Salvation Message, Matt Slick Live, Radio, Sept 23 2015

The Unmerited Favor of God and Human Unworthiness

The grace of God is the unmerited favor. Let me tell you something, folks. I just wanna preach a little bit of gospel to you. This is it. None of us are worth saving. You're not good enough. You're not worthy enough.

You're not. I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy enough. It's just a fact. I'm not accusing you of anything that I'm not saying is also guilty of myself. We all have lust and pride and arrogance and selfishness.

We all have things in us that permeate our being. And from our own hearts, we speak, and our hearts are desperately wicked and deceitful. Jeremiah 17, nine. And because of our hearts, we have to be careful that we don't lift ourselves up in pride and say, I'm sincere enough to be with God.

Or I'm trying and that's good enough. Because it's not. You see, you have to understand something. If we could be forgiven of our sins based on the sincerity of our heart, then it would be based on our sincerity of our heart.

The Bible never says so. The Bible says to the contrary, the heart is desperately wicked and deceitful. No man can trust it. But when people look to their own hearts, their own sincerity, they're disobeying the word of God.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have good hearts. I'm not saying we shouldn't be kind and be gentle and be loving and things like that. I'm not saying that at all. We should be. Those things are good. We ought to be loving and kind and sincere before God.

But it's not our sincerity of heart that makes us saved. It's not the sincerity of our hearts that keeps us right. It's not the sincerity of our heart that God looks at and then says, I'll save you. It's not the sincerity of our heart combined with the grace of God that God then lets us be saved.

That is demonic doctrine. I have to say it for what it is. It's demonic. It's from the devil. And the reason it is is because the devil, he likes to appeal to our hearts. He likes to appeal to our feelings.

I'm not saying it's bad to have feelings. We're too happy. We should have feelings. We should enjoy God. We absolutely should. No problem. It's just that. When people start using their hearts as a standard of what is right and sufficient before God, that is self-deception and that is demonic.

Because the Bible says the heart's deceitful. Don't trust your own heart. Don't trust your own heart that you're good enough, that you're trying hard enough, that God will make up the difference after all you can do.

It just does not work. If you want a true experience of God, a true experience, then what you do is you humble yourself before God. What you do is you come to the Lord Jesus, Matthew 28, 18, who has all authority in heaven and earth to forgive sins, and he does so, Luke 5, 20, 7, 48.

You go to him. As he said, come to me and I'll give you rest. That's what he said in Matthew 11, 28. He said, ask me anything in my name and I will do it, John 14, 14. See, to be humble, and it's like me saying, yeah, I was humble yesterday.

Doesn't work, does it? But in a state of humility before God, what you're doing is you're just confessing your sin. And you don't lift up any good thing in you. Because that's not humility. And in true humility, we depend completely on God.

That's what it means to be humble before God, to completely depend upon him, not us. You're not good enough, I'm not good enough. Your heart's not good enough, my heart's not good enough. What we do is we recognize our sin, that we've offended God.

We have offended him. We've broken his law, we've lied, we've stolen, we've lusted, we've coveted. And we've offended God, we've offended his character. But you know something? He loves us. Oh boy, does he love us with a love that we can't even begin to understand.

Christ Fulfilled the Law in Our Place

And he loves us so much that he became one of us. And that he is the one who fulfilled the law and all of the requirements of the law perfectly, which includes love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Which is Deuteronomy 6 .5. And also out of Leviticus 19 .18, to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus did that perfectly. Jesus committed to himself all the law and never failed in one area. That's why you need to trust in what he did in the law, not what you do in the law.

You need to put your faith in what he did as he was a man under that law, not what you can do when you're under that law. See, the standard of the law is perfection. Deuteronomy 27 .26, curse is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the law to perform them, all.

That means you have to love God with all of your heart and love your neighbor as yourself perfectly. Sorry, we're just not good enough to do that. That's why what we need to do is rely on what Jesus did, God in flesh.

He lived that law perfectly. He never sinned, 1 Peter 2 .22. And then he did something miraculous. He took our sins, our law-breaking, our lying, our stealing, our coveting, our whatever. He took it upon himself.

He bore it in his body. Now the wages of sin is death. He took our sin and he died with it. He took that penalty and he died with it. And it was a horrible death. And he rose from the dead. And you know what he asks in return?

That you follow him. He wants you to believe in what he did. He wants you to trust in what he did. He wants you to lean completely on him, totally on him, because that's the greatest of love. That's the greatest of sacrifice.

And on your part, that's the greatest of humility. To lean completely on him, not on him and yourself and your ability to be saved by grace after everything you can do. No, in him. That's what the gospel is.

The gospel is the Greek word euangelia, which literally means good news. It's the good news that we do not have to keep the law in order to please God. We don't have to keep the law in order to be saved from our sins and go to be with him.

We don't have to keep the law in order to keep ourselves right with him. Because if that were the case, then we're saying what Jesus did wasn't enough. And what we need to do is trust completely in him.

That's being humble. It doesn't mean it's okay to sin. It means that we trust him completely. We trust him completely. Not in him and baptism. Not in him and church authority. Not in him and your sincerity.

But him. He's everything. It's he that you need to look to. It's him that you've got to trust. Excuse me, you've got to trust what he has done. You need to look to him completely. That's salvation. Receiving what Christ did on that cross and not putting any ability in your own heart, in your own ways, your own effort.

False Religions, Heavy Burdens, and Coming to Christ Alone

And I have to say this. False religions always teach that you have to add work to what Christ did. And that's what gets you saved, maybe. And let me ask you this test question. Do you feel in your present understanding of God and your relationship with Christ, do you feel a burden?

Do you feel that you're not good enough? Do you feel you're failing? Do you feel that there's a weight of goodness you're supposed to maintain and you're failing it? That you hope that God will be merciful to you because you feel that your performance is what God's looking at and that his examination of you is part of what salvation is for you.

If that's the case, then you cannot claim the verse for yourself where Jesus says, come to me who are heavy laden and I'll give you rest. Because if you had gone to Christ, you'd be resting in him. You wouldn't be laboring to keep yourself right with God.

And if you are laboring to keep yourself right with God, then you've not found who Christ really is. You've not found what he can really do for you. If you want to find him, if you want to have what he has for you, then give up.

Give up trying to be good. Give up trying to be perfect. Give up trying to follow the law. Give up trying to live a perfect life. Just give it up. And just fall at the feet of Christ on that cross. Let the blood from his body drip down upon you and wash away your sins.

Just be there in the presence of Christ, the one who's God in flesh, the only one who can forgive you of your sins. And just ask that he would forgive you, that he would condescend in his love to forgive you and wash away all your sins.

And just trust him alone for that. Just trust him alone. Don't bring your works to the cross because the Bible says in Isaiah 64, six, a man's righteous deeds are filthy rags before God. And the word there is use menstrual cloth.

Don't bring it to the cross. Just bring your heart, your soul, your mind, your body. Lay them before the cross. Let the blood of God drip upon you and cleanse you. Receive it by faith. It's not what you do.

It's everything what he did. And in that is forgiveness of sins. And in that is freedom. And that is hope. And that is true love. All right?