God Is Salvation

 Last Sunday’s sermon was preached by Pastor Harry on “God Is Salvation” (Romans 5:8-11 and Romans 1:18-20). The sermon and the whole service can be watched on our WIC YouTube Channel:

God is salvation! “The Lord is my light and my salvation – so why should I be afraid?” What wonderful words from Psalm 27, our opening verse! God saves people! He saves those who are lost! He saves those who are in despair! He saves those who are seeking the truth, by showing them the truth! Because He is the truth! What a mighty God we serve!

Above all, He saves us from our sins. That doesn’t mean we never sin again. But it does mean we can be safe with God in heaven when we die, instead of being punished for those sins, because God cancels our sins. And it means we can feel saved today – here and now – while we are still alive! Most people in the world don’t have that assurance that they are already saved now. They worry about whether God will forgive them their sins after death – but they can have the certainty of forgiveness this very minute; and as Christians, I hope we all have it. If not, why not?!

So we see that God can save us in the future; and He can save us in the present. But do you know why He can do that? It’s because He already saved us in the past! He loved us so much that He came as a man – Jesus Christ – to die for us while we were still sinners. 2,000 years ago! We weren’t even born! When you and I were born, Jesus had already cancelled our sins, by dying for us all! He had already forgiven us, and put us right with God! And all those years, when we were growing up, we hadn’t even been aware of it! Since birth, we have had a royal place at God’s everlasting banquet in heaven! It’s all been done – not by us, but by God, in His role as the Saviour, Jesus Christ.

It is so important for us to know all this – because if we don’t understand it, we’ll reject Jesus; and then we’ll say “no” to our own salvation – and will die, condemned by God. Do you want to die forever? Then just keep rejecting Jesus. You cannot be saved and live, unless Jesus becomes your whole heart and soul, your whole life. “Not I, but Jesus in me”. That is the way to God.

So, as Brother Kevin said last week in his wonderful message: we’ve all been lifted up to a higher plane. Everybody in the world is now privileged, because of what Jesus Christ did for each of us. We’re all in Christ’s top class: murderers, prostitutes, tax collectors, good guys and bad guys – everybody. The important question is: are we going to graduate from that class? To illustrate this a bit better, let me tell you a story. It’s called: “The Salvation Factory”.

The Salvation Factory

There was a man called God; and he owned a factory. It was a salvation factory; and all the people who worked there were working to produce salvation. The factory was run by God’s son, Jesus; he was the manager. But actually, Jesus the manager already gave the employees salvation when they started to work there! He wanted to help them. He gave it them in advance, just like when an employer pays you in advance, and you have to work it off. Jesus told them: “See, you’re automatically already saved! You don’t have to slave away in this factory, doing thousands of good works to earn your salvation. You’ve already got it! All you need do is make sure of it, by putting Isaiah chapter 45 verse 22 into practice while you work”. And Jesus placed signs in various places in the factory, saying “Isaiah 45:22”. If the employees looked it up, it said: “Look to Me and be saved”. Simple. All they had to do was look towards their boss as much as possible, to make their salvation sure.

There were quite a few employees who obeyed that simple rule. They were happy and peaceful; they felt close to their boss; and their work wasn’t at all strenuous. They were so happy to work there. But unfortunately, most of the employees didn’t keep to the rule. Some even thought it was too simple, too trivial. They kept saying: “We’ve gotta work real hard, otherwise we won’t produce anything”.
Then there were others who kept looking at God the owner, instead of Jesus the manager – they felt great confusion in their heads, and tried to obey really complicated rules. And still other employees didn’t even know who was in charge of the factory. They said: “We don’t know who’s in charge – we are agnostics”. Even worse, there were others who thought no one was running the factory at all – they called themselves atheists. Can you imagine that? They were working in the factory and thought no one was in charge!

Some of the others thought the factory was run by an Arab called Mr. Mohammed. But some disagreed. They said: “No – it’s not Mohammed; it’s a guy called Krishna”. And still others insisted: “The man in charge is neither Mohammed nor Krishna; his name is Mr. Buddha!”. Finally, there was a sizable group who thought that Jesus’ mother ran the factory!

You see, the vast majority of employees didn’t read and didn’t obey the sign that was up: “Look to Me and be saved”. Not once did they look towards Jesus.

How does this story end? Well, the ones who did look at Jesus and were saved knew they had a mission: to get all the other employees to fix their eyes on Jesus. They couldn’t keep their salvation to themselves. So they did whatever they could to talk to as many other employees as possible, to turn their hearts and minds towards Jesus. And dear Friends, that’s still how it is today.

The points of this story are, firstly: We are all in Jesus’ salvation factory, whether we know and accept it, or not, because He died for all. We all already have salvation in our pocket! And we’re in this together: that guy on the street may not be your brother in Christ – but he is your brother.

But the second point is: Are we going to activate our salvation, which has already been given to us, by actively following Jesus? Or are we going to forfeit it, lose it, by doing nothing about it? Remember, we have to pay off our salvation by serving our Master to secure it.

And the third point: those of us who are true followers of Jesus have a plain obligation to tell others about Him. We cannot be a true Christian, without being an evangelist, in the general sense. We cannot keep our revelation to ourselves.

So now, let’s activate or re-activate our salvation, and consecrate ourselves to the Lord to serve Him better, as we sing the next hymn: “All, All To Jesus I Consecrate Anew”. 

Amen.