Boot Camp 5 – Salvation – Eph. 2:8-9

Well, we have come to our last Sunday morning of boot camp and I want to do a quick review to make sure y’all are ready to graduate.  First, tell me why we are even in boot camp.  What’s the point? We are in boot camp to know who our enemy is and how to fight him but also to know where our true help comes from and to do that we must become masters of the basics.

We want to know who we fight but also we need to know why we fight. Why should we continue to fight against Satan when the going gets rough? We know he is bigger, stronger, faster, meaner and has been doing this a lot longer. What is my motivation to continue in the good fight?

Well, I don’t want to let my church family down. Also, I have seen and heard and read about a whole bunch of people that have gone before me and I want to do honor to their memory – people like Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, John and Peter. But ultimately my reason for fighting, in fact, my reason for living is to bring glory to God. That’s why God created me and when I do what I was created to do, through Christ who gives me strength, then no matter what life hands me, I can live a full and abundant life as I make God look good.

I don’t have to know all the answers. I just have to know that God changed me so I will give Him glory. Remember John 9:25. “I don’t know. One thing I do know is I was blind but now I see!”

Now, in this battle, we have many weapons but what is the greatest weapon that we have in our arsenal? Prayer is the greatest weapon of all time because it is the power of Almighty God Himself. We saw in James 5:16 that to truly have effective and powerful prayer, we have to be fervent and also righteous. This weapon is to be taken seriously and used correctly but when it is, no scheme of Satan has a chance.

Then in week three we talked about how the Bible is our guidebook and is the way to getting righteous and staying righteous and we should use the whole canon of scripture when we need to make a decision. In week four, we talked about why we come to church and what is the purpose of the church. Just like our reason for existing is to give God glory, the church exists as the body of Christ to give God glory.

So, here we are in week 5 to master the basics of salvation. First, let me ask a question. When we talk about salvation, what are we saved from and what are we saved to? Don’t worry. You don’t have to sugar-coat it. The Bible doesn’t. We are saved from everlasting fire and separation from God in Hell and we are saved to eternal life with God in Heaven as co-heirs with Jesus to all the good things Heaven has to offer.

Heaven is going to be better than we can ever imagine and Hell will be worse than we could imagine. Some people asked me why salvation was the last week. They thought it should be the first week. My response was that I am assuming that anybody that goes through boot camp is going to already be saved and bound for Heaven so this is not so much about encouraging someone here to be saved but to encourage us to tell others the correct way to be saved.

So, in thinking about how to tell someone how to be saved, I want you to use your imagination with me for a minute and think about a set of old-time scales, like the scales of justice or the kind of scales they would have used to weigh gold or silver or something. You have a set amount of weight on one side and you add something on the other side to see if it is lighter or heavier.

Now, on this scale, I want you to put all your good deeds on one side. Think of all the good stuff you have done, all the times you held the door for somebody or didn’t slap the office fool when he deserved it. You know, all the good stuff on one side. Now, on the other side you put all your sins. Put on there every time you displeased God; every lie, every impure thought, every time your car went over the speed limit (ouch!).

Do you have all that in your mind? Now, shove that scale off the table onto the floor and smash it with a bat because salvation has nothing to do with that at all. Absolutely nothing, not even close. Don’t ever think about it like that again. Okay? I know that makes sense in our human minds and that is why every other religion in the world is based somewhat on your good deeds outweighing your bad deeds.

The Mormons say they exist to make bad men good and good men better. Well, that’s real nice but what about us really despicable men; men that are horrible? If we got better, we would still be bad. I don’t need a fake god that wants to make me a good man. I need a real God that will make a dead man come alive!

I don’t want some vague hope based on how good I am or how many magazines I have sold to get me to Heaven. I want a hope that is certain of something that just hasn’t happened yet. I want to know that I know that I have the assurance of Almighty God, written in infallible scripture, assured by the peace of the indwelling Spirit of God and paid for by the blood of the Son of God that I am going to Heaven, not based on who I am or what I have done but based on Who He is and what He has done.

Now, the problem is, I have good news and I have bad news. I heard the story of a farmer like that. A farmer went into his banker and announced that he had bad news and good news. "First, the bad news...""Well," said the farmer, "I can't make my mortgage payments. And that crop loan I've taken out for the past 10 years -- I can't pay that off, either. Not only that, I won't be able to pay you the couple of hundred thousand I still have outstanding on my tractors and other equipment. So I'm going to have to give up the farm and turn it all over to you for whatever you can salvage out of it." Silence prevailed for a minute and then the banker said, "What's the good news?" "The good news is that I'm going to keep on banking with you," said the farmer. Bits & Pieces, April 30, 1992.

For us today, I’ll do the same thing. I’ll give the bad news first. If you think about it, the Old Testament is bad news.  It is full of laws and commandments that are impossible to keep.  It meant trying to live up to a standard of living that was literally impossible. Following the law involved sacrificing all kinds of animals any time there was sin.

There were several different kinds of sacrifices, some might involve different kinds of grain or oil or bread, but if there was sin involved, I’ll save you the gory details, but an animal had to be sacrificed. Bulls, cows, sheep, goats, birds all had their place in the Old Testament Law that God gave Moses. They would kill the animal, cut it up and put the meat on the altar and spread some of the blood of the animal on the altar and that blood was said to make atonement for the sin.

Do you know what atonement means? It’s not a word we use very often in daily speech but it simply means to make reparation or satisfaction between God and man for man’s sins. Depending on the sin and what the sacrifice represented, they would probably burn that sacrifice up completely and it was often said that the smell of that sacrifice was an aroma pleasing to the Lord as that sin was atoned for. They would then take the body of that sacrifice – the parts that were left like the hide and head and take that outside the camp where they were living and burn it up completely.

It was a lot of work for those priests to cut up all those animals and it was also very costly for those making the sacrifice.  Can you imagine if every time you displeased God you had to sacrifice some kind of animal? Some folks would need a zoo just to make it through the week. But that is what the Law of Moses required. Where there was sin, something had to die and in that sacrifice we see just how seriously God took sin.

Now, here is just some of the bad news I was telling you about. God still takes sin that seriously. In Malachi 3:6 God said, “I the Lord do not change” and that includes how He still feels about sin. He still hates sin and requires a sacrifice for it.

Now, don’t you wish God would relax a little with His hatred of sin? Don’t you just want to tell God, “Look, you need to chill with that. I didn’t mean anything personal against you. I just felt the need to lie (cheat, steal, gossip, lust, whatever it is you like to do) and I know it wasn’t the best thing to do but is it really that big of a deal?”

I understand that line of thinking but the problem is that God is perfect and can’t have anything to do with sin. He can’t be around it. He can’t hang out with it or be seen near it. It’s sort of like when somebody has the flu. We have seen a lot of that here lately. How much can you hang around someone who has the flu? None! You don’t want to be in the same zip code as that person.

That’s not a great analogy because sin always leads to death and God is perfect and CANNOT sin or be close to it. The thing is He wants to be close to you. He wants to have a relationship with you and He created you for the sole purpose of bringing Him glory and you can’t do that with sin in your life. I’ll say it again that sin is the worst thing that can happen to you because it puts a barrier between you and holy God.

Now, here’s some more bad news. We are all sinners. Every one of us has displeased God. That’s what sin is. Sin is anything that displeases God and we are all guilty. You are guilty. I am guilty; your mama, Billy Graham, Mother Theresa, Hitler and everybody in between. You can hide it or deny it or lie about it but you are still a sinner.

The drunk husband snuck up the stairs quietly. He looked in the bathroom mirror and bandaged the bumps and bruises he'd received in a fight earlier that night. He then proceeded to climb into bed, smiling at the thought that he'd pulled one over on his wife. When morning came, he opened his eyes and there stood his wife. "You were drunk last night, weren't you!" "No, honey." "Well, if you weren't, then who put all the band-aids on the bathroom mirror?" (sermonillustrations.com)

It is bad news that we are all sinners. The Bible says in Romans 3:23, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” You want some more bad news? It just keeps on coming. Well, it says in Romans 3:23 that we are all sinners and then it says in Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin – what we deserve for our sin - is death, meaning eternal death in Hell separated from God and all other people.

That is bad news. God is loving but He can’t allow sin to come into Heaven and when we die, we go either to Heaven or Hell and since unforgiven sin can’t go into Heaven, there is only one other place to go. God is loving but He is also just and if somebody chooses not to repent of their sin and ask God to forgive that sin then He allows them to choose to go to Hell, a place God created for Satan and his demons.

Now, if you were listening close you might have caught hold of something that sounded like it might be a silver lining in all of this bad news. Yes, God will forgive sin but how is that possible? Hebrews 9:22 says, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” That is exactly right and this leads us to the Good News about Jesus. The good news is found in John 3:16 that says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God gave Jesus, His son, to be the perfect sacrifice for our sins. That was His plan from the beginning. Jesus didn’t come to abolish any of the Law but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17) and He did fulfill this part of the Law the best way that it could be done.

Jesus bled, died and was sacrificed as the Perfect Lamb of God for all of our sins. That’s a price we could never pay with every bull, cow, lamb, goat or sheep ever born, much less by ourselves and all we have to do is believe. But let’s talk about that word “believe” for a second. It literally means, as it is used here in John, to commit fully to or to rely upon.

It’s an old example but it’s the best that I know of to use a chair to show what it means to commit to or rely upon. I can believe in my mind that this chair is going to hold me up. I can examine it and see that all the bolts are tight and the wood is solid and I can believe with my mind that this chair will hold my weight. But it is that the “belief” the Bible is talking about? No.

It is only when I put my full weight in this chair that I can say I truly believe in this chair. I am now fully committed to this chair, relying on it fully. If it falls apart then I will get hurt but I examined it and I truly believe that it is solid. In our spiritual life when we are committed to Jesus as our Lord and Savior, that means that I have examined Him in scripture and while I may not completely understand how He works, I believe that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life and that no man gets to the Father but through Him (John 14:6).

I believe that when God’s Word, the Bible, holy scripture says something that it is for my good to obey that word. I believe that when the Holy Spirit, Who lives inside me, guides me to do something that it is the peace of God ruling in my life. I believe that God is in control and that He loves me and so what in the world do I have to worry about?

My life has been changed. God has changed me and so I will bring Him glory. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know what kind of fruit Adam and Eve ate. I don’t know how prayer works. I don’t know how Jesus could be all man and all God. I don’t know and don’t care what happened to the dinosaurs. One thing I do know is I was blind and now I see. I know that God has changed me and so I will give Him glory in the good times and the bad times of my life because He is good.

Now, for some people that is good enough but for me, I want to know, not just how I am saved…I want to know why. I want to know why God loves me, why He saved me and why He would allow me to grovel in a shack in the worst part of Heaven much less give me crowns and allow me to share His glory and why He looks at me like He looks at His precious Son Jesus.

You want to talk about “fair”? That’s not fair! What have I ever done to deserve that? Who am I to merit that kind of love and favor? If God really knew who I was and what I have done, He would thump me off the planet like a paper football. Well, let’s find the answer to this problem in the New Testament book of Ephesians. I’m just about to get started preaching here. Thanks for being patient.

We finally get to the passage that I want to preach on. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- 9not by works, so that no one can boast.” I have an imperfect analogy to illustrate all of this.

Suppose a motorist, by careless driving, kills a child. He is arrested, tried, found guilty and sentences to a term of imprisonment and a fine. After he has served his time and paid the fine, as far as the law is concerned, the matter is over. But it is very different in relation to the mother whose child he killed. He can never put things right with her by serving time and paying a fine. The only thing that can restore his relationship to her is an act of free forgiveness on her part. That is the way we are with God. It’s not that we have sinned against God’s laws. We have sinned against His heart and therefore only an act of free forgiveness by the grace of God can put us back in relationship with Him. (Barclay, Ephesians, page 105)

How are we saved? We are saved by believing and fully committing ourselves to God through His Son Jesus. Why are we saved? Only by God’s grace and through faith. It has nothing to do with who we are or what we have done or how good we are or how much more good stuff we have done compared to the bad stuff. We are saved just like they were in the Old Testament, by grace and through faith.

If you have never truly believed in Jesus then do that today. Commit yourself completely to Him and to His Word. Ask Him to forgive you of your sin and He will. Then turn away from that sin and that lifestyle and become a follower of Jesus.

Invitation / Prayer Time

Well, congratulations! You have graduated from the very first Christ Fellowship Boot Camp. You now know why we fight, who we fight, how we fight and Who fights for us. You have a firm grasp on the basics of prayer, scripture, church and salvation. This is by no means the end. It is literally just the beginning. We go next into Combat Training starting next week.

But I want you to know that our enemy Satan is highly ticked off and will attack immediately. He may attack by even trying to convince you that you don’t know what you are doing and that you were never saved and have no business quoting scripture or even coming to this church.

But never forget that you are a warrior and can do all things through Christ Who strengthens you. Through Him you can overcome temptation and make God look good even in the worst times Satan puts you through. I want to give you all your dog tags. Camo on one side and the other simply says, “Make God Look Good”. You can take off the camo wristband if you want or leave it on as a reminder that you are in a battle. For me, I’m leaving mine on but I’m throwing away my razor. I want my facial hair back.

Today we give God glory. Tonight we are having a party. Tomorrow we are back in the battle. But right now it’s selfie time. Gimme your war face!