Salvation - There Are No Gaps

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God is Government, called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ's teaching of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today's focused discussion will be salvation. There are no gaps. The helmet of salvation is confidence in the future, as Paul calls it in 1 Thessalonians 5, the helmet of the hope of salvation. But the helmet in the future gives us strength to go on in the present. It gives us strength to go on in the present, even when things get tough. There is a finish line. There's a glorious reward. There is an end in view. There is coming a coronation day. There is going to be that time when we leave this veil of tears and enter into the presence of Jesus Christ, and our flesh falls aside, and no more sin, and no more struggle, and no more warfare, and no more battle. We'll live in a glorious new universe. It's coming, and it's going to be fully enjoyed, on the basis of the fullest of commitment now. So he is saying, when Satan wants to hit you with discouragement in the battle, realize there's coming a victory day, and don't bail out. Having done all, stand. And I tried to share with you last week that if there was no future element to salvation, the other two parts would be meaningless. If I was saved and being saved, but there's no future, why should I keep doing this? Why should I fight so hard if there's no future? If there's no hope of a fullness and a final element of salvation, why all this effort? Let me illustrate that to you in 1 Corinthians 15, 32, and this is very apt from the experience of Paul. And Paul says in this verse, 1 Corinthians 15 32, if after the manner of men, or in a strictly human way, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what does it profit me if the dead rise not? Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Listen, folks, if there's no future in this, forget it. If I have to go into Ephesus, and it gets so bad there, and the persecution is so severe that I have to fight with wild beasts, what is it going to profit me if there's no resurrection? What kind of a salvation is it that goes nowhere? You think I'm going to lay my life on the line for a bunch of wild animals? You think I'm going to confront a bunch of hostile pagans with Christ's gospel if there's no resurrection, if there's no future element of salvation? I would give up right now, throw in the towel, throw down the gauntlet, walk away and say it's over. That's the idea. He is saying, what kind of a salvation would there be that didn't have a future? It would have absolutely no power to cause me to fight the battle today. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 4. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6. God commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge to the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Now what that verse means is that God has made us the lights of the world. God has put Christ in our hearts to radiate him to the world. And therefore, verse 7 says, We have this treasure. What is the treasure? It's the light of God, the light of Christ in our lives. We have it in these earthen vessels, these bodies, and the excellency of the power is of God, not us. We have divine power in the indwelling Christ. And what happens? Alright, we take Christ to the world, we've got the power and the light is there, we move out, and what are the results? Verse 8. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed, perplexed, not in despair. We are persecuted, but not forsaken. We are cast down, but not destroyed. We are always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus. Look at verse 11. We who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake. Now look at that. He says, here's how it is to minister for Christ. Great career to go into, right? Everywhere we go, distress, persecution, cast down, bear in our body the dying of the Lord, always on the edge of death, somebody always wanting to take our lives. This is how we live. Day in, day out, day in, day out, confronting a godless, hostile world. You might say, well, why do you bother, Paul? Why do you bother? Verse fourteen tells you why he bothers. Knowing that he who raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus. Now listen, the thing that sustained Paul in the level of commitment that he had was that someday he would be raised to glory with Christ, you see, so that the future dimension of salvation becomes a powerful force in the living of life right now. Hey, you know I'm gonna stand face to face with Jesus Christ someday. I'm gonna stand face to face with a record of what I've done to serve him, and I love him enough, and I have enough desire to know the fullness of eternal life and all that it can give, to want to give everything I can give as long as God gives me breath, in this little tiny veil of tears. This little life that only is a vapor that appears for a little time and vanishes away. I want to maximize these few short years so that I can experience the fullness of glorification in eternity with Christ forever. And the reason I don't want to grow weary in well-doing is because I know that I'll reap a glorious reward if I faint not here. So when Satan comes against me and wants to discourage me and tells me, Why don't you quit preaching for a while and rest? Why don't you take some time off? Ah, don't give them so much study, you know, just think of a few things. Tell them funny stories. They'll never know the difference. Just have an easy time of it. I get sometimes distressed with the things that I even work hard at, and Satan says, Oh, it's very discouraging in ministry. People don't appreciate you. You know, the church isn't the way you want it to be, or it's not doing the things you want it to do. Oh, you know, just give up on it. And you hang in there, because you know that coronation day is coming. You know that day of accountability is coming. You know that day when you're going to be like Jesus Christ, and you want to maximize all that that can be for all eternity. That's what moved Paul on. That's what ought to move us. He said, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. Why, Paul? Because henceforth is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me, and not to me only, but to all them that love his appearing. I do it because I know what's coming. And so when Satan comes with the sword of discouragement and the edge of discouragement against our lives, we hold fast, and we are protected by the confidence that the salvation God promised will come to pass. There's a second thing, and that is that Satan has another edge on his sword. It isn't discouragement, it's doubt. And maybe doubt is the ultimate discouragement. Do you know that Satan wants you to doubt your salvation? Oh, he is really good at that. Most people suffer from that at some point in their Christian life early on. Now you'll grow in the Lord and get to the place where you perhaps don't. Although none of us is totally invulnerable to Satan's temptations along that line. But Satan wants to come just after you've done something that's sinful and say, you're not a Christian. You couldn't be a Christian. Why would the Lord ever save you? You'll never make it. You're not good enough. You don't deserve to be saved. How do you know you meant it when you did it? Better try it again, see if it works any better. Satan really comes after people in that area. And there are people, you know, who go to certain churches that teach you can lose your salvation. They live in constant people say, do you believe in eternal security? In a sense, that's what the Bible is saying here. The one thing I don't believe is eternal insecurity. But there are some people who live in that all the time. They just live in a constant state of insecurity. And some people are told, you'll never know whether you've made it until you face the Lord. Oh, can you imagine living that way? All your life. Oh, see, am I gonna make it? Oh it's getting close. Am I going to be? What a horrible existence. That'd be anything but these things are written unto you, that your joy may be full. You'd have to say the New Testament would say these things are written unto you that you might be miserable. You could never be happy, knowing that that kind of thing was a guessing game. Then there are other people who think every time you sin, you lose your salvation. I'll never forget the guy on television channel 40. He was being asked questions, and somebody called up and said, If you sin a sin and you're a Christian, and you forget to confess it before the rapture, you sin the sin, the rapture comes, you haven't had time to confess. What happens? He said, You go to hell. Now can you imagine living under that kind of fear? Satan wants us to be afraid we don't have salvation. He wants us to doubt salvation. You know why? Because he wants us to doubt the promise of God. He wants us to believe God doesn't keep his word. He wants us to believe that salvation isn't forever, that God can't hold on to us. He wants us to deny God's power, to deny God's resource, to deny that God can hold us, to deny that God speaks the truth. And all of these things are simply denials of that. And so Satan comes against us, making us doubt. How do we react to that? The helmet of salvation is that if you are past salvation, brother sister, if you have a past salvation, you also have a future one, right? Because there's no other kind of salvation seen in the Bible, see? There is no other kind but the fullness of that which involves justification, sanctification, glorification. Whom He called, He justified, whom He justified, He glorified. There's nobody in the gaps. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of salvation. There are no gaps. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way.