The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: God help us today to work out our salvation. Come on, let’s get a hold of Jesus, let’s get a hold of ourselves, and stop the pretending. Friend, there’s an abundance of life in Jesus, an abundance of life.

Guest (Male): The Apostle Paul in Philippians chapter 2 tells us to work out our salvation. Listen today as Pastor Jack Morris describes this process of drawing closer to the Lord and leaving behind the thoughts and ways of the past.

Pastor Jack Morris: Salvation is a cooperative experience. It's something that happens between you and God, God and me. I know some of you are going to say, "Well, Pastor, all these years you've been telling us that God and God alone performs the miracle of salvation." That's true, but after he performs the initial miracle and you're born into the kingdom of God, you have a tremendous responsibility now to work out that salvation and bring it to completion. So it's you and God.

Work out your salvation. The salvation experience is God's part: bringing us into the kingdom of God, bringing us into the family of God. It's all of God. There's nothing that I did to save my soul. Jesus drank the cup in the garden—a cup with my sins in there, and your sins, and the sins of all the world. He carried those sins in his body up Golgotha and Calvary, the Via Dolorosa, burning with fever because he had a human body and it was filled with the sins of the world. That's what we are coming to this table to remember in just a few moments.

Those sins, when he was nailed, were spiked to that tree also. He died for your sins and my sins that you and I might live forever in his presence and in his glory, while on earth and in heaven when our earthly life is over. "Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling." I am asking myself, letting this sermon and these words work over in my mind and in my heart: do I really cling to the cross?

Paul said, "God forbid that I should glory or boast in anything save in the cross." Because of the cross, I have been crucified to the world and now I'm alive unto God. When Jesus died on the cross, I and my sins died on the cross also. I rejoice in him today because of what he did at Calvary. I can't earn salvation. I can't buy it. I can't do enough good works for it. There's nothing I can do but trust in the Lord and believe on him.

Even when I trust in the Lord and believe on him, he is the one that puts that desire in my heart because I couldn't even do that part. He makes the desire come alive within me. Salvation is totally of the Lord's doing. You love the Lord because he put love in your heart to love him. You don't love him because you love him, or I love him because I love him. I love him because he first loved me and he solicited a desire from my heart—a desire that he put in there to serve him. I could have said no. You could have said no. But I didn't. Thank God you and I said yes and received him as our Lord and Savior.

That's God's part. Let me talk to you about your part this morning, and my part. We have a part now in this salvation. Notice what it says: "Work out your salvation." He's talking to us. There's something you have to do and that I have to do. If we haven't been doing it, hear it today and begin doing it. Work it out. Let that which he put in me come forth in acts of love, in acts of service, and in words and deeds, caring and loving. Love your enemy, if you have any enemies.

You might say, "Well, she's really not my enemy, but I just don't care for her." I've been a pastor of several churches for a lot of years and I remember one time somebody called me after I hadn't seen them for a while. We got to talking about church and why they're no longer in church anymore. She said, "Well, there's people there that I just don't get along with. I don't like them, so I just avoid them." I said, "Are they still there?" She said, "Yeah, they're still there." I said, "Well, why don't you come back and let them go then?"

Friend, love God. Love one another. If you love God, you will love one another. If you're not loving your brother whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you haven't seen? Love pulls us together. We desire to shake hands. We desire to throw our arms around one another and hug one another. We're the people of God and we're brothers and sisters in the Lord. We're going now to begin to work out our growth.

Think of your own physical health. What part do you play in being healthy? You play a pretty big part. You have to have good sleep habits. You have to have about 30 minutes of exercise a day, we're told. You have to have a good diet. If you're healthy, you have played a tremendous part. You have to stop smoking. Come on, say amen. There's a tremendous part you play in being a healthy person. You're healthy enough to take a vacation because you have worked for your health and you have taken care of yourself. We have to take care of ourselves now spiritually. We have to do that.

There was a little boy who fell out of bed one night, and he tried to explain why. He said, "I fell out of bed because I went to sleep too close to where I got in." Some people say, "I'm saved. I go to church on Christmas and Easter and once in a while." But we don't go on. Our growth is stunted. We become spiritually like midgets. We haven't grown up. Oh, you look beautiful and healthy physically, but you're a dwarf inside unless we obey the scripture. Work out your salvation. You've got to work at it.

You work at your job to get a raise or a promotion. If you don't work at it, you don't get it. How is it that we have to work at everything, but somehow we think that through osmosis we're just going to develop spiritually? It's not going to work that way, dear friends. That's why God put it upon Paul to write this. That's why God put it upon me to read it. That's why the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, "Now preach it." God wants you to be a healthy believer, and so I am talking about it today.

Work out. It's like a student working out an arithmetic problem. He has to work at it to get an answer or to bring it through to a conclusion. We work at everything that we really want to bring to a conclusion. Think about marriage. How many marriage ceremonies I've performed. Friend, when they come down to the altar for the pronouncement and I say to the gentleman, "You may kiss the bride," only one time the bride spoke up and said, "I'm not going to kiss him right in front of the preacher." I stood there and I thought, "Well, now what am I supposed to say?" Only one time that happened. I just lost everything.

The kiss is not the marriage. That's the wedding. There's a wedding and then there's a marriage. A wedding takes but minutes. A marriage takes a lifetime. We must work at the marriage to make it work. It takes two to make it work. It only takes one to destroy it. Whether it is the marriage, the garden, or the car, we have to keep everything intact. But sometimes we let our spiritual growth slide, and that's not good at all. Not good at all.

We might say we are Christians and we'll go to heaven by the skin of our teeth. But let me tell you something: God's going to say, "Hey, why didn't you speak to that person? You had every opportunity. Why did you avoid them?" Something's wrong inside. That needs to be confessed and repented at the altar. Jesus went out of his way everywhere. If Jesus is in you, then you're going to go out of your way everywhere, and so will I.

Work out your salvation. We're coming up so short spiritually. We're not getting nearly enough out of our Christianity as God wants us to have because we're not working out our Christianity. Go out of your way. This is what Jesus did. He went out of his way all the way from heaven to come to earth to be with us and to bless us. Salvation needs to be brought to a conclusion. God started it; you conclude it if you want to have the abundant life the Lord has given to us. Salvation is both instant and progressive. God does his part, and now I've got to do my part.

Are you still with me? This is why we're victims of habit—habits that we don't want to have. We don't want those habits because we don't have strength enough to resist them. That's why we can't speak to people. That person is a Christian and I'm a Christian, yet I can't speak to them. I won't go out of my way; matter of fact, I'll even go out of my way so I don't have to speak to them. What is wrong? Can you tell me that is the right behavior? No, you know and I know that's not Christ-like. "I just know I should, but I can't." Why? Because you haven't worked out your salvation.

I'm a dwarf spiritually when that happens, and that's going to happen. Every one of us has been tempted in that area. Consider the temptations that come and people will yield to those temptations. They will give in to a failure only to give in to that failure again, and then to fail again and fail again. Why? They're spiritual midgets. They don't have the strength because they haven't worked out their salvation.

I need the church. Jesus said, "I will build my church." We're the church. I can't avoid you and be separated from you. I need you. I have to be with you. I draw strength from you. I really do, as your pastor. You strengthen me, and I hope I strengthen you. We strengthen one another. We care for one another. We love one another.

Work out this salvation. Now, I'm going to tell you something that I don't know whether it's going to surprise you or not, but let me give you a couple of scriptures. In 1 Timothy 4:14, Paul spoke to Timothy. Timothy was ordained; the elders laid their hands on him. He had the gift of God within him, but Paul was afraid he was not using that gift. Paul said to Timothy, "Do not neglect your gift." God gave you and me salvation. You didn't earn it; you got it as a gift. He hands it out to me as a gift.

Paul says, "Timothy, don't neglect it." If Timothy, who wrote and preached and traveled with Paul, could neglect it, listen to this from Hebrews 2:3: "If we neglect such a great salvation." You can neglect it, and if we do, we never grow up in the Lord. This virus hit us head-on. No one was expecting such a thing as this. It closed down churches. There are churches today that are closed. There are people in some of the churches that are still open who have been shut out of church for going on three years, and they've lost their desire.

Friend, if you don't eat natural food after a period of time, you don't hunger anymore. You lose your hunger. The same thing happens spiritually. Stop reading your Bible at home. Some Christians can go a whole week, two weeks, a whole month. How long has it been since you read a chapter? Prayer meetings. This church has done just about everything I know that we possibly can do to help people grow in the Lord. We have Sunday school, we have Zoom, we have small groups, and we have men's and women's fellowship. We have senior citizens groups. We have scouts. You get it every week. I'm sending it out to you—all of these opportunities to work out your salvation. But I can't just reach out through the computer and say, "Come on."

Jesus says, "Come to me." We can only come to him through prayer, through word, through Christian fellowship, and through acts and behavior of love. "Come to me." The decline in church membership and church attendance is real. I'm thankful that every week I've been checking those who are streaming. Last week there were 200 laptops or computers streaming. If one person were there, that's 200. If a husband and wife were watching, that's 400.

Largo Community Church, for the most part—by far the greatest majority—are working out their salvation. But there has to be somebody who isn't. Like Timothy, for instance. You have a little pilot light in there. I remember when we didn't have the electric stoves that we have now, but that little pilot light was just flickering. It didn't cook the food or warm the house, but it was there in readiness. Turn it on. Friend, I pray, "Dear God, turn some of us on." We shouldn't just go around flickering, "I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian." Do something for Jesus and love even as he loves.

Here is what I want to say to you. In the last three decades, adults 55 and over, more than any other age group, have seen a big church dropout rate. They don't go back anymore. The enemy has worked hard these last three years to keep you out of church. Those people who are streaming are in church with us today. I'm so thankful. Some of you need to get ready to come back. It's not quite the same. Pray about it, think about it seriously, and when God gives you the comfort, you come back.

Some of you have been here all along whenever you could. I know there are some Sundays that we can't be here. I almost didn't make it today, but the Lord pushed me hard to bring this message because he cares and he loves and he wants you to have a full and complete salvation. Look at the research regarding what is called Gen X and baby boomers. Those are people over 40. People over 55 are dropping out more so than Gen X. Then there is Gen Z and the millennials. We're always hard on Gen Z and the millennials, and we should keep on. But what about our teenagers? What about our senior citizens that are dropping out?

A lot of these senior citizens have been polled. Some of them have dropped out because of political reasons. We need to remember that we are citizens of heaven, that we're Christians, that our names are in the book of life in heaven. We are people of another world. We are Messiah's people.

A lot of these elderly people that have stopped going to church are still healthy and still have cars. They have moved into a senior citizen community and bought a home or are renting there. Some of them—a lot of them—have said, "I don't go to church anymore because I'm a member of a group in my senior citizen community. I find that I'm getting as much out of going to that group as I used to get when I went to church, and I don't have to even get in the car."

The devil hit us with coronavirus real hard. Now he's hitting us with gas prices. He's going to keep you out of this sanctuary on Sunday morning. This is your spiritual home and my spiritual home. Jesus said the children of the world, the unsaved, are wiser than the children of light. At least some of them are. God help us today to work out our salvation. Come on, let's get a hold of Jesus, let's get a hold of ourselves, and stop the pretending. There's an abundance of life in Jesus.

Guest (Male): If today's message strengthened your faith, we invite you to stand with The Healing Word through your prayers and your generous support. Every gift helps us take the gospel to more people who desperately need to hear that Jesus still saves. Join us tomorrow for another Healing Word message. Until then, blessings on you.