INTRODUCTION

It is not a good thing also because we can not only lose perspective but we can also lose our joy and that sense of gratitude that should run through every christian’s life.  

            Salvation ought to lead to an increase in gratitude. There are different kinds of salvation in life, different ways in which we can be saved. We talk about a Dr who saved someone’s physical life through heart surgery; we speak of a life guard or even a passer by who saved someone from drowning in the sea. When someone’s life has been saved we are glad and the individual I imagine is not only glad but is especially grateful and this has consequences for how we live our lives.

            This is well illustrated by the story that is told prior to the second world war when a young boy from the city of London was on holiday in rural Scotland. He went for a swim in a lake but got into trouble and shouted for help. A young farm boy heard the screams and ran to the lake, dived in and rescued the boy. You can imagine how grateful the young boy was to have his life saved by this stranger.

Several years later the two boys met again. The city boy still filled with gratitude was thrilled to see the person who had saved his life and asked him what he was doing. The farm boy had decided to study medicine. Since the city boy’s parents were wealthy and because of their gratitude for the saving of their son’s life they paid for the farm boy’s medical education. The young man showed brilliant promise as a physician and as a bacteriologist. In 1928 he discovered penicillin – his name was Alexander Fleming, and he has helped to save many more lives through this wonder drug.

            The story does not end there for some years later the city boy, now a man, grew ill with pneumonia. He recovered in hospital after receiving penicillin which meant that in a way the scottish farm boy had saved the city boy’s life twice.   And the story does not even end there for the city’s boy’s name was Winston Churchill the British Prime Minister and wartime leader who in his own way was responsible for the saving of the western world from Hitler.

            You see saving a life is a big thing and it can have immense consequences for the person and for other people, and the person whose life has been saved is always grateful to the person who saved them. But of course as Christians we believe that while to save a life is a great thing there is something even greater and that is not only to save a life but to save a soul for as Christians we follow Jesus and this is what Jesus taught.  Jesus gives us some perspective here because he always views things from eternity and from ultimate reality: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell”. (Mt.10:28) Or again in Mark 8:36 “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul.” This was Jesus’ perspective on life. You see your soul is the real you and is worth saving.

            Now if we need to be reminded, this is not the way the world thinks. The world we live in today pretty much discounts the soul. The world encourages us to live for what we can see, invest in what we can see, hold on to that which we can see. But this is not the way a Christian views the world for we are told that there is an ultimate reality that lies behind what we can see, and feel and hear physically. We talked last time about fighting for joy in Christ, and it is a fight, it is a struggle because we live in a world which operates fundamentally under anti-God principles.  If we are to fight for joy, the true joy that God wants us to have, then a key element in winning that battle is an appreciation of the concept of salvation.

            Notice that in v.8-9 that Peter encourages his readers towards joy as he gets them to reflect on the goal of their faith, “the salvation of your souls”. In the midst of the difficult time they are facing as they face persecution Peter wants them to get the bigger picture and to see that even though they are in peril of their physical lives their whole life (their soul life) is safe. This enables them to be filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy even though in peril of their physical lives and living far from home, because they know that they are right with God and they know that even if they lose their lives they have actually been saved from an even greater peril, the loss of their soul.

            So what we need to do, if we have not understood this, or if we have at one point understood it and have lost it recently, is fight for joy in the Lord by discovering, or maybe re-discovering an appreciation of our salvation, of what it is to be saved.

            So it is good to ask some basic questions. Why do we need to be saved? What are we saved from? What are we saved for or to do? These are good questions and again the devil will try every strategy in the book and outside the book to stop people asking these questions, but they are fundamental questions. But sometimes even we as Christians forget to ask them and we get distracted.  

            You see this is the key: salvation. A young man was asked if he had read War and Peace (which is a big book) and he said he had and when he was asked what it was about he said it was about Russia. Thousands of words summed up in one word. But the bible is an even bigger book (it contains 66 books) and thousands of words but if you were to try and sum up the Bible in one word what word would you choose – well the word I would probably choose would be salvation. That is the message of the bible. If you read the bible and miss that salvation you have missed the point. From Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 this book is about salvation.

It is a book that tells us we need to be saved from four fundamental things:
1. Saved from sin. The bible is about a God who is there who has created mankind for his glory but mankind chose not to glorify God but to glorify self and chose to go its own way. Rather than being dependent on God mankind seeks to be independent of God and from God. The Bible calls this fundamental independent spirit sin. It is a rebellious spirit and it will be the ruination of us and we need to be saved from it.

But even when we realise that there is a God there then sin still makes us do wrong for in trying to get back on good terms with him we still usually go wrong because we try and placate this God by offering to him our own goodness and our own good works as if that will please him. But no, God just wants a love relationship like any love relationship, not one based on works but on love, on loving the person and obeying the person for the person’s sake.

 2. Need to be saved not only from sin but from religion. Sometimes at best instead of real life with God we settle for religion and we need to be saved even from religion. Mark Driscoll says “Religion usually ends in pride (because I think I am better than other people), or it ends in despair (because I continually fall short of God’s commands).” No what we need is not more religion but more relationship with God - the joy of living the life we were meant to live and the joy of knowing the God who has made us. God sent his son Jesus to save us from ourselves, from our pride, from our spirit of independence and also from man made religion.

Martin Luther from the 16^th century saw things very clearly – he saw that as sinners we are prone to pursue a relationship with God in one of two ways – religion or gospel. But the two are opposed actually and we need to be saved from religion -

Religion says that if we obey God he will love us. The gospel says that it is because God has loved us through Jesus that we can obey.

Religion says that the world is filled with good people and bad people. The gospel says that from mankind’s perspective as we compare each other there may be people better or worse than each other but actually as we look at God’s standards we see that the world is filled with bad people who are either repentant or unrepentant. “All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory”  

Religion is about what I have to do. The gospel is about what I get to do.

Religion is about me, the gospel is about Jesus.

Religion leads to uncertainty about my standing before God because I never know if I have done enough to please God. The gospel leads to a certainty about my standing before God because of the finished work of Jesus for me on the cross.

            The Bible is about salvation from religion. It is about a God who is angry at sin and who has provided a way for people to get back on track. It is about a way of salvation that no man could have dreamed up because men in their religion talk about reaching up to God while God in the gospel reaches down to us. We are saved from religion.

 3.We need to be saved from the world. The world speaks of success and wealth while God saves through poverty and meekness and a cross. You see the world’s wisdom and God’s wisdom are so often different from each other and that is why we need to be saved, we need to be saved from the world’s foolishness.

            The world as we have said lives for the seen but we are to live also for the unseen. Paul says in 2 Cor.4:18 “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal”. ..and again “we live by faith and not by sight” (2 Cor.5:7). 

4. We need to be saved from hell. Everyone wants to go to heaven but no-one wants to think about hell. And yet again Jesus spoke about hell as a reality, he spoke of it as real and as something to be avoided at all costs – “If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into the fire of hell.” (Mt.18:8) We have forgotten about hell and in doing that we also diminish the preciousness of what we have been saved from. If we have not been saved from a great peril then it reduces the value and the preciousness of that salvation doesn’t it.  

            Paul reminds us in 2 Thessalonians 1 what we are saved from: “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marvelled at among all those who have believed”.  (2 Thess.1:7-10)

            We have a great salvation and as we reflect on such passages we are reminded what we have been saved from.

In verses 10-12 Peter expands on this theme and says that this salvation is great because as we pull back and get the bigger picture we see -

a) that the prophets of the Old Testament looked forward to God’s salvation (“they searched intently and with the greatest care” v.10). They knew what was at stake -  the salvation of the world and they knew that God was going to use them in some way and he did.

b) Although at the time they did not fully realise it “The Spirit of Christ was in them”( v.11) when they were making predictions. The source of their prophecies was Jesus himself for he is God and although they did not fully understand about Jesus he actually fulfilled many of their prophecies although separated by many hundreds of years.

c) Not only were they prophesying to the immediate culture in which they lived but their words were also fulfilled many years after they died. They served different generations, the one in which they lived and us who many years see the working out of the prophecies. (v.12)

d) Finally he says this big picture of what God is doing in saving us is so wonderful and exciting that “even angels long to look into these things.” (v.12)

             Sometimes as Christians we forget we have been saved from and forget the marvellous excitement of being involved in a slowly unravelling story of how God is redeeming his people and one day millions will gather from every tribe and nation and tongue around the throne of God and worship him and declare his praise.

            The church is the company of the saved. We are not embarrassed to proclaim graciously but firmly we have an exclusive saviour - we proclaim in a pluralist world that “Salvation is found in no-one else for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12) This is the gospel, the good news, and we sing of it, we speak of it, we pray about it, we love to hear it because we see the big picture and we see what we have been saved from and what that salvation involved.        Others will not see it but one day they will. But until that day comes let us appreciate what Jesus has done for us and let us continue to think of ways of creatively sharing this message with others, for although the world does not realise it He is the only hope for our world.

Thank you for saving me, what can I say, You are my everything, I will sing your praise.

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