[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Erickson Covenant Podcast. We are so glad that you've joined us today.
We confess that we don't have all the answers, but as a community, we seek to find and follow Jesus and to discover daily the life he has always wanted for us.
We hope this message will be encouraging and will inspire you to take the next steps on your spiritual journey.
If we can help you in any way, please connect with us. The the easiest way is through our
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[00:00:38] Speaker B: Tom asked each of us to share a verse that was especially important to us in some way and that God had spoken to us, through which we did freely and easily and enthusiastically. Passages that had meant a lot to us.
And then Tom said, okay. Ah, that was great. I'd like you each to preach on those verses over the next few weeks. So that's how it is. So that's how we have this series When God Speaks, because it's a series of passages where God has spoken to each of us in a special way.
So some of you may be a little feeling a little disoriented after a week or two being away from the book of Luke. But have no fear, we are planning on coming back to it eventually anyway.
That's how we started.
Now, for me, I've never had a life verse like some people who had a verse. There's been one or two verses that have been, specially at special periods, but nothing over my whole life. But when Tom asked the question, the verse immediately came to mind. It was from Romans 10, 9 and 10, because that was a verse that had been bumping around in my head for a few weeks.
And as I looked at other passages and were meditating on other passages of Scripture, it seemed to be a relevant verse.
It's a verse that links believing in your hearts and professing with your mouth, right? If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
So one of the passages that I read recently and was thinking about Romans 10, 9 and 10 again with regards to it is in Matthew 14.
It's when the disciples were in a boat on the Lake of Galilee at night and Jesus came walking to them on the water and their first response was that Jesus was a ghost.
And they cried out in fear, right? There was hardly any light, just a vague figure there.
The natural first thing they thought of was ghost.
And they were afraid because it was quite realistic.
But then Jesus spoke up and said, don't be afraid, it is I.
Anyway, Peter said, lord, if it's you, tell me or command me to come to you on the water.
Come, Jesus said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came towards Jesus. So what was going on in Peter's mind? Right? He wasn't sure to begin with, the figure was Jesus, right? The first response is a ghost.
He couldn't see clearly, a vague figure.
So but if it was Jesus, and as Peter heard the voice, he thought, oh, maybe it's Jesus, then Jesus could not only calm storms, and Peter had seen him do that a little while before, but if he could calm storms, maybe he can control water and walk on it too. So this made some sense.
So then the crazy idea came to Peter. If Peter could walk on water, then his command over water should mean that he could make it possible for Peter to walk on water too. Have you ever thought like that about God?
Anyway, this was a.
Most of us wouldn't come up with this kind of thing.
But Peter wondered, but if would. Could he be sure that Jesus would be willing to let him walk on water?
Another big question.
Anyway, but if it was Jesus command, then that resolved some of the doubt, right? If Jesus said come, then it was obviously Jesus will for him to walk on water. So instead of just jumping out of water to go and join Jesus to begin with and probably going straight down, Jesus gave him the command, come.
And. And Jesus walked on water.
Not Jesus, Peter walked on water.
Definitely a step of faith there, right?
Faith with some questions.
But once the faith was expressed, it led to this dramatic experience for Peter. But then everything fell apart because we're told that Peter saw the strength of the wind and he started to sink.
But he had not actually lost faith in Jesus, just that he could walk on the water because it was so wild.
And he had enough faith to call out, lord, save me.
And Jesus reached out and did so.
Now, at this point, as best as we know, Peter didn't believe that Jesus would, that God would raise Jesus from the dead.
Nor did he know for sure that Jesus was the Messiah and could give him eternal life.
But he was certainly confessing what faith he had.
Jesus once gave an illustration of the link between our hearts and what we say in Luke 6. 45. He says, A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart.
And an evil man brings evil thoughts out of the evil Stored up in his heart.
For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
So, going back to the verses for today, Romans 10, 9, and 10, we need to be familiar with the surrounding passage to really understand and clarify what Paul is saying here and why he's saying it.
So here are the verses in Romans chapter 10 that lead up to them.
Moses writes about this.
And you had the passage read earlier from Deuteronomy 30.
Moses wrote about this, about the righteousness that is by the law.
The person who does these things will live by them.
But the righteousness that is by faith says, do not say in your heart who will ascend to heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the deep, that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say?
The Word is near you, it's in your mouth, and it's in your heart.
That is the message concerning faith that we proclaim.
If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified.
And it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
So Paul is quoting from that last sermon of Moses.
And Moses said that it wasn't necessary to go to heaven, up to heaven, to get God's commands. The word of God had been brought down to them through Moses.
Nor was it necessary to cross oceans to find the law.
It was right there with them, with Moses.
The Word is very near you, said Moses. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so you may obey it.
So Paul changes the quote when he quotes Moses. He changes the passage somewhat to become a message focusing on faith, because he replaced references to the law, the word of God, with references to Jesus, the word of God.
And the point made in both cases is that what we need for salvation is easily accessible. It's right here with us.
So Paul taught that for all, whether Jews or not. And in this passage in Romans 10, he's talking a lot about the Jews. But whether Jews or not, in faith, we know that we do not have to send someone to heaven to bring Jesus, the living Word of God, down to us. He came down to us already.
Nor do we have to send someone down to the place of the dead Jesus. The Word of God rose up from the dead, as we have recently been celebrating last week. No, we already have the message of faith.
It's in our hearts and in our words, he says.
And that's the background for those two verses.
If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord. I'm repeating this a few times so you get it and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. You will be saved, for it is with your heart that you believe and are justified. And it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
So the significance of these verses for me has to do with the nature of faith, the faith that God responds to.
For everyone now, whether Jew or non Jew, one part of faith is believing our hearts, in our hearts that Jesus is Lord and that he really did rise from the dead.
And the other part is professing that truth with our voices.
You know, I often talk about the link between faith and action, but here Paul puts things together a little differently and he directs us to recognize the link between faith and our tongues.
Faith is essentially a thing of the heart, it's not just of the head.
And if it is in our hearts, then it changes our emotions and then it changes the priorities of what we do.
And in particular it changes what we say and how we say it.
And when we do that, there's helpful feedback.
I don't know if you've noticed that when we say seems to increase our faith, it solidifies our faith.
So both Moses and Paul in the passages we looked at teach that speaking out is an essential part and sign of effective faith.
One of the connect groups we've had, the group that I'm in with Peter Boot leading it, actually we're kind of leading it. We watch videos and talk. Anyway, the topic was its big questions and one of the topics was does God exist?
And in a video that we were using to prime our discussion, the man who was speaking, Andy Steger from Abbotsford, he made this point.
God's existence isn't something you can prove or disprove. In fact, I'm not sure you can prove or disprove anything with that level of confidence.
A more realistic way to determine our beliefs is if something is reasonable.
That's why I define faith as trusting what you have good reason to believe is true.
I found that to be a helpful definition of faith because that was my experience. It's been my experience in my journey of faith as a mid teen, I was struggling with the difference between what I was being taught about God and what I was seeing around me in the family, in the church, the lack of evidence of spiritual reality.
Now I'd been given a New Testament at my confirmation a few years earlier, confirmation in the Anglican church.
And I decided to read through it to get Some clarity.
So I did. I read through the New Testament, and I concluded from that the New Testament is probably true.
Not, yes, it really is true. Not. It's got me. It's probably true.
And that was enough. Enough faith for me continue.
For me to continue going to church once I left home, but not much more.
But while I was away in university, I met various Christians, and I was challenged to clarify my faith in a prayer of commitment, on understanding forgiveness of sin.
But the sticking point for me was the call to actually turn to Jesus, call him Lord, and do whatever he asked me.
It was a struggle.
You know, the commitment involved giving up some autonomy.
But that was not the main struggle.
The main struggle for me was how confident was I that Jesus and God were actually as presented in the New Testament.
That was not a question with a definite yes, no answer.
It was a question. My answer lay somewhere on a continuum.
And did I have enough faith that I could make a commitment?
And isn't that the way we make commitments all the time?
Am I confident enough that this is the best course for me and that I'll be able to make decisions and act based on it?
You know, taking a new job is an example, requires moving to a new place.
With all the moving, you might lose friends, be distant from family, but is the extra income going to make it worthwhile? You weigh the things up and you decide, yes. And then make decisions appropriately.
Going into a marriage.
Yeah, you know, there might be a good person, the occasional person who realized they want to marry someone the first time they see them, and then they have no qualms afterwards. But I think they're rather unusual. But I do know the occasional person.
Most of us writes there's a process of decision making in which we slowly gain confidence that a marriage will work well, and then we're able to make that commitment.
So we come back to the passage, Romans 10, 9, 10. It starts with, if it is not enough to think that we believe in our hearts, as we grow in our belief, then we will come to a point, a decision point of telling Jesus that he is our Lord.
You know, when I considered making that commitment, as I said, it was a serious struggle.
But the struggle crystallized my faith, and I was able to make the commitment. And after doing so, my heart was at peace.
The struggle was over.
Jesus was my boss and savior, and life changed.
I found that I loved to purposely spend time with God each day, meditating, reading the Bible, praying.
The whole world came alive to me in a new way.
And I pinned a verse on My desk in university, I pinned a verse above my desk. 2nd Corinthians 5:17.
Do any of you know that?
It's a wonderful verse. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away.
See, the. The new has come.
And I pinned it there just to be able to enjoy that verse and the truth of it day by day.
Now there was a second part to the struggle, being open to others about my commitment.
Because after I made that commitment, the guy who'd been encouraging me in the decision also encouraged me to tell the important people in my life what what had happened.
And a few days later, I started that process. I told my parents.
Then a little while later, I told a cousin who happened to be living nearby.
But evangelism, letting non believers hear the good news has rarely been natural for me.
Perhaps that's a surprise for you to hear that from someone who spent many years as a missionary. But those of you who know me are aware that I'm not one of those who are always sharing their heart with others or encouraging others to change, or debating or convincing. But I early on discovered that something wonderful happened and that when I did push myself to share about Jesus, he did wonderful things.
So do you believe is Jesus your Lord?
What I mean is, have you told him that he is your Lord?
That first and foremost you intend to follow him and do his will?
That requires more than a general sense that you believe.
It requires a conscious decision that's confirmed on your lips.
Let's take a look at another passage about the apostle Peter as an example of believing in the heart and then speaking.
We've seen the one in the boat.
Unlike me, the apostle wasn't afraid of putting his feelings into words.
And. And here is the version from the Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew 16, when Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say the Son of man is? They replied, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
But what about you?
He asked, who do you say I am? And Simon Peter answered, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God.
This is described in the gospels of the first time.
The disciples really clearly understood who Jesus was.
Perhaps you were thinking about it before. This is where it crystallized.
It took quite a while, right, for Peter to get to. To that point.
If you just think about Peter, like when they first met Jesus, when Jesus first started his ministry. Andrew, Peter's brother, he was a disciple of the apostle John or John the Baptist. Rather, and he met Jesus, Andrew did, and he went to Peter and said, we found the Messiah.
So that was right at the start.
And.
Then Peter saw the miracles of Jesus.
There was the turning water into wine, healings, feeding crowds from a few loaves, calming a store, walking on water, giving extraordinary teaching.
So coming to a verbal faith can be quite a process.
Now I want to go a little bit beyond that too, and see that there are not only are the two parts to a faith that takes us to safety and that saves us. It's a faith that's a combination of heart, belief and confession, but there are also two directions to that confession.
First of all, to Jesus, that we accept who he is, we take him as our Savior, but then also this confession to our fellow humans.
So let's take a look at what Paul wrote immediately following the two verses.
Romans 10, 9, 10. I'll start with the two verses again.
If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified.
And it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.
For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile.
The same Lord is Lord of all, and richly blesses all who call on Him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
How then can they call on one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have never heard?
And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?
And how can anyone preach unless they are sent as it is written? How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.
Speaking to people is the only way that they are likely to hear the good news and give them the only chance to truly believe.
And the news is the same for Jews or non Jews. It's the same for everyone.
Jesus is the Savior whom God the Father sent for everyone we all need to hear.
Then we need to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, and then to call on him to give us new spiritual life.
So from these verses I see four levels of faith.
First, we believe that God probably exists enough to let that fact influence maybe some of our decisions. It's a basic kind of belief and probably a struggle for many for a long time.
Maybe there's always a little bit of a struggle, but it's there. The second we believe in our heart that God probably raised Jesus from the dead.
You'll notice I'm saying probably here, right? Because as I said, it's a process.
But then we come to the point where we act on that by telling Jesus that we accept him as our Lord, ask Him to cleanse us from sin and its effect, and to lead us on in his way.
And then there's a fourth stage.
We're telling other people about our faith.
So as our faith grows, those are the natural steps that follow, and they lead to salvation. So where are you in your faith?
You know, there may be some here who are not on this list at all because, you know, you don't even believe in God.
You're here with friends or you're here just to see what we do here, because we're. I know, because we're a nice group of people, right? Yeah, but you're investigating Christianity with no significant commitment yet. But most of us fall somewhere on this list.
If you're at level two, then just keep on investigating because you don't want to stand still.
Somewhere where you could be someone far better, somewhere far better.
Keep investigating. Keep reading, actively pursue, read, listen to podcasts.
Keep questioning stronger believers about their faith so you can keep clarifying your thoughts.
You know, whatever level you're at, don't just stay where you are at that point, drifting around.
Some of you at level two may be realizing that you do in fact believe enough to move forward, to actually talk to Jesus, accepting the offer of spiritual freedom and bowing your heart before him as the Lord he truly is.
And for anyone who is in that situation, I would encourage you to pray now if you can, putting into words what you've been thinking, that you are not worthy to come into Jesus presence, but asking him for cleansing and total forgiveness so that you can come before him, asking him to enter your life as Lord and Savior.
And in case there's someone here who is actually ready right now to do that, I'm going to pray a prayer. I'm going to ask everyone to just bow your heads, close your eyes, and if you have. If you are in that situation where you actually have never really taken that step of commitment to Jesus Christ, but there's nothing really strongly holding you back now, you're ready to actually take the step of verbalizing it to him.
I'll pray, and you follow along behind me.
Pray either silently or quietly, verbally if you'd like to, but praying the words from your heart.
So let me pray. Pray that verse, that prayer now.
Lord Jesus, you know who I am.
You know I'm not worthy to ask you to come into my presence, but yout've given youn own life so that I can be spiritually cleansed and forgiven.
I ask youk to come into my life and to renew it so that I can live as your true disciple.
Amen.
If you have just prayed that prayer, then I urge you to tell someone what you've done.
Whoever is most important to you or someone you are here with, or me, or someone else you trust.
Some of you are at level two.
Some of you have made that commitment in the past. Sorry, but you've never actually told anyone.
Then my encouragement to you is the same. Tell someone.
Tell someone that you've taken Jesus as Lord.
And everyone here we have a remarkable message to share.
Let's tell the world.
Let's allow ourselves to speak out under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: Thanks for listening in today.
We hope you feel encouraged and challenged.
If you know someone who would benefit from what you have heard today, please share this podcast.
For more information or if you have questions, you can connect with us through our website, Erickson Covenant ca.
You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Erickson Covenant Church.
