[0:00] John chapter 6 verse 25 and going to verse 29.
[0:17] When they had found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you come here? Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.
[0:31] Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.
[0:41] Then they said to him, What must we do to be doing the works of God? Jesus answered them, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.
[0:54] May God add a blessing to the reading of his word. Would you please be seated? Now there are some statements that have been made in the past that summarize the time and the attitude of a people.
[1:10] For an example, there has been tons of books written about the Roman Empire, but you can probably sum up the attitude of the Roman people in a famous statement uttered by Julius Caesar when he gave a report about his endeavors in the country of Gaul.
[1:31] And this is what he said, Vini, viti, vici. I came, I saw, I conquered. And that attitude really summarizes the attitude of the Roman Empire.
[1:45] They were conquerors. They would go, they would see, and they would conquer. Likewise, many books have been written about the American Revolution. And we have many great statements from the patriots that have come from that time of revolt against the tyrannical English Empire.
[2:05] But I think that the one that, to me, best summarizes the attitude of those early revolutionaries was made by Patrick Henry. On the brink of war, it was Henry's speech given on March 23rd of 1775, concluding with this final inspiring statement, sentence, that really spurned those early revolutionaries on towards war.
[2:34] And he said, and you no doubt know these words well, as he concluded that famous speech, give me liberty or give me death.
[2:45] And with that, again, final dramatic statement, Henry summarized the attitude of the time of those early American people and the freedom they desired to have.
[2:58] John Piper once said, books don't change people, paragraphs do. Sometimes it's simply a sentence, though, that changes a person, that stirs a person to action, that challenges them to think in different ways and to act in ways that they hadn't before.
[3:19] I think that's part of the reason why men like C.S. Lewis and Charles Spurgeon have become increasingly popular in our day and age because those two men, and there are others, they were able to take such deep, rich theological truths and pack them into short sentences, maybe even one sentence.
[3:40] And so if you're on Facebook a lot of times, especially if you follow me, you'll see quotes from C.S. Lewis or quotes from Charles Spurgeon because they're able to say so much. They were able to say so much in just a sentence that causes you to think and maybe even to change.
[3:56] Sentences like those are called golden sentences because they vividly, again, portray a personality, a theme, or a spirited moment of world history.
[4:07] However, those statements are moving. They are not nearly as valuable and as impactful and as moving as those statements contained in God's holy word, the scriptures, the Bibles that we have.
[4:27] God has used a sentence in his word to save many, maybe even you. Maybe it was you hearing a scripture read or a scripture preached upon that God used to work in your heart and the Holy Spirit saved you as a result of that.
[4:48] His sentences have encouraged, have exhorted, have convicted, and have communicated his great and unending love to millions for ages.
[5:02] Verses like John 3.16, for example, is one that we all know very well. One of those brief statements in scripture that has so much great truth packed within it that has had a great impact on many.
[5:20] The Psalms, Psalm 23, for example, is one that has been a blessing to many. The golden rule contained in Matthew 7.12, and those are just a few. And I'm sure that you, like me, each of you can, you know, think of your own verse.
[5:34] That scripture that you say is your favorite scripture or your life passage or whatever you want to call it, it's something that is very special to you that you have tucked away in your mind and in your heart because God used that to change you in some incredible way that you don't ever want to forget.
[5:54] And so I bring that up because I believe that our text today is another one of those that we should store away forever in our minds and in our hearts. Because oftentimes we are like the crowd that Jesus encountered on that day that had witnessed his miraculous multiplication of the loaves and the fish.
[6:15] They crossed the Sea of Galilee, if you remember, to find Jesus in Capernaum. And once there they asked him, what must we do to be doing the works of God?
[6:27] And that is a question that many still are asking today. In fact, it was a good question, but it was a good question with an even greater answer.
[6:39] And the words contained in Jesus' one sentence statement are words that every human being, I believe, should hear, should read, and should have memorized.
[6:51] Again, he said this, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent. So that brings us to the main idea for this morning's sermon.
[7:03] If you have your handout, I'd like to fill in that blank. Main idea, only faith that saves, the only faith, excuse me, that saves is faith in Jesus.
[7:15] The only work that can purchase your salvation is the work of Jesus. Your salvation does not depend on what you can offer God, but believing in what he offers you.
[7:29] Believing in what he offers you. So why is this important? Well, I think, first of all, if you're an unbeliever and you're listening, first of all, we're glad you're here.
[7:42] We're glad that you're listening. And what you need to understand from this scripture is that you cannot put God in your debt. That God owes you nothing.
[7:54] In fact, all that you have, even your own life, is from God. And also, that he will receive nothing from your hand in exchange for your salvation. He has sent Jesus.
[8:06] He has sent his only son to purchase the salvation that you cannot buy. To redeem you from the sins that no good deed on your part could ever erase or atone for.
[8:18] If you are to be saved, you simply must put your faith in Jesus. And if you haven't, that would be my hope, and I'm sure, and I know many of our hopes today, certainly, I believe the hope of our Lord.
[8:34] Now, if you're a believer, why is this important? Well, I'm sure that you, again, like me at times, have been tempted to believe that God's love is something that you must earn in order to keep.
[8:47] Perhaps you've unfortunately had a parent whose love depended upon your performance. And so, you are of the mind that God is consistently displeased with you.
[9:03] unless you are doing something to earn His favor. And so, you work begrudgingly, though, for Him because you think that you have to earn His love, but the Bible says it's a love that you already have if you're in Christ.
[9:22] God wants you to be obedience, but not an obedience based upon a feeling primarily of a requirement, but of a joyful attitude in understanding the gift of salvation that He has bestowed upon you through the sacrificial work and life of His Son, Jesus Christ, whom He sent to die for your sins.
[9:44] I hope that you will gain a greater understanding of that grace today, that grace that saves you. How you understand the relationship of your faith in Christ and your obedience to Christ makes all the difference for living a joyful and God-glorifying life of freedom in Him.
[10:04] If you have been set free by Christ, don't labor for what is already yours, that He's already given to you. In John 6, 28-29, the Lord reminds us of three realities regarding salvation.
[10:21] Three realities regarding salvation. So the first reality that He draws our attention to comes from verse 28, that salvation cannot be worked for.
[10:34] Salvation cannot be worked for. So again, you look at your Bible in verse 28, you see that the crowd has followed Jesus after He fed them miraculously the day before to the other side of the sea.
[10:48] And they've had an exchange here, and we'll see this is just the beginning of this exchange that we'll be going through in John 6. And they asked Him, what must we do to be doing the works of God?
[11:04] Now it's astounding that the crowd, again, would ask such a question of Jesus, though it was a good question. It's astounding because we consider what they had just been through with Him.
[11:18] What He had just told them in verse 27. Again, there Jesus said to Him, Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that He endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.
[11:33] Jesus is speaking of a gift here. It's a gift that He says that He will give. They didn't ask Him to perform that miracle the day before when Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fish.
[11:49] Jesus gave that to them as a gift. They didn't earn it. Jesus didn't say to them something like, Well, I'll perform this miracle for you, but first I need you to do something for me in return.
[12:04] Likewise, Jesus said that He had more than that to offer them. He says to them, I can satisfy you spiritually.
[12:14] Spiritually. But they think that to receive such a blessing, they must do something first. And that is how the fallen human mind, which is set against God, operates.
[12:32] Such a mindset characterizes many in the pages of Scripture. This wasn't the first time that Jesus was asked a question about what someone must do to earn eternal life.
[12:43] Remember, the rich young ruler approached Jesus and said to Him, Good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
[12:55] Then after our Lord's death and resurrection, the apostles, on the day of Pentecost, Peter preaching to the Jews and they were convicted. And then they asked of Him and the others, Brothers, what shall we do?
[13:11] Same with the Philippian jailer who we encounter later in Acts chapter 16 when he asked, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Likewise, in Jesus' parable of the prodigal son, in that parable, the son thought that even after he returned to his father's house that he had to do something to earn his way back, to earn his forgiveness.
[13:36] And so remember, he asked of his father to make him as one of his hired servants. None of these knew what they must do, simply that they felt like they had to do something.
[13:52] And that is what the fallen mind is wired like. I've got to do something. Something good cannot come to me without my doing something to earn it.
[14:04] many of our great stories in movies involve some kind of a quest, some test of human endurance, some trial to overcome, some tragedy to endure, some test of the human spirit that must be passed.
[14:22] You watch them or you read them and if you're like me, you often think, I can bring balance to the force. I am the unlikely hero that will cast the one ring into the fires of Mount Doom.
[14:35] I can drink raw eggs and run up and down the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and I can knock out the champion. We like to cast ourselves, don't we, as Luke Skywalker, as Frodo Baggins, as Rocky Balboa in the story of our own lives.
[14:52] Thinking that we can endure the journey. Thinking that we have what it takes to overcome the odds that we in the end have the ability to slay the giant. It's up to me.
[15:02] We think. I can do it. As a kid, I was so inspired by watching Rocky for the first time that at night I snuck down into our kitchen and I took three eggs and I cracked them into a glass.
[15:20] And as I raised the glass to my lips and opened my mouth and as the lukewarm goo of the eggs filled my mouth and dripped down my face, I immediately was disgusted and expelled them into the sink as quickly as I could, realizing that maybe I don't have what it takes to be Rocky Balboa, but maybe somewhere out there in a galaxy far, far away there is still need for me.
[15:51] The human mind is wired like that, isn't it? We're flattered by the thought that we can do something to earn something from God for what we've done.
[16:03] And more than that, we are tempted to believe that we are entitled to a reward for what we've done when we've done it. How pleased we would be, how good, if we're honest, how good we would feel about ourselves if we could earn our salvation.
[16:18] we would love to be able to put God in our debt in some way, to put Him in a position where He was the one who owed us.
[16:30] And really, isn't that what the message of the health and wealth gospel is? That if you do this, if you say this, if you pray this way, if you give a certain amount, that then God will be obligated to honor your efforts, obligated to honor your works with some kind of material blessing in exchange.
[16:56] But this, according to Jesus, is not at all the way of salvation, and it is not the gospel, and it is not the way to approach God at all. This thought was a consistent struggle for those who were living during the times of the early church.
[17:11] Many of them, if you remember, came out of Judaism. And the numerous man-made laws that the Pharisees had crafted for them and taught them that they must do them all in order to be saved.
[17:25] And so, we repeatedly see in the New Testament the apostles countering this belief system with the truth that salvation cannot be earned by anyone's law keeping.
[17:37] An example of that comes from Romans 3.20. For there, Paul says very explicitly and very clearly. For by works of the law, no human being, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
[17:53] So again, according to that verse, it is impossible to perfectly keep what God's moral law requires of us. And therefore, the law serves not to save us, but as a mirror to show us just how sinful that we are, revealing our helpless situation and our need for a deliverance that we cannot earn on our own that must come from some other source because we can't do it.
[18:21] Galatians 2.16, another example. Again, Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, writes there, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.
[18:34] So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law no one, no one will be justified.
[18:49] We are justified by the God, the judge of the universe, not based upon what we've done but based upon what Christ was willing to do and what he did for us.
[19:02] In salvation, God declares the guilty sinner innocent and righteous before him by giving them the righteousness of Christ, by imputing it to them, by crediting it to their account.
[19:20] When you trust in Christ, when you believe in him, God says through his word that your sin is imputed to him on the cross and his righteousness, his sinlessness is imputed, is placed upon you.
[19:39] His ability to keep the law perfectly is imputed to you and that that imputation is permanent. It's permanent.
[19:51] So I don't have to do anything to work to earn God's love for me because I am fully loved by him through Jesus Christ, my Lord. Lord. Jesus clearly illustrated this truth in one of the parables that he told, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18, 9 through 14.
[20:15] Let's look at that together. He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
[20:32] The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
[20:44] I fast twice a week. I give tithes to all that I get. But the tax collector standing far off wouldn't even lift his eyes to heaven but beat his breast saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
[21:07] Jesus says, I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
[21:23] You see, it's not the one who thinks he's done enough to earn his salvation, but the one who realizes that he can't do anything to earn it, who pleads for God's help, and who then receives his mercy as a result.
[21:40] If we're not careful, sometimes those of us who have been justified by God act as if we haven't. God, I know of a church who had a sanctuary constructed by one of its members, beautiful sanctuary.
[22:01] The man poured his heart into the work. Again, the completion of it was a great space for the church to worship the Lord in. He cut and ate whatever expenses that he could in order to keep the cost of it down for the church.
[22:18] And again, when it was completed, people were so thankful. Years went by. The church then faced a decision.
[22:29] The leadership decided that what was best for them at the time was to split into two services, one contemporary, one traditional. And he, this constructor of the sanctuary, didn't like that the traditional service was so early in the morning.
[22:47] And so he thought that that since he had built the sanctuary, that he could use that as leverage as to why his opinion should matter and should be heard more than any others.
[23:02] Saying something like this, I built this church, I saved this church money. Eventually, when he didn't get his way, he left bitterly that he hadn't been able to earn the appreciation that he felt like he deserved for his work.
[23:27] And so, if whatever you are doing here in service to the Lord, and I mean this with love, but if you're doing it primarily for yourself, then you need to stop doing it.
[23:39] You need to stop doing it. Not saying that you stop doing it forever, but that you need to stop doing it until you re-examine why am I doing this? For me, so that I can be complimented for what I've done, or am I doing this primarily for the Lord?
[24:02] We here don't give to get. We don't serve one another in order to get something from the other person. We mirror the Lord in that way.
[24:14] He has given us life, he has given us salvation, he has given us spiritual gifts, and we use those in service to bless others, not expecting anything in return. Which then moves us on to the next reality that Jesus mentions here, which is that salvation is a work of God.
[24:35] Salvation is a work of God. God. And again, Jesus very clearly says in the beginning of verse 29, this is a work of God. Jesus here sets the crowd straight.
[24:48] The work of God, what God requires is faith. They must believe in the one whom he has sent. Toward the end of the 19th century, the London Times published a story about the great hymn writer Augustus Toplady, who lived from 1740 to 1778.
[25:11] In this story in the London Times, they reported that Toplady was overtaken by a thunderstorm in a rocky glen, and there he sought shelter between two massive pillars of native limestone, and once there he penned his well-known hymn, Rock of Ages Cleft for Me.
[25:32] Now there's some debate over whether or not that's actually the story of how he came to be inspired to write that hymn, but whatever the case may be, two of the verses of this great hymn I want to read to you this morning.
[25:48] Again, I will not sing them because I won't put you through such torture. He's written, not the labors of my hands can fulfill thy law's commands.
[26:04] Could my zeal no respite know? Could my tears forever flow? All for sin could not atone. Thou must save, and thou alone.
[26:16] Nothing in my hand I bring, naked simply by the cross I cling. Naked come to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace.
[26:27] Foul, I to the fountain fly. Wash me savior, or I die. Now again, there's some debate about the legitimacy of how that inspiration came to him, but there is no doubt about the event that happened 200 years prior to Top Lady's writing that hymn, when a young German by the name of Martin Luther Peter, who no doubt was caught in an intense thunderstorm, and who in that moment feared for his life, believed that every crashing bolt of lightning was an expression of God's wrath against him, and that he would die that day.
[27:18] And so petrified, Martin cried out, vowing that he would become a monk in an effort in that moment to save his soul. In that moment of desperation, no one would have guessed that God would use that trembling man to change the world and recover the gospel for the church.
[27:39] But after years of serving as a monk, and after trying to earn his salvation and favor with the Lord through his good works, and nearly driving himself literally crazy in the process, and those who were around him, Luther's eyes were opened to one revolutionary fact, that the righteousness he sought was not to be found within himself.
[28:04] It was none other than the righteousness of Christ which was given as a gift to all who believe. Only faith in Christ alone could free Luther from his burdened conscience.
[28:19] And then Luther and the rest of the reformers concluded without qualification that there is absolutely nothing within ourselves, even if assisted by grace, that can show, that can somehow merit God's favor or cooperate with his saving grace.
[28:39] The antidote was nothing, has nothing to do with us, but everything to do with God. This may have seemed like a new teaching to those who lived during that time period of the Protestant Reformation, but really, truthfully, Luther was just saying and mirroring and echoing what Paul had said, what the Bible had always taught.
[29:06] Ephesians 2, 1 through 10, I want to read this slowly. Hear the word of the Lord. And you were dead. You were dead.
[29:18] We understand here that Paul is writing to a Christian church in Corinth and writing to believers and talking about prior to their salvation that they were dead.
[29:29] You were dead in the trespasses and sins 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, 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.
[29:55] That's bad news. But here's good news. But God, being rich in mercy, not but you, but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, who made us alive?
[30:15] He made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. And raises us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.
[30:38] For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
[30:55] For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Who has saved you?
[31:08] God has saved you. How has he saved you? By his grace. The good works that we do are done not to save ourselves.
[31:22] Why do Christians do? Yes, we should do good things as Christians, but we don't do them because we are trying to earn in South Asian, but because we've received it. We've been changed.
[31:33] We've had the Holy Spirit. We have the Holy Spirit residing within us. That will make you different. And so we want to obey him because we are his workmanship, and because we understand the salvation that we've received by his grace.
[31:49] And then the third reality, salvation is through Jesus Christ. Salvation is through Jesus Christ. This is a work of God.
[32:00] What is that work of God? Jesus says that you believe in him whom he has sent. As the Apostle Paul explains in Romans 5, Adam was our first representative.
[32:13] Sadly, as our representative, when he sinned, he plunged all of humanity into condemnation with him. The guilt and corrupt nature of Adam, as a result, has been imputed or reckoned to all of us, his posterity.
[32:30] This is the doctrine of original sin. As a result, our nature is now inclined towards sin rather than towards righteousness.
[32:41] And if you don't believe that, as I've said before, I'll say again, volunteer in our nursery with our little kids or in our schools or babysit some kids and you'll know if you haven't had kids yourself that we don't have to teach little kids how to be bad, do we?
[32:58] We don't have to say, now little Johnny, this is what bad is. This is what bad means. He knows that. We have to teach him what is good and what is right because it doesn't come instinctively to us because we were born with original sin.
[33:13] The first chance we get, we act upon our sinful inclinations and with that we only increase God's wrath against us as a result of the guilt for our rebellion against him.
[33:28] We not only break God's law but we fail to keep it as perfectly as his law requires us to. And so our predicament could not be any worse.
[33:41] But the beauty of the gospel is found in a Savior who succeeds where Adam failed. Like our first father, Adam, Christ also acts as our representative.
[33:56] But as the second or last Adam, he does not fall prey to the temptations of the evil one. His mission was, in fact, twofold.
[34:08] On the one hand, he was born to die. Countless times in the gospels, Jesus stated that truth. Revealing his intention and coming was to lay down his life.
[34:24] Well, why? Because he must suffer the penalty for our lawbreaking if we are to be forgiven. Until he drinks the cup of wrath in full, he cannot declare on the cross, it is finished.
[34:43] However, there's a flip side to that gospel coin. It's not enough to have our sins forgiven as essential as that is for our salvation.
[34:55] If only the penalty is paid, then we stand still before God naked. Yes, our guilty robe has been removed, but no positive righteousness speaks for us in sight of our God who is holy, holy, holy.
[35:13] Needed still, then, is the obedience of our Lord. Many of us understand the cross and why that was essential, but maybe not as many of us understand why the life of Christ was so essential, why it was so necessary.
[35:31] He had to live that perfect, obedient life, which could then be credited to our account. I've failed.
[35:42] You failed. You failed. Christ has never failed. He has never faltered. When he went to the cross, he truly went to the cross spotless.
[35:55] The spotless Lamb of God who takes away our sins. As a result, God's word says that those of us who believe in him, those of us who place our faith in him for our salvation, that not only when we do so are we forgiven, but we receive his righteousness.
[36:17] We receive his righteousness. The guilty robe has been removed as a result of his forgiving us, but then we are covered in the spotless righteousness of Christ forever.
[36:34] This is great news for sinners, isn't it? So now when the Father sees you having been saved, having put your faith in Jesus Christ, and though you still struggle with sin, though you still fall into temptation, and you, like me, have to regularly and daily pray for God's forgiveness and confession of your sins, but you know even still that when the Lord sees you, what does he see?
[37:07] His son. His spotless, sinless son. You are his daughter. You are his son.
[37:17] You are his. Not because of what you've done, but because of what Christ has done for you. It's all of Christ. None of us.
[37:29] One of the books in the Chronicles of Narnia written by C.S. Lewis is called The Silver Chair. Maybe you've read that book. The story, if you remember, begins with the cousins of those in the earlier tales.
[37:44] The names of these two are Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pohl in The Silver Chair. The book begins with these two talking at school and then Eustace telling Jill about this magical kingdom of Narnia that he has visited before.
[38:05] They long to go back. Jill longs to be there and to see it. And so together, they start calling for Aslan. Aslan, the lion lord of Narnia.
[38:16] Narnia. And they ask him if they can return. As they are talking about this, they are suddenly chased by some other schoolmates. And Eustace and Jill run through a door and open it to discover that they've been transported into the land of Narnia.
[38:36] They soon realize that they are also on the edge of a cliff. And soon, Eustace falls off that cliff.
[38:49] Before Jill can comprehend what has happened to him, Aslan appears. He doesn't roar. He doesn't speak. He simply breathes.
[39:02] And his breath causes a wind strong enough to capture Eustace before he can plunge to the ground and die. And then he, on the breath of Aslan, is carried off into the air into Narnia.
[39:21] Aslan then turns to Jill and instructs her to walk before him to the edge of the cliff. The girl does so.
[39:33] And as she comes closer to the edge of the cliff, the lion instructs her to stand still. Lewis then explains that as the lion's voice grew softer to Jill's astonishment, she saw the cliff already more than a hundred yards behind her and the lion himself, a speck of bright gold on the edge of it.
[40:01] She had been setting her teeth, she had been clenching her fist, expecting this big blast of air to take her suddenly.
[40:12] But it was nothing like that. In reality, it says, Lewis writes, that she floated on the breath of the lion, that it was extremely comfortable as she did so, as if she were in a pool of water, able to float on her stomach and on her back.
[40:29] Jill Pohl in that story was passive. She was merely along for the ride on the vessel of the lion's breath.
[40:42] She was delivered by word-speaking breath alone to Narnia. She would never think when she got there safely on her feet of boasting about how she had crossed this great distance of land on her own strength.
[41:01] She realized that all she had to do was simply respond in obedience to the lion's command. And further, he sent her, if you've read the book, with a task, an important work that he had for her to do.
[41:21] But that good task, that good work would be the fruit of what she would do after he had already transported her safely by his breath alone.
[41:32] It wouldn't be the cause for why he did that for her. Aslan's delivery of Jill to Narnia is a helpful picture of what the Bible articulates as saving faith.
[41:45] Christ has delivered us from death. The Spirit has raised us to new life. And as a result, we've been called by God.
[41:57] We've been tasked by him to participate in his mission. Don't work to be saved. Work because you are saved.
[42:09] And that will make a huge difference in understanding the two. And when you do, give all the glory to God who will, as he's done for our good friend Dwayne yesterday, safely transport you from this life to his eternal kingdom.
[42:29] Before I bring up our final two questions of application, I do want to say if you are an unbeliever and you've heard this, maybe you feel like you've been toiling for God's pleasure in you because of your good works, or maybe you've been of the mind, you've been taught that that's what's required for your salvation.
[42:48] I encourage you, please, to contact me if you're here this morning. coming forward, if you're realizing that there's no hope for me in my good works, that I can only be saved for Christ, and you see why his life and his death and his resurrection were essential for your salvation.
[43:06] I would love to talk with you and to pray with you and to encourage you and to continue to disciple you. Let's move to our final two questions of application. I hope that you'll just think about these and pray over these this week, tuck this sheet into your Bible and come to it again maybe tomorrow or later on this week.
[43:26] First of all, what are you trusting in today for your salvation? Think about this. What are you trusting in today for your salvation? God's sake? If today is your last day on planet Earth and you stand before the Lord Jesus Christ and he asks you, why should I grant you entrance into my kingdom, right?
[43:50] What are you going to say? Well, hopefully you'll say because I know Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior and I know that my guilty robe has been removed and I've been covered by his righteousness.
[44:03] I know that it is Christ who has saved me. What are you trusting in today for your salvation? And then secondly, what is the primary motivation of your Christian service?
[44:18] What is the primary motivation of your Christian service? Now this is a question that I've learned to have to ask myself repeatedly, daily. Why am I doing this?
[44:29] Why would I put that in the message, right? Think about the Sunday school class that you teach, the instrument that you play, your part in the choir, your leadership position within the church, whatever it may be.
[44:44] Think about what is the primary motivation of my service in this task? And if you realize in any of these cases that you're trusting in something else for your salvation or your primary motivation for service is anything else besides fulfilling the great commission of our Lord Jesus Christ, then pray about that.
[45:03] Ask God to help you. And he will. Thank you. Thank you.