So Great a Salvation - Part 2 (Compilation) — Compilations

Christ Bought His People to Set Them Free

You bought me, to set me free. Listen, the Lord Jesus Christ bought you, to set you free. And when you understand that, then it's the joy of your life, to come and stand against the door of grace, and let Him bore through the ear of your heart, that you can be His born slave forever.

He bought you. He bought you, to set you free. Not only from hell, but from the world, and the flesh, and the devil. He bought you, to set you free. All come to Him.

John the Baptist's Challenge to a Hypocritical Church

What will the church of today do, when the Job and the Baptist arise and say, it's all a facade. I don't believe in anything you do. Do you think they might say that kind of thing? I think they might.

I think they might say, most of the people in the church are wearing masks. Most of them are pretend Christians. They fell away from Jesus being utterly alive in the depths of their being years ago. They don't live that way.

But they'll clap their hands and raise their hands. What if the John the Baptist come preaching that? What on earth is the church going to do to the John the Baptist? You know, he lasted six months. You know, the religious authorities, they hated his guts.

And finally, Herod had him beheaded, six months into his ministry. Jesus lasted three and a half years. He would have crowds trying to throw him off a cliff, and it says he walked through their midst and was not harmed by them.

Because they hated his guts. Because of what he spoke to them, it challenged everything about themselves, every high and lofty thought that they thought about themselves. He would bring it to the dirt and say, you're not sons of Abraham at all.

You're the children of your father, the devil. Look at your behavior. Look at the way you act. Look at the way you speak. Everything in the hidden place shows that you're false. When you confront people with sin, they want to kill you.

Or they want to repent. What's the church going to do to the John the Baptist that God sends for the next great awakening? Hey, I believe it could be in 2004. I believe if it is, you know what? It'll shake us first.

It'll shake us so terribly. We're so complacent. When I started witnessing to people, I was 18 years old. I was at university in New Zealand, and I'd go up to people, and I had this little pamphlet called The Four Spiritual Laws, which I think came from Campus Crusade for Christ.

And this was a little procedure, of course. You'd get people to ask Jesus into their heart. But something I noticed was strange. I would be getting people to pray this prayer, and they would be totally unchanged.

I would say, pray this prayer after me. And they'd repeat it word for word. And, you know, I'd been taught, this is what we were told to do, as soon as they pray that prayer, you say to them, right, you're saved now.

You just asked Jesus in. So, Jesus is inside you. You're a Christian. But hang on a minute. Do you know what I believe that is now? It's false assurance. Who's supposed to assure us if we're truly a Christian?

It actually says, the Holy Spirit will cry out, Abba, Father, from inside of us. There ain't no record of anybody having to say to somebody, Oh, you've just prayed a little prayer, now you're in. You don't have to worry.

You've got your little ticket for paradise, and you're okay.

Repentance as the Entrance Into Fellowship With God

For instance, when John the Baptist was preaching, he never taught in any such way at all. For you'll find him saying, Repent! For there's one coming after me, who's preferred before me, the latchet of whose shoes I'm unworthy to lose.

He it is that baptizeth you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. In other words, John said to his generation, Repent, because repentance is the means whereby the barrier between you and God is removed, and the end of God's grace is to bring you into fellowship with God, not simply to take you to heaven.

Salvation From Sin, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil

Now here's a misconception that carries along with what we've been discussing. Too many people have felt that God's great purpose in grace was to take us to heaven when we die. Oh, how many things can grow out of the wrong emphasis.

God's great purpose in grace is not just to take us to heaven when we die. It is to save us from sin.

People are literally loaded with sin, iniquity, and vice. Their conscience is screaming at them out of shame, and the psychologists are trying to stop the cry and flip the switch. Amazingly, the Church is doing the same.

Here we are in a time when people are more evil than they've ever been in the history of our nation, celebrating their evil. Instead of the Church confronting sin, the Church is trying to befriend the people.

It is to make us like Jesus Christ. It is to bring us into vital, living, warm, experiential fellowship with Him now, during the days of our pilgrimage. And then, because He's already brought heaven to us, it'll be a simple matter for Him to take us to heaven.

How are you going to escape the heartache and the grief that comes from realizing you have robbed the Lord Jesus of the glory He could have gotten out of your life?

You know, God woke me up about six months ago at four o 'clock in the morning, and He showed me something that I'd never seen in all my studies of revival. He showed me what these guys honed in on when they preached, and I suddenly saw it.

You know what they honed in on? Assurance of salvation. Sounds like a weird thing to... You know, they used to preach that? Okay, assurance of salvation, uh-huh. But I suddenly realized what they were doing.

We're going to go down that path tonight. 2 Corinthians 13 verse 5. Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you unless, of course, you fail the tests?

So it's actually telling you. Paul here is telling you. Test yourselves. Examine yourselves. Are you really in the faith or not?

Are you doing what Jesus, who speaks the words of the Father, are you doing what He says? Seek first the kingdom of... Jesus said in this simple contrast, not those who simply say, Lord, Lord, who by one means or another have claimed an attachment to Jesus Christ in faith and love, but those whose claim is expressed in doing the will of the Father who is in heaven and the beginning place of doing the will of the Father is coming as a helpless, hell-deserving, undone, needy sinner who owns his sin, turns from it, and throws himself into the arms of a compassionate and an almighty Savior who alone can do sinners good.

But my friends, hear me. As clearly as the Bible says that's how you begin to do the will of the Father, if that professed casting of yourself upon Christ is real, it will never stop there. It will expand into a heart response to the Father's call given through the Lord Jesus to a life of universal obedience to the revealed will of God.

This is why Jesus can go right on in this context after saying, not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven. Verse 24, everyone therefore that hears these words of mine and doeth them.

For you see, it is in the words of Jesus that the will of the Father in heaven is made known. And Jesus made it abundantly clear in every call to discipleship that if our attachment to Him is real, it will be expressed in these simple words, follow me.

Taking Up the Cross as the Condition of Discipleship

If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross,.

And follow me. Four times in the ministry of Harvard already mentioned the word cross. In Matthew 10, he said, take up your cross and follow me. In Mark 10, he said to the rich young ruler, first tell all you have, give it to the poor, take up your cross and come follow me.

And in Matthew 16, he said, if any man would follow me, let him take up his cross and come follow me. And in Luke 14, he said, except a man, if any man take up not his cross and come follow me, he cannot be my disciple.

The only four times the Lord Jesus mentioned the word cross as such was in reference to his disciples. At the very outset, he said, this is the condition for coming to me. It is as though you were to say you're at Bethany Fellowship.

The only possible way that anyone can become a member of Bethany Fellowship is to go to the gallows, have the rope put around your neck, the trap door sprung, and your life utterly taken away from you.

And when they've taken you down from the gallows, slip the rope around your neck, and you're cold and dead, and you're a candidate to Bethany Fellowship. It was as though we were to say in the gospel tabernacle in New York City that no one can become a member of that church until they've gone up to Sing Sing.

They've gone into that little room that's set aside for criminals under capital punishment. They've had the electrode put around the forehead, around the hands and the feet, and the power's been turned on, and they've been electrocuted.

And then it is that when they've been taken out of that room and laid out to stretch their candidate for membership. It was just as shocking when the Lord Jesus Christ used these words in this context.

His people couldn't understand it. Did you know what he said? If any man take not up his cross and come follow me, he cannot be my disciple. And so we find that this great salvation does not only include salvation from sin, salvation from hell, but it also includes salvation from the world in which we've lived, that's governed us and controlled us, whose attitudes, whose maxims, whose rewards we've sought and whose interests we've served.

It not only includes salvation from the world, but it includes salvation from the flesh, from our own personality and nature, traits and interests. It includes salvation from those habits and attitudes that we've developed and acquired.

But it not only includes salvation from the world and the flesh, but it also includes salvation from the devil. We were his bondslayers. We'd given him control of our life. It had been done for us by the father of the race, but it had been confirmed by us, by our own choice, at the age of accountability.

And we were then the children of the devil. His father, he was our father, we were his children, his nature we exhibited, and his acts we performed and his government we accepted. But we come to Jesus Christ and his purpose is not only to save us from hell and save us from sin, but it's to save us from the world and its government and its interests and its control.

It's to save us from the flesh with its pull and its hold and its ensnaring and meshing pulls around us. And it's to save us from the devil with all of his power and all of his cunning and all of his craftiness.

The Lord Jesus died, therefore, to set his people free. For whom the Son makes free is free indeed, free from the fear of death, free from the fear of hell, but free from the power of the world, free from the power of the flesh, and free from the power of the devil.

This was all part of his great salvation. Now can you see the folly of a person saying, well, I don't want to go to hell when I die, but I'm quite content to be in bondage to the world, to its aims, to its goals, to its interests, to its rewards, and to engage in its service.

Well, can you see how silly, how foolish, how ridiculous it is for a person to say, I don't want to go to hell, I want to go to heaven, but I'm quite content to go on being in bondage to my own personality.

I've got a mean, ugly disposition, you see. Oh, I lose my temper, I get terribly mad, but I'm quite content to go on shaming Christ and caricaturizing Christ, you see, because really all I wanted out of Christ was to escape from hell.

Can't you see what a total contradiction this is? Can't you see how foolish it is for a person to say, well, you see, I'm quite willing to go on doing the business of the devil. I'm willing to be a fifth columnist for hell because I've already been secured against the burning.

I won't have to go to hell when I die, and so I don't care if I do serve the devil a little bit. It's all right. Can't you see what a total contradiction of terms this is? How unthinkable it is. And no wonder the writer of Hebrews says, how can we escape if we neglect so great salvation?

Repentance, Revival, and the Danger of Superficial Religion

And God's salvation intended deliverance not only from the penalty of our sin and from the certainty of hell, but it included deliverance from the power of the world, its grip and its hold upon us. It included deliverance from the power of the flesh, the personality, the nature, the traits of the individual.

It included deliverance from the power and control of Satan himself and the demons of darkness. And for a person to say, well, all I really want from Christ is just to go to heaven anyway. Why, it's unthinkable.

It's inconceivable. It just doesn't make sense. It just can't make sense. But anyone can turn the grace of God and the mercy of God and the love of God manifest in the essence of His Son to set His people free and go out in fondness.

Most revivals have literally started this way with people of God falling on their faces and repenting with great crying and tears for their sins. And yet we dance around the topic and we have our lovely games and most of our meetings are games and they're parades and they're hype and they're garbage.

I'm tired of it, man. I've seen it for over 30 years. I'm just so sick of playing this garbage, you know. Really. I see more of it here in this nation than anywhere else. People, when are we going to stop that game and start getting real with God?

There's people in this room now who have secret sin in their heart. You've been living with it for years. Some of you have recurring sins. They're there because you don't fear God. If you feared God, you would repent.

Most of the church is sick because we never preach the gospel. Charles Finney, if he saw our gospel wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry. It ain't no gospel to him. Come to Jesus. He'll give you a more adventurous life.

Come to Jesus. He'll make you happy. Come to Jesus. You'll get another fake Colgate smile like me. It's a Santa Claus load of garbage and it's not going to save us when it most counts. Did you know that nothing else matters in the world but this?

That on the day of judgment He says these words to you. Well done, good and faithful servant.

The Four Tenses of Salvation

How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? Obviously our temptation would be here to say, oh, salvation. That means pardon from sin. But you know the word salvation is an immense word? Far greater than we generally associate with it.

If you will take that word and trace it through the New Testament you will find that there are actually four tenses of salvation. In this sense I use the word. There's the past perfect tense, the past tense, the present tense and the future tense.

Now let me explain. The past perfect tense. I have been saved from the pleasure of sin. Repentance. The past tense. I was saved from the penalty of sin. Justification. I am being saved from the power of sin.

Sanctification. I shall be saved from the presence of sin. Glorification. Now if somebody comes to you and says are you saved brother, sister? You would be quite in order to say how do you mean? I have been, I was, I am being and I shall be.

Now let's talk about the one you're interested in. The word saved has been generally compressed by us to be equivalent to forgiveness. But the word in its use in the Bible is far larger, far more inclusive than just pardon.

We have one remedy. In the Christian faith we have one remedy. It's simply this. Put on Christ. The only thing God respects, the only thing God can look at and say yes, there is purity, yes, there is absolute righteousness is Jesus.

You either put on Him, that white robe, you're either wearing that on that day or you are an absolute goner. You will regret every day that you spend living because there is no important thing in the world than this.

Well done, good and faithful servant. Nothing else matters. It's all gone. So I appeal to those people in this room who have been playing games with God. I appeal to the people in the room who are kind of pretend Christians, who have sin in their heart and they behold it and God beholds it and everybody knows it except the people around you because you're faking it.

Really good. I appeal to all of you to repent because you get few chances in this life to repent before God and if you leave it, it will kill you.

Keeping a Cleansed Conscience and Heeding God's Word

Do you know what happened at your conversion? Your evil conscience got washed. Salvation cleansed your conscience. You have a new conscience, cleansed, pure. It's not going to damn you. It's not going to bring its shaming accusations out of the dregs of your life from before your conversion.

You're a new creation. Old things have passed away and new things have come, right? But now you have a tremendous responsibility to keep that conscience good and clear and pure and affirming and excusing, not accusing.

Becoming concerned about other things and interested in tasks which are more appealing to us, truth which was in the eternal mind and heart of God and purchased at the tremendous price of the blood of Christ just slips through our fingers and slides away with the common cares of the day.

And so we have a warning here. We ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard. Lest, in our preoccupation with many things, this truth, just like sand in our hands, slip through, slide away, and we be left with nothing but regrets.

Again, we see it here. How shall we escape if we neglect? It isn't refusal. It isn't rejection. It isn't a matter of taking one's stand against. It's just a little matter of saying, well, another day, another time.

There are other things more important, other things more challenging, other things more demanding of my time and thought. And the question isn't whether or not we will neglect it. The question is this.

What are we going to do? How are we going to explain it? How are we going to face Him who purchased these priceless privileges with His precious blood, included them in His Word, and had them expounded to our hearts, and then we, in our indolence and in our carelessness, were prepared to just neglect the things which God purchased by the poured-out blood of His only begotten Son?

How are we going to escape it? How are we going to escape it? This is the question. Well, what are the consequences? You understand, of course, that if a person neglects repentance and neglects faith in Jesus Christ, that they'll be forever in hell.

The Peril of Postponing Repentance

Well, I am confident that in hell tonight there are multitudes of people that intended someday to repent. I can't for the world believe that everyone there made up his mind at some point of crisis that he was determined to be lost.

Years ago down in Richmond, Virginia, I was talking to a young man who said, well, religion is all right for the old. Christianity and salvation is good for people when they're on their last legs, but anybody as young as I am doesn't want to be saddled with a lot of do's and don'ts and a lot of religion.

And when I get old enough to take my social security, I'll also take my heaven security and I'll get along with it then. But right now, sir, don't bother me. And so I said, well, what else? What about that?

Well, he said, well, frankly, I don't even know that then I'm too interested. I said, all right, I'm going to draw up a contract and you sign it. So I took a piece of paper that his mother handed me and I drew up such a contract as this.

Because I do not know that I'll live to be old enough to take my social security and because I have no certainty of tomorrow and because I've made up my mind that I am not going to do anything with Jesus Christ until I get to be at least 65.

I hereby relinquish now and forever all interest in the death of Christ and I declare to one and sundry to whom this paper may come that I refuse hereafter to consider myself a candidate for salvation.

I am determined, therefore, to go to hell. I have made up my mind that I should be lost if lostness there is is the consequence of my action because I am simply not interested in Jesus Christ. I said, would you sign that?

He read it over, his face blanched, blood drained from it. He said, no, I wouldn't sign that. You think I'm a fool? I said, yes, I do. I actually do. Because you have essentially signed it by telling us, your mother, your wife, all of us here, that it is your intention to do nothing with Jesus Christ until some point in the indefinite future and there's no reason to suppose that when you reach sixty-five that you won't postpone it again.

And so I said, you might as well get the thing off your mind so that when people trouble you in the future you can say, no, I've settled that. One Sunday afternoon in my mother-in-law's house I just made up my mind that I wasn't going to be bothered about it anymore.

I said, I think that would be the wiser course rather than just somehow going to do it in the meanwhile hardening, case hardening your heart against any work of the Spirit of God. He said, mister, you put it to me in a hard way.

I don't know what I'm going to do about it, but I assure you this, I'm going to think more than I have in fact. I don't know what happened to him. I wasn't able to follow it up. But it's my conviction that hell is filled with people that have said, well, someday, someday, someday.

And we know that it is fatal to neglect repentance and faith. And they never heard that Jesus Christ died to set them free. They're all to think that when they've heard they'll go right on and be bought.

That's unthinkable. That's unthinkable. And so if I speak to you and you've had bondage to the world that's been gripping and pulling the Lord Jesus died to set you free, He carried you with Him to the cross so that as you went down in death the world would have to relinquish its hold and couldn't follow you into death.

He carried you with Him to the cross so that as you went with Him into death the flesh couldn't hold you and govern you anymore. He carried you with Him so that the devil couldn't hold you anymore. And then He brought you up on the other side of the grave with Him in newness of life so that you could walk in peace.

For he that is dead is freed from sin. Can you go on neglecting so great salvation? You can't. You've got to admit your bondage, admit your need, admit that you've been serving when you didn't have to serve.

And come and throw yourself at His feet and gladly take from His nail-toothed hand the deliverance that He purchased with His blood. Because you've heard about it. You've heard about it. And you know that He died to set you free.

Set you free.

See, this is dictating thinking to a whole culture of young people.