12th January 2025

Beyond the Sinner’s Prayer

Passage: Matthew 5:48, Luke 19:1-10, Titus 2:11-15
Service Type:

Salvation extends far beyond the initial moment of conversion or the sinner’s prayer. A good representation encompasses both Jesus’ ministry to the lost, as seen in His encounter with Zacchaeus, with its challenge for a change of ways and example of change in behaviour.  Jesus’ call is not just to conversion but also for the new believer to pursue godly perfection. The Lord’s work of salvation includes not only forgiveness of sins but also the ongoing transformation of the believer’s character through sanctification, ultimately looking forward to Christ’s return. This broader understanding of salvation helps explain why many Christians struggle with living the Christian life after conversion, when their new salvation needs time to find help and hope through the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] Tonight I wanted to talk about the extent of our salvation, or you might call it how broad is the application of our salvation, and what exactly is it? There was a time in the Northern Hemisphere, Christian circles, where a fellow who was an evangelist described what a Christian was, was someone who had said the sinner’s prayer. And although saying the sinner’s prayer may well have been the appropriate thing in varied moments where he was ministering, that is a too tighter definition of salvation. Salvation is more than just a prayer. How can we understand the concept of salvation, and what does it aim to accomplish, and in what should you be able to see in yourself, and know that you are saved? It’s a pretty good question actually, because how are you to think of yourself if you’ve said the sinner’s prayer, but you know you’re living a rotten life?

[00:01:12] Or you know you’ve failed in some other way, it may not be your fault, but how do you think of yourself? Is there some better way to construe about our salvation that will answer this question, to give us the breadth of what salvation is about? Now when our church in the morning services was going through the Beatitudes, we came to a place, it’s a bit hard to pick where those Beatitudes finish, but I finished on verse 48 in this passage that was just read for us, where it says, you therefore must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect. And the requirement, the ethical requirement if you like, or the behavioural mandate for us to live like the Father, and if we put the passage back up just as it was, you’ll see that Jesus is saying things like love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.

[00:02:25] And here we have from Jesus an articulation that the aim of salvation is to make us like the Father, and at the final verse, you therefore must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect. Now this does introduce that behaviour, that deep idea, that salvation is getting us to be something a lot more than what we started out to be. It’s not really salvation if all that it gets for you is you think you’re forgiven, but your life doesn’t change. And it gives a bit of a hard challenge to many examples of everyday Christianity, and there are plenty down through history of examples of where the Church did not really represent this being perfect, as the Heavenly Father is perfect. But here it is, Jesus is talking about what the Father wants of us. Now there are other verses nonetheless in the Scriptures which would seem to speak somewhat differently from this,

[00:03:38] and one that I’ve been noticing is in Luke and chapter 19. You’ll excuse my cough, I have kicked the COVID that I had, but the cough was lingering, but I’m meant to be clear of COVID. Luke 19 and verse, I think it’s 10 and following, or maybe see what we have here. We’ll start at verse 1. Now it’s a storyline, and therefore it is Jesus who in the ministry with people is finding opportunity to illustrate what it is that is salvation. Excuse me. And the answer Jericho was passing through.

[00:04:25] By the way there’s two parts to Jericho, and we’re Balaamis and Balaamis is sitting, the middle, where there a bit of an open territory part where he was both coming out, Jesus was, out of Jericho one spot, and he was going into Jericho another spot. And so, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, who was the chief tax collector and was rich, and he was seeking to see who Jesus was. Now here we’re beginning to see a little bit of the other aspect of Jesus’ ministry. Not only was he a person who is busy calling out what is the requirements of God, but Jesus is also doing another part of his ministry, which is where he’s bringing people to come

[00:05:18] to know him and to know his salvation. And so here is Jesus and his ministering to the crowds, and there was Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector who was very rich. Usually everybody would understand that he got rich, not very honestly. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but in account of the crowd, he couldn’t. He was a short man. So he ran on ahead and climbed up a sycamore tree to see him.

[00:05:52] Now that’s a tree with rather thick branches and lots of leaves. For he was Jesus was about to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to them, or said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down. I heard Leighton Ford give a message from this passage, and his design of Sermon was simple. At this point he says Zacchaeus got a fright because he suddenly realized Jesus sees me.

[00:06:30] Zacchaeus thought he was up the tree and that wasn’t going to reveal him, but Jesus stops underneath it and looks up. Then the Lord says Zacchaeus, and in Leighton Ford’s sermon he says, Jesus not only sees me, but he knows me. And then Jesus says, he says, I’m coming to your house for dinner. And Zacchaeus would have said, not only does he know me, but he wants me because this man was a social person pushed out from being a part of the Jewish nation in their estimate,

[00:07:04] not allowed to go to the synagogue, considered to be like a person who was not a Jew though he was one. And Zacchaeus was not used to anybody coming to his nice big rich house because he was not wanted, he was reject. But Jesus says, I’m coming to your house for dinner. Now what you have illustrated here is the ministry of Jesus where he not only is busy teaching the people about what it is to be a good Jew and obeying the law and upholding

[00:07:39] what the Old Testament required, but he’s also somebody who has an eye out for those who are lost. And so he finds a person like Zacchaeus. And anyway, he hurried down and verse seven, when they saw it, they all grumbled the people. He’s gone into a house to be guest of a man who is a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, now I think he’s already gone into the house, so this is in the house he’s saying this, behold Lord, the half of my goods I give to

[00:08:14] the poor. And if I’ve defrauded anybody of anything, I’ll restore it fourfold. And Jesus said to him, here’s the verse, today salvation has come to this house since he also is the son of Abraham. In Jesus’ ministry to the Jews, he didn’t want any of the Jews to be lost, but they needed to come to know him. They needed to be resolved about their sins.

[00:08:44] They needed to have a confession like Zacchaeus is making. Salvation has come to his house since he also is the son of Abraham, for the son of man has come to seek and to save the lost. Now if you want to find the heart of Christianity, if you want to find what it is to be someone that is in the centre of where God would have you, if you want to follow Jesus’ understanding of salvation, it isn’t only to be someone who is lost to then get saved, like Zacchaeus. There’s also the other verse where Jesus was teaching all the crowds that they were to

[00:09:25] be perfect, even like the Heavenly Father is perfect. Now it’s very clear to see that Zacchaeus was very hardly anywhere near being perfect. And if I had to pick two of the illustrations of salvation, the sinner’s prayer by Billy Sunday, or this passage where someone is going to make a reparation to give back money stolen, he’s going to do something so that he would be seen to be saved with respect to his membership in the Jewish race, right with the God of the Jews, you can see that both ends of those two goals are in the mission of Christ.

[00:10:09] And when he calls on us to be saved, his salvation isn’t only just that we make a decision and so we’ll get to be in heaven. Some people think of heaven as the reward for saying the sinner’s prayer. It may be the outcome for many people, who under Billy Sunday particularly had a very successful evangelistic ministry, who did come to know Christ and will be in heaven, but heaven is not for us to be looking at us being rewarded for having just gotten in the door.

[00:10:44] Heaven is about us being to the Father and us achieving what it is to have fellowship with the Father that our salvation has meant to prepare us to be like. It’s going to be a difficult salvation experience for you. If you have gotten in the door for forgiveness, but you’ve been slack and never chased what your salvation should be having you doing, and you still were just as sinful and guilty, and the time came for you to go to Heaven, you are not going to really have a time there where the Father rewards you for all the nice things that have happened in your life.

[00:11:24] You are going to be in the door, maybe, but the teaching of the New Testament is it is possible to get in by the skin of your teeth. And there’ll be a lot of people. I think it depends on the generation in which you live, whether or not there’s been a salvation proclaim that is more than just getting forgiveness, but a salvation that proclaims a change in life. A sanctification which is progressed. A coming to a place where when you go to heaven the Lord will be heard to say, well done, you good and faithful servant. There’s meant to be what happens after you come in the door that is a part of your salvation. If you want to test such a

[00:12:07] theory as I’m putting it out, one of the best ways to test it I think is in the fact of the book of Romans, which a lot of people don’t realise at first. They think it’s a book to tell us doctrines. It certainly does that well. But the book of Romans is really just a gospel tract without giving you all the trips that Jesus made in the hills and his speeches. It’s a gospel tract in the sense of its content is to make clear about how you come to know God, but it’s also clear about the fact that people who come to know God then find themselves having a problem. And the The problem is, although they know they’re saved because they’re forgiven, they don’t

[00:12:51] find themselves very easily able to live the Christian life. And the Apostle Paul, though he was someone who was very good at keeping the Jewish description of the things they should do, nonetheless was not very successful in living the Christian life. And so in the middle chapters of the book of Romans, if you were to read it through, you discover he cries out about how he’s failed. A wretched man that I am, who shall release me, who shall rescue me from this body of

[00:13:21] death describing what they used to do back in those days where the prisoner is to strip their clothes off and tie them up back to back with a corpse where the worms and the rotten flesh against the flesh of the person so tired would work their way through. And it was called a body of death. And Paul cried out as a bit of a metaphor of how he found himself as a Christian. I believe he’s a Christian, as someone who’s wanting to be saved and in fact knows he is saved.

[00:13:59] But nonetheless, he’s chained to a body of death, which the Bible describes as what our flesh is. And we find ourselves unable to cease to really be the people that God could call perfect. And so we have here about salvation that there’s this dual thing on one hand where Jesus is the meek and mild Saviour that saves a person like Zacchaeus who’s a rotten cheat and who’s been scalping his fellow Jews, so much so that he’s been working for the Romans and getting more money out of his fellow Jews for taxes.

[00:14:34] The difference being is what he kept and how he got rich. He wasn’t really a very pleasant personality. Whether he grew to be like that or whether he had a chip in his shoulder because of his youth, maybe he wasn’t allowed to play in the football team because he was short. I don’t know what the story was. But Zacchaeus was not exactly a person that you would put up there, here’s what a Christian is.

[00:15:00] And you see that nonetheless, Jesus has a focus not only on giving to us how to be good Christians but also recruiting us to be involved in his process of winning those who are lost. Salvation has these two things that they could be looked at as an antithesis, things that are in opposites, directions, leading and teaching. But if you examine carefully, you discover something about Jesus’ teaching, that he knows that we’re going to have trouble living out the Christian life after he said the sinner’s prayer, or after we came to Christ whichever was the way that you first put

[00:15:35] your faith in Jesus to be the Savior. He knows that you’re going to have a difficult time and but he understands that there is further to salvation than just your justification, just your initiation, just your beginning. It is that part of salvation which is called sanctification. Though the word sanctification is used for some part of what happens when you first come to to Christ, you’re set apart and sanctified to belong to God. But it’s also used for the change of character that the Holy Spirit begins to bring in you as a Christian. And that change

[00:16:12] of character and that growth towards perfection is what the aim of salvation is all about. Now when you read through the various passages, what you discover is that although there might be one passage that seems to be emphasizing Jesus’ ministry to teach us to have a perfect standard, yet at another moment you’ll find that Jesus has a context in which he’s also demonstrating his love for the lost. And this story of Zacchaeus is beautiful in examining this because Zacchaeus, when he gets to his house, that’s my presumption. Some people think he says this to the crowd, which would make more sense to the way you’d think it all happened, but it’s already said that

[00:17:01] he’s asked Jesus to go to his house. So I’m taking it that he’s in the house. But then he makes the comment at the end and he says he stands up. Now I just see a scene of him standing up and making a comment and saying, Lord, if I’ve cheated anybody, I’ll restore it four times. Half my goods I’ll give to the poor. Look at it there. And if I’ve defrauded anyone of anything, I’ll restore it fourfold. And Jesus said to him, this is a concluding verse, today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham, for the son of man has come to seek and to save, that which was lost. And though Jesus has this standard of perfection, he also has with it that

[00:17:55] the context in which he’s speaking is for us to join him in the mission to look for the lost. And that means we’re going to be applying salvation to people who will be a long way away from being examples of where they’re meant to get to be. In our church in Sydney, some of you have heard me say this before, but we had a young man come. He was a tradie. He was rough looking. He had tattoos. He had a wild look with awfully long hair. He just looked a fright. And he came into the church and he had come to know the Lord. And a good lot of the people were suspicious. We didn’t want him not to come. And there would have been some who wanted people like me to show him, you know,

[00:18:47] get a haircut or do this or that, or maybe not come at all. But across time, something happened to that young man. He actually had quite a gentle personality, despite the appearance. And he became strong in Christ. And it was clear that what salvation meant for him was that development after the fact of his coming to know the Lord. Now my purpose in saying all this is to show to you that the two elements of Jesus’ ministry, the context of one is often the other. And if you have a ministry where you’re seeking to bring the lost, you need to keep the context that the aim of it all isn’t just to get them to sign the sinner’s card, but the behaviour doesn’t change.

[00:19:40] But it is that they will eventually become people whose lives demonstrate the difference of what it is to have Christ as the Saviour. And that’s a part of the mission of Jesus. And you will find in most of the different spots where Jesus is emphasising one of those two, you’ll find it’s also got the context of the other, because the two are a part of what he’s all about. We’ll go to another passage, please, to the next one, and have a look here. This is in Titus, in chapter 2. Now, Titus is a pretty short little book, but boy, it’s got some good advice that Paul is sending to Titus as he sent them to get things right in the church. And that very fact of Paul

[00:20:32] sending one of what I would call an apostolic delegate, someone that goes and takes Paul’s authority to a foreign place, shows that he is interested not just in getting converts and having them express it as whatever their culture is. He’s interested in there being a growth in righteousness. And so we’ll read it through Titus, chapter 2, verses 11 to 15, for the grace of God has appeared. Now, by the way, I’m very tempted to give you a long spiel on the grace of God. I’ll save that for another time, but it’s what God has done in his love and in his kindness and in his mercy. And God and his grace, this grace has appeared. But how is Titus talking about appearing?

[00:21:19] It’s appearing in the ministry of Jesus, bringing salvation for all people. And although it is true that some people end up in hell, therefore they didn’t get saved even though Jesus came for all people, nonetheless the grace of God would have had it so, if possible, that all might be saved, training us to renounce ungodliness. And so that part of the Christian life, which isn’t just the bringing in of the lost and getting evangelism to happen, but training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age. In this period of time, which we’re still in, that period of time Paul was in, it’s the last time,

[00:22:08] so the very moment when Jesus had risen from the grave and the Holy Spirit was given, that was the beginning of the last time. So the last times will be finishing up when Christ returns. But we’re in the last times now, but they were then too. And in this present age, waiting for the blessed hope. And now we see, because my title of my sermon was to the extent of salvation, to how broad it is and how much is included in it, includes about the second coming. You can get forms of salvation, which just highlight one point getting forgiven, like Billie Sunday, if you said the sinner’s prayer, you’re in the door. But you could also get other types of descriptions of salvation,

[00:22:56] which have an awful lot about the second coming. They’re not wrong to so include, because here it says, it calls it the blessed hope. Waiting for the blessed hope. The blessed hope is the return of Christ, where many of the promises that he made will then be fulfilled. The word hope, in their language, originally meant more expectation than just, I hope so. It’s the idea that you really can understand it’s going to happen. It’s an expectation. You have that blessed hope. The appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. And the feature of the second coming is that when Jesus comes, he’s coming into open view in a way that we’ve never understood him before. But it’s

[00:23:43] a blessed hope. I hope that we’ll see him. See him as he is, as he comes. See him in his kingdom. Be with him. The appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. That’s also a part of the Gospel. What I’ve discovered is that you can go around and be a preacher of the Gospel and people give you a degree of thanks for coming. But there are a lot of places, if you choose to do it, about the second coming where their thankfulness and pat on the back goes cold. I’ve been to churches where I knew I did the wrong thing to preach the first time I was there on Jesus’ second return and I never got invited back. Because their church, though they would have

[00:24:31] given intellectual theological credence to the fact that Jesus is returning, it was one of those beliefs they didn’t like to have emphasized. And I’ve made the mistake, I shouldn’t have given my very first message on the second coming in that church. Because they were of a teaching that didn’t emphasize that as a part of the Gospel. It’s just a little extra bit that may happen, but it’s no big deal. But here the word is waiting for our blessed hope. And so that if you have a salvation, it’s one that includes in you an awareness that you’re looking toward the moment when Jesus comes. When my dad first came up here to Queensland to be the principal of the college,

[00:25:18] it had previously had quite a up and down theological journey. They’d have one principal who was conservative, they’d have another principal who was less than that. And it’d go backwards and forwards and dad was the new one coming and he was a conservative. And one of the things about his teaching was about the second coming. But there was an existing lecture in theology at the time who was of the other sort of understanding that didn’t make as much of the second coming and what that he did teach was just the basic fact that Jesus would come. But it wasn’t a place of emphasis. And certainly not a place to locate what is the Gospel. But the

[00:26:00] The Gospel includes about the fact that Jesus is coming as a part of the message that we’re meant to proclaim. Anyway, because my father’s area was theology, this fellow left and went back to overseas and did his own PhD. He thought he better take another qualification so he could teach somewhere else. And he did a very mammoth doctoral dissertation, six volumes long, I believe it was, about the beliefs of the early church fathers, and he did it on what they believed about the

[00:26:33] second coming. He was sort of checking out the things he did believe and whether or not he should feel aggrieved at having to leave because my dad came with a different belief. Well, what happened was my father received a letter and this professor fella studied the second-coming beliefs of the early church fathers and he wrote to my dad, and he said to his surprise, he discovered that the majority of them, and the nearly most of all, but not all but most of them,

[00:27:04] believed in the Second Coming like my father did, believed it was a literal event, and something that the Church should be waiting for. And then he continued in his communication, he continued with the idea that because he thought he should follow the historical evidence of the early Church Fathers,

[00:27:25] they’re much closer to the original age of Jesus and the first apostles, so who was he to have an idea, a doctrine that was different? But then he realised if you went wanted to take on this place of believing in the second coming you’re going to have to be far more literalistic about many of the passages. And so he had to change his attitude to the scriptures as to how straightforwardly he took them. And he wrote to Dad and said he’d become an evangelical, somebody who believes the scriptures is an evangelical. Someone who believes in the

[00:27:59] Gospels also an evangelical, because the word evangelical is, apart from the Greek word, gospel. And if you’re an evangelical you believe the Gospel but where do you get the Gospel from but from the scriptures? Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is a good starting place. And this fellow became more evangelical and changed his eschatology that’s the study of the last times because he found historical evidence that was very weighty. If it were those early church fathers were in the majority that they were people believed a certain way, who was he not to believe that they would be like a rapture?

[00:28:39] Let’s turn to 1 Thessalonians 4. When I have had many discussions on the topic about what should an evangelical believe about the second coming and some people say well there’s verses in the Gospels about at the resurrection some will be risen to go to be of God and some will go to judgment. That shows that there’s not any of the little details and in the light of that when you come to 1 Thessalonians 4 you don’t really take much notice of it or you don’t take much put much weight in it. I think the reverse is clear from the Gospels they’re just giving a quick statement which is generally true but it’s also clear from this passage he’s trying to inform them on details.

[00:29:27] Let’s read it but I do not want you to be uninformed. In the Greek it’s the word agnostic. I do not want you to be without knowing not to be in the know brothers about those who are asleep people who’ve died as Christians that you do not grieve as others do who have no hope for since we believe that Jesus died and rose again even so through Jesus or with Jesus God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep so all the people who have died and have gone to glory but they’ve died and they’re there with Jesus now they won’t get to get into the kingdom on earth after the people who have coming to know the Lord later won’t go ahead of those

[00:30:13] who have fallen asleep? For this we declare to you by the Lord of the Lord that we, who are alive and who are left until the coming of the Lord will not precede, go before those who have fallen asleep. That is dying Christ for the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with the cry of command, the voice of the archangel or that’s a reiterating cry by the angel and with the sound of the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first.” This is a resurrection. Then we who are alive who are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so will

[00:30:52] always be with the Lord therefore encourage one another with these words. Now that description of being caught up together the word in the Greek hapazo it means literally to be snatched away and it’s talking about the fact that the dead in Christ will get snatched up first and we who are walking around haven’t died yet because for whatever reason God’s left us we will also be lifted up snatched away and will meet Jesus in the air. Now that’s a being dubbed by people to criticize it the doctrine of the secret rapture and I’ve sat with theologians around tables as we discuss the life of the college and they said on this silly idea some people have

[00:31:40] of the secret rapture and I said it won’t be very secret in fact it but it must be secret now because I keep meeting theologians who’ve never heard about it. I didn’t read first there’s Lord is for. We who are alive who are left will be snatched up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words. Now this is a very detailed description and even though there may be general statements made elsewhere where you might jump to the conclusion it’s just one big event

[00:32:16] and some go up to heaven and some go to hell. I think this detail trumps that and you interpret the other and the light of the detail of passages like this. It’s really interesting that you don’t really have a sufficient breadth of understanding of the gospel if it doesn’t include something to do with the Second Coming. There was another evangelist who’s someone that has been a great help to me and someone who has been an excellent preacher, still alive but he’s quite an old man now, but he had a crusade here in Brisbane out near

[00:32:58] Kenmore and there was a whole lot of empty land where there were some fields and they’ve been filled up probably by these days but he had a tent pitch pitched and he gave his final a message on the Second Coming of Christ. And they’re largely teenagers who came to the meetings and a great crowd of them responded to the invitation to come to Christ. He preached in the second coming and they got so scared that a lot of them who went forward. And that made the evangelist a little bit scared. Did he scare them too much? And he came up to

[00:33:37] college, which isn’t far away from where I’m describing, to see my dad in the first instance to ask the question, how much should we rely on the second coming to motivate people to respond to the Gospel? When he finished with Dad, he came and talked to me. What he didn’t know about that time, I was in the middle of doing a Master’s, an extra Master’s. I had one in theology, but I also wanted to get one in New Testament. I was at Wheaton College, but I was coming home and going back and coming home. I’d done the course work. They had two years of course work, but you had to do a thesis. But I didn’t

[00:34:16] have a thesis topic. He came and asked me. He knew I was trying to study up about theology. I don’t know whether he was flattering me or not, but he asked me, what has the second coming got to do with motivating people to respond to the Gospel? Well, I had my topic for my thesis. I went back there. The professors were wanting to know what it was, and I explained to them. They set me going on that. To my surprise, what I discovered was that the second coming in the New Testament, especially the Book of Acts and the teaching of Paul, isn’t only just to motivate people to make a decision, but it’s a message. It’s a part of the message.

[00:35:06] The very message of the Gospel is that Jesus Christ is coming back again to call into account all people, and that’s a part of the very message that we are meant to deliver. We don’t have an option as to whether we’re included. It’s actually what we should be preaching as the Gospel. Now, it’s not the centre of the Gospel, any more than Genesis is the centre of the Gospel, as relevant as that is. The centre of the Gospel, as I’ve been saying over this Christmas period, is about Jesus and his birth, and Jesus and his live, and Jesus and his matchless living, and his qualification to be a sinless sacrifice on the cross and

[00:35:45] Jesus and his death on our behalf, and then his resurrection, and Jesus. He’s going back heaven that’s the center of the gospel it’s about Jesus Christmas begins the center of the gospel and Jesus and what he came to do and how he lived a sinless life and how he gave it on the cross in our place that’s the center but the gospels more than just the center it’s more than just come to Jesus the gospel is all about the fact that we are to learn to live a life that’s heading towards perfection. And the book of Romans, as I mentioned earlier, is a book that

[00:36:26] shows that Paul knew that that’s a very hard thing for people to do and he himself felt a failure and cried out that great statement, who shall deliver us from this body of death? But then he goes on to explain through the power of the Holy Spirit helping us in sanctification, we can have that delivery moment by moment if someone tells you or just have this special experience will make you entirely sanctified. Don’t believe it. You don’t get entirely sanctified. There is a type of sanctification you have by getting converted. You’re set apart for God and that’s the idea of sanctification. But the process of sanctification is not something that you can have a spiritual

[00:37:06] experience and it’s all yours. It’s something you’ll struggle with all through your life, but you can make progress in the struggle. That’s what Paul discovered in the rest of the book of Romans with that final chapter 12 that calls on us to surrender our lives as a living sacrifice is about how to be in a position to win more of that struggle. And it is God’s will for you that you should be sanctified. This is the will of God, Thessalonians says, even your sanctification. And God wants you to know that salvation is more of a thing than just getting in the door. It’s meant to be something gripping us to want to be perfect and being ashamed when we don’t,

[00:37:52] but calling out for His help, that we might have another attempt, that we might struggle on further. The whole idea of being a pilgrim is walking a difficult road, but the road that God wants you to make progress in? Don’t just know the title of pilgrims progress, be a pilgrim who makes progress. That’s what I think God’s wanting you to hear tonight. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for the Gospel and how it has those elements of enormous holiness expected as Jesus didn’t lessen the standard. Thank you for the Gospel. It also explains his love and his salvation and his motivation to find the worst sinner there in that little

[00:38:44] town. Was it Jericho? Where it was, where Zacchaeus was. And bring forgiveness to him, so he was able to say at the end, salvation has come to this house. Or Father, help us to be people who are caught up in both those elements of pursuing our salvation, to learn to get more and more sanctified, but also, Lord, that we might be involved in bringing others, more Zacchaeus’s, more people who don’t know the Savior. Help us to see that one is the context of the other and to keep them together, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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