SALVATION
Mark I Webster
I desire to say a word as to salvation and as to the One, the blessed Saviour, in whom it is found. We all need salvation, and whether we are in our sins or whether we are believers, we need it for the duration of our lives here. Salvation is for time, although the consequences of it go through into eternity. In eternity there will be two categories of persons. There will be persons that are with Christ in the restful enjoyment of His love; they will not need salvation then. And there will be those, sadly, for whom the opportunity for it has gone; they will be in what the scripture speaks of as “the lake of fire”, Rev 20: 15. That is a very solemn and serious thing to consider. But we need salvation now, and from these four passages I would like to speak of four aspects of it.
The first, the most fundamental of all, relates to our salvation from the wrath of God, which is a most solemn thing to consider. Persons, including some we may know, may belittle God’s wrath, or seek to avoid any discussion as to it. Often, they are fearful and uncertain as to it, but it will most certainly come. Consider for a moment the scene around, the wickedness in the world. We do not need to dwell on it, but we see it. Can God leave that? It would be impossible for God, being who and what He is, to leave the sin in the world unceasing and unjudged. When the Lord Jesus returns to this earth, He will deal summarily with the evil in the systems of men that will be unleashed when those who compose the assembly have left at the rapture, Rev 6: 12-17. Following the period of the millennium, when He will rule in equity, He will sit as judge on the great white throne where the final act of judgment will be executed towards those still in their sins, Satan himself having also been cast into the lake of fire. That is all most solemn; for those still in their sins it is fearsome. But it need not be, because what we can present in the glad tidings is One who is available as a Saviour. None need fear the wrath of God which will be expressed in summary judgment; there is the means and the provision in the blessed Saviour whereby you and I can look ahead with certainty, and without any fear of that wrath, because of the work of Christ. How blessed that is.
I trust everyone here has the certainty of knowing the Lord Jesus as their Saviour, the Saviour of sinners. It is the most fundamental, the most blessed, matter of salvation, the beginning of our soul history with God, when we turn to Him in repentance and receive the Lord Jesus as our Saviour. Do you know Him in that way? That blessed One, the Son of God, has in love gone to the cross and, in virtue of all that He has done there in bearing the judgment of sin and in the shedding His precious blood, God is fully free to be favourable towards you and me.
What does God look for from you? He looks to you that you might recognise before Him that you are a sinner and that you might receive, by faith, the Saviour of His provision, whom He has raised from among the dead. If you, or any other, want a disposition laid out in a logical way that will prove to your natural mind what I am speaking of, you will be disappointed, because what is presented to you is for your acceptance by faith. What is presented to you is God’s word, and His word is brought to you that you might receive it by faith. Take God as His word now, and He will assure you tonight that because of His beloved Son, the Saviour of sinners, and all that He has completed in His work on the cross, He is favourable towards you. All that is needed from you is the recognition that you are a sinner, and faith in the Saviour and in His precious blood.
Romans 3 brings out the importance of that, with the consequence of it being that you not only know with certainty the forgiveness of your sins but, because the blessed Saviour has not only gone into death but has been raised from it, you are justified in the sight of God; free of all sin. What a wonderful matter it is to be able to count ourselves amongst those to whom the apostle Peter refers when writing “who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Pet 2: 24. How precious that is. God is propitious to all; He holds the whole world in provisional reconciliation to Himself on account of the work of Christ, who Himself “is the propitiation for our sins; but not for ours alone, but also for the whole world”, 1 John 2: 2. The work has been completed and the One who has done it is now living on high, a blessed and glorious Saviour, available to you right now. Your salvation from the wrath to come depends entirely on you believing on the Saviour and having faith in His blood. I trust that is the portion of everyone here tonight. Dear friend, if you are unsure, have to do with God about it. You may be young, you may be old, but it is imperative that you do; it is imperative for your salvation and for your blessing. The alternative is almost too awful to contemplate, that which I have spoken of already, the wrath of God that is to come. That is the first most essential matter of salvation.
The second matter of salvation that I want to speak about is in our second scripture; it is what we sometimes speak of as salvation from this present evil world in which we are. If you are a believer on the Lord Jesus, as I trust you are, you are here in a hostile world. If you believe on the Lord Jesus, Satan knows that. He cannot see into our hearts, that is impossible for him to do, but he can determine whether we are believers through our walk, how we behave and what we say, which he observes. If you are a believer on the Lord Jesus, he is determined to damage you in this present world. As believers on Him, we all need this present salvation. How is it to be experienced? The essential thing firstly is that to which I have referred already, that you believe that God has raised Him from among the dead. Then we need to confess Him, our living Lord. That is an important thing because, as the writer puts out, and it is very clear, “For with the heart is believed to righteousness; and with the mouth confession made to salvation”. Earlier he wrote of confessing “with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”. If you have received Him as your Saviour, the One that has met every claim that God could levy against you on account of your sinnership, then God would say, ‘That One who has so wonderfully made provision for you as a sinner, He is your Lord’. You are to recognise His claim upon you. The Lord Jesus, the One by whom the worlds were made (Heb 1: 2) has claims upon you and me. He has creatorial claims and rights upon us, but He also has claims upon us in love on account of that which He has done in the great work of redemption. Therefore, He is our Lord; we belong to Him. I trust you recognise that and, as this scripture brings out, salvation from this present evil world is found as we confess Him as our Lord. That is very important; it is not good enough for us to just say, ‘I am a Christian’; indeed in some ways that is somewhat presumptuous, because the meaning of “Christian” is one that is Christ-like, and who would wish to claim to be like Him? It is what believers were called by others in the early days of Christianity; they were "first called Christians” in Antioch, Acts 11: 26. If you do say that, it is better said than not, but in the world in which we are persons will often say, ‘That is alright; you are entitled to your view, your religion, or whatever it is’. But I am sure all here who have confessed Him as Lord have found that it provides the point of salvation from the world. Because, although unbelieving persons might be very amenable, your friends at school, persons with whom we work, our neighbours, and so on, whenever the name of the Lord Jesus is confessed, it makes them feel, perhaps sub-consciously, uncomfortable in your presence. That is not surprising, because God has established Him as Lord of all. When a believer says, ‘He is my Lord’, it provides a point of practical separation and salvation.
Separation can sometimes be viewed as something rather negative and legal, but it is not that; separation from the world is the most blessed thing. It is a wonderful experience for a believer to find that they are saved from this present evil world; they are apart from it morally; and this is recognised, albeit sometimes reluctantly, by others around them. We may have to engage with the world in our studies, in our work and so on, but in the confession of Jesus as Lord, we find that there is a separation, practically, from all that is evil. How wonderful that is in a world that is becoming more demanding of us, more explicit in its promotion of what is evil - and I am speaking here not of that which most persons, including those that are young, understand and recognise as evil in the world, murder, assaults and that kind of thing - but that which is morally corrupt and unclean, which is growing in its brazen and insidious character and influence. But how blessed it is, with the power that God’s Spirit gives us as we ask Him for it, to be a confessor of Jesus as Lord. It sets us apart, practically, from that which is evil in the world, and protects us from the activity of Satan as he seeks to entrap us in our minds and affections.
I wanted to speak from Matthew’s account of the storm on the lake of another aspect of salvation that is brought out there, that of the Lord’s activity in love in His care for His own in the circumstances in which we are down here. We are all in different circumstances, and those circumstances in which we are found trouble us at times; they often bring sorrows, tests and challenges. In His ways in love with us, the Lord Jesus may allow and order certain things which test our faith. At times, just as with Peter here, our faith may wane. We may become overburdened, maybe overwhelmed, by the circumstances in which we are, and our faith fails. Yet the precious Saviour in His love and grace is available; He is available at every point in our lives. Peter found that. Consider the circumstances in which Peter was here; all here can understand them. The wind was contrary; the waves were strong. Peter was walking on the waters, his eye was on the Lord Jesus; and then took his eye off Him. We might say very simply that if nothing had happened, he would have gone fully under the water. He was in danger and he realised that, and he called out. What clear and simple words these were, “Lord, save me”. They are those we can all utter at any point in the circumstances of life. How assuring that is! We prove the help of divine Persons; we prove the Father’s care, we prove the power of the Holy Spirit in confessing the Lord’s name as we call upon Him; but we can always turn to the Lord, our blessed Saviour, and we can cry out to Him, “Lord, save me”.
Peter did not have the time for anything lengthy; the matter was urgent, and all he uttered were those three words, “Lord, save me”. Did the Lord ignore him because of his lack of faith? Of course He did not. What does it say? “And immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught hold of him”. What a Saviour He is! In the circumstances of life, He is there to save us. Sometimes we may get into things on account of our own foolishness or weakness. Is the Lord’s love changed? No. As we call out to Him, there He is; He hears the feeblest cry, and it says, “immediately Jesus stretched out his hand”. How comforting that is. He may subsequently have to speak to us about the matter, in His ways with us, as He did to Peter, but His love and His saving grace will never waver. He is always available to us as we call to Him in the circumstances in which we are. They may be very simple or ordinary circumstances. Nothing is too simple or ordinary for Him.
I remember an incident in my life when I was a child. I was with my parents returning home in the car from a fellowship meeting on a Saturday evening. It was dark, and we were driving down a hill on a long twisty, very narrow, country lane. We could see the headlights of a car coming up the hill very fast and my father said something on the lines, ‘That car is going at speed, that is dangerous’. It got nearer and came round a bend in front of us very fast and there was no place to pass at all and little time to stop. I can remember my father simply calling out, ‘Lord, save us’, and He did - immediately. How wonderful it was to prove the truth for ourselves of what Peter experienced, that something seemingly impossible was not impossible for Jesus. There is a little saying that some of us have mounted on the wall in our homes: ‘There is nothing that Jesus cannot do’. How true those words are. Whatever the circumstance of life may be we all prove for ourselves the truth of those words as we call out to Him.
I read finally in Philippians 3. What the apostle writes here has sometimes been described as Jesus’ final act of saviourship. It is a wonderful thing. The Lord Jesus, our blessed living Saviour is, I trust we all know, the centre of another realm altogether. He Himself is in a glorious condition, no longer in that of flesh and blood into which He came in order to suffer and to die. It is Him that we, as believers, await. I trust everyone here is awaiting Him, as the apostle who wrote this was awaiting Him, “we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour”. We await Him as Saviour because of what follows, “who shall transform our body of humiliation into conformity to his body of glory, according to the working of the power which he has even to subdue all things to himself”. All power is with Him. When He comes at the rapture for His own, one blessed aspect of His coming is that He will come as Saviour. He will come to “transform our body of humiliation”. What a comfort that is. There is much suffering amongst the Lord’s people and possibly as we get older, we feel the limitations of our physical beings, the frailty of them, and the temporary character of them. But what a wonderful prospect to have, that the One whom we have known through our lives as our Saviour, in those many wonderful aspects of saviourship in which He can be known, will, whether or not He has not already taken us to be with Himself, undertake His final act of saviourship in transforming our bodies of humiliation into conformity to His body of glory. At that point we shall be like Him for, as the apostle John writes, “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”, 1 John 3: 2. We will be forever with Him; the time of his saviourship in faithful love will end; we will no longer need Him as Saviour. Everything that has entered our lives here, necessitating His untiring activity in love, will have ended; we will be untroubled in His presence, enjoying the sweetness of that love. I am sure the savour of all that He has done for us and the delivering power of His Name will ever remain in our hearts, but His service and activities in love as a Saviour will no longer be needed. How blessed that is.
All of us therefore need Him as our Saviour. If you are still in your sins, receive Him by faith as your own, personal Saviour. If you are a believer on Him, may you and I prove the blessedness of His saviourship in our lives here and the salvation from the world that the confession of His Name brings, as we await Him as Saviour to take us home to be with Himself. He is truly an ‘all the way home Saviour’.
May that be the experience of everyone here, for His Name’s sake.
Sunbury
24th December 2024