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The Power Behind Religious Words

06/15/2008 - Salvation, Selected Scripture

"What must I do to be saved?" That was the question that a prison guard asked the apostle Paul when he and his buddy, Silas, were locked up in a jail cell in the town of Philippi in northern Greece. They had been stripped, beaten, flogged, and thrown into prison because of the message of Jesus.

But that didn't stop them from praying and singing hymns to God until midnight when an earthquake rocked the foundations of that prison so violently that the doors flew open and everyone's chains fell off. The guard, who thought everyone had escaped, was about to kill himself when Paul shouted, "Stop! Put the knife down! We're all here!"

And that's when he said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" And Paul's reply in Acts 16:31 was, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved - you and your household."

That same question was on my mind when I was about seven years old and was attending a Good News Club in the back yard of a neighbor's home. It was the last day of the club and the guy who was leading it asked if any of us wanted to be saved. And I can remember putting my hand up and saying, "Yes. I do."

And so he took a few of us aside and told us that God loves us and sent his Son Jesus to die for us. But Jesus didn't stay dead, he said, he rose again three days later and if we believed in him we would be saved and on our way to heaven when we died. That sounded like a pretty good deal to me and so he led us in a brief prayer to accept Christ as our Savior. And to this day I look back on that day as the moment of my salvation.

But for a long time I thought that was the end of my salvation. I thought it was all about getting saved from hell and going to heaven when I died. Salvation seemed to be more important to my life after death than to my life now. But over the years I've come to realize that that was only the beginning of my salvation. God has a lot of other things that he wants to save me from. He wants to rescue me from the anything and everything that would rival my worship of him. He wants to save from the things that can make my life hell right now. And that's a day by day process.

And so he's saving me today and wants to save me tomorrow and keep saving me the rest of my life. And besides that he has a whole world that he wants to save as well, a creation that he's out to restore and reclaim, and he wants you and me to join him in that rescue mission. Salvation is not just something to look forward to after we die as wonderful as that is. Salvation is very much about the here and now. Jesus came to give us life before death as well as life after death.

This morning we continue our series called The Power Behind Religious Words with a look at the word "salvation." Last week we looked at the word "gospel." The gospel, Paul said, is the power of God for salvation to all who believe. Salvation comes from believing the gospel. The word gospel means "good news." And the "good news" that Jesus wants us to believe is that the kingdom of God is near and we're all invited to be a part of it by putting our faith in King Jesus who loves us, who died on the cross for our sins, and rose again from the dead. He, not Caesar, is the true Lord of this world. And once we believe in him and are in his kingdom our number one allegiance is to be to the King and to making the gospel of his kingdom known throughout the whole world by our words and by our actions. That's the good news of the gospel. That's the mission that God invites all of us to give our lives too. That's the mission of Valley View Community Church.

And whether we buy in or not we need to know that the stakes are high. Just like there are wonderful consequences for believing and obeying the gospel, so there are dreadful consequences for opposing the gospel. The apostle Paul talks about them in 2 Thessalonians 1.

Look at what Paul says to this church in verses 3-10, We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing. ⁴Therefore, among God's churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. ⁵All this is evidence that God's judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which your are suffering. ⁶God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you ⁷and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels.⁸He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. ⁹They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might ¹⁰on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you have believed our testimony.

That's sobering stuff. Apparently, these Christ followers living in Thessalonica, another city in northern Greece, were experiencing some real opposition and persecution for their faith. It wasn't easy to be a Christ follower there as it still isn't today in many places in our world. And they needed to know that they could trust God to be just. His judgment is right. They didn't need to fight back. They could keep loving their enemies knowing that God would pay back those who were troubling them and who opposed the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The stakes are high when it comes to embracing the gospel.

That's why when we think of the word "salvation" we often think of being saved from everlasting destruction. And thank God we will be through faith in Jesus Christ. That's God's grace to all those who believe. We've got a bright future ahead of us because our salvation will one day deliver us from all evil.

But God's salvation doesn't start then, it starts right now in our lives. It's at work in us today through God's Spirit to transform us and make us into new creations to give the world a glimpse of what God will one day do for his entire creation. He will save it all.

So let's take a look at this concept of salvation in the Scriptures. Like the word "gospel" it's bigger than I ever thought. The word salvation itself means "to rescue, to deliver, to liberate." In the

Hebrew Scriptures, salvation was all about the here and now. It wasn't about salvation from hell at all. It was about God rescuing his people from sickness and trouble and distress and fear. It was about God delivering them from their enemies and from war and violence, disease and death.

The very first appearance of the word "salvation" is found in Exodus 15:2, The Lord is my strength and my defense, he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him.

That's from the song of Moses and his sister, Miriam, celebrating the Exodus and how God saved his people from slavery in Egypt by bringing them safely across the Red Sea. The Lord is my strength and my defense, he has become my salvation.

King David uses the word "salvation" a lot. He's always giving God the credit for saving his life from something or someone. One example is found in 2 Samuel 22:3, My God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation. He is my stronghold, my refuge and my savior - from violent people you save me.

David sang these words after the Lord rescued him from King Saul who was trying to kill him. God is my shield and the horn of my salvation, he says. The horns of an animal are used to protect and defend itself. They were an ancient symbol of strength. And so David is saying that God is the strength of my salvation. He's the one who protects and defends me.

The word "salvation" is found all the over the Psalms. One of my favorites is Psalm 27:1, The Lord is my light and my salvation - whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life - of whom shall I be afraid?

I love that Psalm because I'm so prone to be afraid, so susceptible to fear. But the Lord doesn't want us to live our lives in fear. That's one of those things that God wants to save us from right now.

So salvation in the Old Testament meant God's deliverance from trouble, not after we die, but before we die, deliverance from all the enemies we face in our journey through life right here and right now. And God is still saving us that way. And whenever he delivers us and whatever he delivers us from, he wants us to sing his praises too. Salvation comes from the Lord. The Lord is my light and my salvation. He is our deliverer. That's why we worship him today and everyday.

This understanding of salvation continues right into the New Testament. Turn to Luke 1. In Luke 1, John the Baptist is born. And his father, a Jewish priest named Zechariah, is so excited that he breaks out in song. And look at what he sings about in verse 68, "Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them. ⁶⁹He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David ⁷⁰(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), ⁷¹salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us—⁷²to show mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant, ⁷³the oath he swore to our father Abraham: ⁷⁴to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear ⁷⁵in holiness and righteousness before him all our days."

When John the Baptist is born his dad is so pumped that he sings a song of salvation. And the salvation that he has in mind is God's deliverance from the Romans, the enemies of Israel. He's asking God to remember his promise to Abraham that God would bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you. And at that time the Romans were the ones cursing Israel. And so he can't wait for God to save his people from the hand of their latest enemy.

But God wants to do much more than that. His salvation is going to be much greater than political liberation. Look at how the angel announces Jesus' birth to Joseph in Matthew 1:20-21, But after he (Joseph) had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."

The name Jesus means "salvation." It's the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua. "God saves" is literally what the name Jesus means. But do you see the shift here? God is going to save his people from their sins, not from the oppression of the Romans or any other political enemy. For the first time in Israel's history, God is promising a liberation that would go way beyond political oppression and religious persecution as important as that is. He was going to save his people from their sins.

The Pharisee's, who were the religious leaders of the day, thought they knew how Messiah was going to do that. He would save his people from their sins, by getting rid of the sinners. And in their mind they had the sinners pegged into neat little categories. There were the prostitutes and the tax collectors and the drunks and the gluttons. They were the sinners who were keeping God from saving Israel from her enemies. "It's all their fault that we're oppressed. It's all their fault that we're not being saved. If we can just get rid of the sinners then God will get rid of Rome and we will be free at last!"

But what does Jesus do? He hangs out with the sinners. He loves them and eats with them and drinks with them and laughs with them and forgives them. He calls them to follow him. He builds the foundation of his kingdom with sinners. Unheard of! And in the process he's accused of being one of them.

"There's no way this guy can be the Messiah," the Pharisees say. "If anything, he's an anti-Messiah," which is why they wanted to kill him. The salvation that Jesus came to bring goes beyond deliverance from political oppression and religious persecution which is what the people of his day were focused on. But it also goes beyond salvation from hell after we die which is what many Christians are focused on today.

The salvation that Jesus talked most about was being rescued from the hell we can make of our lives right here and right now. He came to save us from our sins and to set us free to get on board with his mission of the kingdom. Salvation he said in the Sermon on the Mount doesn't mean slitting the throats of the Romans and grasping their power. Salvation means being liberated from the cycle of violence and the need to be in power.

"Even as an oppressed people," Jesus said, "you can be a blessing. Instead of stabbing a Roman soldier in the back offer to carry his back pack for him. In fact, carry it two miles when he demands you carry it one. Instead of cursing him for spitting on you, pray for him."

"I'm here," Jesus said, "to save you from the whole system of insult and violence and revenge - not by giving you political victory over your enemies or by telling you to give up on this life and just focus on the next - but by giving you permission to start right here participating in God's mission which is to be a blessing to this world. The opportunity to live this new and better kind of life is available to you right now. The kingdom of God is at hand. Follow me!"

That's a big part of the salvation that Jesus came to bring us. What must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. That's true, even for a seven year old. But that's only the beginning, not the end of our salvation. Everyday Jesus wants to save us from the things that keep us from living all out for his kingdom dream.

He wants to save us from greed, so he tells us to be generous. He wants to save us from hatred and prejudice and racism, so he commands us to be reconciled to one another. He wants to save us from anger and bitterness, so he instructs us to forgive. He wants to save us from lust, so he talks about sexual self-control. He wants to save us from pride and a self-absorbed life so he shows us what it means to wash feet and serve one another. He wants to save us from worry, so he tells us to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and don't sweat the small stuff. He wants to save us from working ourselves to death, so he says take a rest every week.

And as we follow Jesus in those ways we discover the abundant life that he came to give us. And we also discover our place in God's bigger story of salvation and what he is doing to rescue and heal and save a broken world, what we call around here the mission of Christ.

Our salvation is personal. I can't be saved for you and you can't be saved for me. But it was never meant to be private. God's work of salvation is not just about God saving souls from hell and taking them to heaven someday. God's work of salvation is about God rescuing whole people like you and me right now and then working through us to help rescue this world.

Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker. When we're saved we become part of a movement that's as deep and wide and big as the universe itself. Rocks and trees and birds and swamps and ecosystems, God is out to restore it all and he wants us to be a part of it.

We're in the midst of baseball season right now. My son, Jordan, is playing in a lot of tournaments. This weekend we were out in Lancaster. And from time to time we need to buy him a new baseball bat. And when we give him the bat we don't say, "Hey Jordan, here's a bat for you to play with all by yourself. Keep it in your room and take it outside and swing it around any time you want." No. Baseball bats are not meant to be played with all by themselves. We give him the baseball bat so that he can get in the game and be part of a team and use it with other people.

And so it is with salvation. Our salvation was given to us to get us into the game and be part of a team and get on board with what God is doing to rescue this world. Our salvation can only do what it was meant to do when those of us who have been saved, and are being saved, and will one day be fully saved realize that they we're saved not only as souls going to heaven but as whole people living on earth right now and not for ourselves only but for what God longs to do in and through us to make a difference in this world.

I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.

FOR MORE INFORMATION about Valley View Community Church, feel free to contact us at info@valleyviewseek.org or call 610.631.2707.