Back in Luke chapter 1, there was an elderly man in Israel
who was a priest, and his name was Zacharias. And he and his wife, Elizabeth,
they had a son in their old age. And after eight days, after the
birth of John the Baptist, he was officially named. And then Zacharias had some things
to say to that eight-day-old baby boy. And he said to him,
and of course the Spirit of God, He recorded this for us in Luke
chapter 1, He said this in essence, my son, God has sent you a hit
of Messiah to make this way ready for him. And of course that's
what John the Baptist did. And then he said, then Zacharias
said to his little infant boy, he said, Here God is going to
send you to give a knowledge of salvation. That's why God's
going to send you, to give you a knowledge of salvation. You can't save and you can't
make anybody be saved but you'll give the knowledge of salvation. And really, that's what all of
the preachers of the gospel do. We give them knowledge of salvation,
who it is it saves, and the way it saves, and the reason it saves,
and what it means to be saved. But I can't save you. I can't
forgive you of your sins. I can't make you righteous. I
can seek God's face for you. I can ask God to be merciful
to you, and I do. I can set before you God's salvation. I can say to you, believe on
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved. I can
say, believe Him in your heart, and God says He'll save you.
But I can't save you and nobody else can either on this earth. This is a work left only to our
God. He must save. He must do something for us that
we can't do for ourselves. Tell you, I have two great desires
this morning. And here's the first one. I want
you to be saved. I do want you to be saved. I read in the book of Romans,
here's what Paul said. Brethren, my heart's desire,
this is what I want, this is what I pray to God for, that
you might be saved. I don't want you to perish. Would
you listen to me? I don't want you to die in your
sins. The Savior said if you die in
your sins, He said you can't come where I'm at. If you go through this life,
every how many years God gives you, and there is no experience
of grace in your soul, if the Savior is not made your all in
all, if you've not come to cast your soul upon Him, as the only
one who can liberate you, the only one who can save you, the
only one who can forgive you, the only one who can make you
righteous. If you don't believe Him, when
you leave this world, you're in for an eternity of death. I don't want you to die in a
lost condition. I can't save you, but I compel
you to come to Christ Jesus. I earnestly do that. This is
the burden of my soul. And only those who are preachers
of the gospel really understand and can feel this burden. You read through some of the
Old Testament prophets. And I would never, of course,
put myself on their level, but they talk about a burden that
God has given them, a burden, a weighty, a weighty burden,
something that weighs heavily on their heart. And my burden is that those to
whom I speak, that they come to know Him, whom to know is
life everlasting. There is no salvation in this
church. There's no salvation in the baptistry. Salvation is in Him. Christ Jesus
our Lord. Believe Him. Trust Him. Come
to Him. And you come to Him, you'll find
that He's not going to cast you out. He never has stopped anybody
from coming. Our Savior stood on the last
day of the feast in John chapter 7. He said, if any man thirst,
let him come unto me and drink. He is the water of life. Are you thirsty? Oh God, give
everybody a thirst. We're naturally thirsty for the
things of this life. That comes naturally. Oh, that we would thirst for
God. David said, he said, as the deer panteth after the water
brook, he said, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. I thirst
for the Lord, don't you? I want the Lord. And I have been
enabled by the Spirit of grace to drink of the water of life,
and I drink, and I drink, and I drink again. Life is only in
the Savior. I want you to be saved. That's
my desire. That's my desire. My first desire
this morning is that you would be saved. Do you know God? It's a time
of examination. What are you resting in for your
salvation? You say, well, I figure I'm going
to heaven one day. Jim, I believe I will. Well, what do you base that on? On whom do you base things? My hope is built on nothing I've
ever done, but only on Christ and Him crucified. The smitten
Savior, wounded, bruised, crucified for sinners to satisfy God's
justice. He's my only hope. What about
you? What about you? That's the first thing. I have
a great desire. for your salvation. I'm gonna
give you, as best I can, I'll give you a knowledge of this
salvation, but God has to save you. And here's the second thing,
then, that I have a desire for this morning. I want those of
you who know something about God's salvation by experience, I want you to rejoice in that
salvation. I tell you, of all the people
in this world, only those who are known of God, only those
who are saved by the grace of God really have a reason to be
joyful. You see, there is no lasting
joy, there's no lasting peace in anything that's to be found
in this world except in the salvation that is of God and accomplished
by Him who sits on His throne in glory. That's the basis for
salvation and that's the basis for rejoicing in Him. We rejoice
in His salvation. I think that many of the people
of God are down quite a bit. I believe many of the people
of God are not really happy, not really joyful. Here's where joy is to be found
in the Lord. In the Lord. That's the reason
the Apostle Paul, he was in prison, in a dungeon, and surrounded
by dried bones and human waste and all the other filth that
was in that dungeon. And he writes to poor people
at the church at Philippi, and he says, Rejoice in the Lord!
Always! Well, how can you rejoice? You
rejoice in where you're sitting? on that damp ground? Do you rejoice
in your circumstances? He said, I'm content with these
circumstances, but I rejoice in my God. I can rejoice in Him. And I rejoiced this morning.
I rejoiced. My sins are forgiven. What about
that? All of my sins are washed away. The sins and iniquities of Jim
are sought for by God. They can't be found. Why not?
Christ put them all away. I rejoice in that. Can you rejoice
in the forgiveness of sins? I said I can't forgive you. and
you can't forgive me of my sins. Now, if I wrong you, if you wrong
me, that is our forgiveness, but as far as the forgiveness
that forgets about sin, only God can do that, and I'm so thankful
He's forgotten mine. Somebody said He remembers to
forget. And I rejoice in that. I rejoice
in salvation. Now, this word salvation, Let
me give you a little bit of knowledge of salvation. It's a big word. It's a word that's full of meaning.
And I'll give you four things about this word salvation. And here in verse five of Psalm
20, we will rejoice in thy salvation. I just want to work on that.
It's a big word, and I'll give you four words to help you to
understand salvation. Number one, deliverance. The salvation is deliverance.
It's deliverance from every enemy. It's deliverance from everything
that is evil. It is deliverance from, number
one, our problem of sin, and number two, our problem of Satan. It's deliverance. Deliverance. Deliverance, first of all, from
sin, the penalty of sin. You see, the justice of God is
aggravated because of our sin. And the justice of God will not
settle for anything less than death. That's why Christ came. And the scripture says Christ
died for our sins according to the scriptures. He died to deliver
us from the evil of sin, that penalty of sin. And of course,
there is the presence of sin. He died to deliver us from the
very presence of sin when we leave this world. And He died
to deliver us from the very power of sin. And so we read in Romans
6, sin shall not have dominion over you anymore. Deliverance,
deliverance from sin, that's what salvation is, deliverance
from sin. Deliverance from that condemnation
of sin. Would you like to be delivered
from the penalty of sin? I want to be delivered from the
penalty of sin. That's death. I preached on that
last week. The wages of sin is death. I
want to be free of that. I want to be delivered from that.
That's why Christ died. He died to put away the sins
of all of his people and take care of the penalty, sin. He delivers us from sin. He delivers
us from Satan. He delivers us from the will
of Him who is altogether too powerful for us. Satan held us captive. Our Lord Jesus, He came and He
set the captives free. And brought us into the liberty
of the children of God. It's deliverance. Deliverance. And here's the second word, okay? Salvation, give you four words
to help you with that. The first word is deliverance.
Here's the second word, health. Or wholesomeness, that is spiritual
health and spiritual wholeness. The psalmist said further over
in the psalms, Psalm 67, 2, God be merciful unto us and bless
us and cause His face to shine upon us, Selah. That thy way
may be known upon the earth and thy saving health, thy saving
health, among all nations. You see, the salvation of a sinner
is not only deliverance from sin and deliverance from Satan. It is the restoration to us of
a spiritual wholesomeness or health in Christ Jesus. You see, when Adam was made,
he was spiritually healthy, wholesome. What anything wrong with him?
But he became infected with a deadly disease called sin. That's our problem. We're diseased
people. We're sick. That's why Isaiah said the whole
head is sick. The heart is faint. We have an
incurable illness about us. It's set forth in the Scripture
as leprosy. A deadly, deadly sickness or
disease for which there is no human cure for it. Ah, but this
is what God's salvation is. It is a restoration to health. He makes us whole. He makes us
whole. You go through the New Testament,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, those first four books of the
New Testament, the gospel narratives, you see so many times our Lord
Jesus heals people of all kinds of diseases. And those are literal
illustrations of spiritual realities. He heals us of our spiritual
diseases. And He actually did that when
He died upon the cross of Calvary. With His stripes we were healed. That's what the Bible says. There's
no healing anywhere else. You see, there is a balm in Gilead. There is a remedy for what our
sickness is all about. For our disease, there's a remedy.
There is health. There is God's salvation. So
we got two words taken care of already. Salvation, deliverance. Deliverance from sin, deliverance
from Satan. And then it is health. But another word will also assist
us in our understanding, and that's the word help. Help. We are set forth in the Word
of God as being a helpless people as far as salvation is concerned. We can't restore ourselves to
God. I know there's an old saying
that says, God helps those who help themselves. And maybe that
is true on some level. I won't get into a theological
discussion with you. However, it is not true on a
spiritual level. We're altogether helpless. Oh, my sinner friend, There is no one more helpless
than a sinner who is lost, undone, unwashed, head over heels in
sin. There's no one more helpless
than you are. Helpless. No wonder we read in the Psalms,
Psalm 146 and verse 3, put not your trust in princes, nor in
the son of man, in whom there is no help. There's no help. So I'm going to join the church.
There's no help in joining the church. That's not going to help
you in this matter of salvation. Well, I'm going to start doing
better. I'm going to stop using those four-letter words that
tend to come out of my mouth every once in a while. Well,
if you're using four-letter words that tend to come out of your
mouth every once in a while, you ought to stop that. But,
that's not what salvation is about. I'm gonna clean up my act. Well,
if your act needs cleaning up, then get some soap and water
and clean it up. But you can't clean yourself
up. That's the problem. You see,
that foulness is within. It's in the heart. And you can
do something about the outside. If there are bad habits you need
to give up, give them up. I'm all for morality, but morality
is not spirituality. We need help in here. And I'm not talking about the
physical heart. I'm talking about the soul, the
inner man. Need help. I need help. woman in the scripture, woman
of Canaan. She said, have mercy on me, O
Lord. My daughter is grievously vexed
with the devil. Finally, the disciple said, I
wish you'd tell her to go away. And the woman, the scripture
says, came to Jesus and worshiped him. It said three words. Three words. Lord, help me. Huh? That's not over your head,
is it? Well, I tell you preachers, y'all
preach about things way over my head. Can you understand these
three words? Lord, help me! Huh? Is that clear enough? There isn't a young person in
this building that can't understand that. Lord, I'm in a bad way. Lord, I'm lost. Lord, I'm a sinner. My only help has got to come
from you. Lord, help me! And I'll tell you what, if that
cry comes forth from your heart, He will help you. He helps the
help. That's clear, isn't it? That's
not sailing over anybody's head. I'm not trying to impress you
with theological jargon. I'm trying to preach to your
heart. Lord, help me. And I tell you, every day, as
a believer, isn't that the essence of your cry to God? Just every
day, Lord, help me. We need help. And you know what? He won't leave
us helpless. He is our helper. And we don't
need just a little bit of help. And we don't need a lot of help. We need totally help because
we're totally helpless. But He's the helper of the helpless.
And I'm a living, breathing, walking example of that. Help. You with me so far? Salvation. Deliverance from sin
and Satan. Salvation. It's health. Wholeness. It's got a deadly disease. You've got it. You've got the
cancer of sin. I know a couple, talked to them
recently, whose son has been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. His health is going down. It doesn't appear that he'll
ever have good physical health again. But I'm thankful to be
able to say to you, he's healthy before God. In, was it 2 John? John wrote
to these people and he said to them, here's my prayer for you. that your body will be in health
even as your soul is. That's interesting. Think about
that. The prayer was that their body
would be as healthy as their soul is. What if your body was
just as healthy as your soul is? How would your body be? Dilapidated, falling apart. That's the way my body is now. That's the result of age. But I'll tell you, within, we're
like youngsters. That's what Isaiah talks about.
We're like youngsters. We have new life from God. We're
saved by His grace. We're delivered from sin, from
Satan. We have health. We're made healthy
by Christ. The leprosy of skin of our souls,
just like the leprosy of the skin of those in the Old Testament,
our leprosy is gone. We're white, pure as new fallen
snow. Would you like to be healthy
like that? Wash me. I'll be whiter than
snow is what David said. Well, there is help for the helpless
in Christ. On this point of health, a verse
in 2 Kings 14, For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that
it was very bitter to them. You know, that's necessary. to
see you got a disease, then you'll want the cure. Remember the Lord said, the whole
have no need of a physician but those that are sick. It may be
somebody in here this morning or somebody who's watching. You
say, well, there are others who need this message far more than
I do. I'm not so bad. Oh, you're bad, all right. You
just don't know it. Hey, and I tell you, you're bad
just like all the rest of us. Just like all the rest of us
by nature. The Lord saw the affliction of
Israel is bitter to them. For there was no helper in Israel. That's what it said. has no help. Tell you what, here's what I
ask God. Show you there's no helper anywhere on this earth. There's no help to be found anywhere. The only one who can help you
is the Lord of glory. He's the only one who can help
you. While you're looking for that
last word, victory. Victory. In fact, if you look
up the word salvation, and I love using a concordance, you can
get a, when I was in Bible college, there were three main concordances
that you could get, crudence, youngs, and strongs. And any
of them will do you good. A professor said one time, he
said, get your crudence concordance, because crudence is for the crude.
And he said, or get you a young's concordance. Young's is for the
young. But he said, get you a strong's concordance. Strong is for the
strong. Well, I'm crooked and I'm young,
but I do enjoy strong's concordance. And these words that I'm giving
you, these are the definitions of salvation. He's the deliverer. He's the one who heals us of
our diseases. He gives us health. He is our
helper. And number four, this salvation
is victory. That's what it means, victory.
And He's the one who accomplished the victory. He conquered our
sin. What did He do to it? What did
He do to our sins? He nailed them to the tree. That's
what the Scripture says. He nailed them to the tree. He
died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He died for our
sins so that we would not die in our sins. Isn't that wonderful?
Saved. Delivered. He conquered sin. And he conquered
Satan. He crushed his head. That's what
happened at the cross. I'll tell you something else
he conquered. Death. He got victory over death. Victory over death. News flash for you. You're a dying person. A better news flash. Give you
some good news. In this day of so much bad news,
here's good news. He conquered death. It doesn't
have the last say so. Death. He's the victor over death. And he's the victor over grave.
The grave. That's where we're going. That's
where the body's going. Going to the grave. The soul
goes back to God. But one day, though these bodies
are going to be buried, unless the Lord comes back soon, they're
going back dust to dust and ashes to ashes. Going back to the dirt
where we came from originally in Adam. There's coming a day
when His people are going to come back with Him. and He'll
show us ultimate salvation. He's going to raise our bodies,
make them new, put our souls back with our body, and then,
then we can say, I'm fully saved. I'm saved altogether. Oh, what a glorious salvation.
And Peter says in 1 Peter 1, 9, this is the goal of faith. This is the goal. The salvation
of your soul. That's what Peter says. That's
the goal. I'll tell you what, there's safety
in Christ Jesus. You believe on Him. You believe
on Him. Say, preacher, I don't understand
a lot of things you talk about when you go deeper into salvation.
Those things will come. Those things will come. If you'd
asked that thief dying beside the Savior, if you'd asked him
about any number of doctrines that we love and delight in,
he would have known what you're talking about. But I'll tell
you what he did know. He is in serious trouble. And
the only one who could help him was dying right beside of him. The rest will come later. Oh,
you'll grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But this is salvation. And those
of you whom God has saved, rejoice in this salvation. Rejoice in
this deliverance. in this good health He's given
you. In His health. He's the helper
of the helpless. Rejoice in His victories, because
you see, in His victories, we are more than conquerors through
Him who loved us. All right. Joe, come lead us.
We'll sing a closing song. Let's sing 187. Bless be the
tie that binds.