Today's Speaker: Eager Avenue Grace Church extends a warm welcome to Ken Wimer. Ken is pastor of Shreveport Grace Church and once again we welcome him as our guest speaker. Ken will conduct both the 10:00 am and 11:00 am services today. Pray for him as he delivers God's Word.
Radio Broadcast: Sunday morning at 9:30am on 98.7 FM -WISK
ARE YOU SAVED?
Often, someone will speak of having been ‘saved' at a particular time and place, referring to some profession they have made, resulting in a personal sense of deliverance. The question is, ‘What does the Bible mean by the word ‘saved'? Here are three uses of the word in the Bible:
1. SAVED FROM THE PENALTY OF SIN- The Lord Jesus Christ accomplished salvation, by His life and death, on behalf of those that God the Father chose in eternity and gave to Him as their Substitute and Representative, Eph. 1:4-7. So complete was the work of the Lord Jesus for His people that because of it, God looks on Redeemed sinners as fully forgiven and justified before Him- Col. 1:14.
2. SAVED FROM THE POWER OF SIN - Those whom Jesus Christ saved from the penalty of sin, by His death, He does in time save (deliver) from the power (authority) of sin. The Holy Spirit delivers them from the blindness and deadness of heart, and opens their eyes to see and believe on Christ who redeemed, justified, and sanctified them, John 5:24.
3. SAVED FROM THE PRESENCE OF SIN- Those who believe on Christ, through the work of the Spirit, shall yet be saved from the presence of sin in glory, as the ultimate effect of His work on the cross, Rev. 20:6.
In all aspects it is Jesus Christ who does ALL of the saving!
Ken Wimer - Pastor of Shreveport Grace Church, Shreveport, La.
ALL OF SALVATION IS IN AND BY CHRIST JESUS
"But of HIM are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, ‘He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.'
1 CORINTHIANS 1:30,31
"The poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel" (Isaiah 29:19)
"The poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel." It is Christ alone that is the Christian's rejoicing. Paul speaks of it thus: "We are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and refoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." This is the way God circumcises the hearts of his people with the circumcision of Christ, made without hands, which cuts them off from all hope of saving themselves; and by the circumcising knife of his law, he stops their mouth from all boastings and brings them in guilty and condemned. The Holy Ghost leads them away from self to a precious Jesus. He leads to a discovery of Christ in all his covenant characters, and shows how he took their case into his hands before all worlds. He opens up to them the glories of Christ in his incarnation; he shows them that, "it is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." So that this is the ground of their rejoicing, that Jesus Christ is an able, willing, glorious and an all-sufficient Saviour.
"The poor among men," rejoice in a finished salvation, all of grace; not a salvation partly accomplished by Christ and the rest made up by the sinner. A gospel of this kind will not save, "the poor among men." I tried for months at saving myself in this way, and when I missed it here and missed it there, I tried it again, for I was determined to hit it. I could see no way of salvation only by being good; therefore I resolved to be good. But with all my trying and tugging, I felt myself to be getting weaker and weaker and further and further off from God, till I was afraid at last that I should surely sink under the terrors of God in a broken law in the waves of damnation, if there were no other way of salvation than my own. I wanted now something more than my good doings. O, my friends, it is dreadful work thus to sink in "the horrible pit and the miry clay." But however painful, it is profitable. The more sick we are made of ourselves, the more we are brought to feel our own weakness and inability, the more well be our joy and rejoicing in Christ Jesus, "the Holy One of Israel."
"The poor among men," then, rejoice that salvation is finished, that sin is for ever put away by the sacrifice of Jesus, that law and justice are satisfied, that everlasting righteousness is wrought out and brought in, that the world is overcome, that death and hell are conquered.
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