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Would you like to find salvation and peace with God? If we are thinking about God and His plan for our salvation, it is important to look at His book – the Bible.

When the Bible talks about salvation it touches on two main areas.

1. Being rescued from the penalties of sin.

2. Being brought in to right relationship with God.

In the Bible we see that when Jesus came and died on the cross, He came to pay the price for our sin. He took the punishment that was rightfully ours.

Jesus’ death opened the way for us to be forgiven of our sin and to be brought back into a right relationship with God. In a future tense it means that those those who put their faith and trust in Jesus will spend eternity with God.

The Bible tells us that salvation is found in Jesus Christ and He is the way to the Father in heaven.

Acts 4:12, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

John 14:6 says, “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”.

Each of us must respond personally to God’s plan for our salvation. God played His part by giving His Son to die on the cross for us to pay the price for our sin. Our part is to receive what Jesus has done for us. God requires us to do three things to find salvation.

They can be described as the A, B, C of salvation –

A – Admit and Ask

We need to admit to God that we have sinned and fallen short of His standards and to ask for His forgiveness.

The Bible says…

Romans 3:23-24 – For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

1 John 1:9-10 – If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.

When we admit to God that we have sinned and not fully followed Him or His ways, it is like a huge weight is lifted from our shoulders. We can know that we are right with God and our sins are forgiven.

B – Believe and Become

We need to believe in Jesus Christ, that He is the Son of God and that He died on the cross for our sin.

The Bible says…

John 3:16 – For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 1:12 – Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

When we believe in Jesus and what He has done for us, we become God’s children and have the promise of eternal life with Him. We can know in this life that our eternal destiny is sorted out by God. God promises us this in the Bible.

C – Call and Confess.

We need to call on Jesus to save us and we need to confess Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour.

The Bible says…

Romans 10:13 – Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Romans 10:9-10 – That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

The final step in the ABC of salvation is to call and confess. We call out to Jesus to save us and we confess Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. This means we are trusting Jesus to save us from our sin (our Saviour) and we are asking Him to be our King and ruler of our life (our Lord).

Prayer to find salvation

Responding to God is as simple as praying a short prayer that expresses our thanks for what He has done, confessing your sin and asking Jesus to be our Lord and Saviour. You can pray this prayer right now.

Heavenly Father, I thank You that Jesus came and died on the cross for my sin. Right now I ask for Your forgiveness for all of the wrong things I have done in my life. Jesus, I believe You are the Son of God, that You died on the cross for my sin and that God raised you from the dead. Right now I surrender my life to You and I ask you to be my Lord and Saviour. Please guide me and lead me in all I do. Help me to live for Your Kingdom by the power of Your Holy Spirit. Amen.

Bible readings: Ephesians 2:4-10, John 3:14-21

Over the years I have had a lot of conversations with people about faith, life and God. Some have been with people who follow Jesus with all their hearts and I have been inspired by their faith and stories. They have uplifted me. Others have been with people who had a vague belief that maybe there is a God out there somewhere, but He is far off and distant or He is a harsh judge with a big stick waiting for us to mess up.

As I have reflected on these conversations and our Bible readings from today I have come up with three thoughts that I want to share.

1. We are truly saved by Grace

In our first reading from Ephesians chapter 2 we see that we are saved by grace through faith. This means we are saved by God’s mercy because of our faith in Jesus.

In our natural state our sin separated us from God. Paul tells us that we used to follow the ways of the world and lived to gratify the desires of the flesh. But God in His great mercy came up with a way for us to be right with Himself. Jesus paid the price for our sin by dying on the cross for us. God graciously provided a way for us to have our sin forgiven in Christ and come in to right relationship with Him.

As our reading says, “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it” (Ephesians 2:8-9 NLT). In His love the Father tells us we are saved by grace and we are welcome home.

2. We need to believe in Jesus as our Saviour

In our second reading we see that God says we have eternal life if we believe in Jesus. God did His part by sending His Son Jesus to die on the cross for us. Our part is to believe in Him, and trust Him as Lord and Saviour.

In John 3:16 the Bible says, “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” Faith and trust in Jesus Christ means eternal life.

Many people think this is too simple – just believe in Jesus. They think they need to work for their salvation, follow strict rules or do some sort of penance. But believe me, purchasing our salvation was not simple for Jesus. He gave up everything. He was whipped and beaten. Mocked by those who watched on. He even gave up His own life. We just have to believe in Him and what He has done for us. The Bible tells us that this faith and belief brings eternal life.

3. Jesus came to save us, not judge us harshly

Another point from our second reading is Jesus came in to the world to save us, not judge us (John 3:17-18). To those who think God is a harsh God, who lives at a distance and judges us harshly, just need to look to Jesus. They need look afresh and see what He has done for us.

Jesus is God in person. Immanuel, God with us. In His love He died, so we can live. If God wanted our lives to be judged harshly, He could have done nothing and waited until the end of time to judge us all. But instead Jesus came to rescue us. God intervened in our situation. Luke 19:10 reminds us why Jesus came when it says, “For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.”

Jesus could not stand the thought of us not spending eternity with Him, so He left the glories of heaven to meet us where we are at. He did not come to hit us with a big stick, but to wrap His arms around us in love.

Closing reflection

The great message of the Bible is God’s incredible love for us and His desire to be in relationships with us all. He moved heaven and earth to make this happen.

Jesus came to earth, lived to show us what God is like, then stretched His arms out and was nailed on that cross. The nails pierced His hands and feet, but His love held Him there. Church, God’s grace can be summed up in the letters of the word G.R.A.C.E. – God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus.

Let us pray.

The title of my message today is “WDJDWI – What did Jesus do when interrupted”.

I am often asked why I always have a title for my sermon. I guess there are two reasons. One is to give you an idea of what I am talking about. Second it helps me to keep on track when writing.

A few years ago I heard a story that I was reminded about this week.

A Bible college submitted sermon to his preaching professor for grading, and when he met to speak with his professor about his sermon, the professor started out very positively. He said to the young man, “I like your exegesis. You have presented the meaning of the text in a helpful and clear fashion. Your three points make sense, they show balance and progression. Your introduction and your conclusion both show a great deal of thought. The illustrations you used seemed most appropriate. However, I am going to give you a D on the sermon.” The student was taken aback and said, “Why a D if it’s all that good?” The professor said, “Well, frankly, it’s because of your sermon title. It is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Nobody will want to come to hear a sermon entitled: ‘The Pericopes of Jesus in Relationship to the Eschatology of the Apostle Paul.’ I tell you what I’ll do. You see if you can come up with a better sermon title and I’ll reconsider the grade. What you want is a title that will reach out and grab people by the heart, a title that will compel them to come and hear what you have to say. Imagine that title out on the sign in front of a church with such impact that if a bus stopped in front of the church and the people on the bus saw the sign, it would be so powerful it would motivate them to immediately get off the bus and run into the church.” The young man said he would give it his best shot. So he went home and he wrestled with this task all night long, sweating bullets. The next morning he showed up at his professor’s office and handed him his new sermon title, which read: “Your Bus Has a Bomb on It, the only safe place is in the church!”

I am not sure he understood or if the professor changed his grade. But it would get you attention!

Back to the sermon: All of us know what it is to be interrupted. We have all had time where we were ready to undertake a task and the phone rings. We are all set up to do something and there is a knock at the door. We are on our way out somewhere and someone pulls in the driveway behind you and they want to talk. We stop what we are doing and talk to the person. Sometimes this can be frustrating and annoying, but we do it anyway.

Today I want to look at two passages from the Bible where Jesus was interrupted and how He responded. What the need was, what He did and the result. We have all heard that saying WWJD – What would Jesus do? Today I want to WDJDWI – what did Jesus do when interrupted!

Interruption 1 – The lady who was bleeding

The first passage I want to look at is Mark 5:21-34.

In this passage Jesus has just arrived at the shore with the disciples. He had just healed the demon possessed man at the cemetery and they headed back across the lake. There were large crowds of people there and one man wanted Jesus to go with him. He was the leader of the synagogue and his daughter was dying. Jesus sets off with the man. I can’t imagine too many more distressing things for a father than a sick and dying child. So, this was very important to Jesus.

On the way we see a lady who had been sick for many years touched Jesus. The precise nature of the woman’s ailment is not stated. Bible scholars tell us that it is probably some sort of uterine disease caused the bleeding that had persisted for twelve years. Mark tells us that she had suffered much, had been treated by many doctors, and had spent all she had. But her condition had gotten worse.

The woman’s hearing about Jesus’ healings and her belief that he could help her led her to come to him. She reached out to Jesus in faith hoping a touch of Him would heal her. Bible scholars tell us that a woman who is bleeding from her monthly cycle is considered unclean and cannot take part in religious duties. If she touched someone she would have made them unclean for ceremonial purposes. This is why we think she did not approach Jesus directly and ask for healing, so she didn’t make Him unclean from a strict religious perspective.

Now in the story we see that Jesus stopped and turned to the crowd. He asked who touched Him. The disciples thought it was a silly question because the crowd was all around Him. But Jesus knew someone had touched Him in faith and power had left Him. In verse 33 it says, “Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of Him and told Him what she had done.” Remember she was unclean because of her condition and would have made Jesus unclean too. In verse 34 we see that rather than telling the lady off for touching Him, Jesus told her that faith had made her well. Jesus told her to go in peace.

We see WDJDWI in action. He stopped His vitally important mission of healing the sick daughter to engage to lady who touched Him. Because He did we have it recorded in the Bible today. If He just went on His way we would not have His example.

As we see from the remainder of the story, the sick daughter died. But Jesus still went to see her and raised her to life. It was a bigger miracle than just a healing, Jesus brought her back to life. By Jesus stopping and taking the time to speak with the lady, the miracle became bigger and God received more glory.

WDJDWI – He took time for the healed lady and raised the daughter to life.

Interruption 2 – Healing and feeding the crowds

The next passage I want to look at is Matthew 14:13-22

Immediately before this passage, Jesus had heard the news that His beloved cousin John had been killed at the whim of Herod’s step daughter and her mother. She wanted his head on a platter because John had called out their immoral lifestyle.

Jesus wanted to mourn the loss of John, so He and the disciples went away in the boat to a lonely place to find space. But as they often did, the crowds found Him. You could forgive Jesus for sending the crowds away to take time for Himself. But we see in verse 14, “Jesus saw the huge crowd as He stepped from the boat, and He had compassion on them and healed their sick.”

Not only did Jesus heal all their sick, later that evening He fed them all. This is the famous story we see that Jesus took the five loaves of bread and two fish and turned them in to a massive banquet for thousands of people with 12 baskets of leftovers!

We see in the last verse of the passage Jesus did eventually send the people away. But in the meantime, He allowed Himself to be interrupted.

WDJDWI – He healed the sick and fed the multitudes.

Reflections on these passages

When we go through the gospels, we see that Jesus never discarded any of the interruptions that came along His way. He always made the best use of those interruptions. In fact, some of the greatest miracles that Jesus had performed were through interruptions He had while doing something else!

Today we looked at two examples of Jesus being interrupted and how He responded. There are many more…

When speaking to a crowd in Luke 5:17-19, Jesus healed a lame man brought to Him in the middle of His message.

When asleep in the boat in Luke 8:22-24, a storm threatens, and He calms the storm and calms the terrified disciples.

When travelling to Jericho in Mark 10:46-52, Jesus healed a blind man who cried out to Him from the edge of the road.

When talking with his disciples in Luke 12:11-21, someone comes to ask about an inheritance and He tells the parable of the rich fool.

When praying in a solitary place in Mark 1:35-39, the disciples find Him.

When celebrating at the wedding in Cana in John 2:1-12, he was celebrating a wedding and He had to turn warn in to wine.

Never once is Jesus ‘thrown’ by these interruptions. He doesn’t even lose His temper. But He uses each occasion as a golden opportunity for some priceless teaching or wonderful miracle.

For us today as Christians, God sends certain interruptions into our lives to catch our attention. He knows that we have schedules to keep and work to do, but He wants us to look to Him. He wants our attention on things that are more important to Him at that present moment. Let’s pray and ask Him for the wisdom to discern what He may be trying to say through interruptions.

We never know how a listening ear, a helping hand, or a kind encouraging word can do in someone’s life. Maybe if we take the time to stop, God may perform and amazing miracle through us.

Closing thought

So WDJDWI – He showed compassion, helped and healed people. It didn’t matter if He had something pressing to do, if He was travelling, if He was mourning, if He was at a party, if He was resting. He allowed Himself to be interrupted.

When we are interrupted we should follow Jesus’ example and be there for people too.

Amen.