Is Your Heart Strangely Warm? ...

Ephesians 2: 1-10

Salvation Offered (Ephesians 2: 1-5)

Salvation Accepted (Ephesians 2: 6-7)

III. Salvation Maintained (Ephesians 2: 8-9)

“There was a man named Thomas Johnson. During a week of meetings at his corps in St. Joseph, MO, he was the center of attention, laughing, smiling, joking, never a serious moment. After the final meeting given by the speaker, Major David Thomas, he gripped the hand of the Major and said “Powerful Message, Major. I hope you don’t think badly of me for jokin’ around so much during the week. I was 30 before I met the Lord. It was such a wonderful experience in my life that I’ve been wanting to laugh and holler ever since.”
Thomas Johnson understands the difference Christianity makes in his life.” ¹ This morning, I ask each of you; Do you understand? We have people today who turn up there noses if someone says ‘Amen,’ or stands and either claps or raises their hands to heaven during a song. We have people who are offended if someone goes into a church in less than a full suit. We have criteria which we ‘think’ is important and necessary for someone to be a Christian. The sad truth is, we have more of these than we do Thomas Johnson’s. He understood. He was not a scholar, so he used words such as ‘got saved, asked the Lord into their hearts, found the Lord,’ instead of ‘justification, regeneration, adoption,’ but he understood. He understood what a man named Wesley was talking about when he said that his own heart was ‘strangely warmed.’ He understood the joy and freedom of salvation; the joy of being changed form the inside out. (Pause)

This point Paul stresses in our text today. Salvation is offered, and furthermore it is offered to all. In many ways today, Christians have become a ‘click.’ Society does not want to be reminded that we are all sinners (Rom. 3:23). In fact, many today appear to believe that ‘sin went out with the Puritans.’ . Karl Menninger wrote a book in 1973, “Whatever Became of Sin?” In it Menninger says, “The popular leaning is away from notions of guilt and morality . . . Disease and treatment have been the watchwords of the day and little is said about selfishness or guilt or the ‘morality gap.’ And certainly no one talks about sin!” ². Today we often see sin ‘all around us’ and we criticize this kid, this parent, this person, but we never look at ourselves. Wesley was a great preacher/evangelist, but he never reached that point until he had been embarrassed in Georgia, criticized in England, and finally opened his heart to the Lord’s will. Like Wesley, like myself, like everyone here and everyone outside the church, we are given the offer of salvation. Yet we have to accept it. (Pause)

Once we have accepted salvation, something wonderful happens. We are given a new zeal for the faith. As Wesley said, our heart is strangely warmed, then he began one of the largest revivals in England and the New World. (Pause) It is interesting today how times have changed. At that time Wesley spoke of the urgency for repentance and conversion. Today, we have taken the term repentance and made it almost undistinguishable from confession. If Wesley was here today, he would probably say that a confession is what he made the first time. Repentance is what happened when he truly let God into his heart. The difference is just that. Confession is saying “Yes I did something.” Repentance is knowing that “I did something and I am now doing something about it.” It is this that God requires. It is much like learning to float. “Our instructors told us to relax and the water would support us. We all know this to be true because we’ve seen countless people and objects floating comfortably in the water. Before we learn to swim its hard to trust the water. So we fight against it. We try to flail ourselves afloat instead of trusting the natural buoyancy. We also stay close to the edge of the pool so we can reach it if we need to. We never learn to swim until we move from the security of the wall and put our confidence in the water’s ability to make us float” ³ . (Pause) In the church today, we have many who just can’t let go of the wall. Some have never let go, others have just found that it is simpler to hold the wall and never change. But that is not what God wanted. To trust God for our salvation means that we must believe that He loves us as much as He says He does and be willing to leap from the wall with pure faith. It is when we do this, that we have truly received our salvation. Like the other thief on the cross, we have to be willing to trust Christ and die with him, to be saved thru him.

With this, we have one more topic which must be discussed. How do we maintain salvation? Is it possible to lose, no. Is it possible to turn away from it and leave it behind, yes. We were given free will. A book called Exploring Our Christian Faith, discusses this topic. For many, the first awareness of God’s ‘converting grace’ surfaces in the form of conviction. That is the dawning awareness that life in sin is not good. Conviction is always painted in a negative light. Partly because of what goes on in courtrooms. Criminals are ‘convicted’ of their crimes and sentenced to pay for those crimes. For these reasons and many others, many people want to avoid settings in which they might experience conviction. God’s conviction is positive. It is a warning light that flashes. Warning us that something is wrong and disaster lies ahead if the problem is not fixed. [Pause] Everyone doesn’t experience conviction the same way. For some it is intense tightening. Others barely feel its presence. The lengths of conviction also vary. However conviction will end when conversion takes place” ⁴. (Pause) In our lives, we will find that ‘life does not get rosy when we are saved.’ As a matter of fact, when life is always easy, I wonder what is wrong. Satan only attacks when we are being strong in our faith. It is then that we become tempted that hardest. It is then that sin becomes the most destructive in our lives. It is when this temptation comes, that we will feel conviction, and thru the grace of God overcome it. We must continually remember the words of verse 10, “we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” We must continue to grow, we must continue to serve, we must be obedient.

A colleague once said this about salvation:

“Three things lay at the heart of Christian salvation and its assurance. First we must come to the realization that we are sinners. In so doing we must turn toward God and change our relationship with Him. Second we must accept the gift of grace God has offered through, Jesus Christ His Son who died on the cross for our sins. Third there must be a change in our life that is visible as a witness that we have indeed become new creations. That witness is a continued state of obedience” ⁵. It is with these words of Andy Almendarez that I leave you with this week. And I also leave you with this thought: “Has my heart been strangely warmed?” If so, “Is the flame still burning bright or am I but a smoldering coal?”

Lincoln, Andrew T. Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 42: Ephesians. 1998: Word Books, Publisher.

Wesley, Rev. John. Sermon I. SALVATION BY FAITH. (Preached at St. Mary’s, Oxford, June 18, 1738). THE SAGE DIGITAL LIBRARY COLLECTED WORKS. THE WORKS OF JOHN WESLEY, VOLUME . THE LIFE OF JOHN WESLEY FIRST SERIES OF SERMONS (1-39). 1996: SAGE Software Albany, OR USA Version 1.1.