Mm-hmm. Our culture may promote the power of self-reliance. But some things simply can't be attained through your own efforts, including life's greatest blessing. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah takes a closer look at what it means to be saved and why no number of good deeds can ever be enough to achieve it.
To introduce the conclusion of his message, salvation pure and simple. Here's David. You know, we talk a lot about being saved. That term has sort of fallen out of favor in the last few years, but when I grew up, that's what everybody talked about. They would ask you straight out: are you saved?
And salvation is the reason for that, because salvation is the doctrine of God's love for us and His gift. Giving us His Son to be our Savior.
So, the question about salvation is important. But I'm going to ask you today: are you saved? That's a good question. That means, have you ever come to the place in your life where you recognized your sin and acknowledged that you were Falling short of the glory of God, according to the Scripture, and you ask Jesus Christ to forgive you of your sin and to come into your life and be your Savior. And you became a Christian.
When that happened, according to the Bible, you became saved. And salvation is at the core of that. This is part two of our discussion of that, and we'll get to it in just a moment. First, let me remind you that we're getting to the end of this month, and before you know it, it will be over. And I won't be talking about this beautiful calendar anymore, and it won't be available anymore.
So if you haven't already ordered your calendar for 2027, please do it today. Here's how you do it: send a gift of any size to Turning Point to help us with the cost of radio and production here during the month of September. And we'll send you this beautiful calendar in four-color. It's 14 months, begins in November. That's why we advertise it in September.
And you will have it for the holiday season, for the beginning of the new year, and for all of 2027. This is truly a gift that keeps on giving. You want to have this, and I want to send it to you. It's yours for the asking when you send a gift of any size to Turning Point. Thank you for your help and for your generosity.
Here is part two of Salvation Pure and Simple. Yeah. When Paul talks about the sons of disobedience, he wasn't referring to our disobedience against God. He was referring to our failure to meet even our own standards. All he's trying to do is help us understand that we don't have what it takes to do that, not even for one day.
The Bible says the heart is sinful above all things. Who can know it? And so, if we don't have help from outside, we can't help ourselves. We're lost. We need something from the outside to enter into our lives.
And we know that that something is a someone who is Jesus Christ, who reaches down to bring us up out of the misery of our sin. We're dead, deceived, disobedient, and the Bible even goes further and says we're defiled. among whom we also once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh. fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.
Now he's talking here not just about sexuality. Oftentimes that's what we think less is just sexuality, but it's not that at all. It's throwing ourselves into doing whatever we want in any number of circumstances. How many people today do you see living for themselves and caring only for their own selfish needs? That's the way we were until God got a hold of us.
We didn't see life outside of ourselves, we saw only ourselves. But the worst part of this list that Paul makes in the first three verses of this second chapter is: we're doomed.
Now, at this point in the message, I can imagine you might be feeling discouraged, maybe even upset. Maybe you're thinking, I didn't come to church to have you tell me I'm dead, deceived, disobedient, defiled, and doomed. I understand that. And the very good news is that you and I Are none of those things if we're Christians, not any longer. Remember, Paul was describing what the Ephesians and by extension what we were before we experienced the blessing of salvation.
Why is he doing that? He wants people to understand why it is they need to be saved. My father was a pastor, and he used to tell me all the time: David, the hardest thing about preaching is getting people lost first so you can get them saved.
So many people come to church and they think they're okay. You know? We used to ask this question when we would talk to people about their faith. If you were to stand before God today and He would say to you, Why should I let you into my heaven? What would you say?
And I've asked that question. probably thousands of times. And the answers are almost inevitably the same. A long list of everything we think we have done that gets us into heaven, which might be good if you could get to heaven by doing good works, but you can't. And even if you're the best of good workers, you can never be perfect.
And the Bible says if you break the law in one place, you've broken the whole law. The law is like a chain. Take one link out of it, and it all falls apart. What Paul has to help us understand, what we all need to understand, if you're here today and you don't know Jesus Christ. You say, well, I'm in a program.
Well, good luck with that. The program won't get you anywhere. You need a personal Savior who can come and live within your heart and lift you up above all of that. Because the Bible says that without Jesus Christ, this is who we are. We're dead.
We're lost. We're without hope. Whenever you feel tempted to take pride in the fact that you're a Christian. Remember where you came from. Look over your shoulder and look at what you once were, and thank God.
for what he's done for you.
Some of us may have grown up in Good families, Christian homes, and we became Christian. Thank God for what you've been saved from. That's the reason we need to be saved. There used to be a song that said I reached up to heaven. and it couldn't quite reach the goal.
But then one day God reached down to me. and brought me up. from where I was.
So That's why you need to be saved. That's the reason for salvation. But now it's a good news. You know, the good news always comes after you understand why you need the good news. Ephesians 2:4, but God who is rich in mercy because of his great love, has loved us.
In your Bible, if you mark your Bible, circle the words but God. I love the way Paul starts this section of his letter. In verses 1 through 3, he's described all the reasons why we have no hope apart from Christ. We were afloat on an ocean of our own sin with no way to get ourselves back to the shore. We were done.
But God In many ways, these are the two greatest words in the scripture. You could say these two words summarize the entire theme and message of God's word. Adam and Eve were lost forever because of their sin, but God Noah deserved to be drowned along with the rest of the world. But God. Jonah did nothing to deserve a second chance.
But God Humanity deserved complete and total wrath after crucifying the Savior of the world. But God, you see, take any situation you want, as bad as it is, insert God in the middle of it, and everything changes. But God. James Montgomery Boyce said, If you understand those two words, They will save your soul. If you recall them daily and live by them, they will transform your life.
God is the difference maker. The situation we're in, apart from God, there's only one answer. You need God. You need Jesus Christ. It says in verses 4 through 9, but God, who was rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
By grace you have been saved, raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding richness of his grace and his kindness toward us in Christ. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And that not of yourselves is the gift of God, not of works. lest any man should boast.
Now I'm going to give you a quick little tutorial. on what it takes to be a Christian. That's what Paul does next. He uses Phrases that we know but he puts them in the right progression. Here's the first one.
Rich. Mercy. Say that with me. Rich mercy. But God, who is rich in mercy.
The first ingredient in God's recipe for salvation is mercy. Paul reminded his readers that God is rich in mercy. He's got enough mercy for everybody. Here's the wonderful Psalm. That speaks of that.
Psalm 103 verses 8 through 12, the Lord is merciful and gracious. He's slow to anger and abounding in mercy. He will not always strive with us, nor will He keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward those who fear him.
Aspires the East as from the West, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. What is mercy? Here it is. Mercy is God withholding from us. what we really deserve.
I hear people all the time say, Well, I just want justice. I don't want justice, I need mercy. If we got justice, we would get just what we deserve. But God is rich in mercy. I like what Pastor Dane Ortland says about this.
The Bible says that God is not tight-fisted with mercy. He's open-handed, not frugal, but lavish. Not poor, but rich. That God is rich in mercy means that your regions of deepest shame and regret are not hotels through which mercy passes, but homes in which mercy abides. It means the things about you that make you cringe the most.
Make him hug the hardest. It means His mercy is not calculating and cautious like ours. It is unrestrained, floodlike, sweeping, magnanimous. It means our haunting shame is not a problem for him, but the very thing he loves most to work with. Means our sins do not cause his love to take a hit.
Our sins cause his love to surge forward all the more. Almighty God is rich in mercy. I want to tell you that today. Whoever you may be, whatever you think is beyond the pale of God's ability to touch you, here's what the Bible says: God has got so much mercy. Nothing you could ever do.
would keep you from that supply. God has mercy. He keeps from us what we deserve. And then the Bible says he has great love, but God who is rich in mercy because of his great love. Why has God given us His mercy?
Because He loves us. Why does He love us? Because God is loved, not because we've done anything to make Him love us. Remember, it's not because of what you do, it's because of what He's done. You and I don't deserve to be loved, not by God.
But he loves us anyway. Scripture makes that clear. The world's most famous Bible verse, everybody pretty much knows, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. And Romans 5, 8 says, but God demonstrates His love toward us, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And 1 John says, In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God sent His only begotten Son into this world, that we might live through Him.
In this is love, not that we love God, but that God loved us and sent His Son to be the satisfaction for our sins. Do you see the reason why we aren't stuck in our death and disobedience and defilement? No, we aren't stuck because God's got a lot of mercy and God's got a lot of love. Here's the third one. He's rich in grace.
Now, let me just show you the difference between mercy and grace. It's real simple. Listen to this. Mercy is God. Withholding from us what we deserve, and grace is God giving to us what we don't deserve.
That's what happens when you become a Christian. He covers your sin with mercy, and He gives you eternal life. Which you don't deserve, which I don't deserve, that's God's grace. Ephesians 2:5 says, By grace you have been saved. In verse 7, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace.
Denise Spanderman helps us to understand what grace is. She tells the story of taking a final exam at Hannibal LaGrange College in Missouri. When she arrived at class, all of the students were anxiously doing their last-minute review. The teacher arrived and told the nervous students that they were responsible for everything they had covered in class and everything they had read in the book. and the class began to shake.
Denise knew she could never achieve. Then the teacher handed out the test face down before instructing everyone to start. To Denise's amazement, when she turned over the test, every answer on the test was filled in. Her name was even written on the exam in red ink, and the bottom of the last page said this. This is the end of the exam.
All the answers on your test are correct. You will receive an A on the exam. The reason you pass the test is because the creator of the test took the test for you. All the work you did in preparation for this test did not help you get the A. You have just experienced grace.
And many of us are wondering, where do I go to that school, you know? Then the professor said, Some of you learn from lectures, some things you learn from research, some things you can only learn from experience. You have just experienced grace. 100 years from now, if you know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, your name will be written down in a book and you will have had nothing to do with writing it there. That will be the ultimate grace experience.
Those of us who are Christians, we love to sing the song we sing almost every week here: Amazing Grace. how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me Paul helps us understand what that wretch thing means. He tells us that's what we were before we came to Christ. But it was the amazing grace of God. They came into our lives and lifted us up out of that mire of sin.
and set us on a solid rock. Listen to what Paul wrote to Timothy. He said, although I was formerly a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and an insolent man, I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Rich mercy.
Great love. Rich grace and number Four, free gift. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. I know it sounds too good to be true.
I know we've been told over and over that there's no such thing as a free lunch. But the reality remains the same. God has offered the gift of salvation to any of us. who will receive it, including you and me. He has offered it to us for free.
An ad for the U.S. Marines pictured a sword, and beneath the words, earned, never given. The message: if you want to become a Marine, you have to earn it through sacrifice, determination, and hard work. But if you want to become a Christian, you have to flip the script. You have to switch the first and third words of the Marine slogan.
You see, the message of the gospel is given. Never earned. You cannot earn your salvation. It's a gift. Becoming a Christian is not like becoming a Marine.
You can't save your soul through sacrifice and determination. This is not a medal to be earned, it's a gift to be received. Have you received a gift?
So, how do we accept it? What does that look like? The final ingredient in God's remedy for our lives is rich mercy. Great love. Rich grace, free gift.
Through faith. We receive the gift of salvation through faith. We cannot receive that gift by works. By our own efforts, Paul went to great lengths to explain that truth to the Ephesians. He said, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and it is not.
of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works. lest any man should boast.
Well, you say, Dr. German, that's all great, but what is faith? How does that work? That's coming to a place. If I can use these words carefully, that you bet your life on Jesus Christ.
There's a little acrostic I used to explain what faith is. It goes. Forsaking all Aye. Trust him. That's what faith is.
Faith is turning away from anything else you might hope to be putting your faith in. to go to heaven. And realizing the only hope you have to go to heaven, the only hope you have to be saved, is in Jesus Christ. It's not Jesus Christ plus this. It's not Jesus Christ in a catechism.
It's not Jesus Christ in do the best you can. It's only Jesus Christ, nothing less, nothing more. Faith. Charles Spurgeon described it this way: He said, Our condition is like that of a child in a burning house. Who, having escaped to the edge of the window, is hanging on by the windowseal, and the flames are pouring out of the window underneath, and the poor child would soon be burned or.
falling be dashed to pieces. He therefore held on with the clutch of death. He did not dare to relax his grasp until a strong man underneath said, Boy, Drop. Drop. I'll catch you.
Now, it was no saving faith for the boy to believe that the man was strong. That was. Evident, that was good help toward faith, but he might have known that and still have perished. It was faith when the boy let go. and dropped down into his big friend's arms.
There you are, sinner, clinging to your sins and your good works, said Spurgeon. The Savior says, Drop, drop into my arms. It's not doing, it is leaving off from doing. It's not working, it's trusting in the work which Jesus has already done. Trust, that is the word: simple, solid, hearty, earnest trust.
Trust, and it will not take an hour to save you the moment you trust. You are saved. The moment you let go of all of the things you've been trusting in before. And trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. you become a Christian.
That is our remedy for salvation. Those are the ingredients, rich mercy, great love, great grace, all wrapped up in a free gift that we receive through faith. As you can see, salvation is all about God. purchased by him, offered by him, and our only part. is to receive it.
Can't do anything to earn it. Can't do anything to merit it. You just receive it. Max Lakato sums up the message of Ephesians. to when he makes this application to a story we all remember.
It was the fall of 2010. And billions of people around the globe were captivated by the story of the Chilean miners. Trapped beneath two thousand feet of solid rock, and thirty three men were desperate. The collapse of a main tunnel had sealed their exit and thrust them into survival mode. They ate two spoonfuls of tuna, a sip of milk, and a morsel of peaches every other day.
For two months. They prayed. for someone to save them. On the surface above, the Chilean rescue team worked around the clock, consulting NASA, meeting with experts. They designed a 13-foot-tall capsule and drilled first a communications hole, then an excavation tunnel.
There was no guarantee of success no one had ever been trapped underground this long and lived to tell about it.
Now someone has. On October 13th, 2010, the men began to emerge, slapping high fives and leading victory chants. A great-grandfather, a 44-year-old who was planning a wedding, then a 19-year-old, all had different stories, but all made the same decision. They trusted someone else to save them. No one returned the rescue offer with the Declaration of Independence.
I can get out of here myself. They all stared at the same stone tomb long enough to reach the unanimous opinion: we need help. We need someone to penetrate this world and pull us out. and when the rescue capsule came, They climbed in. I wonder if you wouldn't like to do that today yourself.
Jesus Christ offers the rescue capsule. You say, what do I have to do to be saved? Just trust him. Just open your heart and say, Lord Jesus, I've been trusting all the wrong things all my life. I've been trusting in my own good works.
I've been trusting I can be better than somebody else when I realize. What I really need is I need help from above. And you've promised it to me if I will just put my trust in your Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the rescue capsule. And you have to get in.
That's all you have to do. Just believe it. You say, Well, Pastor, do I have to come to a class? Nope. Just believe it.
And he will change your life. He will change everything about you. We were in Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina, had our Turning Point rally there. It's a long weekend and When those things are over, we're pretty well spent. We were in the elevator going back to our room at the hotel.
And Donna had a copy of the program. For the night, and on the front of it, it said something like a night with David Jeremiah. This guy got on the elevator and he said, Hmm, David Jeremiah, is he here? And I said, I'm right here. And I thought the guy was going to have a heart attack, you know.
He said, I wondered if I'd ever get to meet you. Let me tell you my story. Thirty years ago. I was in a mess in my life trying to make things right, and I started listening to you on the radio. And I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior.
My wife is saved, my family is saved, and he's ahead of an attorney bureau in Orlando. And he told the story of how Jesus Christ had changed his life. You know, that's not an isolated story. Whenever Jesus Christ comes to live within your heart, He changes you from the inside out and makes you the person God created you to be. I want to ask you today.
Are you willing to trust him? You say, well. Let me think about it. And there's nothing to think about. Either you'll trust him or you won't.
You say, well, I'm not going to make a decision today. If you don't make a decision today, you have made the decision. Make the decision to trust him. There's never going to be a time like this. Absolutely.
and that we should not put off for tomorrow. What God has told us to do today. I always tell people the time between when God tells you to do something and you don't do it. That's the devil's time. If you felt in your spirit today God talking to you about your own relationship, about your being saved, Open your heart to Jesus Christ right now while you're tender toward this message and toward Him.
And He will change your life. You will not believe what God is going to do in your life when you put your heart. together with His in salvation. Tomorrow, we're going to talk about the oneness of our faith, once again from the beautiful book of Ephesians. How we are together as God's people in unity and as a family.
Don't forget, that's right here on Turning Point tomorrow on this good station. Thank you for listening. I'm David Jeremiah, and I'll be here tomorrow. Hope you will be too. Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor Dr.
David Jeremiah. Drop us a note to let us know how God is using this ministry in your life. Right to Turning Point, PO Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. Visit our website at davidjeremiah.org slash radio or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of our 14-month 2027 calendar, The Light of the World.
It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also download the free Turning Point mobile app to instantly access our content. Search the App Store for the keywords Turning Point Ministries. Visit davidjeremiah.org slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org slash radio for details.
This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow for a special message from Dr. David Jeremiah right here on Turning Point.
