One Hope for Salvation

I got pictures on my, sent to me, texted with a group from Collins School that they had successfully completed a fire drill. And they were out in the parking lot and they had straight lines of all the different classes. Straight lines and it looked so organized and perfect.

And I was thinking, what did it look like right before they took this picture? On getting out there. Now they got out there in a good amount of time. But kids learn, and you guys, how many of you had drills when you were a kid in school? And you learned what to do in a fire, what to do in a tornado? I don’t know if anybody learned what to do in case the USSR attacked us.

Oh, you did, oh wow, wow. But today we have other drills that we as adults have. Like in Florida, I see on the news when they’re going to have a hurricane, they warn people to evacuate.

And people, most people do not seem to know what the word evacuate means. Because they are like, I’ve heard it all before. You know, they say that and then nothing happens.

And I’m just going to stay here in my home where it’s safe. And we see it on the news too. The local news seems to hype up everything.

All of a sudden on the news they’re saying the tornadoes hit ground, take cover, go to your basement. How many go to their basement every time on the news they say take cover, go to the basement? And why is that? Because sometimes it’s very rare that it actually comes. So we lose that sense of urgency.

The first time you heard it, I bet you were in your basement. Later on it’s like, I’ve heard it all before. Now in our faith, as we continue through our series coming out of the Book of Romans on one hope, today we’re going to talk about one hope for salvation.

When we see in the Book of Acts and other places when people heard about the need for salvation, the need to repent, I mean there was a sense of urgency. They wanted to take care of it right away. And we go through our lives thinking, well, I haven’t seen Jesus come back yet.

So that sense of urgency goes away. And in the world, when we don’t have that sense of urgency, they come up with many different ways in which we can be saved. We can be saved by ourselves.

We can be saved by doing good. And if you read the instruction manual, it says we have one hope for salvation. Paul talks about this hope as we move on to Romans 8 this week.

Will you stand as you are able? For I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself would be set free from its bondage to corrupt corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

For we know the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope, we were saved.

Now, hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what is not seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. The word of God, my God, for the people of God, thanks be to God. Amen.

How many did I lose you as soon as I ended that passage with the word patience? Patience is something that we will get to that as we work through Romans 8. Colleen Null was a volunteer firefighter in North Canagan, Alberta, Canada. And she was working a summer job as a part-time kitchen staff at the Jasper Lodge in the Jasper National Park, which is the Canadian Rocky Mountains. And while she was doing that, there was an evacuation order that was issued.

The smoke was coming up from the mountainside, and Null said it was big. Null quickly spread the word to guests of the lodge and tracked down any other people camping in the area. In total, she rallied 16 people to go on a four-hour hike through treacherous terrain to get to safety.

As we look at what Paul said, there’s a lot of connection to what they were facing here. And the first thing that gets to me in what she did in this situation was she spread the word. There was a sense of urgency, and she went to everyone in that lodge and gathered whoever would come, and she went out to the campers that were around the lodge and grabbed them in, and she spread the word.

And she let everybody know that they were in danger, that there is an emergency, and they needed to take cover, not in the lodge, but to get away from the smoke and the fire and get to safety. Now, eventually, they’re going to find out that it’s going to be hard. Not everything is going to be easy, even if they trust in what she wants to do, even if they go where she wants to go.

Romans 8, 10, 8. Let me back up. Romans 10, verse 8. The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved.

It’s pretty straightforward, right? We try to add stuff onto there. If you do some good things. If you don’t believe this, then you’re going to look to other things to save you.

Look to the government, who thinks their vote is going to save their soul, who thinks their vote is going to cause anxiety for their soul, no matter who’s there. The government, other leaders, other people, other situations, or myself. Not me as pastor, but you saying myself.

I got this. I’m going to trust in myself. But Paul says, you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved.

That seems pretty straightforward at this point. And if you go over to verse 14, it goes on to say, How are they to hear? How are they to know? How would the people at the lodge know unless Colleen went around and grabbed them all and told them and said, hey, we got to get to safety without her doing that. And we got to think back in our lives.

Sometimes the sense of urgency goes down because we’ve known Jesus for years. But you also have to think, who in my life has helped me? Who has nudged me toward Jesus? Is it your parents? Is it grandparents? Is it a friend? Is it a Sunday school teacher while you were under the table doing an emergency drill for a nuclear war? Who is it that nudged you towards Jesus? What caused you to do that? Whose words said something and it clicked in your mind? Now, if it clicked in your mind, then God was already working on your heart. So the importance of God in the midst of this and the grace of God moving us and stirring us and leading us towards Jesus in connection with someone telling us about Jesus, it says she spread the word.

Colleen spread the word and let them know about what they needed to do or they would probably die. And she spread the word, gathered everyone together and tried to give them hope. Paul says in Romans 8 that the hope is that we have freedom from and a freedom to and redemption.

Now the freedom from that he is talking about, he says that creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Set free from the bondage of corruption. Jesus said it like this, when the Son of Man sets you free, you will be free.

He says you are slaves to sin and that corruption in our lives that Jesus doesn’t just set us free with forgiveness, but he sets us free to something. And it says to be called to the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We were set free from the corruption of sin and set free to be children of God.

Be in the presence of God. Last week we talked about being in the presence of grace, in the state of grace. That that’s what we’re set free to be in, in this life and in the life to come.

That we have this freedom. It’s not like we’re just set free something, we’re set free for something. And that is for God.

And we have things that keep us from doing that. And then Paul goes on to say, he talks about creation compared to childbirth. I always love when people who are not childbearing people try to tell you about childbirth.

That’s kind of a big thing to do. Now, when you are set free, it’s like he’s comparing it to childbirth. There is pain during childbirth.

Is that true? What if you have a thing in your back, what do you call that? Epidural, do you still feel pain? Pressure? Intensity? Oh, you just, you went natural. They wouldn’t give you one. The last words you remember were, tough it out.

Well, all that pain, all that suffering that, you know, you develop, you have in those trimesters. You start getting morning sickness. Or you could be like Holly and me, that when she’s in her second trimester, we fly.

And on the way there, it was okay. On the way back, I didn’t see her much. And then you go into childbirth, and it’s a painful, excruciating thing.

But Paul is saying, once the child comes, it’s so beautiful and amazing. You look at the child and you say, that was worth it. That is what God, the gift that God gave me was worth the suffering and the trials and the difficulty to get there.

Paul says, all creation was subjected to corruption. Meaning, when Adam sinned and Eve sinned and humanity fell, it wasn’t just humanity. All creation was subjected to that futility.

Futility means that no matter how hard you try, you can’t change your circumstances. No matter how many self-help books you read, you can’t change your circumstances. And that futility happens for all of creation.

But God gave us Jesus Christ, this one hope, so that we are not the ones trying, so that Jesus already tried and he accomplished and he has the victory. So in Christ, we can be saved from all of this. And finally, when Paul is talking about redemption here, he says this strange thing.

Redemption from these earthly bodies. Now, when you’re young, you don’t think about that being that great of a redemption. You’re like, man, I’m feeling good.

But as the decades go on, you’re going, yeah, that redemption of the earthly body sounds pretty good. That redemption from the earthly body because we have eternal life and are no longer vulnerable like we are in these bodies. 1 Corinthians 15, 53 and 54, he says it in a different way.

He says, for this perishable body must put on the imperishable and the immortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? That is part of the salvation that Paul is talking about.

That is an amazing thing that God does for us. And he says it back in Romans 8 as we are continuing to work through this. He says, we are for in this hope we were saved.

We were saved and now we are in this hope. To be in this hope is a state like to be in that state of grace. If we look at the prepositions, we say we are saved by grace through faith.

We are saved by grace through faith and now we know that we are saved into this hope. That we see that hope. Not that we have seen it, but we see that hope in our mind’s eye.

That something amazing is going to happen. I mean it has already happened that you have this salvation, but you also have this hope for the redemption of your earthly body so you can live forever. That is a huge part of salvation that we don’t always talk about.

Colleen Knoll quickly spread the word. And then as she gathered those 16 people, Rebecca Tocher, a hiker who was in Knoll’s group, said, there was more intense smoke. My eyes were burning.

There was ash falling constantly. She was an amazing leader and was just making sure that everyone was working together. Now when we are saved by faith, we are saved in, if we think of it in a Wesleyan sense, we think of how we have imputed grace and then as we grow up in our faith, that it becomes more imparted or that we are saved or justified.

And then our journey of faith growing up is a journey of sanctification or being set apart more for God every day. Once we are saved, we say Jesus is Lord. So we are on a journey following Jesus, trusting that he will lead us to the promised land, trusting that we can hold on to this grace in our lives and part of this salvific journey is working together.

I mean, there are times where we may be set apart and we have our alone time, but there are also times where we need one another to encourage us, to lift us up. Paul is writing this letter to the church and notice that he keeps saying, we were saved. The we language in the book of Romans is big with the church that we were saved.

We are in this together, we will help one another, we will guide one another, we will encourage one another, we will strengthen one another and when we slip, somebody else is going to come alongside us and pick us up. That’s the we journey that Paul has, that’s how we work together here. Thad, I had previously ridden a horse.

Knoll said that she had previously ridden a horse up to the lodge and on that same trail and throughout the way, me and my employer, we had cut logs along the way. There were 67 logs cut, so there would be 67 logs on the way down. I used my tracking skills following horse tracks and horse manure.

Who’s good at following horse manure? Sometimes when we’re walking, even in the way, we got to follow the horse manure. That we go through so much stuff. She goes on to say she was just on it and she led it the whole way, said David Richmond, another hiker in the group.

Knoll said, I do it because at the end of the day, I’d want someone there to help. During the hike down, the group was able to communicate with search and rescue crews and help with the evacuation. Knoll eventually drove all 16 people in her pickup out of the evacuation zone and no one was hurt seriously.

Knoll had used her knowledge of the area and tracking skills to navigate the dark. She navigated the dark. We need someone in our lives to navigate the dark, to navigate those things that are unseen, those things that are out there that could destroy us, but we trust in Jesus as Lord.

So with our salvation, we can navigate what we have seen and we can have this hope that Paul is talking about, that is the hope that we were saved in that is unseen. We hope for what we did not see. How many of you have a heavenly body that is eternal and getting better every day? We don’t seem to see that yet.

But through faith in Jesus Christ, we have that hope that someday we will have that, that we won’t have to worry about the aches and the pains and the sickness and the trials and the difficulties that come with life. We will have eternity with our Lord and Savior. That’s the salvation we face.

And when Noel was leading them down there, it says she used her tracking skills. We need someone who knows the way. We need someone who is the way.

And that’s Jesus. And that’s what we have. Because hope unseen means we, Paul starts this off by saying we have sufferings.

If you’re being honest, we all suffer at some point in time. We all have things that come up. I mean, he’s talking to the church.

In this case, probably everybody he’s talking to was saved. But they still have sufferings. And it’s the hope that in our salvation, the hope of salvation, the hope of redemption, that we have this freedom now that God will make us more free and that eventually we’ll be redeemed.

I mean, we’re redeemed from our sins. Redemption is something that means that we are to something that was corrupted. And the dictionary says it was corrupted and it’s replaced.

If you think of in the garden that they were there, they could have lived with God forever and they needed something to replace it and put it back. That this hope that is unseen, that we know without a shadow of a doubt that God loves us. And this sense of urgency that I talked about in the beginning is not just a sense of urgency about ourselves, but for anyone out there who still needs to know Jesus, that we have this sense of urgency that even though we may suffer embarrassment or it’ll take time out of what we want to do in the day that when we share Jesus with someone, when we love someone who might not even deserve it, that we are giving them this hope that is unseen.

And when we have this hope, Paul says we have patience. Instead of saying, when is Jesus coming back to clean all this up? We say, now I’m going to share Jesus with someone. I’m going to open the door.

This salvation that Jesus offered is an emergency. That there are people out there that need Jesus. And in that, they can’t be given this watered down version of the gospel, but they need to know that they need the love of God in Jesus Christ to be saved.

That we have one hope and that one hope may only be heard by somebody else through you today. That is our one hope for salvation. Let’s pray.

Almighty God, thank you for Jesus. Thank you for our one hope. Thank you that by one man’s sin, even though all people were subjected to futility, all creation was, but also by one man’s gift of grace through Jesus Christ, that we have been set free and set free to follow you and worship you and redeemed by the blood of Jesus.

This blood in which we are saved washes us, cleanses us, renews us, restores us, and gives us the hope that we need to face everything every day. This is an amazing hope of salvation. We pray this in Jesus’ name.

Amen. When I was early in the ministry and I moved from rural churches, where you could sing anything, to more city kind of churches, and I picked this song out for us to sing, and somebody grabbed me and they said, Hey, some people are not that comfortable with this song. You know, we got to be careful with what we do.

We haven’t sung this in a decade or so. And I was like, wow. No other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Some people say that is hateful. Some people say that is exclusive. Some people say that is not who Jesus is.

But I say, baloney! Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. We have one hope for salvation, and that comes in Jesus Christ. And if you share that with someone, it is only because you love them, because you want the best for them.

And if we don’t have an urgency to share the love of Jesus, then it’s not really Jesus in our heart. That love is what we are called to share. That is love.

That is the enemy that says that is not of Jesus. That is the enemy that says that is about not being nice as a Christian. Sometimes Christianity is messy.

Sometimes there’s suffering. But by the grace of God, we have one hope that delivers us from that suffering. And that one hope is, everybody give the children’s church answer, that one hope is Jesus.

Remember that. Live by that. Live into your salvation.

Will you accept my blessing? God, as we go from this place, we go by the love and the grace and the mercy that you have shown us to share Jesus with the world. To let others know about Jesus. To help grow in our faith.

You are our one hope, and we praise you for that. Amen. Go in peace.