Today we’re going to talk about salvation and your need of it.

The simplest way to understand the Gospel is:
A - Acknowledge you are a sinner.
Have you ever lied? Lusted? Disrespected your parent? Then, according to the law of God, you are a sinner. Romans 3:23: All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory

B - Believe Jesus died for you
Jesus came from heaven to earth to give his life as a sacrifice for our sins. He took our place and paid the debt we owed from sin just as if we’d died. Romans 5:8 God showed his love for us that even while we were sinners, Christ died for us

C - Confess Jesus is Lord
Confess your faith in Jesus Christ. Declare your commitment to Him, and express your gratitude for His salvation. Romans 10:9-10 9 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. 10 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.

You are a sinner, born into sin. You have been separated from God by your sin. But God, in his great love for you sent his only son, Jesus, to die in your place. You don’t have to be good enough, clean enough, or holy enough for God to accept you. You just have to believe in your heart that Jesus came to earth and died for you and that he rose again to give you life, and confess he is Lord with your mouth.

This is the Core Gospel. It is simple. This is salvation.

I’ve shared this simple core Gospel with people my whole life.
Some people embrace this Gospel, some shun it, but please hear me clearly:

There is no other way to heaven than this Gospel. There is no other way to a relationship with God the Father than through a relationship with Jesus Christ the Son.

John 14:6
I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

This statement is one of the seven “I Am” statements attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of John, emphasizing His divine nature and authority. Jesus presents Himself as the sole path to salvation, emphasizing His role as the mediator between God and humanity. He is the only means by which people can approach God and experience eternal life. Jesus is the embodiment of truth, surpassing the written law and any human understanding. His words and actions are the ultimate standard of truth, and those who follow Him will find the truth that leads to eternal life. Jesus is not only the means to eternal life but also the source of life itself. He is the one who gives life to those who believe in Him, and His life is the pattern for human existence. Jesus’ statement “No one comes to the Father except through me” underscores His exclusive claim to be the sole means of salvation. He is not suggesting that other paths or religions can lead to God; rather, He is asserting that He is the one and only way to the Father.

Everyone wants to go to Heaven. Everyone wants what Jesus claims to offer. But so many people have doubts.

I want to talk about those doubts for a few minutes today.

You might be here and have not given your life to Jesus because you have doubts. You might be here and have given your life to Jesus but you have doubts.

Let’s address those doubts right now.

The 5 most common doubts about the Gospel
- If there really is a God, how can there be all this evil?
- How can I really believe that Jesus was God?
- How can the Bible be trusted?
- How can he be the only way?
- if all this is true, why all the hypocrisy in Christianity?

If there really is a God, how can there be all this evil?
This is really easy to answer, so I am only going to take a second on it. God created perfection and placed us, perfect beings, in perfection. We sinned. We chose to disobey God. Adam and Eve ate from a tree God told them not to eat from. Well why the tree to begin with? Because God wants you to have freewill to choose him.

So did God create evil? No. Freewill gave evil a space to live. How?

Darkness is not a thing. It is only the absence of light.
Coldness is not a thing. It is only the absence of heat.

Evil is not really a thing. It is only the absence of God.

God gave you free will to choose God and obedience, but in that option, you have the ability to not choose God and obedience.

So if you want to know why there is all this evil in the world, it is because we chose to live a life absent of God.

The real question then is not, “If God exists, why is there all this evil?”
The real question is, “What is God doing about it?”
The answer is Jesus.

How can I really believe that Jesus was God?
Let’s look at two sides of a coin - one side from the Bible and one side not from the Bible

Biblical sources
Jesus claimed to be God.
John 8:58
Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am
This “I am” (ego eimi) statement was Jesus’ clearest example of His proclamation, “I am Yahweh,” from its background in Isaiah 41:4, and even more emphatically in Exodus 3:14. In Mark 2 Jesus heals a man by saying, “Your sins are forgiven.” This is one of the earliest moments where the religious leaders understood who Jesus was claiming to be.

Colossians 2:9-10
9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

The early church prayed to and worshipped Jesus.
Acts 2, 7, 10, 14, all record the early Christians either praying to or worshipping Jesus.

The miracles.
The Gospels are filled with miraculous feats that Jesus did from healing the sick to controlling nature to raising the dead.

Non-biblical sources
Tacitus: While not explicitly stating Jesus’ divinity, Tacitus’ writing implies that Christians worshipped Jesus as a god. In his work “Annals”, Tacitus describes Christians singing hymns to Christ “as to a god” (Annals 15.44).
Pliny the Younger: Pliny’s letter to Trajan (Epistulae 96.7) mentions Christians worshipping Jesus, and one scholar interprets his statement as implying that Jesus was understood as a divine being who had lived on earth.
Religious Leaders: They clearly had issue with Jesus claims in the Bible, but Josephus and even the Talmud references a “yeshua” who clearly believed himself to be God.

How can the Bible be trusted?

Reliable Transmission.
The Bible has the most surviving copies of any ancient document, with over 24,000 manuscripts from all over the ancient world. This allows for cross-checking and verification of the text, confirming that what the authors wrote 2,000 years ago is what we have today.

Trustworthy Authors.
The New Testament authors were ordinary men who had everything to lose and nothing to gain from fabricating their testimony. They were willing to suffer and die for their claims, demonstrating their integrity and accuracy.

Early Church Affirmation.
The early Christian church recognized and affirmed the authority of the biblical texts, with quotes and references to them appearing in the writings of early church fathers as early as 115 AD. This provides a historical record of the Bible’s acceptance and trustworthiness. Not to mention the fact that Christians were willing to be martyred for what they believed to be true.

Consistency.
The Bible’s 40 authors, writing over 1,500 years, present a consistent and clear picture of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Historical Reliability.
The Gospels are historically reliable, with evidence supporting their accuracy. Non-biblical sources include: Josephus, The Babylonian Talmud, Pliny the Younger, Mara bar-Serapion, and Tacitus

Internal Evidence.
The Bible’s non-contradictory claims about itself, such as its own authority and inspiration, provide internal evidence for its trustworthiness.

How can he be the only way?
Religious pluralism model holds the belief that there is virtue in every religion, just as all religions are good and are of equal value. You may have heard this described as a mountain, which at the top, is God. Pluralism teaches that every religion is equally as relevant in the quest to ascend the mountain to reach God.

So let’s imagine that there is this mountain that God sits atop and that all religions are trying to reach him. If this is the case, what makes Christianity so different in that it can claim to be the only way?

Works
Every religion that than Christianity teaches that you can attain Heaven, enlightenment, etc. through your works.

Islam - Submission to the prophethood of Muhammad and the revelation of the Quran as the word of God with a heavy emphasis on following the Five Pillars of Islam

Hinduism - Spiritual works are done with the goal of “moksha” which is liberation from the cycle of birth and death until, through karma (actions and consequences) and reincarnation, you reunite with the Brahman or ultimate reality.

Buddhism - Achieve enlightenment through meditation, mindfulness, and the abandonment of attachment and craving, while adhering explicitly to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path.

Judaism - Emphasis on covenant and obedience to the Torah, focusing on ritual practices

Christianity - faith in Jesus Christ, who paid the debt, making a way for us to be restored into the relationship with God we were created for.

If you notice, Christianity is the only religion where, rather than God expecting you to get your life together and eliminate sin that separates, he chose to come down the mountain, destroy the power of sin, renew you, and reunite with him.

The major flaw in every religion other than Christianity is that if you could fix your sin issue, you would have already fixed it. We are good at messing it up, but we are incapable of fixing it. Every religion forces you to try to fix it. Christianity is the only religion where the God we worship fixed it.

Love
Jesus being the only way is one of the most loving things a God can do for you. It is more than the fact that he is the one who fixed what we broke making a righteous relationship with God available to us, but he also empowers those in his Kingdom to share that Gospel with others. And he doesn’t hide the way from us as some religions do. Rather, he gives us a clear path to walk in order to be saved.

I heard an incredible way to describe this last week.
A man said that he and his daughter flew into an airport they didn't know anything about and were looking for the gate that would take them back to Houston where they were from. Now, imagine a person came to that man said, "Don't worry! Just pick any gate you want and that will lead you home.” Would that be loving? Would that person genuinely be caring about the man and his daughter? What would happen if they got on a random plane at a random gate and found themselves in a war torn area with no chance of getting back? Is it loving to say pick any gate? Or is it evil?

But what if someone came up and said, “The flight you're looking for leaves from gate D16. That is the only gate that will take you back to Houston, so here's what you do: go down this corridor take a left, take a right, and the gate will be on the right.” Is this person being evil or loving? The culture would say they are being close minded and intolerant.

But what would the man say the moment he stepped off the plane in Houston? He would be grateful for someone who loved him enough to tell him the truth.

The most loving thing I can tell you is not be true to yourself and live the life you want to live. The most loving thing I can tell you is that Jesus Christ is the only way to Heaven, the only way to a genuine relationship with God, and the only way to experience the life you were created to live.

If all this is true, why all the hypocrisy in Christianity?
It is very sad but very true that the main reason people refuse to embrace Jesus is because of how people who claim to be Christians act. Even Gandhi was famously quoted as saying, “ I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

However, when you build your life with Jesus based on how other people live their lives with Jesus, you are at the worst building your life on a terrible foundation, but at best are simply misunderstanding what a relationship with Jesus really is. Would you build your marriage or your family based on how others are living and acting? “I’m not getting married because they say 50% of marriages fail.” If this were how we lived our lives, we would never accomplish anything.

CELLO ILLUSTRATION

Matthew 7:17-20
So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

We know a bad apple when we see one. But does a bad apple keep you from eating the next one? Does one bad experience at a restaurant keep you from going to another one?

Colossians 1:10
So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;
After we say yes to Jesus, we are charged with bearing fruit.

Trees do this at different paces. Some trees just produce. Some tress have to battle issues within the tree before they can bear fruit effectively. But there isn’t a tree out there that does or does not bear fruit based on what some other tree is doing.

Romans 14:10-12
…we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; 11 for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” 12 So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.

I realize there have been some people out there doing a trash job of living for Jesus, but you are not going to answer for them. You will answer for you. What other people did or didn’t do will not be important in that moment. Are you ready for that moment?

At the end of the day, what is required of you is faith.
You can look at the evidence and the proof. You can look at the data and the sources. You can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that what was written is at the least congruent with what the eyewitnesses saw and heard.
You can know for sure that people were willing to die for this Gospel.

But you are going to get to a point where faith is what you have to have to take the next step. This is where so many get tripped up. But faith is an interesting concept.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines faith as, “A belief based on evidence, testimony or authority.” In other words, the secular definition of faith isn’t the opposite of evidence and testimony. By this definition, faith is reasoned, based on good evidence. This seems to conflict with the Bible that teaches in Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

But obviously when you trust something or someone, not every aspect of your trust is proven. You might have good reasons to trust someone and that’s enough to put your faith in them. We’re exercising faith every time we walk into surgery and trust that doctor with our wellbeing. What we’re doing is trusting that they are an authority, that they’ve got the documentation and so on. Christianity has got a great deal of evidence to support it, biblical, philosophical. Perhaps you say there’s no proof, but at the least, there is enough evidence for someone to express trust in this as a reasonable way of understanding the world.

The same person who chastises faith believes fully in something like evolution, even though there is no definitive proof of it. I believe it takes more faith to believe amebas became humans than the idea that God created everything.

At some point you are going to have to run into a wall that requires faith to overcome it. So how do you get that faith?

Hebrews 12:1-2
1 Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

If you need faith to believe, Jesus not only supplies that, he brings it to completion.

Faith is not self-generated. The search results emphasize that faith is not something we can produce through our own efforts or willpower. Instead, it is a gift from God, given to those who seek Him and His word.

God allots faith to us. 2 Peter 1:1
To those who have been allotted faith equally precious as ours in the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
This verse highlights that faith is a divine gift, given to us by God.

Faith comes from hearing. Romans 10:17
So faith comes out of hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
This verse indicates that faith arises from hearing the message about Jesus, specifically the gospel.

So again, here is the simple Gospel:

Jesus loves you
He didn’t just say it. He put his money where his mouth was. You exist not because of some accident or random series of events that led to your birth.
He knew you before he knit you perfectly in your mother’s womb. He had a plan for you before he ever said, “Let there be light.” God the Father so loved God the Son that creation burst into existence, and you are breathing air simply because God wanted more sons and daughters to love.

Jesus died for you
Humanity died that day Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden. But God didn’t think us worthless and walk away. Rather, he enacted his perfect plan of sending his only Son, Jesus, the fullness of the Godhead, to die as a sacrifice for your sins. He didn’t just cover sin. He became sin, taking all the punishment of every sin that has ever been committed or ever will be committed. His death paid the price you owed and gave you an opportunity to be perfect again, to undo the decision that led us to separation from God.

Jesus rose again
It wasn’t enough for Jesus to pay the price we owed with his death. He wanted a relationship with us, but as David said in Psalm 6:5, For the dead do not remember you. Who can praise you from the grave?
We cannot praise God if we are dead. So to restore relationship, Jesus not only died on the cross for your sins, he rose again so that you could have the life that he lives. His death paid the price. His resurrection gave you life.

This is the Gospel. Now what?

Jesus asks you to choose
You might say, “I don’t need this today. let me live my life and I will get my life right down the road.” If only tomorrow were a guarantee.

James 4:13-14
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

Matthew 13:24-26, 37-43
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. 25 But that night as the workers slept, his enemy came and planted weeds among the wheat, then slipped away. 26 When the crop began to grow and produce grain, the weeds also grew.

37 The Son of Man is the farmer who plants the good seed. 38 The field is the world, and the good seed represents the people of the Kingdom. The weeds are the people who belong to the evil one. 39 The enemy who planted the weeds among the wheat is the devil. The harvest is the end of the world, and the harvesters are the angels.

40 Just as the weeds are sorted out and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the world. 41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will remove from his Kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 And the angels will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s Kingdom. Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand!

Jesus wants you in his Kingdom so badly that he died to make it happen.
He has given you time.

2 Peter 3:9
The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.

But now it is time to choose.

Revelation 3:20
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

What is it going to be?

If you know you need to give your life to Jesus, it is time.

But if you are struggling with faith, with doubt, you have questions, Jesus has given you faith, he has silenced your doubt, and he has answered your questions. But you’re never going to be able to understand him until you step into a relationship with him. The time for trying to understand Jesus from a distance is over.

Today is the day of your salvation.

“Jesus I am a sinner. I confess my need for you to save me. I believe you died for my sins and that you rose again. I confess you Jesus as Lord of my life and receive the life you have to give me. Thank you for saving me. From this day forward I am yours. In your name Jesus Amen.”

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?

How does he want you to respond?