Sermon: "Who Needs a Savior?"

1st in the "Heroes" series.
Delivered August 19, 2007 by Andy Gathman.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3

Series Theme: Every culture has its heroes. Heroes help a culture express their hopes, dreams, and fears; what is best about humanity and what is worst. We'll look at 3 of our modern superheroes to help us see what they reveal about our culture, about ourselves, and about our faith.

Movie reference: Superman Returns.

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(Played a video of people talking about their favorite superheroes.)

All right. Well, for those of you who don't know me, I love movies. So welcome to the movies. I love almost any movie, which is a bit frustrating to my wife who wishes I would stick to suspense thrillers or romantic comedies, but I like them all. The classics like North by Northwest; dramas like The Shawshank Redemption, goofball comedies like Tommy Boy, Sci-Fi like The Matrix or the blockbusters Back to the Future. I like the independent films like Crash and Garden State and yes, I will admit it, I like the epic adventures. I like Lord of the Rings. I like Braveheart and I love superhero movies. For me, movies can be more than just a chance to escape everyday life. They do something substantial. At times they help to point me to the bigger, deeper realities about life; the kind of things that are hard to recognize as I am going through the day to day; things like the reality of good and evil and figuring out the vast grey area that often exists in between. The truth that faith, love and hope are the bedrock virtues of everything that is good despite how hard it can be to live in to them. And so for the next three weeks as the summer is winding down and the school year is kicking in, if you will permit me, we are going to have a little fun and look at three recent superhero movies to help us uncover some of the most important truths about ourselves, about our faith and about our God.

So today we are going to begin with Superman. Now growing up Superman was my favorite super-hero. I mean he had it all. He could fly. He had the x-ray vision and the heat ray vision. He stood for truth, justice and the American way. It seemed like there was nothing that he couldn't do. Well, take a look.

(Video clip from Superman Returns)

Now, that's a superhero. Anyone feel like cheering after seeing that? Yeah. I remember thinking when I was a boy if only there was such a thing as Superman I would never have to worry because there would always be someone around who could save me. That is what Superman is all about isn't it? Salvation; that when there is no where else to turn there is someone who can reach in to our lives and do something that is beyond sheer human ability and save us; that a plane load of people hurdling toward the earth, toward a baseball stadium would not all die, but be saved. Now here is the question though; now that we are all grown up and living in the real world, who needs a savior? See that very question comes up in this movie Superman Returns. That airplane rescue we just saw, it was apparently the first time Superman had been seen in five years. Not long after that daring rescue Superman finds out that in his absence his one time love interest Lois Lane has written a Pulitzer Prize winning article called, "Why the World doesn't need Superman." This is understandably upsetting to our hero and so he goes to confront her about it.

(Another video clip from Superman Returns)

So who needs a Savior? Now I know that for most of us who call ourselves Christians we probably agree with the theological view that we all need a savior. But I wonder if our attitude doesn't more often mirror that of Lois Lane. "Thank you for saving me back there in that plane, but on the whole, no, I don't need you." How many of us actually live out our lives in ways that show as Lois says that we have moved on? Sure, we need a savior for our eternal destiny and that is something that we know we can't attain for ourselves. But what about in the day to day? Does the salvation that God holds out for us really impact the gritty realities of our daily lives? Do we even want it to? Who needs a savior? Have you ever felt like that? Like you have been left all alone to face the burdens of life and your only option is to buckle down knowing that it's all on your shoulders. Maybe there is a situation that you are facing right now; maybe it's an important decision or a family crisis; maybe you are having a difficult time handling a relationship with a child or a parent or a spouse or a friend; maybe you are dealing with some financial difficulties or declining physical health or maybe nothing like that, just the weight of a bunch of little stresses all piled on top of one another. If you are facing a situation like that, I want you to just take a moment and mentally acknowledge it before God. In fact, maybe even just take a moment and write it down.

If you are like me there are times and maybe this is one of those times when you find it difficult to relate your faith in Christ to the daily stresses and difficulties that you are facing. When it happens to me life can start to feel like a tangle of messes that I am just struggling to wade through or else trying hard to ignore. If we are honest, life can often feel like we are on our own moving from one trying situation to the next. The problem with this scenario is that it doesn't reflect the kind of vibrant, fruitful, fulfilling life Jesus said we would experience. When we are not purposeful about relating our faith to the whole of our lives it means that in practice our lives don't look much different from our neighbors who have no faith in Christ at all. It puts us in danger of carrying the kryptonite of hypocrisy around our necks, which mortally wounds the spirit of Christ within us and turn others away from our weak and powerless faith.

So who needs a savior? Better yet, how do we develop a faith in our savior that is relevant to every part of our lives? And that is a question fortunately that Christians have been asking from the very beginning of our faith and the Apostle Paul in particular addresses this very issue in Colossians 1, Verses 15 to 23 and he approaches this problem not by giving us some spiritual tips and techniques, but by focusing our attention on who our Savior is and what he is able to do. So let's turn there together for a fresh glimpse of who our Savior Jesus Christ really is. You can turn with me to Colossians, Chapter 1 on page 833 of the red pew Bibles as we look at this passage together.

Let's pray: Lord we ask that as we come before you and read your holy word that it would be more than just text on a page, that it would reach in to our hearts and change us. Lord touch us where we need to be touched right now, as we read together, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Colossians, Chapter 1, Verse 15:

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy."

Let's just stop for a moment and break down what Paul is saying there. See, he is closing all the loopholes that would prompt someone to look anywhere else besides Christ. Now this group of Colossian believers that he is writing to was being influenced by their culture that was telling them you've got to have more than Jesus to really experience life in its fullness; that Jesus doesn't have all it takes. And so they started looking in to a philosophy called gnosticism, which emphasized a dualistic worldview. That means that they thought the material world and the spirit world were separate in opposing states and that everything material was bad and only the spiritual was good.

And then it emphasized secret teachings and rituals as a pathway to find the life hidden in this spiritual world. Now I know that most of don't fall in to the trap of seeing the material world as bad, but we may tend to lean that way if we think that God is only interested in the spiritual side of life. We might not turn to secret knowledge to help prop up our faith in Christ, but I think there are other places that our culture tells us to look beyond Jesus for our salvation. It might be the advice of experts, achieving financial security, being well-educated or good old-fashioned self-reliance. So to all of that Paul is saying here there is no need to turn anywhere else, because Jesus is able to save in every and any situation, not just in the spiritual plain of existence, but in the temporal, the spacial, the material as well. He is as Paul says, before all things, the creator of all things and the one who continually holds all things together. He is our forerunner and our leader in this life and the next and that there is no level of creation, no part of our existence that Jesus doesn't have absolute authority over or mastery of. I am going to get back to that last idea in a moment. First, let's continue in our text. Verse 19:

"For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross."

So here we see that because of the qualifications Paul had just mentioned, Jesus has in himself both the power and the position to be the reconciling agent between God and all of creation. Jesus Christ has set right what is most wrong with the world. Through him God has laid out the full resources of heaven to save us and now Paul is honing in on this point, because all of a sudden he gets very personal in Verse 21.

"Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation- if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant."

See, Paul is contrasting our known past with our certain future. Once you were alienated, but now, and in that small phrase lies a remarkable turn of events. Now, you have been reconciled. Why? So that in the end our lives might be presented to God as a pleasing sacrifice, holy, unstained, above reproach and this is something that only God can do if; did you catch that while we were reading? There is a warning here, yes, but that shouldn't surprise us, because Christ's ultimate aim of presenting us before God is predicated on the condition of our continued steadfast faith in him. This shouldn't trouble us because we know from what the whole Bible says that faith is the most basic response of created beings to a good creator.

Now, Adam and Eve had a lack of faith that broke humanity's relationship with him in Genesis Chapter 3. Faith is the only thing that God requires of us to reconnect it. Jesus is the one who has done all the work of reconciliation through his sacrificial death on the cross and it's our resurrected savior Jesus who is focusing on the goal, presenting us worthy before God. We need to worry only about our faith. Now, I don't think Paul's concern here is even for us to lose our salvation. I think he is concerned for us to really live in to it, that it wouldn't remain underdeveloped and immature in the 1% of our lives that we consciously give to spiritual things. See Paul believed that our Savior Jesus was fully capable of addressing every area of our life that needs attention. Paul wanted us to experience the full power of Jesus' salvation. And we access the fullness of our salvation the same way we did when we first received it through faith, by believing that this Jesus with whom we have entrusted our lives when we first believed has everything we need for this life and the next.

So why do we so often have difficulty in applying this whole-hearted faith in Jesus to every area of our lives? An observation that Dallas Willard makes in "The Divine Conspiracy" helped me enormously when I came across it several years ago and I would like to share it with you now. This is what he says,

"Our commitment to Jesus can stand on no other foundation than a recognition that he is the one who knows the truth about our lives and about our universe. It's not possible to trust Jesus in matters where we do not believe him to be competent."

He is basically saying, look we believe that Jesus has created the whole universe so why shouldn't we trust that he knows what is best and practical matters as well. He goes on to say:

"Once you stop and think about it, how could he be what we take him to be in all other respects and not be the best informed and most intelligent person of all; the smartest person who ever lived."

He concludes by saying:

"Jesus is Lord can mean little in practice for anyone who has to hesitate before saying Jesus is smart."

So think back to that scenario that I asked you to jot down earlier. Do you believe that Jesus is the best person to help you handle that situation, that he would be the best financial counselor, the most competent physician, the most understanding relationship counselor or whatever? Now, I am not suggesting that we stop going to doctors or stop watching Oprah, maybe Oprah, but here is the thing. Something changes, something fundamental and life-giving changes inside of us when we believe that Jesus really does have the insight and the ability to save us. That is why we must as Paul says continue in our faith as we receive the salvation that he has laid out for us. He might have said, "Allow your faith to become as big as a savior that we believe in. Allow it to touch every area of your life and systemically apply it to every corner of your heart, mind and soul, to every facet of your experience and to every plain of your existence, because a big faith in our big savior enables us to fully live in to our salvation."

So if the path to a fuller experience of Jesus and his salvation is through a bigger faith, what do we do? I mean most of us can't just manufacture faith as if it were some commodity that we could whip up with the right raw materials. For some of you here today your faith hasn't been growing for quite a while; maybe it's stagnant or diminishing. Perhaps for others, you haven't even begun your faith in Christ yet. I would like to remind us all and especially those whom I just mentioned that the good news is that Jesus says that if you have even a mustard grain size of faith, that's enough. The faintest hope of the slightest possibility that Jesus is who he says he is can be enough for God to cause the growth that will some day turn that faith in to a large tree that provides shade and shelter for others. What does that faith seed look like? "Maybe, God, if you are really there, help me to see you. God, I don't think I can do this on my own, please help. God, maybe it's you who knows the way and not me." You would be amazed at what God can do with mustard seed faith.

I said before that we can't manufacture faith, but we can cultivate it like a gardener tends to the soil around his prized plants. We can cultivate our faith by staying committed to the things that keep it alive; faithfully coming to corporate worship, fellowshipping with other believers, seeking communion with God through scripture and prayer. These are the kinds of things that help our faith stay alive and vibrant through the good times and the bad. The things that help us stay focused on the object of our faith, the one who is before all things who holds all things together, who became a man and laid down his life for our sakes. Having an attitude of persistent faith in Jesus is something that Paul is calling us today to continue until we are called home by our Savior. "Jesus, I am looking to you for guidance. Jesus, I am trusting you to make things right. Jesus, I am believing that you are working in me even when I can't see it. Jesus, I will trust in you, not in my finances or my smarts or my charm. I will trust in you not in the advice of experts or market forecasts or media personalities, I will trust in you, not anything or anyone else. When push comes to shove and I am at the end of my rope, I will put my faith in you, my Lord and Savior because I know that you above all can be trusted."

So who needs a Savior? Maybe today it's you and today you can grab hold of him with the smallest little mustard seed faith and act of turning that says, "Yes, Lord, I need a Savior and I am looking to you."

Let's pray: God, I just want to take a moment to pray for anyone here who is struggling in their faith that you would by your Holy Spirit plant a seed in their hearts that helps them turn to you even when their reason or their will or their circumstances is telling them that it would be hopeless and Lord, I pray that you would help us all to remember that it is you who created us, who loves us, who knows us, that you are holding all things together. Help us to trust in you everyday so that we can receive the fullness of the salvation that you have given us. I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

© 2007, Andy Gathman
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org