Good morning.
I’m always afraid this thing’s going to be on when I’m singing. You know?
Let’s read a couple of verses, okay? Romans chapter 1, verse 16.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ:
for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth;
to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
And then in Luke chapter 21, verse 28. In the middle of the verse, it says:
Look up, and lift up your heads;
because your redemption draweth nigh.
And then in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 13:
These all died in faith, not having received the promises,
but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them,
and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
And then one last verse in the Old Testament, in Isaiah chapter 12, starting with verse 1:
And in that day thou shalt say, I will give thanks unto Thee, O Lord;
for though Thou wast angry with me, Thine anger is turned away, and Thou comfortest me.
Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid:
for the Lord, even the Lord, is my strength and song; and He is become my salvation.
Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.
Let’s pray.
Father, we come to You this morning with thanksgiving that You have laid aside everything against us and laid it on Your own Son. And in Him You have judged us. You have judged everything that was wrong with us, everything that was against You—all that we were as enemies, You have judged. And it has fallen on Him.
We thank You, Lord, that in judging Him and judging us, You accepted that sacrifice, and it brought us to Yourself through Him as You raised Him from the dead. Here we stand before Thee, Lord, with nothing against us because of what You have done.
Lord, we want to enter into what all this means. This idea of why You have saved us—what does it mean? We do not know how else to approach You except just to pray and ask that You open Your Word to us and encourage us, Lord, to see what it is, how it is, and Who it is that we are to trust ourselves to for the remainder while we live here, until You come again.
So, Lord, open Your Word to us. Give us Your Spirit, I pray, in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
I have been speaking on the gospel for about five times now, and this is the last time I am going to speak on this subject. Last time I reviewed everything, so I am not going to review it again, okay? Except to say this.
Last time we looked at the end. I mean, we have seen from the beginning how we were sinners, how God justified us, how He set us apart, and how we, because He set us apart, have responded to Him and consecrated ourselves.
But then we got the picture of what it is—that is the end. You know, that is really what we should be focused on. And I just have a question to end this out. My question is: in the light of all these things that we have been going over in the gospel, and this whole matter of salvation, where are our eyes?
Where have they gone? Where are they stayed? That is what I want to address this morning as an end, because the end of the gospel is really where our eyes are. I want to look at three places where our eyes may be, and we will end with that.
You know, I am a history teacher, and I have used the verse in Luke 21: “Look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.” One of the classes I teach is a United States history class, and we are in the early 1900s.
For those of you who hate history or do not know history, the early 1900s in the United States was the time of the Progressive Movement. The Progressive Movement was spurred on by a group of people called muckrakers.
The term muckrakers actually comes from Bunyan’s wonderful book, Pilgrim’s Progress. Muckrakers were journalists, and what they did was expose things that were wrong in the United States, whether in business, city politics, or wherever it was. They were there to expose those things.
But in Pilgrim’s Progress, a muckraker was not just somebody trying to expose things. A muckraker was someone who was so caught up in the muck that he was always looking down. He never looked up because he was infatuated—possessed—with the muck.
It is an interesting thing about Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt, who was president during the Progressive Era, said, “You know, all they do is dig up muck. They do not do anything else. They just dig up muck.”
The thing about the muckrakers was that that is what they did: they dug up muck, but they never could cure it. They could bring it to the surface, but it was not in their power to cure it. It had to go to a higher power to cure that.
But my point is this: where are our eyes? As we have approached salvation and seen the end of salvation, are we rejoicing in the end?
I used to have a book of Pilgrim’s Progress. I think I either got it from an older saint or something, and it had beautiful pictures in it. You know, that is what we like in the pictures. That is why history books are so good—they always have pictures. I do tell my students, “Remember, read the pictures.”
They had a wonderful picture, and I remember it vividly because one of those plates they put in there was in color. You had this guy who was just sitting down there, raking up this muck, and everything in him was occupied with it. Up above him was a crown, and he never saw it.
Now, in light of what we talked about last time, how many of us do not even look at what God’s end for us is because we are too busy looking at why we cannot attain it?
Where are our eyes? Are they in the place where we are going, “Oh, this is wrong. This is wrong”? I will tell you, when the enemy works with us, he does not have to impugn God. All he does is say, “Look at you. Look at that right there.”
Then once you deal with that, he says, “Oh, and what about that over there?” Then you go over there, and he goes, “Oh, did you see that?” Later on he says, “You remember the thing that I showed you before, and you picked it up? It is back.”
All our Christianity is dealt with trying to clean ourselves up. Therefore, we are robbed of the very joy that we should have—the joy of our salvation.
That is one of the reasons why some of us cannot even witness. We are so caught up in our inadequacies. The Lord has not called us to look for our inadequacies in ourselves or in our brothers and sisters. That is not His purpose for us.
Remember, He has forgiven us. He has judged our sin. It is no longer for us to look down inside, but to look up. Our redemption draweth nigh.
We can look at that verse, “Our redemption draweth nigh,” and we can shudder. We can say, “Oh, Lord, do not come back.” I remember as a young Christian, I said, “Lord, do not come back till I get married.” You know, we are fleshly people. We have all these things.
But as we go on in life, pretty soon we are like, “Lord, I will use a Floyd-ism: my life is not worth a hill of beans.” I look at it, and what do I have to offer You? Nothing.
Therefore, we think that by His holding back, things are going to change. Because we are in that mindset, they will never change. We will always be the same. There is no transforming work that the Lord can do when our heads are looking down in the muck.
Transforming work only comes when we see what the hope is. It is the hope of what the gospel is that transforms us. The question is, where are your eyes? Are your eyes there? Well then, look up, because that is what the Lord is saying: “Look up.”
Now secondly, I want to read a verse from Colossians. Actually, it is three verses, in Colossians chapter 1, beginning in verse 21:
And you, being in time past alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil works,
yet now hath He reconciled
in the body of His flesh through death,
to present you holy and without blemish and unreproveable before Him:
if so be that ye continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast,
and not moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye heard,
which was preached in all creation under heaven;
whereof I Paul was made a minister.
If you are not moved away from the hope, what is the hope? What is the hope that we have?
Last time, when we were talking about it, the hope we had was the completed work. Some of us think of the completed work as just being that the Lord died for our sins and He said, “It is finished.” That is half of it.
The completed work is that because He has died, and because He has risen again, He is able to transform us into this one who is holy, blameless, and above reproach. That is the finished work.
It began in eternity past, when the Lord decided that He would go to the cross. It continued when He came to earth, when He died, and when He rose again. It will be completed when we are brought before His throne complete like this: holy and unreproachable.
That is finished. That is the glory of God. That is God satisfied with what He has done in Jesus Christ. That is our hope.
The verse I read in Hebrews says they had seen from afar. They had seen, even through a glass darkly, but that is not the matter—how much you have seen or how clearly you have seen. The question is, have you seen? Have you gotten that inkling of what God is planning and is at work doing in your life?
Have you seen that so that your hope is fixed on that? Hope is not wishing. “Oh, I wish this would happen to me.” It is not even merely desiring. You can desire something and know it is not a hope.
I desire things that I know I will never get. It would be nice to have a nice new house all paid for. I desire that, but it is unrealistic. Some of us might think that this idea of being blameless and beyond reproach is unrealistic. But actually, that is the hope that God has set for us.
It is not wishful thinking. It is God who has said, “This is My end.” We are to set our hope and not be moved from this hope.
What is this hope? He is talking about an expectation. This is what I can expect at the end. Man, that is a pretty cool deal. This is my expectation.
But it goes beyond expectation. It is like Paul in Philippians chapter 3. He says, “All these things I have gone through, they are nothing, but I am looking forward.” Hope is not just something that we set a day for. Hope is something that we look forward to. It is something that is coming, and we know it is going to come.
I remember as a kid looking forward to Christmas because I knew it was going to come. You could not tell me Christmas was not going to come, because it was on the calendar. You could look at the calendar, circle it, and count off the days. It was coming.
The closer and closer it came, the more and more excited we would get, because we knew there was going to be something for us. We expected it, because that is the way it was.
You can expect something and be disappointed because the one you are expecting it from is not faithful. But this is an onward expectation. It looks forward to something.
When we see ourselves, we can look on ourselves like a muckraker and say, “Gee whiz, it is never going to come.” But no—it is to get our eyes up and say, “Wait a minute. It is there. I can look onward. I press on.”
Is that not what Paul says? “I press on. I press forward. I am not going to stay in this spot. I am going to go forward.”
Hope is also a desire. It is a desire that is able to be fulfilled. It is not something that is pie in the sky by and by. It is a desire that will not be stopped short.
We can get to a place and say, “Well, I have had enough. This is enough, or this is as good as it gets.” The hope that we have, the hope that has been given us, is something that will not be satisfied with anything less than what the Lord has.
Do not be moved from this hope. Many things can move us. “Oh yeah, I have got my job and everything is right. My kids are in college now. I can relax. I can be satisfied now. Job well done. Kids are in college.”
Can I be satisfied in my Christian life by saying, “Oh, gee whiz, I have been a Christian thirty-five years. People respect me. They listen to what I say. I can just rest now”? Some of us do that. “I do not have to go any further. I followed far enough. This is what I see salvation is.”
Or some of us are lulled by the things in the world. I think in Pilgrim’s Progress, if you remember the place of enchantment, Christian and his buddy are out there, and all of a sudden it is just so warm, so nice. “This is so good.” Then you fall asleep.
You fall asleep in the comforts of the world, and you are lost.
I remember when I first came to Virginia. I think it was the second week, I got pneumonia. What a welcoming gift from your brothers and sisters, okay? I got pneumonia, and I went to the doctor. The doctor said, “You have got pneumonia.”
It was an advanced case of pneumonia, and he gave me two shots that day. I remember saying to Barb, “I do not think I can walk to the car.” She ended up carrying me over to the car and getting me into Patient First. I remember just sitting there, shaking and everything.
The doctor came in, took the X-rays, gave me two shots, and then gave me some pills. He looked at me and said, “You are going to be miserable for about four days.”
You have got to appreciate that in a doctor. He does not say, “Take this pill and you are done.” He said, “You are going to be really miserable for about four days. But after the fourth day, the drugs will start kicking in.”
I was miserable for four days. I mean, really miserable. I could not sleep. You would fall asleep, wake up, look at the clock, and say, “It has only been three minutes.” You feel like, “Oh, I am getting rested. The four days are coming,” and then, “Oh, it has only been three minutes.”
It was just terrible. For four days, it was miserable. My wife and kids would not come in and bother me because they knew I was miserable. But the thing that kept me going was, “Four days. It is going to be four days.”
I remember Barb came in once and said, “Are you feeling bad?” I said, “Yeah, I am really bad.” Then I said, “Only two more days. Two more days.”
That word from the doctor really gripped me. That was what kept me from just giving up and wanting to die. You know, men, when they get sick—well, you know what we are like. That is why we do not have children. Think about it.
But that was the whole thing: I had had a promise. Four days.
Then we were supposed to go on vacation with my brother-in-law, and they took us to the beach. I went back to the doctor, and he said, “Do not go in the water.”
Because of what I had gone through, I was transformed. I did not go in the water. I was a good boy. I got my rest, I did everything, and look at me now.
But do you see the point I am making? You have this hope to hold on to. You have that desire to see it finished through. Boy, I tell you, I had that desire for those pills to work.
There was really nothing I could do for those pills. I had to wait it out. Sometimes the Lord shows us the hope. He shows us what is going on, and the next thing we know, we just go in the pits.
Once we get a hope, the enemy comes in and says, “Hope for you, huh? Well, look at this, and you are going to go through this, blah, blah, blah.” The Lord just whispers, “Remember. Remember what I told you. Hold through. Hold on to that hope.”
The Lord is the One who sees you through. So hope is an onward expectation. It is a desire for complete fulfillment. But it is also tempered by patience.
You know what tempered means? It means to be made stronger. If you have tempered steel, it is made stronger. You know how it is made stronger? By heat—by heat and pounding. That is how they make strong steel.
If you look at this idea of patience in Romans 5, beginning with verse 1, it says:
Being therefore justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ;
through Whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand;
and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
And not only so, but we also rejoice in our tribulations:
knowing that tribulation worketh stedfastness;
and stedfastness, approvedness;
and approvedness, hope.
We rejoice in the hope of God completing what He has begun. This is going to happen. Tribulation produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope.
Hope is not just a thing apart, just saying, “Here is some hope.” Hope is something that has been built in, or is being built into, the character that is ours in Jesus Christ.
It is not something that we just grab hold of. It is something that is built in. It is a part that cannot be separated from. It is part of our character as Christians. We have this hope. Hold fast to it as it is being worked into you.
Hope has an effect in our life. Like I said, I had the hope that I was not going to get sick again if I stayed out of the water, and I stayed out of the water. Believe me, it was because of that hope—because of what the doctor said.
It is the same for us. We find out that this hope has transforming power. I have told you the story of how I got saved before, how I am a body surfer. I would like to be out in the water now. I do not swim well, but to body surf, all you need is a couple of strokes, and you are there.
I love the water, especially out here. You guys in Virginia, your water is so warm. In California, it is warm if it is sixty-eight degrees. But here, man, you guys are seventy-five degrees. It is like taking a bath.
But even though that was pleasurable to me, I found myself withholding from it because of the word that was given to me: “You want to be well? You want to stay well? Stay out of the water.” And I did. I stayed out of the water.
Now, even having our eyes on hope can sometimes leave us short. What I mean is this: you remember Abraham.
Abraham came to the Lord, and finally he said, “Lord, what are You going to give me? I do not have any children.” The Lord said, “I will make you as many as the stars that you see, as many as the grains of sand.” Remember, it says Abraham believed Him.
But then, kind of like in Romans 10, where Paul is talking about the Jews, he says the Jews have a zeal for God, but without knowledge. In the same way, Abraham, not having the knowledge of how this could be, instead of waiting for the Lord’s direction and way to do this, listened to Sarai, and you had an Ishmael.
Even us, we look sometimes at the hope, and what we try to do is manufacture whatever it is to make that hope real in us, to make those things real in us.
Sometimes we do not look at the inside, but we look at the outside and get satisfied with it. “I am a pretty good person. I do not commit adultery. I do not steal. I do not worship idols.” Pretty soon we think that this is the life that God wanted.
Abraham was satisfied with Ishmael. I think that is the whole thing. We can be satisfied with what we think God has promised. We think that the life He has promised is this life of outward stuff.
Even the Jews would look at their possessions as being the blessing of God. “Well, gee whiz, I have nine children. That is the blessing of the Lord.” In Old Testament times, the more children you had meant your wife was fruitful. “Oh, and look at this. I have got all this land. I have got the blessing of God. I need to build more barns.”
We can get satisfied with the outer things, even with the outer entrapments of religion. “I go to all the meetings. I speak. I go to the prayer meeting and I pray.” But is this just an outward thing? Is this the thing with which I am satisfied?
Abraham was satisfied, but the Lord was not. The wonderful thing about it is the Lord came to him and said, “I am not satisfied. This is not what I had in mind for you. This is not what I am after.”
Some of us will come to the point where we get sick inside of ourselves, and we say, “Lord, is there anything more?” You know what I mean? You know what I am talking about?
We get to the place where we have played the game. We have played the religious game. We do all those things, and inside we are just empty. By God’s mercy, we come to the place where we say, “Lord, You know me inside. I am empty. There is nothing in there.”
“I am alive, but I am dead. I am saved, but I am not experiencing the very things that You want from me.”
Or some of us are just satisfied, and the Lord really has to come and say, “Can I come in? This is not what I wanted for you.” But the Lord is faithful, because what the Lord has done in His Son, He cannot turn His back on.
Boy, I tell you, that is our salvation. He cannot turn back on it. There is that lovely hymn by Wesley, “Arise, My Soul, Arise.” One of the verses says:
His Father hears Him pray,
His dear anointed One;
He cannot turn away
The presence of His Son.
He cannot turn away from His Son. He cannot turn away from His Son’s pleading for us and saying, “Father, I have died for this one. Do not let them go.” And He will not, because His Son means that much to Him. We have to believe that.
Where should our eyes be? If our eyes on the prize are not making it, where is our hope? Going back to Hebrews 11, it says, “Having seen afar off, they were persuaded of these promises and embraced them.”
The question is, how did they get this assurance? Where did this assurance come from? Really, the word assurance is the Greek word for persuaded. They were persuaded. What persuaded them?
I do not think it was a what. I think it was a Who. Who persuaded them? It was God.
It is God who persuades. It is God in Whom we are to set our hope. We are not even to set our hope merely on the idea of obtaining this. We cannot reach the attainment of the things God has promised unless God, by His power, by His might, and by His faithfulness to Who He is, intervenes for us.
What is our salvation? We can say, “Well, it is the forgiveness of sins.” But do you know what our lives are really going to testify to? They are all going to testify to the faithfulness of God.
That is the whole thing. Our whole lives are to be a testimony that God is true. That is it in a nutshell: God is true.
Think about Abraham. Abraham was promised a child. If we look in Romans 4, after Ishmael, God says, “No, Sarah will be the one.” Romans 4 tells us Abraham looked to himself—one hundred years old—and looked at Sarah, ninety-odd and barren.
He looked at himself. He looked at Sarah. Where else could he look?
But in Romans 4, beginning with verse 17, it says:
Before Him Whom he believed, even God,
Who giveth life to the dead,
and calleth the things that are not, as though they were.
Who in hope believed against hope,
to the end that he might become a father of many nations.
And without being weakened in faith he considered his own body now as good as dead,
he being about a hundred years old,
and the deadness of Sarah’s womb;
yet, looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief,
but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God,
and being fully assured that what He had promised, He was able also to perform.
That is Abraham’s testimony. He was not running around saying, “Hey, look, I sired a kid at one hundred years old.” He was saying, “God is faithful. I looked at myself, and there was no hope for me. But God promised, and God is faithful.”
You even take the idea of him sacrificing Isaac. Isaac was the promised one, and God says, “Sacrifice him.” Hebrews 11 says Abraham figured that since this was the promise, God must be faithful. He was going to raise up a seed through Isaac; therefore, He would have to raise him from the dead.
Because God is true. God is faithful, Who has called you into the fellowship of His Son. God is faithful.
Look at Joseph’s life. Joseph had the dreams. Here he was stuck in prison in Egypt. But God is faithful. Other people might have done things for evil, but God was faithful. Look at Moses. God is faithful.
Our lives, in the same way, because of the gospel, are to bear this out: that God is wholly true and wholly faithful to Who He is. He is true to His nature. He is true to His Word. He is powerful. He is going to bear that out. That is Who He is.
He is able to do what we cannot do. He is able to do what He says He can do. This is the gospel. Our gospel is not that I work hard and this is what happened. Our gospel is that God has saved me, God is saving me, and in the end, I will be what God has planned me to be.
That is salvation. It is to be borne out in our life, and our testimony is, “God is working,” until it is complete. My God will complete what He has begun. He has not left us to ourselves in that.
That brings us back to this hope: we are to hope in God. In 1 Peter 1:3, it says we have been born again to a living hope. What is a living hope? What makes it living?
What makes it living is that God is living, that God is alive. Otherwise, there is no living hope. The hope is living because it is in a living God.
How many times did God talk to the Israelites? “Why are you going to these things that are not alive? Why are you turning to these things that have no ears? Why are you calling out to them? Why are you going to these things that have no legs, that cannot move?”
They cannot help you. “I am the living God. Ask Me, and I will do it.” So, we have been born again to a living hope.
In 1 Peter 1:13, it talks about a hope that finds rest. It has support.
Set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
That is such an interesting look at things, because we look at the coming of the Lord and say, “Oh man, what I have not done.” And He says, “What are you doing that for? Rest your hope on what I have promised.”
That is where it should be resting: on the grace of God. Grace is not just undeserved love, as though He is going to say, “Oh, it is okay.” It is also the enablement that I am able to obey His will because He strengthens me to do it as I act on His Word.
A lot of times, we think grace means that we just sit and wait passively. That is not it. Waiting is something to be done in expectation.
I could passively wait for Christmas. I knew it was coming. But if I find out that you are coming to my house, I am not going to passively wait for you. I am going to clean up my house to make it presentable for you.
I am going to make sure I have something for you to eat. I am going to make sure you are comfortable. I am going to make sure that you feel at home. I am going to do those things in preparation for your being there with me. That is part of grace. Grace transforms us in that way.
We get to the place of thinking, like Mary, “Oh, you cannot do all these things.” But in the end, Martha is serving God in John chapter 12, after Lazarus is raised. She is not serving in a way that she is flustered and saying, “Oh, gee whiz, I have got to get these things done. Where is my help?”
She is serving in perfect peace. You do not find a complaint. In John chapter 12, Mary is at the table with the alabaster flask, Lazarus is at the table, and Martha is serving without a complaint in her mouth because she is totally at rest.
It is the same with us. How can we serve? How can we walk if we are not at rest? Do you not know that God has put us at rest? Have you not found that we can rest? We do not have to worry about the punishment of sin.
We can rest completely in His love. Out of that rest comes service. It is out of the rest. It is not work that produces the service; it is the rest.
When we rest, we start to see Who He is. When we see Who He is, we are compelled to want to serve Him for Who He is—not to serve this person or that person, or so that we do not look bad if we do not do this. We see Who He is, and His worth to us makes us want to serve Him.
Finally, let me read this, beginning with 1 Peter 1:18:
Knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold,
from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers;
but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,
even the blood of Christ:
Who verily was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world,
but was manifested at the end of times for your sake,
who through Him are believers in God,
that raised Him from the dead, and gave Him glory;
so that your faith and hope might be in God.
Brothers and sisters, if we are not purchased by perishable things, there is nothing that we can offer God that is not perishable.
If He is not going to entrust our salvation to perishable things, then He will not entrust our salvation to our trying to work things in. Our faith and our hope are now in God.
That is the whole point of this. That is the whole point of the gospel. The gospel is to remove ourselves from thinking that we can attain to anything, and to put our total reliance for the whole salvation—not just the forgiveness of sins, but the whole salvation, to where we are holy and irreproachable in His sight—in His hands.
He Who said it can be done is able to do it.
So, we said at the beginning, the Lord says to us, “Look up. Look up. Do not be looking within yourself. Do not be looking around. Look up. Look to Me.”
What then is our response? How shall we respond to God? I want to close with this.
There are a few psalms known as Psalms of Ascent. I want to read two of them in their entirety. One, I think, looks at us before we know the Lord, and the other is after we find that the Lord has saved us from our sins.
The first Psalm of Ascent is Psalm 120:
In my distress I cried unto the Lord,
and He answered me.
Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips,
and from a deceitful tongue.
What shall be given unto thee, and what shall be done more unto thee,
thou deceitful tongue?
Sharp arrows of the mighty,
with coals of juniper.
Woe is me, that I sojourn in Meshech,
that I dwell among the tents of Kedar!
My soul hath long had her dwelling
with him that hateth peace.
I am for peace:
but when I speak, they are for war.
If you look at this, what is happening is this: “In my distress, deliver my soul. Woe is me.” Those are the very things that lead us to Christ, are they not? We look at ourselves, and there is no hope for ourselves, and we look to the Lord.
Now, what is our response to His saying, “Look up”? Psalm 121 says this:
I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains:
from whence shall my help come?
My help cometh from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved:
He that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, He that keepeth Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is thy keeper:
the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day,
nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep thee from all evil;
He will keep thy soul.
The Lord will keep thy going out and thy coming in
from this time forth and for evermore.
The whole thing of this psalm is this: once I get past saying, “Woe is me,” and find that the Lord has delivered me from that death, where do I find my eyes the rest of the time? It is the Lord’s salvation.
Look at all the times it says, “The Lord, the Lord.” Look at the things He says He will do. Our salvation is wrapped up in this.
That is why I read that one verse from Isaiah 12. I just want to read it again:
And in that day thou shalt say, I will give thanks unto Thee, O Lord;
for though Thou wast angry with me, Thine anger is turned away, and Thou comfortest me.
Behold, God is my salvation;
I will trust, and will not be afraid:
for the Lord, even the Lord, is my strength and song;
and He is become my salvation.
In that day—in the day where I find that the Lord has saved me—you will say, “Behold, God is my salvation.”
It is His working in our lives as we come to Him for receiving forgiveness. In all these things, we find out that it is God working in us. We find out that He is our salvation.
Our salvation is not the forgiveness of sin, so to speak. Our salvation is God Himself doing what He said. That is our salvation. It is all wrapped up in Him.
Where are we? We are the recipients, and we are the ones who respond to His work. We are the ones who respond to His Word. That is our part. Let us respond.
Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.
This is our drink. He is our salvation. That is what the gospel is.
The Lord. Jesus means what? The Lord is salvation.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, in some ways I feel that—and I know this is me—but things just did not gel. But Lord, I pray that the impression that can come from You is that You are everything for us, that You are our salvation.
Lord, You are not just the One Who forgives our sins, but You are the One Who takes us all the way through. You have not left us to ourselves, but You have given us a hope. Not only have You given us a hope: You are our hope.
Lord, I thank You that we can look forward in the knowledge of this and see that these things can be accomplished, not by might nor by power, but by You.
Lord, You are the capstone. You are the beginning. You are the One Who sent Your Son. You are the One Who came to us and said, “I have mercy on you. I have forgiven your sins.” But You are also the One Who ends everything.
Not only that, Lord, You are the One Who sees us through the whole middle, when things do not make sense. Oh Lord, how great You are. Oh, help us just to see. Just help us just to see this hope—that You can take us through.
Help us then, Lord, to respond, not in the way of thinking that I have got to do something, not in the way that I have got to try harder, but please help us to respond in the way of saying, “Lord, I do not see how You can do it, but I will trust You.”
I will hope against hope like Abraham. Lord, it is funny to think that we do not need any more hope than it took for Abraham and Sarah to have a child. We do not need any more faith than that, because the faith is not that they had this great faith; the faith was in the One they had faith in.
Oh Lord, help us to see that. Help us to see how great You are. That way we can see how great our salvation is. Forgive us, Lord, for falling short in the way that we think. Bring us to the place of seeing rightly.
Help us to look up and to see, Lord, that You are our salvation. We ask this in Thy precious name.
Amen.