Designed for Goodness: The Road to Redemption
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Hebrews 10:35-36 ESV
”Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.“
Focus: Jesus is worthy of a life-long, persevering pursuit of love ending in an eternal reward.
The Problem
The Diversity of Solutions
The Cross
The Perseverance (of Christ)
The Problem
Paradise was lost and we’re all searching for answers:
We strive for love, identity, acceptance, joy, peace, a sense of belonging, significance and lasting accomplishment ….all of which seem elusive because of the world in which we live.
Genesis 3:22-24 ESV
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Sin around us and sin in us.
Proverbs 19:3 ESV
“When a man's folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord.”
The Diversity of Solutions
Self-help programs and intellectualism can inspire our habits but do not change the heart.
Our hopes are misplaced:
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses
I tried to hide by pointing to the hypocrisy of religion:
“Think of people you consider fanatical. They're overbearing, self-righteous, opinionated, insensitive, and harsh. Why? It's not because they are too Christian, it's because they are not Christian enough. They are fanatically zealous and courageous, but they are not fanatically humble, sensitive, loving, emphatic, forgiving, or understanding- as Christ was... What strikes us as overly fanatical is actually a failure to be fully committed to Christ and his gospel.”
Timothy Keller (Author), The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
The Cross
God’s divine solution for the issues of our day is the cross of Jesus Christ.
Titus 2:11-14 ESV
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”
A suffering Savior found me.
“It is not enough for the skeptic, then, to simply dismiss the Christian teaching about the resurrection of Jesus by saying, “It just couldn’t have happened.” He or she must face and answer all these historical questions: Why did Christianity emerge so rapidly, with such power? No other band of messianic followers in that era concluded their leader was raised from the dead—why did this group do so? No group of Jews ever worshipped a human being as God. What led them to do it? Jews did not believe in divine men or individual resurrections. What changed their worldview virtually overnight? How do you account for the hundreds of eyewitnesses to the resurrection who lived on for decades and publicly maintained their testimony, eventually giving their lives for their belief?”
-Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
Our true hope is based on God’s promise:
“We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus' miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming.”
-Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
The Perseverance (of Christ)
Jesus is worthy and empowers us to persevere to the end as we love and fix our eyes on him.
Colossians 3:1-4 ESV
”If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.“
Over the long run, the question then becomes not just whether what we espouse about Jesus is true, but whether these truths are worth enduring service to Christ to the end in the midst of the trials and fallenness of life.
We have witnesses and testimonies that abound regarding the greatness, the goodness and the faithfulness of God.
Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV
”Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.“
Because of this great love of Christ, let us determine to remain in Jesus and burn in love for him until the end.
Second City Church
