's what you see in verse 1? "Indeed, did God really say that?" Who are you going to believe? Who are you going to trust? You're going to trust me? You're going to trust your instinct? Or are you going to trust God?
Did God say that? You think you're going to die? Here's the problem. God knows the day you eat from it, your eyes will be open, and you'll be like God, and you'll know good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise, she took the fruit, and she ate it. That should ring a little bit true as you think forward to 1 John 2:14, 15. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life. And she takes it, and she eats it, and then she gave it to her husband, and he ate it.
The Immediate Consequences
And their eyes were open, and they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves loin coverings. Instinctively, all of a sudden, they said, we know now something is wrong, and we're going to take care of it. We're going to cover ourselves. It's the natural response to when I finally see this sin. When I finally understand this, all of a sudden, I tend to say, I'm going to do something about it.
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. It's the first recorded incident of abnormal behavior in all of mankind, and it was caused by what? Sin.
The Blame Game
So you know this. God turns to the prosecuting attorney, and He comes to the woman, and comes to the man, comes to the man, and he said, you know, it's the woman You gave me. She told me to do it. And the woman said, it's the serpent. And in both cases, they're saying, really God, it's the woman You gave me. It's the serpent You created. God, I guess I have some responsibility for it, but it's really them, and in a way, I guess they're kind of agents for You. So, you know, God, why did You make us this way?
And then He pronounces the curse. And that's the setting. That's a historical event, I believe. That's the creation of mankind.
Why We Do What We Do
So when you look around, and you go, how can an athlete, who's got a $200 million contract, be taking these drugs that he knows are illegal? He's been caught already. He's going to be caught again. You can't beat it. Why would he do it? Genesis 3. And rather than think about the athlete who blew his contract, why do you do what you do? Why is it that you know, I know I shouldn't do this. What is it?
And it's intuitive. Everyone has this story, or a story similar to it. I went into a room, and my daughter had an orange marker. There was orange everywhere in the room. There was orange on her face. There was orange on her teeth. And she's standing there with this orange marker. I said, "Sarah, did you do this?" And she said, "No."
My daughter Haley has a son, Yale. Yale's an interesting little kid. He's six now. He got a blue marker, and they have a white couch. He got the blue marker on the white couch, which is really awesome. Then he wrote "Yale." So Haley said, "I can crack this case pretty easily."
But why is that? Why is it that your kid intuitively says, "No"? They don't even understand what you're asking. They just say no. If I came home from a trip, and I used to travel quite a bit, I would always pick up something, usually a t-shirt. I would give Sarah her gift, and Haley would say, "Where's mine?" If I gave it to Haley, Sarah would say, "Where's mine?"
We discovered that we had to teach our kids to tell the truth. We didn't have to teach them to lie. We had to teach them that nobody else's stuff belongs to them, don't take it. And it's universal.
The Biblical Explanation for Human Nature
Now let's go to the New Testament, and we're going to try to pull all of this together. The book of Romans, chapter 5. I want to go to verse 12, because we get the very simple explanation: "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned." That's the explanation for why the world is the way it is.
So you have this titanic cultural battle. I made a couple of notes. It was a coach talking about a player, and he said, "That's his faith perspective. He speaks the truth as he sees it." So here's the subjective nature of all that. One of the guys was talking about Pete Rose. He says, "Pete Rose is morally flexible."
All of a sudden we have this idea of what is the condition of man? Well, man's basically good. I don't understand how anyone could arrive at that conclusion, especially if you're a parent. If you've lived at all, you see it everywhere. I'm never stunned anymore when I open the newspaper and read all of the stories just from last week. Ninety-nine-year-old woman beaten to death. Hot dog vendor robbed. Ten-year-old that killed a seven-year-old for his lunch money. How did we get that way?
Adam represented us. When Adam sinned, he plunged all of us into ruin. The condition of that is that we are separated from God. The way that Art said it last night, and he's exactly right, is that we do not sin because we are sinners. We are sinners, and we sin because we're sinners. That's who I am by nature. Paul describes it in Ephesians 2 as children of wrath. That's who I am.
The Solution: Peace with God
Look at Romans chapter 5, verse 1: "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." We've been justified, declared righteous, a legal standing. So we have peace with God. We were at war with God.
About the beginning of December, we start singing Christmas songs in church. One of the songs we will sing has a line in it that says, "God and sinner reconcile." Let's dwell on that a second. If I say to you, "Kevin and I have been reconciled," from that, you can conclude that there was a pre-existing hostile condition. We had to be apart before we could come together.
What Paul's telling us here is that God and sinner are reconciled. Reconciled through Christ, we have peace with God. One of the paraphrases says we have real peace with God. We're no longer His enemy.
Art used a sentence last night. I want to tweak it a little bit and then diagram the sentence. Here was the sentence that Art gave us last night: "God saves bad people." I want to tweak that phrase "bad people" and just change it to "sinner." God saves sinners.
Understanding Our Role in Salvation
God is the noun, the subject, the actor. Saves is the verb, the predicate, the action. Sinner is the direct object. If you ever have a chance to be in a sentence, be a direct object. You have no responsibility, you're a victim, whatever they do, they do it to you. God the actor takes the action which is to save the sinner. God saved you.
Now look at verse 6: "While we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly." Verse 8: "God demonstrated His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Verse 10: "While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ."
God saved you. This is important. God saved you in spite of you, not because of you. It's not that God looked at you and said, "Boy, she's something, some rough edges, a little bit of sin, but if we can knock that off, she's going to be a real prize."
He looked at you and saw you as better than anyone else. That's a game we play all the time, isn't it? We play that comparison game. I'm not as bad as my old days.
God saved me when I was 30, and up to then I wasn't terribly concerned about much other than having fun. I remember sitting in Muscatine, Iowa in a bar one night with a guy and I was having kind of this low moment, and I said to him, "I don't have any value." He looked me right in the eye and he said, "Tom, you have great value. You can always be used as a bad example." I thought, well, I hadn't thought about that before, but I thought, well, that's something. I said, "Well, tell me what you mean." He said, "I'm always saying to my wife, I may be bad, but I'm not as bad as Tom."
The Comparison Game We All Play
When I was in eighth grade, I went to a Catholic grade school, high school, and college. I was educated in elementary school by the most misnamed group of people on the planet. They were called the Sisters of Mercy. Mercy was not their long suit.
So we had Catholic counterparts across the river. So Davenport, Iowa, if you can—and I don't know why you couldn't do this—picture the outline of the state of Iowa. There's kind of a hump on the eastern side, and on the bottom of that, it's the only place in the country where the Mississippi River runs east and west. Well, that's Davenport. The first bridge across the Mississippi was built there. There was a big battle between the railroad guys and the shipping guys, and the attorney representing the railroad guys was Abraham Lincoln. So it's a great... I love Iowa. Not enough to live there, but I love this place.
So you go right across the river. There's a Catholic school there, and they had, on the first Sunday of each month, a dance. We didn't have dances. We didn't do that. We didn't know anything. We knew the girls were different than us, but we didn't know why. We knew something was going on.
So you go over, and it was my first night over there. They were 8th grade. It couldn't be more awkward. They said this was some kind of dance, and I don't remember what they called it. But what they did in that dance—so let's say there's a couple. Let's say this represents a couple. A thin couple, but a couple. So there's a guy and a gal dancing. So four or five guys would come up, and they'd put their hands around this couple, and then the girl would have to pick one of the four or five guys to dance with.
Well, if you're a junior high kid, you couldn't do anything to destroy your ego any more than this. So after about four or five of these rejections, I realized the rest of that night, and every time I went over there, my night was consumed with finding three guys uglier than me to go, and then convincing them, "Let's go." So that's how you do that. So you have that tendency to do that comparison.
When Comparison Breaks Down
I'm not Jeffrey Dahmer. Well, Jeffrey Dahmer—and many forget this guy, but he was a guy who, among other things, seduced young men, cut them up and ate them, hid them in a freezer. He's finally caught, sent to prison, and I don't know if this is true, but let's assume that it is true for the sake of this illustration. In prison, made a profession of faith in Christ, and was baptized. He was subsequently killed by another prisoner.
If that's true, and you get to heaven, Jeffrey Dahmer is going to be there. You've got your mansion, and he's right next to you. That's why you're locking your doors in heaven. Even then, you've got to be afraid. I think he's okay, but I don't know.
But isn't that what you do? I'm not Jeffrey Dahmer. Here's what He's saying: We've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and God, independent of anything in you, but God demonstrated His love toward us.
The Nature of God's Love vs. Human Love
Everything that we love, there seems to be condition with it. As I mentioned, Sandy and I have been married 15 months. We started to date, and we didn't date very long. We went really quickly from dating to getting married. Part of it was, I've been around a while, and she's been around, and I'm old. My resting heart rate's about 400, so I'm not going to be here that much longer. I'm saying, if we're going to do this, we probably should do it fast.
And so, I love Sandy. I love Sandy, and I know this sounds weird. You're going, "Well, you've only been married a year and a half? It'll change." I hope not. But I love Sandy more today than I did yesterday. But still, my love for her is somehow still based on her and what she is and how she is and what she does for me.
It's a very awkward statement when somebody says to you, "Do you love Sandy?" "Yes." "Why do you love Sandy?" "Well, she's funny." Jerry Seinfeld's funny. "Well, she's pretty." Well, there's a lot of pretty. What is it? And literally, there's a part of your brain that has these emotions that you can't articulate. It sounds stupid when you start to say it. But I love Sandy. But there's still kind of this conditional thing. I think she's beautiful. I think she's an incredible person.
I've talked to a lot of guys about this. The closest guys come to unconditional love is when that first kid is born and they see it. Almost every guy goes, "Wow," and there's a connection. But even then, they love it because it's their kid.
God's Radical Love for the Ruined
God looks at you and doesn't see a person who's a little messed up and a little makeover will do it. He sees you as totally ruined. Paul says, "There's no good thing that dwells in me." I'm a sinner. That's the phrase. While we were still helpless, while we were sinners, while we were enemies, Christ died for us.
I think this will be our last turn of the morning. But turn to the right in the book of Romans and get to the book of Ephesians. Art quoted from it last night. He quoted the passage that's probably most familiar of these passages in the book of Ephesians. He quoted from Ephesians 2:8 and 9. But let's start at Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1. We've got, just so you know, we've got about 15 minutes.
You were dead in your trespasses and sin in which you formerly walked according to the course of the world, according to the sons of power of air, to the spirit that is now working—this is you now—in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly live. He's writing to believers. He's saying that's who you were. Remember last night? You were washed, you were cleansed. You formerly lived to the lust of the flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath. He said you came into this world physically alive but spiritually dead.
The Reality of Spiritual Death
Do you remember the first dead person you ever saw? I do. It was my grandfather, my mom's dad. We were at Beardsley Funeral Home in Sheraton, Iowa. It was this big house with this big porch that was now being used as a funeral home.
My grandfather and therefore my mom, their family, they didn't have a lot of money. He worked in a warehouse his whole life—Hy-Vee, a Hy-Vee warehouse. My mom used to tell stories, and her sister, they were home when my father died. I spent five hours one night talking to my mom and her sister and we just had a map of all these little towns. We were talking about just memories.
I asked my mom, "When's the first time you ate out in a restaurant?" The counterpart of that would probably be to you today, "When's the last time you ate at home?" They said, "We didn't have restaurants. There were places in the hotels where you fed the guests but there weren't restaurants." They said, "What we used to do for Christmas is we used to get a nickel and an apple."
I remember going to see my grandparents. It was an awful thing because it was outside plumbing and I just don't like dirt and grime. When they do the announcement about tsunamis and viruses, I want to leave. I use a lot of hand sanitizer. When my grandmother and grandfather got indoor plumbing, it was like the greatest thing.
So my grandfather's dead. They put him in a small room because they know there's not going to be many people there. We're in there—there's my grandfather, I'm with my mom and my aunt. We go out on the porch and my aunt said to my mom, "Didn't dad look good?" I thought, I better go back in there.
I wandered back in and it's creepy. I'm still creeped out by this. My dad had an open casket—it gives me the heebie-jeebies. My grandpa's there and he had on a suit. He never wore a suit. They put a smile on him. He never had a smile. His glasses were squared. I concluded to myself, he looked really good. But he had one overriding problem that I could detect. What's the problem? He's dead.
What the Dead Need Most
There's only one thing a dead man needs and that's life. Here's what Paul says: You were dead. And Jesus says, "I've come that you might have life." The first night we were here when Dave was leading music, he said, "Let's quote together probably the most familiar verse in all of Scripture: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever might believe in Him might have eternal life."
I can have a heart rate 120 over 70. Have my BMI down there around 15. All this kind of stuff. But still be dead spiritually. That was me. That was my life.
My Journey from Death to Life
I was born, raised Catholic—grade school, high school, college—and somehow I had this idea that God kept track of everything that we did and He had a ledger, good and bad. When you died He'd hit the total and if the good was higher than the bad, you went to heaven. If the bad was higher than the good, you went to hell. If it was a close call—they didn't have replay—if it was a close call, you went to purgatory. That's what I believed.
Well by the time I'm in my sophomore year at college, the bad pile is so big that there's no shot at catching up. So I figure let's just see how bad we can get this bad pile. How big can we get it? My life goes on like this.
I get married. We're married literally three months and I come home and I said, "I married you to make me happy. I'm not happy." She said, "Well slick, let me tell you something, you're no party either," so we're at war with each other. What do you do when you're a young couple and you're at war? What do you do? Have a baby. Exactly. So we have a baby. Now we have this baby we don't know what to do with.
Susan was eight and three-quarter months pregnant one night and I had been out all day drinking. I'm driving home over Camelback Road and the lights come on—emergency vehicle lights. I'd been through this before and up came a female police officer. I learned something that night because it was Sergeant Elizabeth—she doesn't want to be called Babs, that's not what she wants. She said, "Take me in," and she did. I remember all that went with it and waking up the next day and going to work and sitting with my best friend and telling him what had happened. He said, "I got something for you." I said, "What is it?" He said, "Jesus." I said, "Wow, do you have anything else? I mean it's cool and all but do you have something else?"
The Bible Study That Changed Everything
It was 30 to 60 days later that I walked into a Bible study. Let this be a source of encouragement to you—I walked into this Bible study and there were some guys in our office and I knew they went to a Bible study. I said, "Can I go to that?" Here's what the guy said: "It's for anyone." So with the bar being that high, I was able to go.
I went in. There was a man by the name of Larry Wright who was teaching. In the room there were maybe about 30 of us and it's as though there were just the two of us in the room. I went back to the office literally shaking, opened up the phone book: W-R-I-G-H-T, a whole bunch of Wrights, Larry Wrights and Lawrence Wrights. I got close and took that number, called it.
I said, "Hey, my name is Tom. I was at a Bible study this morning that was taught by a Larry Wright. Do you know him?" And he said, "That's me." It was one week later that God saved me. I wasn't looking for Him; I was running from Him. But He's now in heaven. God saves sinners.
I heard the gospel. I heard that all the other stuff other than biblical Christianity—all the other stuff you can put in one big bucket—and it's called religion. It might have Jesus in it. It usually has you doing something. And God says, "No, there's nothing you can do."
Religion vs. Biblical Christianity
Go back to the language that Art used last night. Here's a holy, righteous God and a sinful man, and the two of them cannot on the surface come together. Religion—very important—religion is a sinful man trying to reach up to a holy God. Biblical Christianity is a holy God reaching down to a sinful man. And that is available to anyone who would simply believe.
Now that's almost counterintuitive because I hear it: "It can't be that easy. There must be something I should do." No, it's to acknowledge that you're a sinner. And it seems to me that's the easiest thing—that's the one thing for which we have overwhelming empirical data: that you're a sinner.
What the Bible tells us now is the wage of sin is death. Death means separation. The reason I'm helpless and the reason I'm a sinner—the reason I'm an enemy of God—is my sin has separated me from God, and there's nothing I can do about it. But Christ, as Art talked about the last three sessions, Christ died in your place.
The Power of Christ's Death
I spoke at a Good Friday breakfast like three years ago, and they had a lady singing quartet. Often with singers, they feel compelled to teach—singing is not enough as a vocation for them, so they want to teach. And so she said, "On this Good Friday day, imagine if you were the only person alive. Jesus would have died for you." We don't know that, but she then sang some song that fit together.
As I'm sitting there and processing it, I'm thinking, "Okay, let's think this through for a second. This potentially could be powerful here." If I was the only person alive and Jesus were to die for me, then I would have had to be the one to pound the nails in Him, to shove the spear in His side. He would have died for me as I killed Him. He was doing it for my redemption.
The Question That Matters
Now here's the line in the psalm: Have you come to that place? And I really don't care how. I don't care if it was a long morphing—that's what Ruth Graham would say. Ruth Graham would say it was over a period of time. She's not sure when or where or how, but somehow she came to the understanding that her sin separated her from God, that Christ died on the cross alone. She was seeing Christ and Christ alone for salvation. Billy Graham could take you to a place or time. I don't care about necessarily how; I care: Have you come to that place?
It's not going to happen this way, but should you die and you are at the gates of heaven and God says to you, "Why should I let you in?" what's your answer? And if it's anything other than, in essence, this: that really You shouldn't based on me, but You have to based on You.
The last time we were here, somebody used the phrase, "God doesn't owe me anything." Now I know this is dangerous, and to throw this out in our first session when I've not yet built the trust that I will have by the end of this is scary. But in reality, God does now owe it to me because He promised it to me. He's obligated. If I believe in Christ, I have eternal life. That's what He said.
The Security of Eternal Life
Let's turn there. We'll close. I lied to you, so I'm asking you to trust me and lie at the same time. John chapter 10. I should be running for something. John chapter 10.
There's a great scene in verse 24. The Jews are around: "John 10, if You're the Christ, tell us plainly. If You're the Messiah, tell me." "I told you, you don't believe it. You don't believe it. You're not My sheep. But My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And here's what will happen inevitably: I give them eternal life, and they'll never perish, and no one can snatch them out of My hand."
That at this moment right now, at 11:28 on this date, I, based on my faith in Christ, am I certain of heaven as the saints that are already there? That's an amazing statement. But wait a minute, Tom, can't you screw it up? Well, if I could, I'm sure I would. But I can't, because He's got a hold of me. It says that I have eternal life, and eternal life is now and forever. I'm His kid—not based on anything in me, but based on His death and the Holy Spirit working in my life.
God's Continuing Purpose
See, that now—that's not the end. If all God wanted to do was get me to heaven, then at the moment I believed, March 8th, 1980, He would have taken me. But He left me here. I can say this: I know God's not done with you. And the way I know that is you're still here.
The pattern that Paul uses in the book of Romans, but he also uses in the book of Ephesians—the same pattern—he has this amazing doctrinal treatise. They've read from Ephesians 1. We've read from Ephesians 2. When he gets to Ephesians 4, Paul writes this: "I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called." He said, "Here's what I want you to do: because all of this stuff is true—He chose you, He predestined you, you were dead, now you're alive, God saved you—because that's true, I want you to walk."
Walking Worthy of Your Calling
Now we think of that word this way: a primitive mode of transportation in which we put one foot in front of the other. That's not what he's talking about here. Look at those legs, by the way. That's bad, huh? I know that; I've heard it all. "Look, mom, a man riding a chicken!" They're skinny and they're small, but I'm comfortable. That's what's important.
It's not this walk in a primitive mode. The word "walk" here means conduct yourself. Live in such a way—you say you're a Christian, now live like it. Jesus says, "Let your light shine in such a way that people see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." That tells me that your Christianity is to be visible. Paul, a little bit later on in Ephesians chapter...
Ephesians 4 says walk no longer as the Gentiles walk—you don't live like everyone else.
Now we gotta close. You are a Christian not because of how you behave but because of what you believe. So I hear something all the time: "Oh Bob's a great Christian." Well tell me about Bob. "Well Bob feeds hungry people." Well Buddhists feed hungry people. "Bob builds homes for the homeless." Well secular humanists do that. What makes you a Christian is that you believe that your sin separated you from God but Christ died in your place and He got what you deserved.
Time to Live
Now it's time to live. Now it's time to live a life that reflects that. So in my sessions—we have four of them left—in my sessions we're going to do a little mini series called "How to Stay Afloat in a World That's Circling the Drain." We're going to talk the first thing about how to handle adversity. So that's what we'll do tonight.
Ladies, I remind you 3:30 over in Pacific Lodge. And then tonight we'll be back in here.
Let me pray as Dave and the guys come and they'll close our time.
Father, thank You for this amazing and awesome truth. It's been spoken sometimes more eloquently than others for four sessions now—this gospel cross truth. God, I pray that now every person in this room has heard it. Now that we've responded, help us understand that because we are Your kid, that has to affect the way we live. It affects our whole mindset and approach to life. God, thank You for saving us, for loving us. Thank You for Jesus. We pray in His name. Amen.