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Open Door SDA Church

The Plan of Salvation

Dwayne Lemon

01 The Plan of Salvation

Let me go ahead and say Happy Sabbath to everyone.

All right, and I have a question for you.

We don't want you to get caught up into vain repetitions.

We want to always make sure we're checking our hearts to make sure are we just saying it or are we truly experiencing it.

We live in a world of insincere sentiments.

How many times have you typed LOL and you know you wasn't laughing out loud.

Sometimes we start saying things that we don't necessarily experience.

But I don't want that, and I trust God doesn't want that.

That was the very essence of Jesus's message when he began his ministry on the Mount of Blessings.

He constantly said, blessed, blessed, blessed.

His desire is that we would be happy, happy children of God.

And I believe that even living in a time in Earth's history where there's a whole lot going on, realities facing us time and again, and we find ourselves constantly perplexed and challenged, I do believe that God can still cause us to be a happy, joyful people in the Lord.

And my hope and prayer is that we always receive the joy and happiness that Christ so desperately wants to give to each and every 1 of us.

And I believe that we're living in a time right now where this subject of the plan of salvation, it is something that needs to be revisited.

The more that I am constantly exposed to people of all sorts of walks of life, various Christian denominations, outside of Christianity, I love to talk to my Muslim brothers and sisters, my Hebrew Israelite brothers and sisters, those who are in no faith, in fact.

I got a chance to meet a dear sister not long ago, and she's an atheist, and I wanted to ask her a question, and it was 1 of our sister's daughter, and she was kind enough to indulge me, and she was an atheist, and I wanted to know why.

And as she gave her answers, it's not that I lacked a response, but it wasn't the time to give a response.

And the more that I would listen and understand, it put me in a position that should we meet again, I believe by the grace of God, looked to me like we had a good meeting, it's like when we talk again, and she did start to ask some questions, And I said, well, you're asking, so now I've got to give an answer.

And in giving those answers, you find that little statement I read from a book called Acts of the Apostles, page 109, where it says, all over the world, men and women are looking wistfully to heaven, longing for light, for grace, and for the Holy Spirit.

And it says, many are on the verge of the kingdom, waiting only to be gathered in.

And I think to myself, the harvest really is more plenteous than we realize.

And there are many who are waiting to be gathered in.

But the reality is, is gather them into what?

If we ourselves do not have a firm understanding of how Jesus saves and what he saves us from and why, If we're not clear on it, it's going to be hard to make it clear to somebody else.

And I can guarantee you the world is longing for salvation.

And so this is the beginning of a series on dealing with the subject, the plan of salvation.

And I wanna encourage you to not only hear, but to take notes.

You know, get your pen out, get your papers out, get your phones out, notes, whatever it is that you wanna use, because we're gonna go over quite a bit.

This is not so much preaching as it is teaching.

And so I want us to make sure that we're studying together so we can, by the grace of God, really understand what we believe.

And then go tell as many people as you can.

As has been our custom before we go into the word, I'd like to first have a word of prayer, and I'd like to do that upon my knees.

And so if you'd like to, please feel free to join me in kneeling as well.

If you cannot kneel, just bow your heads reverently where you are, but if you can kneel, let's kneel together and let us pray as we ask God to prepare our hearts to receive the word.

Our loving Father, Lord, we're ever so grateful once again for the gift of life.

We thank you for bringing us safely through another week.

We thank you, dear God, for these opportunities to hear your voice.

And Lord, we pray that all of us here on earth shall remain silent before you as you speak.

Grant us wisdom that goes beyond our years.

And Father, I pray that while you bless others, please do not pass me by.

Give me a fresh revelation of your love, a fresh revelation of your power, as in the sanctuary, let the bread be fresh and hot on today.

And may we all feast upon thy words, and may it help us to become better children of God.

This is our prayer that we do ask with the forgiveness of our sins.

I think it's good to revisit the beginning of time to understand what God's plan was, And then we can look at where some things got broken, and then of course how God is going to bring it back.

Now again, we're not going to cover it all in 1 sermon.

You know, this is a subject that I'm thankful we can take some time with.

But we're going to cover some foundational, fundamental truths that will help us on this journey of really knowing how to arrive in the arms of Jesus and to be able to truly receive the salvation I know he wants to give to each and every 1 of us.

In Genesis chapter 1, the Bible lets us know something very, very clear, God's intention when he created man.

It was in Genesis 1, and we're going to consider verses 26 to 28.

Genesis, we're looking at chapter 1, I'll be reading from a King James version, and here's what it says.

In Genesis 1, we're starting at verse 26.

It says, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

And so God created man in his own image and the image of God created he him, male and female created he them, and God blessed them.

And God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it.

And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that creepeth or that moveth upon the earth.

When God created man, brought man into the world, God made us in his image and his likeness.

Now The Bible, obviously we're reading English, but of course the Bible was not written in that.

It was written in 3 languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

And in the Old Testament from here in Genesis, we're looking at the Hebrew if we were to look up the original words.

I thought it was good for us to look up this idea of image and likeness, right?

Because God said, this is how I made man.

I made man in my image, and I made man in my likeness.

And the reason we're going to talk about this is because I remember talking to some friends of mine who were ministers, and they were, we were all talking about being created in the image of God.

And as we were talking about it, I remember we got to this point of, I gave a story of many years ago, and I was in a church, and the ministers were teaching the young people about how they were created in the image of God.

And there were some challenges that I had in my mind and I shared it with my minister friends and we were all talking about it.

And today you're my minister friend, so we're gonna talk about it too.

And here's what the Bible says as it relates to this idea of image and likeness.

When we think about the term image, this is what the word comes up, and this is what really caught my attention when I was thinking about, we're created in the image of God.

It says that we have a resemblance, and more so a representative figure of God.

In other words, when God made man, we were to be a representation of who he is.

God's plan in making the world know who he was was not only gonna be through man, but especially through the family.

That's why when we started our year out, we talked a lot about the family.

We talked a lot about marriage, and we talked a lot about parenthood, because that was God's original plan.

The most clearest way to make himself known was through the tenderest ties that human hearts can know.

And that was none other than in the family structure and in the marriage.

Well, here it is that God is making it clear that when I created mankind, God says, I wanted you to be a representative figure of who I am.

When the people see you, they get to know me.

Now, understanding this, the word likeness was another word that I thought was powerful because it spoke to God saying, I want you to have the same mannerisms that I have.

The character qualities that I have is the character qualities I want you to have.

And the reason why this is very important is because as we continue in the Genesis story, Again, we have this first part where God says, let us make man in our image and our likeness.

02 The Plan of Salvation

And so as we get ready to go through this very important message, very deep, very solemn, I pray that as we go into prayer, don't worry about anybody else.

Don't worry about, Lord, are they hearing it?

Am I hearing what your spirit wants to say to me, part of your church today, and I trust that as long as we have ears to hear, God is gonna take us on higher ground and we'll climb another round above Jacob's ladder, ultimately arriving in the arms of Jesus.

And that's most certainly my prayer and I hope it's your prayer.

Let's go ahead and let's have a word of prayer as we prepare our hearts to receive the message.

Our Father in heaven, We recognize that we're living in a very serious time in Earth's history.

It seems like there's confusion all over the land.

But Lord, we realize that you have called us as your people to come together, that we might hear your wonderful words of life and that we will follow the Lamb whithersoever he goes.

And So Lord, we avail ourselves to you with heads bowed or upon our knees and we're asking you, please, Lord, forgive us of our sins.

Please, Father, we pray, grant us your spirit, awaken our hearts to our desperate need for thee.

And Lord, I ask that as we hear your voice, may we follow you as you lead.

Teach us now we pray, and may we gain a greater understanding of this beautiful plan of salvation.

It's our prayer that we ask in Jesus' name.

When we did our first session on this subject, we came to a summary point where we learned that though we have a sinful nature, complete victory over sin is possible through Jesus Christ.

We learned that in our last study, that Though we have a sinful nature, complete victory over sin is possible through Jesus Christ.

We learned that in our last study, that though we have a sinful nature, it does not mean that we have to live subject to it for the rest of our lives.

God has a plan to save us from the power even of this nature by doing something very simple.

It is by giving us something the Bible calls the divine natures.

1 of my favorite promises in 2 Peter 1 and verse 4, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these, the promises, you and I might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruptions that are in the world through lust.

God has a plan to deliver us completely from the power, the penalty, and the very presence of sin.

And all of this comes to that blessed plan of salvation.

But now what we want to do is we want to go a little bit deeper in that.

And I want to go ahead and take you to the book of Isaiah 59.

I want you to see something that this is the real issue in this story, in this drama.

In Isaiah the 59th chapter, the Bible indicates something that helps us understand what Adam and Eve had before they fell into sin.

You know, sometimes I heard a preacher say that Adam and Eve had face-to-face communion with God.

Adam and Eve had face-to-face communion with God.

And I thought to myself, what a beautiful thought, to be able to see God face-to-face and not be consumed.

Hebrews 12, 29 tells us that God is a consuming fire, but the only thing God consumes is sin.

So Adam and Eve, before sin, they had face-to-face communion with God.

They could see God and not be consumed because there was no sin yet.

But in Isaiah 59, I found the biblical evidence that yeah, they must have had face-to-face communion with God because the Bible says in Isaiah 59, and if you're there, please say amen.

It says in Isaiah 59 in verse 2, it says, but your iniquities have separated between you and your God and then it says, and your sins have hid his face from us, that he would not hear.

That indicates what we're having an issue with right now.

We want to see God face to face, but personally, I'm thankful that I can't.

Because until God uproots the very thing that caused the separation in the first place, we don't wanna see God face to face.

Because if we were to see him face to face, we would have to suffer the penalty of that, which is to be consumed.

Because sin cannot exist in the presence of a holy God.

And that's why All throughout the Bible, when you see God speaking to the people through a burning bush, or talking even through a donkey, let alone talking through men, servants, and maidservants.

Why is it that God is using all these mediums to talk to us?

Because it's not that he doesn't want the face to face, but it's in mercy that he knows that if I were to let them see my face right now, they would be consumed.

That's why every time I used to travel, even last week when I was over at Wildwood, And I was very privileged to be there 80 years of service in gospel medical missionary evangelism.

I mean, I praise God for that institute, and I pray God's blessings will continue to rest upon it.

When I arrived, I arrived Thursday night.

And in my mind, I was like, all right, Thursday night, 3 more days.

And when Friday came, I said, praise God, Friday, 2 more days.

And on Sabbath I said, praise God, 1 more day.

And some of you are like, what is he talking about?

Well, what you don't understand is you see on Sunday, early in the morning, I jumped on an airplane.

And when I jumped on that airplane, there was 1 thing that I was looking forward to more than anything else.

We are at a place in our relationship that I don't like being away from her, and she does not like being away from me.

We marvel at how if I leave to go on a 1 hour drive to go see 1 of the saints of God to minister, my wife will tell you it is no more than 5 to 10 minutes after I pull out of our driveway, she knows that her phone's gonna ring.

And I'm just gonna be like, hey, what are you doing?

And then she's going to be like, nothing.

And I'm just like, well, why are you doing nothing?

And I mean, in other words, we don't have anything to talk about, but we're making up stuff to talk about.

And sometimes we marvel at it, and I talk to her, I said, isn't it crazy?

I said, babe, it's been almost 25 years of marriage.

25 years of marriage, 2 years of courtship.

I said, I've known you longer than I've been alive.

And here it is all these years later, and I can't go even an hour without talking to you.

And we were just talking about how much we love 1 another and what I'm trying to impress upon us is we actually think that God is satisfied with prayer.

God says, look, I look forward to the day that I can get rid of prayer and now I can talk to my bride face to face.

There's a reason why that hymn, when it talks about the sweet hour of prayer, towards the very last stanza, it says, there a time shall come where we will say farewell farewell sweet hour of prayer why because now we are face to face God loves to commune with his bride.

This is what every marriage is supposed to be.

This is what God designed, and if your marriage is not there, that's all right.

God knows how to take things that are broken and fix it.

God is the master of taking a mess and turning it into something very beautiful.

And the Bible lets us know that God says, I want the face-to-face communion with my people.

You see, the plan of salvation, God bringing us to a place of victory over sin.

The reason why it's so necessary is because that's how God has a reunion with his bride.

This is how that hymn, face to face shall I behold him, that's how that hymn comes to pass.

And so it is that God said I must put together a plan.

I have to put together a plan that is designed to bring about the end results that he desires.

I pray that you never ever entertain the idea that there are sins in your life that are so powerful that God is too weak to give you victory over it.

I pray that you would never entertain such a thought.

For to entertain such a thought is to say that we will never have communion face to face with him again.

That's the only reason why we have prayer.

That's the only reason why I'm talking to you versus Jesus standing here talking to you himself.

03 The Plan of Salvation

And so I'm very grateful for this opportunity for us to once again press together and study together and go through the word of God and to learn some beautiful things from his word.

The Lord has impressed upon my heart some time ago that the need to study God's plan of salvation and how he actually goes about saving us.

The Lord has really impressed this on my heart because I've had the privilege of talking with individuals who are pastors, elders, evangelists, missionaries, medical missionaries, and the list goes on.

And I can't say to my surprise, but Nevertheless, I have seen that there are people who are even advanced in the gospel, in the work of the gospel, that still do not really understand what must they do to be saved.

And of course, we say, well, you're a pastor.

Nicodemus was a great teacher in Israel, but he did not understand the plan of salvation.

And if that can happen to Nicodemus, I think that can happen to any of us.

And so obviously, I do my own heart searching.

And as I search my own heart and as I consider the conversations and counsels that I have with others, there is no question in my mind that this is a subject that needs to be agitated.

This is something that we as God's people need to make sure we're clear on.

And that by his grace, we can receive what he came to give.

And so as we prepare our hearts to go through this study, Part 1, we talked about our condition, the reality of the fall of man, and the fact that because of our fallen nature, we have a natural tendency to do that which is against God.

But Through the plan of redemption, we saw how God can help us overcome even the clamors of our carnal, sinful nature and how God can give us victory.

In our second session, we talked about what God wants to deliver us from in the plan of redemption, which is sin, but not just the external acts of sin, but also the sins of the heart, especially the foundational sin of the heart, which was pride.

Today, we're gonna be talking about 1 of the key ways that God establishes his principles of salvation in the heart of men and women just like you and me.

And that's what we're gonna talk about today.

So as we prepare our hearts to receive the word, I'm gonna once again go to my knees for a word of prayer.

I'd like to invite you to join me in that if you're able to, and if you're not able to kneel, just bow your heads where you are, but let us all pray as we ask God to prepare our hearts to receive the word.

Our loving Father, We thank you, Lord, so much for this opportunity.

And Lord, we thank you just for this time on this, your Holy Sabbath day of rest, that we can hear you speak to us as we on earth remain silent before thee.

Lord, we pray, please forgive us of our sins.

We ask you to block out anything that would prohibit us from hearing your words.

And we pray that you would make your words so plain to our hearts that we will know that God has come down to commune with the people here at Open Door.

And Lord, I pray this not just for us, but for all the congregations throughout this world that have chosen to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

May you anoint your ministers, anoint each and every 1 of us, and grant us that which we need most, a beautiful revelation of Jesus Christ.

Lord, we ask all of these things in Jesus' name.

There's a very important question that I think all of us would do well to consider.

And what exactly is it that he wants us to know about him?

And the thing that I love about God is that while he lets us know the things that he wants us to do.

And there's a statement that God says in the book of Jeremiah.

It is in Jeremiah 9, and I'm gonna ask you to turn your Bibles there, that God makes it clear what he wants his people especially to know about him.

That we may appreciate as well as follow his counsels.

We're going to chapter 9 and we're considering verses 23 and 24.

Now when you get there, just let me know by saying amen.

I want to make sure that we're all there, and that we can review these words together as the Lord speaks to our heart.

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Series

The Plan of Salvation

05 God’s Part Our Part

Transcript

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