All right, brethren, let's turn
to 2 Corinthians chapter 1. This is one of the most important
messages that you will ever hear me preach. And I hope you'll
pay attention. I hope you'll read the scriptures
with me. When speaking of His trouble that came to Him, when
men tried to cause Him to die in a temporal way, the Apostle
Paul said this concerning how God delivered Him. He said in
verse 10, Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver,
and in whom we trust that He will yet deliver us. Now Paul is speaking about God
delivering him from physical death, from a temporal death. But what he says here about God
delivering, that's true of us concerning salvation. God has,
He is, and He shall yet deliver His people. Some ancient translations
put deaths here, plural. He delivered us from so great
deaths. So great deaths. And God does
deliver us from many deaths. From many deaths. I realize dead
is dead. But when Adam sinned and we died
in Adam, we died many deaths. God told Adam, of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, thou mayest freely eat. Thou
shalt not eat of the... I'm sorry, of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. Of any other
tree you may freely eat, but that tree you shall not eat of
it. And he said, For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou
shalt surely die. And it means dying, thou shalt
die. In Adam, and through Adam, we
died many deaths. Every one of us, it came from
Adam. We died physical death. When
sin entered, sin resulted in a decaying body, disease. And it just decayed. A decaying
body of death that soon just turns back into dust. And we
have to be delivered from physical death. We died a legal death. Adam became guilty in unrighteousness
when he disobeyed God. We became guilty in Him. We need
to be delivered from that legal death. We became spiritually
dead. Adam's nature became sin. Sin
marred God's image in Adam's nature. And so by Adam's corrupt
seed, by natural generation, we received from Adam that corrupt
image. We received the corrupt image
of Adam. We received a nature that's dead
in sins, doesn't know God, is thoroughly, totally dead in trespass
and sin. We have to be delivered from
that spiritual death. And we're going to have to be
delivered from eternal death, that death that comes after we
die physically. We have to be delivered from
eternal death, that worm that never dies. Now what Paul is
saying here And as we relate it to our salvation is this,
the delivering of God's people in salvation is accomplished
entirely by God alone beginning to end. The accomplishment of
our salvation, the delivering of God's people in salvation
is accomplished by God entirely by Himself from beginning to
the end. The subject we're going to look
at tonight is the tenses of salvation. We're going to start in eternity
past, we're going to go through the present in time, and we're
going to go into the future, into eternity future. That's
covering it all. The past, the present, and the
future. That will be our division. Now,
first of all, concerning the past deliverance. God delivered
His people, it says here, who hath delivered us from so great
a death. There is a past deliverance that
God has accomplished for His people. In eternity past, God
delivered all whom He called in divine election. He delivered
us in eternity. 2 Timothy 1.9 says, God hath
saved us, past tense, and called us with a holy calling, past
tense, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose
and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world
began. Because of the fact that God
works everything after His own purpose, And His grace changes
not. He can't be frustrated because
God is absolutely sovereign to bring to pass His eternal purpose.
Whenever God chose His people in Christ, God delivered us. He delivered us. He saved us
and He called us when He wrote our names in the Lamb's Book
of Life from the foundation of the world. You can read about
it in Revelation 17.8, the Lamb's Book of Life. He wrote our names
there from the foundation of the world. And it was not according
to any foreseen works in us. God creates. Christ was given the work of
creating a new creation. And He creates everything that
is in His child in this earth. He creates everything that He
brings forth from His child that God will receive. He creates
it. So there could be nothing foreseen in us that God foresaw
when He's the one that would give it all. I read an illustration
book by Spurgeon this week and he put it like this. If I saw
a group of fellows standing down there and I said, that fellow
in the middle, I'm going to give him a quarter. It wasn't because
I foresaw anything in him, I'm going to give him the quarter.
It wasn't because I foresaw he had a quarter that I gave him
the quarter, I'm going to give him the quarter. and everything
we have God gave us. He didn't foresee anything in
us. It was according to His own purpose and grace freely given
to us in Jesus Christ before the world began. And when the
Son of God who cannot lie, the Son of God who shall not fail,
when He entered into everlasting unchangeable covenant with God
our Father to die and create His people entirely anew, when
He entered in covenant to do the whole work and God trusted
that whole work to Him, He delivered us in the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world. That's the reason when the Holy
Spirit is talking about the rest that God gives His people, eternal
rest that God gives His people. He says the works were finished
from the foundation of the world. In the eternal now, now try to
think on that. In the eternal now, where everything
is now. There is no tense, it's just
now. In the eternal now, when God chose His people in Christ,
everything about us that will be Christ's finished new creation
was already in Christ. You see what I'm saying? Everything
we're going to be when He gets finished completing that new
creation, we were in Christ in the beginning. And because God
trusted His Son, That work was finished. It was done right then
in God's purpose in Christ. And then we come to the historical
past. We come to time now. And everything
in our historical past. Christ delivered us from so great
a death on the cross. When He went to the cross. This
is how Christ delivered us. This is how the scriptures put
it. Listen to this. He finished the transgression for us. He finished the transgression.
It's done. There's no more transgression
because Christ finished it. He made an end of our sins. They're gone. They come to an
end. He made reconciliation to God
for our iniquity. He brought us back into friendship
with God. And He brought in an everlasting
righteousness for us. That's what He did. And He delivered
us from death's dominion into that everlasting glory with God
when He died and then came out of that grave and arose and sat
down at God's right hand in glory. He delivered us right then and
there. You try to enter into this. In
Christ we really died to sin and we really arose anew to glory. We really did. You see, what
to us right now is real is fleshly, temporal dust, like Brother Robert
was just talking about. And as God said in that passage,
it's going right back to dust. It's cursed and it's going back
to dust. And all that we consider, the
reason we can't understand that we died in Adam and arose in
Christ is because the things we consider to be real are just
dust. That's all it is. but we really
died in Adam. And in that perfect day, when
He comes and brings us home, when the new creation is complete,
when it's complete, when God's finished making the new creation
and it's complete, nothing that now we consider to be us will
remain. Nothing. Not this world, not
this flesh, nothing about us. Nothing about us. will be there
in glory. All this we think is real about
the real me. None of this will be there. It will be all brand new, created
entirely new by Christ. Everything. Everything about
His people will be the new creation. A brand new creation. You know
when He made the first creation, He didn't make it out of something.
He made it out of nothing. And that's important because
He doesn't make us a new creation out of something in us either.
He makes us brand new out of nothing from us. It's all out
of Him. It's all from Him. So we really
are dead and we really are risen in Christ. Listen to Romans 6.10.
In that He died, He died unto sin once. That's done. That's over with. but in that
He liveth continually forever unto God. What does that have
to do with us? He says, Likewise reckon ye also
yourselves, the real you, to be dead indeed unto sin. Everything
about us right now that we consider real already died in Christ because
it had to die under God's justice. We died. And He says, but we
are alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Just like He
liveth now forever, we are alive right now forever at God's right
hand. His people are. That's why He
says, if you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which
are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set
your affection singular. Your affection. We just got one
affection. set that one affection on things
above, not on things of the earth, for ye are dead. And your life is hid with Christ
in God. When am I going to see that life?
When am I going to behold this new me? when Christ who is our
life shall appear. When He comes again, then shall
you also appear with Him in glory. Now that's the truth of the matter.
Then we come now to our experiential past. This is what you and I
experienced. God delivered us. He delivered
us from so great a death. God predestinated each of His
elect to behold the exceeding riches of His kindness toward
us through Christ Jesus. He predestinated us to behold
that. And because He did that, God
worked everything to make your mother and your father and my
mother and my father conceive you in your mother's womb. And
while you were in your mother's womb, God held you up and God
delivered you from your mother's womb. It's even that intricate that
He delivered me? Oh, that's nothing. The things
I just talked about that He did from eternity and that He did
in Christ on the cross, that's far more. But He held us up in
the womb and delivered us from the womb. Turn over with me,
if you will, to Isaiah 46. Isaiah chapter 46. Let me read this to you while
you turn in there. The psalmist said this, ìBy Thee have I been
holding up from the womb. Thou art He that took me out
of my motherís bowels. My praise shall be continually
of Thee.î Now read this right here in Isaiah 46.3. Weíre going
to go on into the future here, but I want you to see how thorough
this deliverance is even in our temporal state. Isaiah 46.3,
Harken unto me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house
of Israel. He's talking about his elect
people, all his elect, his true spiritual elect. He says, which
are born by me from the belly, which are carried from the womb. and even to your old age I am
He, and even to your gray hair will I carry you. I have made
and I will bear, even I will carry and will deliver you."
When we were in our mother's womb, He made certain that we
were delivered. And then from that moment that
we were born, Every dark path we went down in total blindness,
dead in sin, God delivered us from many deaths that whole time. When as yet we didn't know Him
and didn't even know He was doing it for us. We were like Cyrus. He said, I'm the Lord and there's
none else. There's no God beside me. I girded thee, though thou
hast not known me. death that we were delivered
out of, ones we didn't even know we were delivered out of, He
delivered us. Enemies we couldn't even see,
He delivered us. Why did He do that? He carried us sovereignly
in His hand and delivered us sovereignly in His hand to that
hour that He appointed for eternity when He sent us His gospel and
He plucked us like a brand out of the fire making us to be born
again, to be born entirely anew by regeneration. when He made
us entirely new creation in spirit. When Christ was formed in you,
the hope of glory. When Christ is formed in us,
He gives you a new spirit. He doesn't believe for you. He's
going to cause you to believe. My people shall be willing in
the day of my power. But that new spirit and Christ
are one. They're one. So that they can't
be separated. but He gives you a new spirit.
That didn't come from us. Nothing we did gave us that.
He created that entirely anew. Christ did Himself. And He did
it by irresistible grace through the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit,
God the Holy Spirit. He gave us faith to believe Him
and caused us to believe on Him, to cast all our care on Him and
trust Him. He caused us to believe on Him.
And when He did that, He made us willing to receive everything
from God's hand. We received the atonement. We
received free justification. We received reconciliation to
God. We became reconciled to God in
the new man in Christ. And we received eternal life
and peace with God. Don't you pray God to do that
for one of our children tonight. I pray He will do that. I pray
He will deliver them. Is somebody sitting here saying,
what must I do to be saved? What do I have to do to be saved?
Listen to God. He says, if thou shalt confess
with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart
that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
Well, that sounds pretty simple. Why then can't we do it? Man
is willing to do anything but nothing. until God gives you
a heart to cast it all on Christ and say, Lord, I'm going to trust
you to save me. I believe every word God said
and I'm going to trust you to save me. Even if He's done that
for you, you confess Him with the mouth, you believe on Him
with the heart and we confess Him in believers' baptism and
unite with His people and come and hear His Word, this life
to us. That's what He did. So from then till now, God's
delivered us. He started in eternity and He's
delivered us over and over and over from the cross to the cradle
till right now, He's delivered us. Even when we didn't even
know Him. And now, if we're going to face
a present trial, you know what's going to help us to face a present
trial? A trial right now is to remember how He delivered us
in the past. God told Israel when He carried
them into Israel, He said, Thou shalt remember all the way which
the Lord thy God led thee. And He showed us by that, that
without giving a man the Holy Spirit and keeping him, he won't
remember. Because they didn't remember.
But God's going to make His people remember. Remember what God's
done for you. One time Christ's disciples got
to fret. They misunderstood the Lord Jesus
because He was talking about the leaven of the Pharisees.
They thought He was talking about bread. And then they realized,
we done crossed over here and didn't even bring any bread with
us. And they began to reason within themselves, trying to
figure out what we're going to do. That's when we mess up. And Christ perceived it. This
is how He calmed them. He said, Oh ye of little faith,
remember, remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how
many baskets you took up. Remember how I delivered you
in the past. That's how we're going to face
the present trial. Remember past deliverance. Alright, now let's
go to the second tense, present tense. It says in our text, and
He doth deliver. He doth deliver. At every moment
since God has called us, God has constantly been delivering
us and keeping us trusting Christ alone. He has been doing that
constantly, keeping us trusting Christ alone. The psalmist said,
He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all
thy ways. We don't see the deaths, the
majority of the deaths. and the deliverance that He does
for us, we don't see it. We don't see it. The things that
we look at, the things we see and consider to be great deliverance
is really comparatively small because He's delivering us from
the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh
and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers
of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness
in high places. There's evil we can't see. There's
spirits we can't see. What do you think makes a world
all of a sudden go stark raven mad? And yet, you're delivered from
it. It's God keeping you. That's
it. It's God delivering you from
it. Back in 07, I was asking Scott, him and Christine took
me and Melinda on this boat trip. And we put in at Keyport, New
Jersey, on this, the Jersey Shore, and we went in the boat, we motored
across and went across Raritan Bay, and went across New York
Harbor, and then we went up the Hudson River, had Jersey City
on one side, Manhattan on the other, went all the way up to
the George Washington Bridge. Now you just imagine, if you
try to cross that bay, I don't know how many miles it is, but
it, I was thinking it was something like 15 miles, but I can't remember,
but it was a long trip. It's a big, big bay. Now you
imagine trying to go across that bay in the middle of Hurricane
Sandy, when it's blowing to top speed, and doing it carrying
a lit candle and keeping that candle lit from one side to the
other. Arthur Pink said, it's more miraculous
than that, that God delivers us through this world amidst
so many enemies that we don't even see and know. We can't deliver
ourselves from the ones we can see, much less the ones we can't. That's what He does. And then
Christ keeps us by putting an ever-present wall around us. He said this, I will not forget
thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon
the palms of my hands. Thy walls are continually before
me. He has put a wall around us and
He is going to keep His people. Why? Because He has got some
wounds in His hands. that shows that He shed His precious
blood and bought us and we belong to Him. And we're His body. And
if He don't have every member of His body, His body won't be
complete. And His justice will be thwarted.
Justice won't be done if He loses one for whom He's already justified.
And so He shall deliver us. And that's why He's going to
protect His people constantly. Constantly. At times, you know,
we do behold some of our enemies, and when we do start seeing the
enemies, we think that we're gone. We're done for. You know, you get to that point
where you just, I don't know what I'm going to do. Can't do
anything. Best place you can be to get
to that point where you realize, I can't do nothing. Well, Elisha's
servant faced that one morning. He woke up one morning and walked
outside and looked and on every hill all the way around him was
the enemy army. Horses and chariots all the way
around. And he started crying out to Elisha, what are we going
to do? What are we going to do? And Elisha answered him, fear
not. He said, they that are with us are more than be with them.
And he said, Lord, I pray, open his eyes that
he may see." And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and
he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots
of fire round about Elisha. Do you believe this? This is
so. God's angels are around His people
constantly sent forth to minister us and protect us all the time,
constantly. And we've got more protectors
with us than our enemies do. Now that's just so. So our Savior
hath delivered us and our Savior doth deliver us. He's delivering
us right now. And then we come now to the future
deliverance. Our text says, there in whom
we trust that He will yet deliver us. In whom we trust that He
will yet deliver us. Every so often, about every ten
years or so, religion comes out and they start marketing a new
slogan. It becomes real popular. And
I remember One time growing up there for a number of years where
the big slogan was, it was hold on and hold out. That was the
slogan for religious folks. Hold on and hold out. Well, our future is secure not
by our holding on to God, but by God holding on to us. That's
how our future is secure. Go to Isaiah 41 and I want you
to look here with me at this future tense. Isaiah 41. Look here, Isaiah 41, 10. God
says, Fear thou not, for I am with thee. That's present tense. Be not dismayed, for I am thy
God. Now here we come to some future
tense. I will strengthen thee. I will strengthen thee. Yea, I will help thee. Yea, I will uphold thee with
the right hand of my righteousness. Behold, all they that were incensed
against thee shall..." That's future tense. "...they shall
be ashamed and confounded. They shall be as nothing. And
they that strive with thee shall perish. Thou shalt seek them
and shalt not find them, even them that contended with thee.
They that were against thee shall be as nothing and as a thing
of naught. For I, the Lord thy God, He will
hold thy right hand. Aren't you glad of that? It's
not you holding His hand. He says, I will hold your right
hand, saying unto thee, fear not, I will help thee. You see, go to Romans 5 with
me. You see, here's the thing. We
hated God. We hated God and we didn't want
to have anything to do with God. And if a man ain't ever hated,
found out that he hated God, didn't want nothing to do with
God, he ain't had nothing to do with Him yet. You've got to be
taught that all you are in your nature is hatred of God. And
that's what we were. We hated God. We were enemies
to God in our minds, constantly. Watch this, Romans 5.10. If when
we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son,
much more. Being reconciled, we shall be
saved by His life. You see, Christ lives. Christ
is alive. Christ is at God's right hand.
And Christ said, and it's by His life that we're going to
live. It's by His constant intercession before God for us that our triune
God will not let us perish. Christ said, I give unto them
eternal life and they shall never perish. No man shall ever pluck
them out of My hand, He said. He said, My Father which gave
them Me is greater than all and nobody shall be able to pluck
them out of My Father's hand. We're in Christ's hand. We're
in God's hand. And he said he is not going to
allow his people to pluck one of his people out of his hand.
Now brethren, by our past and our present deliverance, we look
to this future deliverance now. And we can say this with Paul,
I know whom I have believed. I know whom I have believed.
And I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have
committed unto him against that day. What have I committed to
him? Everything. everything. I'm dependent on
Him for everything. And I'm persuaded. He's able.
He's going to keep everything. He's going to do that. That's
future tense. Being confident of this very thing. That He which
hath begun a good work in you. That's past tense. He hath begun
a good work in you. Will perform it. That's present
tense. Unto, future tense, the day of
Jesus Christ. So brethren, when we think about
this future tense, we have to remember this, the best is yet
to come. The best is yet to come. Soon
our Lord Jesus Christ is going to return. And when He returns,
He is going to bring us into glory with Him as His entirely
new creation. created by Him alone in body,
soul, and spirit. Not the kind of body we got now.
It ain't going to be dust. It's going to be a new body.
It's going to be our body. It's going to be a spiritual
body, an immortal body, and an immortal soul, an immortal spirit
entirely created by Christ out of nothing that came from us. Absolutely out of nothing that
came from us. It's going to be His creation, entirely His creation. And we're going to dwell with
Him forever. Look over at 2 Corinthians 5. For we know that, and the
word really is when, we know that when our earthly house of
this tabernacle is dissolved, and it shall be, That's what
it's doing every minute of every day. It's dissolving. It's dissolving. It's our earthly tabernacle.
It's a tent. You don't stay in a tent forever.
You take the tent down and it's dissolving. It's going to go
right back to the dust. But watch what we have. We have
a building of God. We have a... It's not a tabernacle. It's a permanent dwelling built
by God. A house not made with hands,
not our hands. Eternal, eternal. This is an eternal house in the
heavens. That's where it's at. And when
Christ returns, He's going to take us across that river. Go
back to Exodus 15. Exodus 15. I want you to see
this now. What's it going to be like? This
is a This is a song they were singing, but I want you to...
You remember whenever... I don't think we've come to it
yet. We will though. Lord willing, we will. When they
got ready to cross the Jordan River, remember that? God told
those priests, He said, you go down there and you stand with
your feet in the river and you hold up the ark. That's all you
do. You just stand with your feet
in the river and hold up the ark. And the people were to stay back.
They were to stand back. Because there's a bunch of folks.
If you get all crowded up there, everybody's not going to be able
to see you. You've got to stand back far enough so they can see that ark
out there. Everybody could see it. And he said, you just keep
your eye on that ark. And you know what God did? They
stood there with their feet on the edge of that river and held
that ark up. And God dried the river up. And they went across on dry ground.
Christ is that high priest. He is that ark. And He is the
one that's holding Himself up before us so we behold Him and
making us behold Him. And He says, all you do is you
just behold Me and I'm going to drive up that river and I'm
going to take you across. Watch this now, Exodus 15, 16. Fear and dread shall fall upon
our enemies. By the greatness of Thine arm
they shall be as still as a stone. Till Thy people pass over, O
Lord, till the people pass over which Thou hast purchased, Thou
shalt bring them in and plant them in the mountain of Thine
inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which Thou hast made, in the
place Thou hast made for Thee to dwell in, in Thee's sanctuary,
O Lord, which Thy hands have established, and the Lord shall
reign forever and ever." Now, 35 minutes, we've gone from eternity
past to our past historical the historical past, to our experiential
past, to our present, to the future history, or the future
that will be in the time to eternity. We've gone from eternity to eternity. Now when you read the Scripture
and you hear me say, salvation is of the Lord, this is what
I mean. Salvation is of the Lord. I mean
that our salvation and the salvation of all God's elect has been,
is being, and shall be accomplished by our great God and Savior alone
beginning to end. Every bit of it. Somebody will
hear that and they're going to say, Well, you just sound like
you say that God's just got control of every single thing in the
salvation of His people from the very beginning in every little
detail, even controlling the enemies, even controlling you,
even controlling everything about His people until He brings us
to glory. And that's exactly what I'm saying.
Exactly. And when we get to glory, everything
that we hold on to right now and think that we can't live
without won't even be there. none of it because it defiles
every bit of it. Everything we think we need to
hang on to is defiling and it's the worst thing in the world
for us. God gave it to Christ and Christ, the reason He created
a world where we live in it and created us and did all this for
us in this world is to show us something of how He's creating
an entirely new world and He's creating His people new. and
everything there will be His creation. Paul comforted Timothy
with this. He said, the Lord stood with
me. He said, and the Lord delivered me out of the mouth of the lion.
And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work and will
preserve me unto His heavenly kingdom to whom be glory forever
and ever. Amen. and we'll be saying to
Him be glory and we'll be saying it forever and forever. Amen.