How Can We Understand Salvation? | The Whole Counsel

The Character of God as the Starting Point for Salvation

The structure of the sermon, the sermon itself, is on the character of God. He's preaching from Job 42, verses 5 and 6. I have heard thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.

So he introduces this and lays out a doctrine from this text and then seeks to press that doctrine. And before I read the doctrine, I was going to mention that it's interesting, you know, as we lay out these doctrines and we see them laid in this order, he doesn't start with the love of God.

Although he does mention God's love in the sermon, but he starts here and what he's trying to press in showing us the character of God, I think he demonstrates why he starts here. The doctrine is clear and just views of the character and presence of God naturally produced in the mind abasing and penitential thoughts concerning ourselves.

So I guess in more modern vernacular, the more clearly we see God's character and his presence, the more we feel humbled and it should produce repentance. So he starts there, not with God's love, as wonderful as that is, but do you see who this God is, who does love?

So he sets out then in the main part of the sermon to show that, to demonstrate that doctrine in three or four different ways that we'll talk about and then make some applications. And that's kind of the overarching structure of the sermon.

The Order of Truth: God, Self, Sin, and Salvation

Yeah, really this is one of the clearest illustrations in one sermon of what we mentioned last week, that there is an order of truth. What a man believes about God will fashion what a man believes about himself.

And those together fashion what he thinks about sin and then ultimately what you think salvation is. What am I saved from? What would it take to save me? And what would a saved life look like? I mean, all of that is determined by a man's view of God ultimately.

And I think that as pastors or as dads or even dealing with our own souls when we look in the mirror of the scripture, it is such a benefit to know that truths do affect us in that order so that we don't waste our time just hammering away at, you know, we ought to do better.

Or the church needs to act right. You know, don't you see this? But the reason that we are okay with sins is because something's wrong with our view of God. And as Dwight said, the most beneficial thing is to get right views or what we tend to think of as high views.

Really what we're saying is biblical views. When we think of an infinitely high God, no matter how high we think of him, still it's not as high as he is. So while we say high views of God, we mean higher than we've had in the past.

More biblically influenced, you know, informed views. But when we see those, it just changes everything. You know, I mean, when we read our Bibles, it changes everything. And ultimately, it changes the way we live.