The Word of God teaches very
clearly, salvation is all by grace. Works cannot enter into
the salvation of God's elect, not one little bit. And we know
that, and God has revealed that to us. And we thank and praise
our God for His amazing grace. Now during His public ministry,
All of Israel was talking about Jesus Christ and rightly so.
He raised the dead, gave sight to the blind, unstopped deaf
ears. He healed leprosy. He cast out
demons. His power was made known throughout
His public ministry in a way that it could not be denied that
he was sent from heaven. And he preached the gospel of
his kingdom with authority and no man was able to refute what
he was preaching. Now I share that to mention the
contrast between the people of this day and what they're saying
about him and what the people were saying about him back then.
Today, Men want to talk about what they do for Jesus. Back
then, it was what Jesus Christ was doing for the sinner. And
that is what we talk about. I remember Charles Haddon Spurgeon
was invited to preach in a certain area. His grandfather was there. who made a prediction that Mr.
Spurgeon, and he made this when Spurgeon was just a little boy,
that Mr. Spurgeon would grow up and preach
to the largest congregation in England. Now, Charles Spurgeon's
grandfather was a preacher also, and Spurgeon's train was late. And his grandfather stood in
a pulpit not knowing what was causing their train to be late,
and said, I know my grandson can preach the gospel better
than me, but he cannot preach a better gospel than I preach.
And he began to preach the gospel and Mr. Spurgeon did show up
and he took over. And that's what I want to share
with you this morning. I just absolutely admire Brother
David Edmondson, I can sit and listen to him preach and never
get tired of that. I believe, in my estimation,
he's a much better preacher than I am, but he cannot preach a
better gospel than I've preached. The gospel is Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. And we're here to worship Him.
This is a worship service. And you cannot worship God, unless
we worship Him in spirit and in truth. They go hand in hand. You can't have one without the
other. Now, can you imagine Lazarus,
who was raised from the dead, talking about his decision for
Jesus, about how he exercised his free will in order to have
the Lord give him this unspeakable gift, eternal life? I've thought
about this so many times. Lazarus had been dead for four
days. Even his sister told the Lord
when he said, take away the stone. She said, Lord, by now he stinks. And the Lord stood at the grave
of Lazarus and said, Lazarus, come forth. And he came forth. Now he heard the voice of Jesus
Christ, but he could not have heard that voice until life was
put back into his dead body. Life comes first. He was given
life, and then because he had life in his dead body, he heard
the voice of Jesus Christ speaking to him, calling him out. of that
grave. And that's the way it is with
salvation. We must hear the voice of Jesus
Christ. We must. But we won't hear that
life-giving voice until He puts life, spiritual life, eternal
life, into these old dead bodies. He quickens His people. gives
us life, raises us from a state of spiritual deadness the same
way He raised Lazarus from his physical deadness. Life comes
first. Turn with me, if you will, to
2 Corinthians chapter 1. 2 Corinthians chapter 1. I mentioned my subject already. I want to talk about Jesus Christ,
our great Deliverer. We read in the scriptures where
our Lord went to the country of the Gadarenes, and there was
a man who was possessed with a legion of demons. I'm not sure
how many that was, but I think 2,000. But he was found keeping
company with those in cemeteries, he preferred dead people to live
people, cutting himself, chains couldn't hold him, he was a wild
man, just absolutely possessed. Our Lord healed that man, and
he was found sitting at the feet of Jesus, fully clothed and in
his right mind. And when our Lord got ready to
leave that country, and that's the reason he went there, was
to heal that man. When he got ready to leave, he,
the Lord, and his disciples got back in the boat and that man
who was healed wanted to go with the Lord Jesus. And the Lord
said, No. Return to thine own house and
show how great things God hath done unto thee. And he went his
way and published throughout the whole city how great things
Jesus had done unto him. He did not talk about himself.
He talked about Jesus Christ, his Lord, and what he had done
for him. And that's what God's people
do today. It's no different. We're here
because the Lord has set us free. He has delivered us. He has delivered
us, He is delivering us, and He will yet deliver us. And we
read that here in the Scripture. If you're with me, in 1 Corinthians
1, starting at verse 8, Paul the Apostle, moved by God the
Holy Spirit, penned these words, saying, For we would not, brethren,
Have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that
we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that
we despaired even of life? Now we don't know exactly what
it was that Paul was experiencing, the trial that he was going through
during this time when he penned these words, but we know he despaired
of life. He was a man who thought he was
going out into eternity. Him and those in his company
despaired even of life, it says in the last part of verse 8.
And in verse 9 we read, But we had the sentence of death in
ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God
who raises the dead. And even in the midst of that
very difficult, life-threatening situation, his trust was in God
and only in God. Then he says something in verse
10 that I want to draw our attention to for this morning's message.
Who delivered us, speaking of God who raised the dead, who
delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver, in whom we
trust that He will yet deliver us. So Paul uses three tenses,
past, present, and future, concerning God's deliverance. Now, I know
that this was a situation that had to do with a very difficult
trial that Paul was going through. But as Brother Henry Mahan stated
in his Bible class commentary, Paul's confidence can also apply
to our redemption. And that's what I want us to
look at in these three tenses. Redemption, past, present, and
future. I ask you to turn, if you will,
to 1 Thessalonians chapter 1. I have four points I want us
to consider on this subject of Christ Jesus, our great Deliverer. He delivered us from the wrath
that's coming. He delivered us from the power
of darkness. He delivers us from all our trials
and afflictions, and He delivers us from the body of this death.
Now here in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, the Apostle Paul is writing
to a collected body of believers. It's what we have right here
this morning. People who have embraced Jesus
Christ because of the grace of God. People who have heard of
the substitutionary death of Christ our Savior, like we heard
from Brother Larry Brown this morning during Sunday School.
People who assembled on a regular basis for this very reason, to
worship the true and living God. And they were there doing something
that all of us are doing today. Look at the last part. of chapter
5 of this glorious subject, where Paul, writing under divine
inspiration, I'm in 2 Thessalonians, I'm sorry,
1 Thessalonians, Well, I know it's here. They were waiting for the return
of the Lord Jesus Christ who had delivered them from the wrath
to come. Well, I don't see it. But that's what they were doing.
They were waiting for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ who
had delivered them from the wrath that's coming. And it is coming.
And that's what we're doing. We're here waiting for the return
of our Lord Jesus who has delivered us. That's past tense. Delivered
us from the coming wrath. And it's coming, folks. I know
it's coming, and all of God's children know that God's wrath
is coming. But how did our Lord Jesus deliver
us? How did He deliver us from the
coming wrath? Well, however you want to, in
your mind, give thought to that glorious subject, I know this
for sure. He did it by Himself. He delivered
us by Himself. Nobody helped Him. He must tread
the winepress alone. And our Lord Jesus reveals to
us that back at Calvary, He paid the redemption price in full
for all of our sins. He didn't try to deliver us,
folks, He did! We have a brother back at the
Church and Rescue, his name is Mike Loveless, he's an excellent
writer, writes a lot of good articles. And in one of his recent
articles, he's made this statement, If your God is trying, your preacher
is lying. God never tried to do anything.
He by Himself purged our sins when He walked on this earth
establishing a perfect righteousness for His people. And when He went
to the cross, He went there with the awareness of the fact
that He was going to suffer the wrath of God in our room and
in our stead. And this is the gospel. Jesus
Christ, when He hung there on that cross, He suffered the unmitigated
wrath of God. He could not have escaped that. There was no other way that we
could be delivered from the wrath that's coming. We had to be in
Him. Now, I don't know how much thought
you have given to that, but I know this. God is a just God. He must punish sin. He must. Either in the sinful
man or woman, or in a substitute. And we were already punished
in our substitute. You can't get a hold of that
without faith. God has to give us faith to believe
that. that we have nothing to fear
of His coming wrath. Perfect love casteth out fear. And when we were in Christ hanging
there with Him on that cross, we were punished just as if we
had been there ourselves. God punished His darling Son
and He cannot punish us. He cannot demand payment at our
Savior's hand then from us as well. It can't. His holy justice
would be a mockery if He could do that. He can't. And so we
look back. We look back at Calvary and we
see that Jesus Christ, by His death, reconciled us to God. We read that in Romans chapter
5. He, when He died, paid the redemption price in full. Nothing
can be laid to the charge of God's elect. Now, how did Paul
know that these people were God's elect? Well, he tells us in the
first chapter of 1 Thessalonians, starting at verse 3, he said,
Remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love
and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of
God and our Savior, knowing, brethren, beloved, your election
of God. And here's how he knew. For our
gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and
in much assurance, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.
So, they received the gospel. Paul preached the gospel. He
had a desire to do nothing but preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And he preached that from his
heart. Telling folks, just like preachers
are telling folks today, Jesus Christ paid it all. All to Him
I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. But
we can preach to people till we're blue in the face. They
will not hear until the gospel comes in power. It must come
in power. God must give the increase. God must take the Gospel and
make it effectual in our hearts. And only God can do that. Only
God can take a hell-deserving sinner and lift him from that
state of spiritual deadness and enlighten that mind with His
truth to where the sinner will bow before God beaten on his
chest saying, God be merciful to me the sinner and give God
all the glory for the great salvation He bestows upon His people. Turn
back to the first chapter of Colossians, if you will, just
one book back. God Himself tells us in His Word
that He has delivered us from the power of darkness and we
were held. We were held. The darkness that
we were in was a powerful darkness that held us to the point where
we even loved that darkness and hated the light. The Word of
God teaches us this. We would not come to the light
lest our deeds should be reproved. We preferred darkness. But in
the midst of all of that, while we were running from God and
sinning against God, and the message reaches our ears, and
we turn a deaf ear to it, in the midst of that, while we were
dead in trespasses and sins, God comes to us in the person
of the Holy Spirit. And He fills our minds with truths
that give Him all the glory and gives us faith to embrace those
truths. It takes God-given faith. Faith
is God's gift to the sinner, not the sinner's gift to God.
Here in Colossians chapter 1, if you're here with me, we read,
starting at verse 12, giving thanks unto the Father, which
hath made us meet or fit to be partakers of the inheritance
of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of
darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear
Son, in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness
of sins." God delivers us. That's our subject this morning.
Jesus Christ, our great Deliverer. We've been delivered from the
power of Satan, from the power of darkness, from the power of
sin, by the sovereign, irresistible, drawing power of God the Holy
Spirit. You can't resist that. A sinner
can't resist that. And when we come to Christ by
faith, we look back and we didn't want to resist it. We wanted
to come to Him. And God made us willing in the
day of His power to receive the wonderful good news that Jesus
Christ redeemed us with His precious blood to the point where we have
been forgiven from every spot and stain. Nothing can be laid
to the charge of God's elect. What a God to come up with this
wonderful, wonderful plan of salvation that He gets all the
glory and the sinner just receives it in a way that nothing can
be taken from it. And I don't know how to explain
this, I don't have to. The Word of God teaches this.
The responsibility of man and the sovereignty of God and salvation
run hand in hand all through the scripture. You're responsible
to repent. God commands all men everywhere
to repent. But we also read that God grants
repentance unto life. No man, no woman, held by the
power of Satan, power of darkness, the power of Satan, will repent.
They cannot repent. They don't want to repent. They
love what they're doing, and unless God does a work in the
heart, they will continue in that state of unregenerate deadness,
going right out into eternity, and spend eternity in torment.
That's man's responsibility. But all of God's children that
have been enlightened by the Holy Spirit see that God Himself
came to us when we were in that helpless, hopeless, lost condition
and brought us into a living union with Himself by His sovereign
grace and His sovereign mercy. Now turn with me, if you will,
to Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11. God is still delivering us. He delivers us from all our trials
and afflictions. And modern day religionists are
deceiving their hearers by telling them if they come to Jesus, all
their troubles are over. Actually, If the truth is known,
when we come to Jesus, that's when our troubles really begin. So, how do I explain being delivered
from all of our trials and afflictions? Well, we have no guarantee that We will be healed up from
an incurable disease. We don't have any guarantee.
We might die of cancer. We might die in a car wreck.
We might die in an airplane wreck. We might have a heart attack
and go out into eternity. These are instruments and God
has ordained the instruments of death and he has appointed
that time of death. But we are still delivered from
those things. We are delivered in such a way
that if we are healed from a disease that's bad like leprosy or those
things that we read about in the scripture, God is the one
who has delivered us. And we heard from Brother Larry
Brown from Daniel chapter three this morning, where Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego said, if God is pleased to deliver us,
he will. If not, we're still not gonna
bow down to your God, your idol. So God might not deliver us from
the trial we're going through. We might go right out into eternity
in the midst of that trial, but he still delivers us. We're delivered
in such a way that no matter what happens in the situation
we're going through, it's going to be for our good and for God's
glory. Romans 8.28 teaches that as plain
as anything. We know that all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them who are called
according to His purpose. Now in this 11th chapter of Hebrews,
we have an account of men and women. who suffered from many,
many trials. Some were thrown into the lion
gym, some were sawn asunder. It's just wicked men doing to
God's true followers what they would do with God if God was
here. They hate God. They don't want God. They have
no use for God. We have them with us today. If
it wasn't for God's restraining hand, I'm going to tell you the
truth. We could not worship God in spirit and in truth without
the opposers of that truth coming in and creating havoc wherever
we meet. But God's restraining hand is
upon them, my brethren. People are hated as much today
as they were back during the days when martyrs were just gone
out into eternity one after another because of the hatred of men.
And so these people that we read about in the 11th chapter of
Hebrews, they were men and women just like us. experiencing trials
just like us, having the grace of God bestowed upon them where
they would not deny the Lord Jesus no matter what came upon
them. And that's the deliverance that
I'm talking about right now in this third point. Nothing, nothing
can cause a child of God to deny our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we read in this 13th verse, of the 11th chapter of Hebrews
concerning these men and women, these all died in faith. They all died in faith. Paul told Timothy in his epistle
to him that his time of departure was at hand. But he said, I have
kept the faith. Brethren, faith True saving faith believes God. We take Him at His word. He promises
never to leave us nor to forsake us. He tells us that as we walk
through this life we shall have tribulation, but He said, be
of good cheer. I have overcome the world. He
tells us that they're doing to us what they would do to Him
if He was still here. And we trust Him. We trust Him
with our souls, our eternal souls. No matter what comes our way,
we have this love in our hearts for the Lord Jesus Christ that
was never there before. And faith which worketh by love
is the believer's rule of life. Without love, we're nothing.
Without love, we have nothing. But this love was put in our
hearts by God the Holy Spirit and we love Him because He first
loved us. And so we go through this life
not knowing what the next hour might bring. but trusting the
Lord Jesus Christ through it all, knowing that He's in control. He's on His throne. He's sovereign. He's the blessed and only potentate,
King of kings and Lord of lords. Nobody can stop Him from what
He's doing. And nobody, as we heard Brother
Larry bring out just a moment ago, nobody can take us away
from the Lord Jesus Christ. We're safe in His hands, and
He has power over all flesh, to give eternal life to as many
as God the Father gave Him, and He's going to keep us by faith. We're kept by the power of God
through faith unto salvation, ready to be delivered at the
last time. And I know this. The Word of
God not only teaches this, we feel it within our innermost
being that Jesus Christ is doing all things well. Go back, if
you will, in your Bibles, to Romans chapter 7, and I'll bring
this to a close. God has delivered us, He is delivering
us, and He will yet deliver us. We have the old nature that wars against
the Spirit of God that dwells in us. to the point where we can't do
the things we want to do, and we do things we know we shouldn't
do. I have problems that I would
never share from this pulpit. Problems in the flesh that just
scare me. And I constantly going to my
God, asking Him to please give me strength, help me, forgive
me. But I know this, God's love for
His own is a perfect love, an immutable love, an eternal
love. He'll never stop loving us. And His love for us does not
stem from anything that He sees in us or anything we do. Our actions prove our love for
God, but our actions do not regulate God's love. God's love does not
grow not one bit, and God's love for His own does not diminish
not one bit. I think I've probably shared
this with you before, but it bears repeating, and I know what
those who are involved in progressive sanctification will do when they
hear me say this. They'll just groan within themselves,
accusing me of giving those that I preach to a license to sin. Not God's enlightened children.
We don't want to sin. We hate sin. We would quit sinning
if we could. But sin is what we are. And here's
what I want you to hear. When David was committing adultery
in the arms of Bathsheba, God loved him just as much then
as He did when David was running down in the valley to face that
Goliath, that giant. God's love was not regulated
by David's actions. God loves us so much with a perfect
love that this love will carry on throughout all eternity. And it's this love that He puts
in our hearts that keeps us looking to Christ, wanting Christ to
reign over us, giving Him the praise and the glory for all
of that which He has been pleased to do. And Paul, who was an instrument
that God used to write at least 13 of the books in the New Testament,
who established church after church after church, who was
stoned, left for dead, got up and went into the very next town,
and began preaching the same gospel that he had just gotten
stoned for, a man who just labored more abundantly than all of the
other apostles, yet he had that same war going on, and he wrote
about it in this seventh chapter, how he couldn't do the things
he wanted to, and he did things he knew he shouldn't do. And
he tells us in the last two verses, O wretched man that I am. Romans chapter 7 verse 24, O
wretched man that I am. Not that I was, O wretched man
that I am. He was in that wretched body
of death, that kept him from worshiping God like he wanted
to worship Him, kept him from doing the things he wanted to
do, caused him, because of the weakness of the flesh, to do
things he didn't want to do. And I defy anybody in this building
here this morning to say they don't have that kind of trouble.
If you don't, then you don't have the Spirit of Christ dwelling
in you. We have that awful awareness And in our best state, we're
altogether vanity. We sin against our God every
day. But Jesus Christ took care of
our sin debt in such a way that we know when we pass from this
life, we're going to be ushered faultless right before His presence
with exceeding joy. Paul says in the 21st verse,
O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body
of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ
our Lord. So then with the mind I myself
serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. So
we have this wonderful truth before us that there is yet a
deliverance that's coming. God has delivered us from the
wrath to come through the perfect redeeming work of Christ our
Savior. He has delivered us from the
power of darkness, the power of sin, the power of Satan. by His irresistible drawing power
and bringing us to Himself and enlightening our minds and giving
us faith to embrace Jesus Christ. He delivers us from all of these
trials that we're going through and He will yet deliver us from
this body of death that is keeping us from worshiping God the way
we want to worship Him. And one day when it's all over,
when we're ushered into the presence of the King, We'll be there without
sin. Without sin. Can you imagine
that? Being without sin? Well, we have
that in God's sight right now. But I know in my own sight, I'm
not free from sin. I still sin against my God. But one of these days, One of
these bright, glorious, wonderful days, it's all going to be over. I don't think I have much more
time left in this life. I might not ever be able to stand
before you and preach to you again. I've already had two heart
attacks. My health is not that good. But
don't weep for me when I'm gone. I've gone to a better place.
I believe God. I believe His Word. When He tells
me that all of my sins are taken care of, and that He will receive
me unto Himself, faultless, I believe that. And it's all because of
Jesus Christ, our great Deliverer, who by Himself purged our sins. Brethren, If your God is not
great, your preacher is making a mistake
and your heart is still filled with hate. But our God is great
and greatly to be praised.