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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/daniel-shutt/great-salvation/
I'll ask you to turn again to your New Testament, to the book of Hebrews, chapter 2. The book of Hebrews, chapter 2, and beginning at verse number 1. Hebrews, chapter 2, and verse number 1. Therefore, we ought to give the more earnest heed.
In other words, we need to pay the most careful attention to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. And the idea is that we should let them slip away. You've been hearing some very clear gospel preaching, and there is a great danger tonight that there are people who may have been listening, who will not pay careful attention, and will allow the words to slip away.
That would be tragic. And so I want to read the words of verse number 3, and this will be my text tonight, just a few short words, ten words to be exact. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?
I want to make that question my theme for the balance of this meeting, and I want to address this great question, and I trust that God will present it personally to every heart. How shall I escape if I neglect so great salvation?
You know, as I think about this statement, the great salvation, I'm aware that there may be some in the meeting who are skeptical of language like this. In our modern information age, in the world that we live in, we are exposed on a routine basis to people who over-exaggerate their claims.
Don't you get sick of these weaselly advertisers that promise all sorts of things for 1995 and whatever it is breaks before you get it out of the box? Doesn't that make you mad? And what about the politicians that promise, you know, four cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot, and before they hardly move into their office they've raised your taxes three times?
Makes you mad, doesn't it? Does me. And what about these phony televangelist guys and the green prayer cloth that will heal all your diseases? I'd like to see if they have something that would grow hair on the top of my head.
I'd pay for that. But you know what I know. People promise all sorts of things, and they're not true. And we become skeptics. We become cynics. And maybe there's somebody sitting in the meeting tonight, and you're just leaning back in your chair kind of looking at Mr. Dennison and Mr. Schutt, and you're saying to yourself, what's so great about this salvation?
Well, I want to tell you tonight what is so great about this salvation. This is a verse that I have been preaching from for over 30 years, and it is a verse that means a great deal to my soul, and if God gives me help for the next 20 minutes, I want to tell you about how great God's salvation really is.
I could tell you first of all about the fact that this is a great salvation because of its source. This is a salvation that comes from God Himself. I love coming to Iowa, and one of the reasons I like to come to Iowa is because when I come to Iowa, I get to drive over the Mississippi River.
I don't know what it is about the Mississippi River. I think it was probably due to Mark Twain and books like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. And I've always just, and I have a couple of buddies out here in the audience that know what I'm talking about, I've always had this big urge to put together an old raft and float down the Mississippi River, but there's actually something else I really want to do more than that.
You know what it is? I'd like to get in my car someday, and I'd like to drive up into Minnesota. I've never done this, but I understand that there is a place in northern Minnesota at the mouth of Lake Itasca where you can actually step over the beginnings of the mighty Mississippi River.
Wouldn't that be awesome to do? I'd like to do that. Someday you call me up, we'll go up there and see it. You see, this great river actually has the the tiniest source. Really, it's insignificant as it begins and begins to flow south.
May I tell you about this great salvation, that as I trace it back to its source, it doesn't get smaller and smaller. It actually gets bigger and bigger because I learned that this salvation comes from the heart of God himself.
I'm so glad that Mr. Dennison and I didn't cook up this message in a back room somewhere before the meeting, God forbid. We are preaching tonight the message of forgiveness and salvation in life, and it doesn't come from us, and it doesn't come from the Garnevillo Gospel Hall.
It's a message that comes from heaven. It's a message that comes from the heart of a loving God who longs that every soul might be saved from their sins. This message is great because of its source. I could tell you as well that this message is great because of its scope.
It's a message that reaches you and me. Back home in the town where I live, there were two square miles that were formerly owned by the state. They had some old buildings on them, and they had become very overgrown and abandoned, and a couple of years ago the state decided it needed more money, and so they sold those two square miles.
And I'll tell you the transformation has been remarkable because here's what they did. They invited Arnold Palmer. Now I know for some of you younger folks, maybe the name of Arnie Palmer is not as familiar perhaps as others, but Arnold Palmer in his day was the greatest golfer that played in the United States, maybe the greatest golfer in the world.
And Arnold Palmer came to our town. He designed a beautiful golf course, and those formerly vacant lands just to the north of where Brother John grew up were miraculously transformed into a beautiful, sprawling golf course and beautiful properties and lands and amenities.
There's only one small problem, do you know what it is? The people who live in our town can't afford to play on that golf course. They bring them in from New York City, they come in from Las Vegas, they come in from Los Angeles, but the poor working schmucks that live all the way around that nice beautiful piece of property, it's out of our league.
It's really just not for us. Can I tell you that there is great joy? Mr. Denison and I have never stood in front of a crowd and wondered if the message that we had was limited in any way. This is a message for whosoever.
This is a message from God that reaches the whole world wide. This is a great salvation, folks, because of its source. It comes from God. It's a great salvation because of its scope. It reaches you and me.
I want to tell you something else. This is a great salvation because of its subject. The subject of the gospel is none less than the Son of God, the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, there's something that I pray before I stand up here.
I don't know if I've ever told anybody this before, but I'm going to tell you tonight. There's something that I pray before I ever stand up on a gospel platform, and it's this, that what I say when I preach the gospel will honor and glorify and lift up the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I know there are a lot of things to be preached about. We have to preach about sin. We have to preach about judgment. We have to preach about debts that are due and wages that must be paid. But friend, let me tell you that the heart of the gospel is not a plan or a program.
It's not a process. The heart of the gospel is a person, and the subject of the gospel tonight is no one less than Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died on Calvary for a world of guilty sinners. And if Mr. Denison and I do anything at all tonight, the longing of our heart would be that we would turn your hearts to him, that every soul in this meeting might get that heart-thrilling look at Calvary, and that every soul might understand that they're the Son of God, loved me, and gave himself for me.
But I have three things I want to talk about tonight, and I'm going to do it very simply, just in the few minutes that are left in this meeting. And these are three things. I just wrote this down a few weeks ago, and I was impressed again with the greatness of this salvation.
I want to tell you that this salvation is great because it removes a guilty past. Back home near Detroit where I live, a couple of years before I was born in 1952, there was a man who moved to our community.
His name was Johann Leprecht. He was a native of Austria. He was a quiet man who did his work and minded his business, and he took care of his lawn, and he, as far as anyone knew, he was a totally respectable member of our community.
He lived just 25 miles north in Clinton Township, and Johann Leprecht led a very unremarkable life, until in the year 2003, just six short years ago, the neighbors looked out their windows to see a remarkable sight.
You know what it was? Johann Leprecht's house was surrounded by policemen and special agents, and as they searched through that home, initially finding nothing, ultimately under the stairs leading to his basement, they discovered a secret room.
And that man, having heard the knock on his door, had secreted himself in this little cubbyhole hideaway. But when they opened the door, there they found him, Mr. Leprecht, cowering in the darkness. Do you know who Johann Leprecht was?
Johann Leprecht was a Nazi guard in Adolf Hitler's Death Head Battalion at Mauthausen concentration camp, where over 200 ,000 people were put to death. I wonder what Mr. Leprecht thought in those years between 1952 and 2003.
Pretty remarkable run, wasn't it? He lived a normal life. I feel sure that somehow in his mind, he thought that his past could ultimately be evaded. One day, the knock came, and the past was revealed, and his guilt must be faced.
I want to talk to folks who are in this meeting tonight and remind you that all of us tonight are guilty before God. You know, I think I have a finely tuned ability, as many of us do, to try and forget about things in my past.
I try to forget the stupid things I did when I was a teenager. I try to forget the stupid mistakes I made around girls that I thought I was impressed with. There are a lot of things I did, and a lot of foolish actions that I took, and silly words that I said, and you know, they're so embarrassing, and you know, just to think about them would make you blush, and so we become experts at pushing them back, in our memory and in our forgetfulness.
My friend, I want to tell you tonight that there is a God in heaven who has kept a perfect record of every single sin. I hope that all of us understand tonight that the Bible declares that we are all sinners before God.
Romans chapter 3, Paul writes, for there is no difference for that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And we have not come tonight to accuse you of the grossest possible crimes of murder or rape or other violent things, but all of us have disobeyed God.
And the solemn reality I want you boys right up here in the front to think about this, and girls too God has a record of every single sin. You know, I think one of the most solemn chapters in all the Bible, it must surely be, is Revelation chapter 20, because there is a day when time is done and eternity has been entered into, and there are sinners that stand before the holy presence of the eternal God.
This is what it says. It says the books are opened, and every man was judged out of the things that were found written in the books. My friend, tonight let me be absolutely clear. Every single one of us has a guilty past, and apart from a great salvation, apart from a full cleansing, apart from a marvelous forgiveness, there is a day when you and I will face that guilty past and be condemned for all eternity.
Why is this a great salvation? Let me quote for you the words of 1 John chapter 1 in verse 7, one of the most glorious gospel texts to be found in all the Bible. This is what it says. The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses from all sin.
I want to tell you those words speak absolute peace to my soul. I have a guilty past. I had a debt of sin. I had a load of guilt before God. Thank God there was a day in my experience, it's been 46 years ago now, when I discovered that my debt was paid, that the work of the cross was fully finished, and my guilty past was removed, washed clean in the precious blood of Christ.
Why do I preach about a great salvation? Because tonight it has the power to remove a guilty past. Second thing I want to tell you very briefly is that this is a great salvation because it is the result of a present choice.
You know, we are not particularly in the business of presenting the gospel as though people can just simply choose Christ the way they choose their breakfast cereal or the color of their socks. We are not arguing that the gospel is received in some diffident sort of offhand way that does not require repentance or an accounting for sin.
But I want to tell you tonight that the Bible clearly declares that men and women make a choice. When they are confronted with this Savior, men and women make decisions. When they are confronted with this great salvation.
You know, there are a lot of choices that we make in this life that really have no permanent and lasting consequence. I will never forget a few years after my wife and I were married. We moved to the Detroit area and we bought a home in the town of Northville, and I'll tell you what, it took every penny we could possibly scrape out of the back of the sofa to buy that house.
Boy, I'll tell you, I never spent that much money. I never wrote a check that big in my life, but we had a house. Well, you know, a couple of years passed and we were driving in the neighboring town of Novi, just north of us, and we saw something that made our eyes just stand right out of our head.
It was another house for sale. It was an old Victorian house. I love old houses. And it had a big red barn out behind it, and if I love Victorian houses, I love big red barns even better. And right next to that was a great big pond, and all I could think about was little Betsy and Danny going down the Mississippi River of that pond on a little raft.
Wouldn't they be so happy? And so we pulled in the driveway and we called the realtor, and then we got the bad news. They wanted $75 ,000. Now, I know some of you pay more than that for a car nowadays, but in those days, $75 ,000!
I mean, I had just scraped together everything I had to buy the little house we lived in, and $75 ,000! And sadly, we looked at the house, and we looked at the barn, and we looked at the pond, and we shook our heads, and we held hands, and we said, no, honey, we just have got to make the hard choice here.
We just can't afford that house. Oh, yeah, I know Paul Harvey just died last year, but I got to tell you the rest of the story. About five years ago, that house was sold again to a developer who wanted to knock it down and build condos on it.
Do you know how much that house was sold for? I think it was sold, if I remember correctly, I think it was sold for 1 .2 million dollars. And every single time I drive by that house, my wife reaches out and kicks me right in the leg.
You idiot. $75 ,000 into a 1 .2 million! What a stupid choice it was! But you know something? I'm over it, except for my leg. Because you know what? I have a house to live in. I'll get a roof over my head, and God has been good to me.
And if I had a million and a half dollars, I'd probably spend it foolishly so I didn't need it in the first place. There are lots of decisions that you make in life, and really, when it's all said and done, it really doesn't make any difference.
But I want to ask you something very solemn. I make you smile sometimes because I want you to think, but I also want to speak solemnly to you tonight. What will you do if you miss this great salvation?
My friend, there are any other number of bad choices that can be repaired. There are any number of other bad choices that have no lasting consequences. Oh my dear friend tonight, to miss him, to miss the great forgiveness that Jesus Christ offers through his blood shed on Calvary, to miss him is to miss everything.
I want to tell you, preaching the gospel scares me to death. I'm going to tell you why. Because I look out into the audience and I wonder when I preach if there's going to be one young man, or one young woman, or one middle-aged friend, or one senior citizen, and somehow they're going to make the wrong choice, and they're going to lose their soul, and they're going to perish for all eternity.
God forbid that one person in this meeting should be lost. This great salvation can be received tonight. It is great because it removes a guilty past. It is great because it is the result of a present choice.
You know there are people that get saved the very first time they hear the gospel. Do you know last year, in the year 2008, in two gospel series that I had the great privilege to speak, there were people who got saved in the very first gospel meeting that they ever attended.
I wish that happened a lot more often, don't you John? That'd be wonderful. But I'll tell you something, you don't need to come to a gospel series. You don't need to go through some agonizing process to receive God's salvation.
This is what the Bible says, as many as received him, to them gave the authority to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. God grant that tonight you might receive him, and that your choice might be to take this great salvation.
I have one more point, and then I'm finished. This is a great salvation because it removes a guilty past. This is a great salvation because its blessing comes as a result of a present choice. This is the day of salvation.
Last of all, this is a great salvation because it reveals a peaceful future. I was going to elementary school in the 1960s, in the very heart of what we called the Cold War. And some of you who are in your 50s or 60s today will remember that almost every school had a yellow sign with little black triangles on it.
And it was a fallout shelter, and in the case that we were attacked by nuclear warheads from Russia, we were all to file into the fallout shelter. And as I recall, we were to sit on the floor and put our hands between our knees and put our hands over our head, and to this day I'm not sure how that was going to protect me from a nuclear bomb, but that's what we did.
And I remember in those days being deeply concerned about my future, because if the Russians could reach us with nuclear bombs, what kind of a future would there be? It was a fearsome thing to contemplate what the future might hold.
I want to say very solemnly that if you're not saved tonight, there is no possibility that there can be real lasting peace in your soul, because the future for you is the wrath of God for all eternity.
That's why the great wonder of the gospel is that there is peace available through Jesus Christ. The words of Colossians chapter 1 and verse 20, that he has made peace through the blood of his cross. I love that.
Peace has been made. Secondly, I discover in Ephesians chapter 2 that peace has been preached, and God tonight is in the business of extending his arms and his grace and his great salvation, and he's saying, listen friend, you can have forgiveness, you can have eternal life, you can have peace with God.
That's the message that we're preaching tonight. We are preaching peace by Jesus Christ. But there's one other thing, and it's just this. This peace needs to be possessed. I wonder tonight if you'll enter into the good of this wonderful peace.
You know, it's one thing to preach, as Mr. Denison has been doing, that the work is all finished. It's one thing to acknowledge that what Christ has done was an amazing and an infinite work. But friend, tonight, unless that peace is personally received, there will be no peace for you.
Many, many years ago when I was in college, I worked for the Associated Press. I will never forget a picture that came over the newswire of a fire in a high-rise building. The picture was very dramatic.
There was a woman who was leaning out of a window, and behind her you could see the flames in the apartment, and the smoke, and the danger that that dear woman was in. But the photographer very interestingly captured the fact that on the street below, there were men who had raised ladders to their highest extension, just a few short feet from that window.
And on the top rung, at the very furthest extent of his reach, there was a fireman who came to save the woman, and he was holding out his hand to bring her to safety. You say, that's a great story. No, it's not.
It's a horrible story. In spite of the pleas of that fireman to that woman to take the hand that was outstretched to her, you know what she told him? She said, I can't do it. She said, I'm afraid of heights.
Can you imagine that? Afraid of heights. And in the face of a man who came to save her, she retreated into that apartment, and that woman perished. My friend, tonight there is a nail-scarred hand that comes to you from Calvary.
That hand is extended by the Savior who loves you tonight, and longs to bring you into the blessing of this great salvation. He longs to forgive the guilt of your past. He longs to bestow a right relationship with God.
He longs to give you the peace that your soul so desperately needs. The question is this, will you receive Him? I want to tell you tonight that if you'll come to Him, He'll receive you. I came to Him as an eight-year-old boy, just a little sinner who needed to be saved, and I discovered that there was a Savior who embraced me in His arms and drew me to His heart, and He forgave my sin, and I committed the eternal well-being of my soul into the man who came to Calvary to save me.
I hope tonight there will be someone who will receive this great salvation. How shall we escape if we neglect this great salvation? How shall we escape if we neglect this great Savior? May God help you to trust the Lord Jesus Christ tonight.
I tell you, you'd tell everybody you know about the great salvation. Let's pray.