Before I begin, thank you very
much for your kindness and generosity, not only this week, but for the
many years we've known each other. It's always a treat and a delight
for Debbie and I to come back to 13th Street, see all our old
friends, and to worship together as children of God. I appreciate it. I appreciate
everything you do. I appreciate your pastor, the
message he preaches. And I appreciate this congregation.
I love you guys. What can I say? Turn in your
Bibles please to Revelation 22. I want to read two verses of scripture
as more or less an introduction to my remarks tonight. Verse 16 and 17, our Lord begins
to close this great letter of visions sent to John on the Isle
of Patmos, the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And our
Lord says, I, Jesus, have sent mine angel to testify unto you
these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring
of David and the bright and morning star. And the spirit and the
bride say, come. And let him that heareth say,
come. Let him that a thirst, that is
a thirst, come. And whosoever will, let him take
of the water of life freely. We just heard the promise in
Isaiah chapter 45, as our brother Juan Ron was reading, men will
come to him. All that the Father has chosen
from all eternity will come to him. And we are thankful for
that. They will come without moving
a muscle. They will come in their hearts
and in their minds to the Lord Jesus Christ in God-given faith. I'm gonna take a little different
tack tonight and relate to you a personal story in this message. It's entitled A Letter to a Friend,
A Letter to a Friend. Several years ago, I was talking
with Brother Scott Richardson in a motel room somewhere, And
he decried the fact that Mr. Wetteyes was gone. That nobody seemed to be a sinner
anymore and that was a rare thing to find. And it is a rare thing
to find a sinner in this day. In this day when salvation has
been reduced to a simple plan, a plan that entails a little
more than accepting and Ursat's offer of salvation, and demonstrating
your will by sauntering down some aisle to the background
dulcet tones of the 37th verse of Just As I Am, it's almost
unheard that anyone would be found despairing
for their soul. Religion today is designed to
make people not despair for their soul. I heard a man say he was
wearing a flowered Hawaiian shirt who pastored a mega church. Sounds impressive, doesn't it?
A mega church. He said, we don't preach and
deal with the doctrines of justification and sanctification anymore. That's
what he said. That was his claim to fame. Of
course, he didn't realize he was saying, I don't preach the
gospel, but that's what he was saying. In this day, it seems
that the Bible has become a self-help book. And that's the way preachers
use it, to help people get along in this world and to save themselves.
It's a rare thing to hear somebody say, I'm lost. I'm undone. I cannot remember
the last time it was said to me before about a year ago. Almost a year ago, sometime in,
I believe it was August of 2009, I got a phone call late at night. It was 11 o'clock at night. There
was a man and he was calling from England, from the British
Isles. He had been listening to some
of my messages on sermonaudio.com. He was a man from Nigeria. His
name was Uche Chuwu Okwada. And his accent was thick, and
my ear hearing was thin, and it made it difficult for me to
understand what he was saying and asking. Though I could tell
from the tone of his voice that he was somewhat troubled. So
I gave him my address, my email address, and told him to write
me so that I could better understand what he wanted, his request. This is the letter that he wrote
to me a year ago. Dear sir, are you Pastor Tim
James? If so, please help me understand
what it means to be saved. I want to be saved by the free
and sovereign grace of the Lord Jesus. I want to be saved. I am tired of empty profession
of religion. Please tell me and show me how
and what it means to trust Christ unreservedly, and I'll believe
Him. I need salvation, the salvation
that Jesus freely gives. I sin every day. Sometimes I
try to be good in character, but I know my good works will
never save me. I know. Please, I beg you to
show me Jesus that I may trust him. I know if he, Jesus, chooses
to save me, he will. I have prayed and asked the Lord
Jesus to be my sin bearer, as directed by some pastors. Is
it enough to make me a saved person? Do I have to continually
confess my sins every moment in order to maintain a fellowship
with God? I cannot bear to be cut off from
God for all eternity if death comes knocking at my door. So
please, please show me and teach me in simple and understandable
English what and how I can be saved. God bless you, Uche. Now my response to him is my
message tonight. I decided to do this because
I was put to the test. This is a test. A man has asked
me some very serious and important questions. Whether this young
man was sincere or not, God only knows. But when this opportunity
was afforded me, I knew that I could not take it lightly.
He was asking me what it means to be saved. And I knew that what I said was
important not only to him, but to me. So here with some scriptural
expansion is what I wrote to this young man. Dear Uche, thank
you for your letter. Yours is not an unusual dilemma. Many, because of the teaching
of religion, find in desiring salvation that there are many
voices spoken in their ears and in their head that seem to mitigate
trusting Jesus Christ alone. I will address the questions
that you have asked. First, to be saved according to scripture
is to believe, trust, rely on Jesus Christ and what he accomplished
as your only basis for acceptance with God. It means that Simply
that, only that, and nothing more than that. As many as received him gave
he a power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe
on his name, which were born, not of flesh, not of blood, not
of the will of man, but of God. I told him, I cannot give you
assurance because that only comes from one place. looking to the
Lord Jesus Christ. In Colossians 2, full assurance
is said to be from the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. In
Hebrews 6, full assurance is said to be from faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ. In Hebrews 10, full assurance
is said to be from understanding the Lord Jesus Christ, faith
and understanding, knowledge. This gives a man assurance and
nothing else. If you are looking for assurance,
I'm going to tell you something. You'll never find it. If you're
looking for it, You'll never find it. It's one of those things
that disappears the minute you start considering it. It always
does. How do we have assurance? Full
assurance. And there's nothing wrong with
assurance unless there's something wrong with believing God. We have assurance through the
knowledge, the understanding, and trusting of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Uche, you say that you want to
be saved. I would ask you, does such a
desire come from your carnal nature? Will the life we have
from birth, which is totally bent to sin and cannot even perceive
spiritual things, generate a desire toward God? John 3, 3 and 6,
the Lord told Nicodemus, Except you're born from above, you cannot
even perceive the kingdom of God. You can't even perceive
who I am, Christ was saying. He also said that which is born
of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the spirit is spirit.
Paul wrote to the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians chapter
2, the natural man, the carnal man, the man or woman that is
born in this world, if that never changes, that first birth, cannot
in any way perceive spiritual things. They will always be foolishness
to them, neither can he know them, nor discern them, because
they are spiritually discerned. Uche, if your desire is true,
it did not come from within yourself. You say that you need this salvation.
Again, where would such a need originate? Would the darkened
mind and the wicked heart of natural man come up with that? Come up with such a need for
Christ? Jeremiah 17, 9 says, The heart is wicked and desperately
evil, diseased, and who can know it? Over in Romans chapter 3,
quoting from Psalm 14, Paul describes all of humanity this way. There is none righteous. No, not one. There is none that
understandeth. There is none that seeketh after
God. They are all gone out of the way. They are all together
become unprofitable. There is none good. No, not one.
Their throat is an open sepulcher. With their tongues have they
used deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth
is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed
blood. Destruction and misery are their ways, and the way of
peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before
their eyes." That's the description of humanity. Did your need for
Christ come from that place? What I find in the Word of God,
Uche, is that everyone who needed Christ and who needs Christ comes
to Christ. Everyone. And they come in a
specific way. They come worshiping Him, believing
that He alone can meet their need. Bill said last night around
the campfire, The greatest definition of worship is one word. Help. Help. And you'll find sinner
after sinner coming to Christ saying that, Lord, help me. I
find no instance where one in need was ever turned away. The
old hymn says, let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness
fondly dream. All the fitness he requires that
you feel a need for him. Uche, we all sin with every breath
we take. Every believer sins continually.
Paul makes that clear in Romans chapter 7 and verses 14 through
25. He don't know what he is. I've often said, would you hire
this man? If you were holding a job application
seminar and this man came up to you and you began to ask him
questions, Would you hire it? He says this, your question might
be, well, what do you do? And he would answer, I don't
know what I do. That's what he said. For that
which I do, I allow not. I don't know what I do. Well, what do you like? He said,
well, I like a lot of stuff, but I find this, what I would
do, or what I would, I don't do that. And what I hate, that's
what I do. If I then do that which I would
not, I consent that the law is good. There's a problem in me,
not in the law. Now then, there's no more I that
do it, but sin that dwelleth with me. I'm a sinner. And everything
I do is sinful. And I don't have a dotted line
drawn down the middle of me that tells me what's what. Say, well,
don't you know when you do good? Yeah, but I know when I do good,
I do bad. And when I would do good, I don't end up doing, and
when I would do evil, that's what I end up doing. Would you
hire this man? He finally ends this whole treatise
by saying, there's a principle in me, a law in my members, that
when I would do good, evil is present with me. And then he
says, down in verse 25, I thank God through Jesus Christ. He
doesn't say, I thank God through Jesus Christ who helps me figure
out what's good about me and what's bad about me. He says,
I thank God through Jesus Christ because he has delivered me from
the body of this death. And then he gives your life and
my life in a succinct way. This is our life. Remember that
old show back in the 50s? Boy, I'm really dating myself.
Ralph Edwards, remember? This is your life. Well, brothers
and sisters in Christ, this is your life. It's not gonna be
any different than this as long as you live on the face of this
earth. With my mind, with the inner
man, For ever and whatever that is, with Him, with my mind, I
serve the law of God. And with my flesh, I serve the
law of sin and death. And it's not sometimes one way
and sometimes the other way. It's always that way all the
time. So we can't know what we would. So I said to Uche, we
sin with every breath. And there is no relief for the
principle of sin in us until we leave this world. The old
nature cannot be eradicated in this life on earth. It can only
be subdued and not by efforts of the flesh to stop doing something
or start doing something. Only by looking to the Lord Jesus
Christ is that flesh subdued and it is subdued, like I said
last night, for lack of affection. It's just, you don't feed it.
But you don't look at it and say, I'm not gonna feed you.
You look to Christ. And in looking to Christ, it's
ignored. It's ignored. Uche, that you want to be a man
of good character is commendable. It is an honorable desire. But
know this, conduct and character play no part in your salvation. No part whatsoever. Salvation
is not reformation. Salvation is regeneration. And
it does not take away the flesh. There was a woman who lived in
the walls of Jericho who practiced harlotry. Her name was Rahab. And she was still practicing
harlotry as far as I can see when she hung that cord down
from that window. There's no indication that she
was practicing otherwise. She didn't stop practicing harlotry
until her whorehouse was torn down. That's when it happened. From that day forward, this woman
whom God honored in the hall of fame of faith in Hebrews chapter
11, from that moment on all the way through the New Testament,
she's known by this title, Rahab the harlot. Not Rahab the saint,
though she was. Not Rahab the believer, though
she was. She was called Rahab the harlot
all the days of her life. Why? Because she was Rahab, the
saved sinner. The sinner, the harlot. I told
our folks back in Cherokee, we're all whore saints. That's what
we are. That's what we are. It's good
to desire to have a better character. But that doesn't have anything
to do with your salvation. Salvation does affect character
and conduct, but salvation is in no way dependent upon character
and conduct, nor is it the cause of it. Our righteousnesses, according
to Scripture, are as filthy rags. And that's a very generous, kind
way of putting that. That's a very mollified version
of the language. Those rags spoken of are minstreless
rags. And that speaks of a woman's
menses, and when she has that, she was cursed. She was cast
out of the camp, and she could not come back in the camp until
she was atoned for. Our righteousness needs to be
atoned for. Because our righteousnesses are
as filthy rags. They are cursed. And our righteousnesses
cast us outside the camp. We can't get back in until an
atonement is made for us. Character and conduct have nothing
to do. Our Lord looked at a group of
men who thrived in character and conduct. They let everybody
know that they were fine characters and upright men. They were called
Pharisees. And don't be so mad at Pharisees.
Because there's still a lot of Pharisee in us. I call myself
a recovering legalist. Because I'm in recovery. I ain't
got over it yet. Let something happen that I don't
like and I can get downright legal about it. And so can you. But he said to these men who
are upright in character, fine men. who wore robes that distinguished
them from everybody else. They put phylacteries on their
bodies, little boxes of verses that they knew, and the bigger
the phylacteries, the more the Bible they knew. Our Lord, back
in the days of the priesthood, He told the priesthood to put
a little blue ribbon around the border of their garment, and
that would show that they were dedicated to God. And our Lord
said to the Pharisees, you've widened that border. You made
it bigger. So the whole bottom of their
robe was this big blue ribbon. And what they were saying, I
obey God better than anybody obeys God. And our Lord looked
at them when they saw Him sitting down with sinners and publican
and eating with them. They went to His disciples and
it says they were astonished. What they saw was a spectacle.
They were offended. And our Lord looked at them.
He said, I didn't come for you. I came not to call the righteous,
but bring sinners to repentance." It's good to want to be a good
character. It's commendable. And I told
Uche, the fact that you're considering conduct and character, though
you know that such will not save you, shows that you suffer the
trouble of every believer. We don't wrestle with flesh and
blood. Principalities and powers. Our
struggles are within. Because we get high ideas about
ourselves. We get high ideas we don't want
to acknowledge God. And our struggle is this. And
it is impossible, apart from the grace of God, to bring everything
we are and everything we do to the obedience of Christ. Not our obedience. His obedience. I am what I am because He obeyed. If I do anything good, it's because
He obeyed. If I'm forgiven for anything
bad, it's because He obeyed. It has nothing to do with me.
It's all about His obedience. We, more than we would like to
admit, often look to ourselves for some shred of evidence that
we are indeed children of God. In us, there is no evidence because
all we do and all we are is tainted with sin. The only evidence of
salvation given in Scripture is simply this, believing on
the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the only evidence of salvation.
Faith is the evidence of things hoped for, the substance of things
not seen. There is no peace to be found
if our eyes are cast upon anything on this earth, Uche. Look away,
my dear fellow. When you see Christ, the things
of this world will indeed grow strangely dim. Uche, you asked
me to show you that you may trust Christ. Show me, he said, that
I may trust Christ. You may. He has commanded you to do so
and with the command comes the permission. You're permitted,
go ahead. Go ahead and trust Him. The issue
is not if He will be your sin bearer, but rather can you believe
and will you trust that He has borne away your sin by the sacrifice
of Himself. His work is done and faith is
given that we might believe that it was done for us. That's what
faith does. When God gives you faith, you
don't believe that you can do something or that there's something
left to be done. You believe that God, by Christ,
through the blood and righteousness of Christ, through His shed blood,
through His death, actually redeemed you 2,000 years ago. That's what
you believe. That's the gospel. The gospel
ain't good news unless it's a finished thing. If there's something left
for me to do, I'm not going to do it. And if I do it, I'm going
to do it wrong. Because that's who I am. Look
over 1 John chapter 5, verse 20. I love this passage of Scripture. And we know that the Son of God is come. That ain't all we know. We know
that He has given us an understanding. What is that? What does that
mean? That means when Christ comes
to you, reveals Himself to you, He reveals that you have an understanding.
You mean I don't have to study all these years to get it? No.
God says, I have written My Word in your minds and in your hearts. I've written it, and it's there.
Why do you think elect people respond to the gospel? Because
in the matter of rebirth, God writes the gospel in their hearts.
You know it's true, the preacher will preach sometimes, and you'll
go, that's it? How do you know that's it? How
are you so sure? Because it's in your heart. It's
in your heart. He has come, we know that, and
we know that He has given us an understanding. What is that
understanding? That we may know Him that is
true. That's what we understand, that we know Him. And not only
that, part of that understanding is that we understand that we
are in Him. We are in Him that is true, even
in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal
life. We know that. So, Uche, can you
believe and will you trust? that Christ has already saved
you, has already redeemed you. Fellowship with God is maintained
but one way, walking in the light of the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's only one way. That's what
it says in 1 John 1 in verse 7. If you walk in the light,
as he in the light, you have fellowship with him, and the
blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you from all sin. That's what
fellowship is. This is just simply another way
of saying, look to Christ. Look. Fix your eyes and hearts
upon him. Look to Christ. Uche, confession
of sin is not the continual rehearsing of our iniquity. It's not making
a list of all our bad deeds, you don't know them. Because
you'd have to actually start with what you think is good deeds
because they're full of sin. Our sin is so involved in everything
we do, think and say that we would not have time to draw a
breath if we started to try to confess all our sins all the
time. We confess our sin, how? By looking
to Christ. What we're going to do in just
a little while is a confession of sin. This is a confession
of our sin. Why blood? Why a broken body? Because I'm a sinner. And he gave his body and his
blood for me. Coming here to worship God is a confession of
sin. Going into the baptismal waters is a confession of sin.
Hearing the gospel is a confession of sin. It's a confession of
sin. We confess our sin by looking
to Christ alone. When we see Him, we see our sin. We understand our sin when we
see Him. You want to know about sin, don't
go to the bars and the bordellos. Don't go to the online sites
of pornography. Look to Christ. You'll find out
what sin is. Because sin is so heinous and so vile and so wicked
and so depraved and so reprobate that when God himself dealt with
it, he poured out his wrath on his only begotten, beloved, sinless
son. That's sin. But what about it? Scripture
says we are to confess our sins. When we see Christ, our sin debt
we know was paid by His sweet suffering substitutionary to
death. But we confess our sin knowing that God is just to forgive
us our sin because of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. God
was satisfied and could be just as He justified poor wretched
sinners. But let me tell you something
about confessing your sin. You should confess your sin. But confession of sin, that's
for us. That's for us, not for God. He's already, because of Christ,
forgotten our sin. He will remember our sins no
more. So confession of sin is for us, is to remind us of his
great sacrifice for our sins. Uche, what I can tell is plain.
Look away from self. Look away from religion. Don't
look at your experience. Look away from anything that's
on this earth. Look to the Lord Jesus Christ. You will not be relieved of the
plague of the flesh, but as you look to Christ, in that moment,
in the now, you will find peace and rest for your soul. Uche, I pray I've been a service
to you, yours in Jesus Christ, Tim James. Several days later,
I received this email. Dear Tim, I'd like to thank you
very much for making me understand and know what it is to trust
Christ. It's never been the same again
for me. I've now clung unto Him alone as my only hope and I'm
deeply convinced He is mine and I am His forever. More so, nothing
will ever take me away from Him, nothing at all. May God bless
you so much. I will always email when I find
anything confusing in the Bible. Yours in Christ, Uche. God bless you.