Well, clear and simple is the word of God to you this morning. Clear and simple. How do you get saved? Being saved is important. The Apostle Paul liked to teach it clearly and simply. If you leave here today, I want you all to know the clear and simple way to heaven. Heaven is important, wouldn't you say? Eternal life is important, wouldn't you say? Then you should know how to get there. And so let me tell you how to get there. Clear and simple. When you leave here today, what you have to do is make sure you avoid all pork products. No ham. Go to church next Saturday, not on Sunday. Keep kosher diet. Make sure you do something, shed some animal blood to get rid of your sins. Make sure all you men are circumcised and all your daughters and all your wives are married to circumcised men. And keep all the laws of the Old Testament, of the laws of Moses. And there you go. Are you helped by that? It's not clear? You know what? Here's the clear and simple way to be safe. What you need to do is make sure you, when you leave here today, you make a big pilgrimage to the Middle East. Make sure you do this. Make sure you confess Muhammad as the prophet. Set aside a special month called Ramadan to fast. Give what you have to the poor, and pray facing the east five times a day. Do all these works, and you shall achieve salvation. Are you, is, you guys, seems, you guys got it? Go do these things. Not that, and is this not convincing? Okay, this one, what you should do now is when you leave here today, here's how you'd be saved. You follow this eightfold path, okay, to enlightenment. You follow this path, and you'll know that you're achieving this path when you get rid of all feeling and emotion. All feeling and emotion. So when you hammer a hammer on your thumb, and it hurts, guess what? You're not on the path to salvation. When you pick up a child that you love and a smile comes on your face, you are not on the path to salvation. You gotta get rid of all that. If someone you love dies and you feel sorrow over that, you're not there, you won't have salvation. That seems pretty hard, isn't it? Do you believe that's the way to salvation? Glad you don't. Or maybe, you know what you need to do to be saved? Salvation is somewhere deep within your conscience. Somewhere down there inside all your personhood stuff. And you gotta find it. Dig around in there. Meditate for long periods of time. Do crazy poses. And hold those positions. If you still can't find it, you know what you need? You need a subconscious experience with a mediator and some drugs. And then, you shall have salvation. Or maybe it's just, maybe if you're not convinced yet, what you need to do is just as much good works as you can possibly do. How many good works? Well, I don't know the answer. You have to figure that out on your own. And then when you die, you will become a god yourself. And once you become a god yourself, then you'll be saved. Are any of these clear and simple ways? And yet the world goes after these by the billions. Clearly and simply, there is a way to be saved. Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. Believe in your heart. Believe in your heart something true, something that is verifiable, something that is fact, something that is witnessed, that God raised him from the dead. And what is it? You shall be saved. You see, When Paul was writing these words down, he was burdened by what I just burdened you with. He was looking around at people who were trying to achieve a righteousness or trying to achieve a justification in the sight of a holy God. And on the one hand, you had Jews, and on the other hand, you had Greeks. And the Jews are saying, go after the Old Testament and earn your righteousness through works. And that people were, others were saying, it's not just that, but you've gotta do extreme things to get to God. Just look at verse eight, look at the verses that come before this. Verse six, who will, but the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart, who will ascend to heaven? Who will build a ladder to heaven? Who will build a babble to heaven to bring Christ down? That's what so many people were thinking. Who will descend into the abyss? To bring Christ up from the dead. No, he says the word of God is very near to you. It's in your mouth. It's in your heart. It's not far away. It's the word we proclaim. The gospel is what Paul says. The gospel and the gospel, y'all, is clear and simple. The Gospel as Paul would preach it everywhere was simply this. Christ Jesus died for the forgiveness of sins. And he was buried and on the third day God raised him from the dead. And by believing in this Gospel, you shall be justified. You shall be declared righteous. You shall be saved. Clear and simple. It's not What can I do? What are the extremities to which I must go? How far to the ends of the earth? How deep into the bottoms of the ocean? How much learning and philosophical education must I balance in my mind before I can finally lay hold of salvation? Paul's like, it's none of that. Clear and simple. Confess Jesus is Lord. Believe that God raised him from the dead. In other words, it's nothing you can do. It's nothing you can do. It's all about what God has done. God did it all, now receive it and give thanks. And here's the main thing, and I normally have an outline for you this morning on mornings like this, but I don't have an outline, although I think you'll be able to follow along pretty clearly and simply. That's what I'm going for this morning. The main thing is this, God saves through faith in Christ. He saves you through faith in Christ. So the first thing I want you to see this morning, I want you to see this morning is an offering of salvation. The offering of salvation. This whole thing is about a very specific and emphatic word. He says, confess, believe, and what? You shall be saved. That's the aim. The aim of Paul, the aim of every true church, the aim of every true ministry is salvation. It's about presenting the way of salvation to a lost and dying world, to people who are lost and dead in their sins. How can they be saved? How can they be right with God? Let's give this to them. Let's not make it hard. Christ has already paid for everything. There's nothing to add to it. It's the obsession, the ambition of Paul to see souls saved. And it must be the ambition of the church. And it's really the ambition of this text to convince you who read it. That there is an offer of salvation, it's a free offer of salvation to you. It's offered to. There's that three-letter word there. It's offered to you. And you need to focus on that. If you look at this verse 9, look at it. It says, because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. It doesn't say the Jew. It doesn't say the Gentile. It doesn't say the ascetic. It doesn't say the law keeper. It doesn't say any qualification. What does it say? You, you. Yeah, that's you. That's me. That's any one of us. This special thing, you are offered salvation. So this is an evangelistic message. Jesus saves. He is a savior. Salvation belongs to him. which really means something if the aim is salvation here, if the aim is that you would understand how to be saved, you would understand the way to heaven, then you take that, spin it in reverse, look at the opposite of that and understand that there's a major trouble in this passage. It's that there are people who aren't saved. And if you are not saved, I ask for your utmost attention right now. Let me go back and just ask, are you saved? Are you saved in Christ? Are your sins forgiven? Are you trusting in him? Are you confident that when you die, you will go to be with the Lord? Are you confident that when Jesus comes back in that day of judgment, you will not be you will go with him and the saints and the angels and not go with. The perishing and the one those who reject God and who are cast off into utter darkness, are you saved? Are you saved? Because here it is. If this verse is true, then a major problem is before your eyes. It's this. You are in need of saving. You need to be rescued, delivered and redeemed. Churches don't like to say this. I don't you know, I don't know what joy there is in saying this, but the truth needs to be spoken. Men and women, apart from Jesus, you are in danger. You are in trouble. You are, what the Bible says, both dying and sick, sorry, headed for hell, under condemnation, under the wrath of God. I tend to think we view the world without Christ as being in some kind of neutral, like, frolicky land, where there's kind of degrees of goodness. But the condition of your soul apart from Jesus, no matter how much money or good works you have, is desperate. If you died today or if Jesus came back, you would have no good thing. All would be weeping, all would be mourning, all would be regret and suffering. Listen to what John the baptizer says in John 3, 36. He says, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. And listen carefully to what Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 1 7-10. He says the Lord Jesus will come again with his mighty angels in flaming fire and will inflict vengeance on those who do not know God and those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. When he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled among all who have believed because our testimony to you was believed. Clear and simple. The question is, are you saved? And you might respond by saying, well, I'm baptized. I have my name on a membership list somewhere. Might say, I'm patriotic. I care about the morals of society and the morals of others and my own morals. Hey, look, I asked you about none of those things. What was the question I asked? Are you saved? Have you been saved? Are you washed in the blood of Jesus? Are your moral debts paid by Christ's own sinful life? Are you robed in his righteousness? Are you just in the sight of a holy God? This was why Paul wrote these words, as I mentioned earlier. They answer the effects and the efforts of those who are trying to save themselves. People were conjuring up strange beliefs and ways of thinking to pacify the guilt of their conscience. They are trying to make up and atone for their sins by any means possible. If Paul were to ask them if they were saved, they could say a whole number of things. They would say, we are Jews. We come from the line of Abraham. Our boys are circumcised. We go to Passover. Some would say, I'm concerned about my country, Israel. Some would say, I think spiritual thoughts. Some would say, I scroll through preaching on the Internet sometimes. No one would say that in Paul's day. But in our day, people say, oh, you know, I watch some preaching here and there. I turn on TBN or whatever it is. Is TBN a thing? Is that the one? I might be off there. All that Paul was saying, I'm asking about none of those things. Are you saved? Here's the thing, though. Remember how I started this. I said the salvation of God is offered in this passage. If this is true, then anyone boys and girls, men and women, saints or sinners who have been far from God. People who have violated every command, the vilest offender, as we sing sometimes. All. To all who are in sin, there is an offer of salvation. A way to God the Father through Christ the Son that is offered to you. This morning, in these words. How so? Because it says this, it says you. You ask what must I do to be saved? The offer is so clear and simple. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to do anything. You could say, well, there's these dues in here you confess and believe, but what is that but simply receiving? The table's been set. The food has been prepared. It's all in front. What must you do? Pick up the fork. And eat. The meal is served. To all who confess and believe in Jesus, you shall be saved. Not if you are Jewish, not if you're rich, not if you're wise, not if you give away money to charity, not if you're on the honor roll, not if you have spiritual thoughts sometimes. Here it is, the free gift of God to all who believe. If you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart. Jesus, you shall be saved. Again, I said, focus on those words. You look at it. You, you, you, you, you. It's not if your mom confesses or your dad confesses or your pastor confesses. It's if you confess you. And if you are plagued, seriously, if you are plagued and you have this doubt, you have these these plaguing doubts about the condition of your heart and your soul. Remember that this passage says you. I love what the old preacher Charles Spurgeon said. He was preaching this passage and he said, I wish I could come down from this pulpit. He had rheumatism and all sorts of issues that kind of prevented him from doing this stuff. But he said, I wish I could come down from this pulpit and grab each one of you by the hands and point your eyes to this text and say, and he spoke in the old English, the text saith thou. I love that. The text saith thou, it says you. That's who this salvation is offered to. So we see that salvation is offered, an offer of salvation is made in this passage, but I want you to see that there is a content to be believed in for salvation, number two. So salvation offered, number two, then, is a content to be believed. Keep this in mind that Christianity is not Your Christianity, or anyone's Christianity, or true Christianity, is not a experience. It's not simply an experience. Let me take this back. We do experience Christ, we experience God and His goodness, but every religion, every cult, every system of belief bases things on experience. So how do you measure if the content of your belief is true? How do you know? How do you know? Well, that's one thing you have to understand about salvation, is that when it comes to salvation, there is a content to be believed in. There's substance to the Christian faith. There are things you must confess, there are things you must profess, there are things you must feel, there are things you must know. There are things you must agree with. And let me tell you something, there's not a whole lot of them. That's why Jesus says when he's on the earth and he prays to God, I thank you, Father, because these things are hidden. These things of repentance and belief in God the Father and simple trust in you, God, they're hidden from the wise and learned, but they're revealed to who? Little children. Little children. There's a substance to faith that justifies. Faith is not based first and foremost on experiences or feelings or philosophies or therapies or imaginations. This might sound contrary to the way you thought, but faith is based on facts, okay? Hear me say that. Faith is based on facts. Unbelief and doubt is based on conjecture, right? What if the Bible is not true? That's why I won't believe, right? That's the way an unbelieving world thinks. What if Jesus wasn't really raised from the dead? And that causes people to doubt. What if my sickness is more than God can handle? What if God can't really provide? What if what Jesus said isn't true? These are all the things that cause doubt. Doubt is based on feelings, really. Doubt is based on feelings. Faith is based on facts. Saving faith is based on truth. And here's simply the content of saving faith. Jesus is Lord. And God raised him from the dead. What does it mean, then, that Jesus is Lord? Well, it means that he, in fact, is God of God. He is Yahweh. When you see that Jesus is given the title Lord, there are a couple layers of meanings to this in your Bibles, in the New Testament. Kind of the basic, most near example is this. You know who everybody in the world said was Lord was the Roman ruler at the time who was Caesar. Caesar is Lord. So now people are going around confessing that Jesus is Lord. the early Christians are, which has got them into a whole lot of trouble. But it's not just that. Do you know that the Lord is the word given, the title given to God, the Lord, as God declares that His name, His personal name, is to be the Great I Am, or Yahweh. What I mean by this is when Paul is saying you've got to confess that Jesus is Lord, he is saying that you need to confess with your mouth that Jesus in fact is Yahweh. He is the Lord God Jehovah. He is the Ancient of Days. He's the ruler of all. There's no king above him. There's no passing of his reign. There's no Resignation in Jesus. I love what one preacher said, Jesus is not up for re-election, y'all. No one can take him out of his seat. He is the Lord of heaven and he is the Lord of earth. Let me tell you what Jesus said when he was raised from the dead, right before he ascended into heaven. He said this, he said, I have a little bit of authority in some parts of this universe. I have something to say when it comes to certain parts of your life. No, he did not say that, y'all. Listen, what did he say? He said, all authority in heaven and on earth is given to me. That's what he said. He said, all authority. He is Lord of all. Confess it with your mouth, and you will be saved. Remember that we sing a song called, I Surrender Some, don't we? We don't sing that one? I surrender some. No, we don't sing that. What do we say? I surrender what? All to Jesus I surrender. Why is this? Because He is what? Lord. He's Lord of all. He's the Lord of all. But this confession is not simply to be a weak-lipped service. We know that we are only able to make this confession. Remember when Peter says to Jesus, I believe you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Remember what Jesus says, flesh and blood can't reveal this to you, but only the father who is in heaven, Peter. Remember that it's out of the abundance of the heart, then what? The mouth speaks. And actually Paul flips this order in the very next verse. He says verse 10 for with the heart one believes and is justified and with the mouth one confesses is and is safe. What is Paul saying? He's saying you can't have one and not the other. You can't be you can't have a hidden belief in your heart and not confess Jesus to be Lord outwardly. You can't confess Jesus to be Lord outwardly and then have no working condition inside of you. That's called what is that called saving faith? No, that's called Dead faith, dead faith. Faith without works is dead. A mouth confession and a heartfelt conviction, a heart known conviction is like a marriage. What God has joined together, man cannot put asunder. You've gotta have both. Deliverance, rescue, redemption, salvation are offered to you freely in the good news. that Jesus has been raised from the dead by God the Father. Just confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, meaning that Jesus has all the kingdom, the power, and the glory. He is your King, your Messiah, your Christ. And believe with conviction, the movement of the heart, that Jesus is living and risen. I shared this just in our resurrection service. You know, when Paul writes these words out, he says, believe in your heart that God raised you from the dead. Well, you might say, what about the cross? What about what about the virgin birth? What about all the miracles of Jesus? Why don't we have to confess all those things? I mean, doesn't Paul also say it's it's it's that he he desires to know nothing among the Corinthians except Christ crucified? So then why does he now say, you just simplify it down into saying, believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and you'll be saved. Why is it so summarized like that? Well, it's a pretty simple answer. It's because those six words, God raised him from the dead, are the summary of all Christian doctrine. They really are. If God raised Jesus from the dead, and I shared this with you earlier, we could go back, if God raised Jesus from the dead, then that means that Jesus is alive, death has no hold on him, he in fact is God. If Jesus died, that means he in fact was man, he's the God-man. He is the mediator between sinful man and glorious God. If Jesus died, that means something had to get him there, and it was the cross of Calvary. And if it was the cross of Calvary, we know that he went to that cross, he said, to suffer for his people's sins, is what he says. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And if he died on the cross, there he demonstrated the love of God as he sacrificed himself and bore God's wrath for you. So that you could have forgiveness and you can have justification in life. And if he was ever alive, he was born. And if he was born, he was born of the Virgin. Like I said, if he was born of the Virgin, then he's the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies. The Virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and his name shall be called Immanuel. Keep on going. And if he's the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies, then he is the promised one. Promised to come into the world, to redeem a people for God, and crush the head of the serpent by being wounded. All of this, all of this comes true in the simple six word statement, God raised him up from the dead. I went through that quickly, but you need to know that. When you say, when you believe God raised him from the dead, That's the summary of the worth and the work and the person of the Jesus you treasure. You need to have this conviction, this movement of the heart that believes in a risen and living Jesus, who accomplished a redemption for you through the blood of his cross. Right? I mean, it's just this, it's crying out, Jesus is Lord, beating in the chest that God raised him from the dead. Think about when you have a new baby born into this world. What do the nurses rush to do? What do they want to hear? They want to hear that healthy baby what? Cry out. And then they put the little stethoscope on the little baby to check it's what? Heartbeat. The same is true in spiritual life. We cry out. It's the expiration of our lungs that Jesus is the living Lord. And then if someone were to put that stethoscope on the Christian's heart, it wouldn't go, ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump. It would go, he lives, he lives, he lives. God raised him up from the dead. You must have a heart that beats with Christ's own life through your body. And that's how it should go. That's the content of salvation. That Jesus is the Lord, we confess it with our mouth, and that he is risen from the dead. And finally, one final statement here. If you've seen the offer of salvation to you, and you've seen the content of salvation, then you shall see the guarantee of salvation. The final words here. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, four words, you will be saved. Thou shall be saved. Wills and shalls, these are the unconditional promises of the omnipotent God of heaven. Do you know this? It says shall, it's a guarantee. Is there a promise of God that you cannot trust in? Can you name one? Can you name one? You cannot. What condition or circumstance can nullify the Holy Lord's word of promise? There is not one. Never, no, never has there been a condition in heaven and on earth that has nullified the word of God's promise. If he says, you shall be saved, then take it down. Cement it in your minds. Know that this promise cannot be undone. Because remember, it's not about what you can do. It's not about any of those things. It's the promise that things have already happened. The promise that Jesus Christ truly is the Lord of glory because He was crucified and now He lives, and now He is at the right hand of God the Father and Lord of all. Believe that. Receive that. Give thanks for it. Take it in. Live upon it. Stand upon it. Those things will never change. We sing the old rugged cross? There was that's because there was an old rugged cross that really existed in history. No one can take that away. There really is a tomb that had a stone rolled away that really happened. These aren't myths. And if these things happened. Then these are things that God has provided for and we can trust in them and we can trust in his word. He is the unfailing, omnipotent God. So what does this mean? It means you shall be saved. If you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, if you confess Jesus as Lord, the Holy Spirit moves upon you to convince you of these things. If in this preaching, as soon as I say these words, if these things become the reality of your mouth and your heart, I can say no less than what the scripture says to you. You shall be what? Saved. You shall be saved. Clear and simple. Doesn't this make your heart sore? That you can know the way to heaven? That you can know the way to God? People, you don't have to go to some mountain in Tibet and hang around with a bunch of monks to find salvation. You don't have to work your backs to the bone or your hands to the bone to prove some sort of righteousness in and of yourself. You don't have to do any of that. You don't have to learn the scrolls of philosophies, go through the ancient libraries, open up the complex charts. What is it? It's the word of faith right here, not far off. Christ is Lord because he is risen from the dead. Do you see how near salvation is to you? How close you are to heaven? If you are not there yet, if you have not been saved, what would you wait on any longer? What more convincing proof should there be? Do you want a scroll? Do you want a journey? Do you want a task? It won't do it. Those are cheap. Those are as hard as those works are. Those are cheap. Those could never afford or pay the price or get you there. Only. Only by the blood of Jesus can your salvation be secured. Only by the empty tomb can you have eternal life. Only by the Savior. whose kindness has come through the cross of Christ. Can you be reconciled to God and have eternal life with him? That's it. Would you stop all the foolishness, stop all the trying, stop all the working, stop all the philosophizing, stop all of that. Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. Believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. So clear, so simple. And let me just, let me issue this one little warning. It's not a little warning, it's a big warning. If it is true, and it is true, how simple is the way? Then I want you to think about this. If you leave here today and you reject this way, you reject this offer of salvation, then how could you ever for one second boast of intellect or honorability or nobility? How could you ever do it? When the world of heaven, the world of glory has been given to you so clearly and simply, all you have to do is just what it prescribes, receive it. And you would say, nope, I don't believe that. I won't take it. Think about how depraved you are in your mind and your heart to reject such a clear and simple offer, to believe that you could do better than what is here. You can never boast ever again of some sort of nobility, some sort of honorability, some sort of intellectual capacity after rejecting such a clear and simple way. You know, it was the case in the scriptures. When Jesus came upon those that that that woman in the condition of blood, what what was it? What was it that saved her life? He's reached out to God. That's it. What did you say? Your faith has saved you. You remember it was. The. the guard in the jail cell with Paul and Silas, and the earth shook, and the jail cell broke open, and the jailer looked to Paul and Silas and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? You know what it says? You know what Paul and Silas said to him? Believe. Believe in Jesus Christ. You and all your house, and you shall be saved. That's always been the case. It's always been that simple. Sunday to Sunday, day after day, in every region of this world, this is the offer held out to people who are lost and dying in sin. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Confess Him to be your Lord and Savior. Believe in what He said and what He did. He died for your sins, but now He lives. And when all of that happens, when you receive by faith this simple, pure gospel of the risen Christ, all at once, all at once, all the treasures of heaven are open to you. All the reality of eternal glory is secured to your possession. All the righteousness of Christ is credited to you. All the days of eternity with the God who made you and the God who loved you and the God who gave you this Jesus by sending him to die and the God who raised him up from the dead, all the days of eternal life with this wonderful, magnificent God will be yours. Will you this moment believe and confess? Amen.