Salvation is a comprehensive deliverance from past sins, present troubles, and future wrath, encompassing all that God intends for humanity. The sermon highlights that while salvation is a one-time event through Christ's substitutionary atonement, it also involves ongoing daily deliverance from sin's power, the world's influence, and Satan's schemes. True security is found not in self-reliance but in trusting God's provision and care, as exemplified by Paul's reliance on God during extreme hardship and the assurance of future bodily redemption. The ultimate conclusion is that believers are continually being saved and will be completely delivered when Christ returns, urging listeners to embrace this salvation.
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I'm sure they all know that's what she'd say, or do I talk to her anyway. What else could she say? She's a loving soul. And she says she's very happy. The only thing she could wish for any better than she has is for the Lord, you come. Godliness with contentment is great gain. Second Corinthians, the first chapter, talks about a subject that We limits, I think, are too much, and that is the subject of deliverance or salvation. The same word, the same word is translated saved as it's translated delivered, or salvation as it's translated deliverance.
I'd just like to think a little bit about our great salvation. Most of us here tonight know the salvation of the Lord, and we ought to rejoice in it more. Some of you may not know the salvation of the Lord, and we'd like you to share with us. A good many years ago now, I remember Roosevelt was here in town. President Roosevelt at that time, so that sort of dates this little story for you. Mr. John Moneypenny was here from England, and he wanted someone to take him over to see Mr.
C.W. Ross, who was then quite ill. And I volunteered for the job, and I did so very selfishly because I wanted to see those two old worthies together and hear what they talked about. Well, we got to Mr. Ross's bedroom, and John sat down and decided him, and says to him, Charlie, I wanted to see you once more before you go home to heaven, or before I go. And Charlie says, John, I'm so glad you came, because I've been wanting to see your face once again. But now we're getting ready for the real talk. They're going to start in, and I'm going to hear some marvelous things.
And they talked a little to each other, and then Mr. Moneypenny said, Charlie, how is it with your soul? And he hoisted himself up on one elbow, and very earnestly leaned out over the edge of the bed, and he said, John, I'm glad I'm safe. And that was the depth of the entire conversation. They spent the rest of the time talking about what a wonderful thing it is to be safe. Two men had been on the road for half a century apiece. And both of them knew that they were pretty close to the Golden Gate. Whether the Lord came or not.
And the main thing they were concerned about is, I'm glad I'm saved. Second Corinthians chapter one, verse eight. For we would not, brethren, have your ignorance. By the way, this is one of seven places in the New Testament that he tells us that we ought not to be ignorant. If you look them up, you may find out that those are the things we are most ignorant of. We ought not to be, anyway. I would not, brethren, have you ignorance of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, about strength, inso much that we despaired even of life.
Now, this was a saved man talking. And you've got any ideas that when you get saved, from then on it's the bed of roses. Get that out of your mind right now. Salvation doesn't mean freedom from problems. Salvation doesn't mean that we're going to have it easy. He said, I want you to understand about the trouble that we had in Asia. If you go back to the Acts and read about it, you'll see it was a real trouble, too. And he wanted them to know that it was such trouble that they were pressed out of measure. Now we're living in days of great pressure. There isn't anything wrong with pressure.
Pressure is absolutely essential for a great many things. You'd be in bad shape if you didn't have any blood pressure. And you'd be in worse shape if there wasn't any such thing as air pressure. Fifteen pounds of the square inch at sea level. You'd be in bad shape without some kinds of pressure. I think you'd be in bad shape if you didn't have any kind of daily pressures. The only thing we need to worry about is to keep that pressure on the right side of it. Pressing is toward God. And don't let it get between us and the Lord and press us away from us.
There's nothing wrong with pressure. If that pressure presses you to the Lord. But makes you more dependent upon it. We were pressed out of measure, above strength. Is that fair? Well, that's great. Because if it's above strength, then, of course, you have to have his strength. If you can furnish the weakness, God will furnish the strength. Because he says, my strength is made perfect in weakness. This wasn't bad at all. We just don't like it. It's good anyway. in so much that we despaired even of life. You don't mean to tell me that's good? Sure I do. I think it's great to despair of life.
I think it's great to get where you don't even want to live. You'd lots rather go home to heaven. The trouble with most of us is we're so satisfied here, we're so pleased with our environment, so pleased with our possessions that we just soon stay here the rest of eternity. Maybe that God has to send difficulties into our lives so that we do despair of life. And Paul wasn't even sure he was going to live from one day to another. He said, I die daily. That has nothing to do with our being crucified with Christ. That was simply that he was facing physical death day by day. He was living in such a state that he never knew whether he'd come out of it alive.
Now, for that background, he says... But we have the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves. This explains why the problems of a Christian's life, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raises the dead, who delivered or saved us from so great a death. That's past, and thus deliver, that's present. in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us. That's future. And to finish the sentence, ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gifts of bestowed upon us, by the means of many persons, thanks may be given by many on our behalf.
He was going to carry a gift to the saints of Jerusalem, and he just wanted to be sure that they would accept it. So he said, you help us out in our daily salvation. Our brother, Mr. Horn, brought me to Kansas City in nineteen twenty-nine. I was still in the Georgia Post and remained in it until the following spring, and then got loose and got away from that business. When we were here, there was a man having some tent meetings. I can't even remember who he was, but I remember what he said. We dropped in on the tent meeting one night.
And he shook hands with me at the door and he said, young man, are you saved? And I said, yes, sir. I told him when I was saved. A little touch of pride, I suppose, that he detected because I was saved early in life. And so I was still only a young man, my early teens. He figured that, or my middle teens, he figured that I figured that he would be quite impressed that I'd been saved that long, you know. So I said, yes, sir. I was saved in said, that's nice. Have you been saved since? Look, he is an Orthodox. Imagine this man is preaching, and he doesn't know any better than that.
And I said, why, of course not. When the Lord saved me once, that was enough. He said, you're fortunate. I have to be saved every day. And I just shook my head that the poor fellow doesn't know any better than that. That we have to be saved every day. Actually, I was a dummy. But as I found out since, salvation is complete only in the sense of deliverance from the wrath to come and of bringing us into the family of God. But salvation is vastly more than that. Salvation is the big, inclusive word that takes in all that God wants to do for the human race.
It's all included in the word salvation. I think of it as a, I think diagrammatically. I think of it as a wheel. And the outside of the wheel could be labeled salvation. That takes out in everything that's inside it. Then I think of the hood of that wheel as being substitution. That's the simplest form of salvation. Salvation is, in its simplest form, the substitution of the Lord Jesus Christ. for the sinner. He died in my place that I might be delivered, that I might be saved. They tell about a Chinaman who was just newly converted, didn't know much English.
They asked him if he would give a little testimony. Oh, he said, Vino can talk English. Well, they said, you just do the best you can. So he prayed about it, and he got up, and he preached a much better sermon than many that I preached. He stood up and said, He died or me died. So he died and me no died. And he sat down. You can't beat that. That's the simplest form of salvation. The substitutionary work of the Lord Jesus. And that's exactly what happened. He had to die to keep you out of hell. Now we have been saved.
We have been delivered. From what? Well. we were delivered from the wrath to come. First Thessalonians one, first ten. I'm glad for that, because I believe in the wrath to come. I believe that there's a hell. I'm glad for that, because I believe in the wrath to come. I believe that there's a hell, which is not eternal, which is the present jailhouse in which the souls of the unsaved are kept. and that death, the grave, and hell are going to enter into the lake of fire, which is permanent, God's penitentiary.
It was not created for man, but it was created for the devil and his angel, according to the twenty-fifth of Matthew. And I believe that I was headed for that place as a Christ rejected, and I believe that when I received the Lord Jesus as my Savior, he delivered me from the wrath to come. But I believe that he did more than deliver me from the lake of fire, from hell if I had died in present time, in my sins, and from the lake of fire where I would have been forever. But I believe that he delivered me from a great many other kinds of wrath. I think that he did, I believe that he delivered me from the wrath that's going to come upon this world during the Great Tribulation.
That is wrath. That is a judgment. And there is no judgment for them who are in Christ Jesus. If I didn't have any other verse to prove that Christians will never go through the Great Tribulation, it would be enough to have that one. That one verse, there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. And the Great Tribulation is a judgment, the day of Jacob's trouble. I'm so thankful that I'll not go through it. And I feel sorry for you if you think you're going through it. There are a lot of Christians today. who are losing the Blessed Hope. Listen, if I believe that the Church is going to go through the Great Tribulation or any part of it, I would pray for death.
My Blessed Hope would be to die before the Great Tribulation starts. I wouldn't want to stay here and go through even a part of the Great Tribulation. They're robbing the Lord's people of our Blessed Hope, the eminence, personal, pre-millennial, and pre-tribulation, rapture. I believe the Lord Jesus Christ is coming soon, and I'm glad that I'm delivered from the coming wrath. He's done more than that, because he says in the first chapter of Matthew, thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sin.
I believe that we have been saved from our sin. You know something about the soul trouble that comes from carrying a load of sin, don't you? You know what a terrible thing, guilt, indeed. I'm not talking about a guilt complex. I'm talking about guilt. I'm talking about what it means to bear on your conscience the memory of your evil deed. If there is anything terrible about dying in your sin, it is the fact that memory will endure for eternity in both heaven and hell.
The rich man died, and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment. And what did he remember? He remembered everything, everything that had happened on earth. He remembered that he had five brothers. He remembered that they were indifferent to the claims of God, and Abraham said to him, Son, remember that thou and thy lifetime receivest thy good things. He remembered everything about his life here on this earth. Wouldn't that be a terrible thing? To have that load of your own guilt resting on you for all eternity. I've been totally delivered from that. I can think about any of the things that I've done that are evil in my past.
When they come to my memory, I don't have the slightest qualms of conscience about them. I'm sorry they happen, but I'm certainly not going to go back and slap on them anymore. I know that they have been taken away. I know that the Lord came to save his people from their sins. I can be carried a step further than that to say a little more about that. I believe that in the deliverance which the Lord gave us, when we first received Him, I believe that He delivered us from any need to depend upon ourselves. He says here that we should not trust in ourselves.
I feel sorry for a person who is trying to be his own Savior. He's like a man standing in the tub and trying to listen. He's got a terrible job on his hands. He's trying and trying to do something for himself. I'm so glad that he delivered from the necessity of trying to do something for myself, anything for myself. I'm not now speaking about Christian Duke. I'm talking about the care and all of the things that I need. How wonderful to know that I'm in my Heavenly Father's hands. Somebody said to me one time, we had fifty-six children for which we were responsible.
And we were pretty lean times. I remember the welfare director, state director, came out, said they passed a new law, and she wanted to talk to me about our financial status. They had a new law that you had to be financially solvent if you took care of children. She said, I would like to... see your assets. So I laid the checkbook out and there was three dollars and something in the bank. No, she said, I mean your surplus. And I said, we don't have any surplus. And she was horror struck. She said, you mean to tell me you've got fifty children here in the home and only three dollars and something in the bank?
I said, that's more than we need. We've got all we need. We've got food for the children. They have everything that they need. They're comfortable. She said, well, you We can't allow this. We can't allow children to be cared for in a place where there isn't any security. I said, you didn't ask for my security. You asked for my surplus. I don't have any surplus. If it's security you want to talk about, we've got all the security in the world. She said, what is it? I said, we've got a Heavenly Father that knows all about it. And he's already provided. For all I know, there are needs coming in tomorrow. And he has the money coming in from another place.
And they always win the race. Sometimes they get there in the same mail, but open the right letter first. The Lord doesn't torment me with Bill. He's going to see to it that we have what we need. Why, she said, we can't allow this. I said, well, all right. If you can't, just let me know how soon you left the home taken out of the state and we'll move it. She said, we don't want to move. We need all the beds you've got here. Well, then I said, then go back to Denver and leave me alone. Because what we're trying to do is to carry on the work of the Lord the way the Lord has told us to do it. And you want me to ask for somebody to guarantee this, besides God. And you're interfering with my Christian liberty. It's enough for us that God is guaranteed to care for these children.
They're his children. They're not mine. I'm not responsible for them. He's asked me to take care of them, and I expect him to flip the bill. That's all. It's just that simple. And you're asking me to find a church or a lodge or a club or some other outfit that's supposed to take God's place. Well, she said, you don't have to do that just so you have a year's budget in the bank. That's just what it takes to run you for a year. Well, I said, I can't do that. There's no place I can get it because I don't believe in begging, and I don't need it anyway, so I can't even ask God for it. I can't ask him for a year's supply ahead of time. I can only ask him for today. So you're making it impossible for me.
Whenever you want us to leave, just let us know. Give us time so we can move it out of the state. You know what she did? She went back and presented to the legislature, and they actually changed the laws on the state of Colorado. She didn't know any way to get around it, so what's any way to get around it? I think it's wonderful to be delivered from work. I think it's wonderful to be delivered from being your own supporter. But, you know, I think it's wonderful to have daily deliveries, too. Do you know what the Lord has done in delivering us? We're told in Galatians chapter one that the Lord has delivered us from this present evil word.
Now, that word evil, they tell me, is the word from which we get our English word, pernicious. You know what pernicious anemia is? Well, this world is pernicious word. It's not only evil in the sense of being bad, but it's evil in the sense of being incurable. It's evil in the sense of being infectious. It's evil in the sense of being in a state of rebellion against God. And it's really wonderful to be delivered from this present evil world. To be independent of it. To be in it, but not of it. The Lord said to His Father, I don't ask you to take...
these men out of the world. I just ask you to keep them from the evil that's in the world. That's God's way. We're sort of like a diver, you know, down in the sea. And we've got an airline and a telephone line and a cable to pull us up when they get ready. And here we are down here in an unfriendly atmosphere. But we're not disturbed because we're in communion. We're in touch with someone who's able to care for us. It's really wonderful to be delivered from this present evil world. And then we're told also that we are being delivered daily from the power of Satan.
Now I believe in a personal devil. I don't trust it, but I mean I believe in his existence. I believe that Satan is just as real, as God is real. He's not as powerful. Don't ever ascribe to Satan any of the attributes of deity. Satan is not omnipotent, only God is. He's powerful, but he's not all-powerful. Satan is everywhere by representation. He's got his henchmen all around everywhere, but he's not omnipresent. He's ubiquitous, which means simply that he has representation in all these places, but he is not omnipresent.
When he's busy working with somebody in Europe, he's got to send somebody else to bug me. And he's always got a few handy to do it. But I'm not afraid of it. It isn't that I'm superior to it. He's much stronger than I am, but the Word of God says, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. You know why, don't you? Because the second chapter of Hebrews says that the Lord Jesus... destroyed him that had the power of death. That word doesn't mean annihilated. It means he disannulled. He took his power away from him. He pulled his bank. Yes, he did. And Satan is not a fear, not a fearful being to us who are saved.
And we are being saved from his daily power. Because we can resist him. And we can look forward to that time, too, when the Lord says, God shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. That'll be nice, Lord. It'll be great to see him bruise under the feet of a triumphant Satan. The Lord is saving us daily from the distresses that come upon this world. You know, of course, that the great problem The great disturbance in the world, I know this is especially true of America, the great disturbance, the great problem is worth.
We're the pill-popping generation. It's amazing the number of drugs that are necessary for most people to get through life. I'm not now speaking of... of any medication that the doctors prescribe for you. Don't have a bad conscience about that. I carry a handful of them myself because there are certain things that the doctors say that we have to have. I'm talking about this business of taking an upper and then taking a downer to kind of keep you on an even keel. You've got to have something to wake you up and something to put you to sleep and something to keep you from worrying in between the times. That's what I'm talking about. The world knows nothing about a heavenly father's care.
And so they've got to have these things. to keep them from the present distresses, it would be a terrible thing to have to live in this world without a heavenly Father, wouldn't it? You know the little poem about the bird. Said the Robin to the Sparrow, I wonder why these troubled human beings rush about and worry so. Said the Sparrow to the Robin, I think that it must be they have no heavenly Father. to care for them, such as you and I. That is a very good portrait. I mean, the sense is all right. Just leave it like that. It was a very good portrait anyway.
We do have a Heavenly Father who cares. You forget that someday? Try to remember it tomorrow. The day after Congress is always a bad day. It's an awful letdown. But it won't be if you remember that your Heavenly Father... still knows that you have need of all these things. There are several other things. I was thinking about First Peter chapter one, where he says, That he has redeemed us, not the corruptible things, but the silver and gold, from your vain conversation. Now, that doesn't mean much in modern English, but the word is simply from your empty way of living, received by tradition from your father.
This world has an empty way of living. Do you know what's so empty about it? It has many focuses. It has many futures. There isn't anything ahead for the man of this world. He lives a totally empty life. He's living a life that is dependent upon accumulating a few more things and becoming a little greater. He lives only for what he can get and who he can be. And our world, our nation is filled with people who are spending money they don't have to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't even like. That's the way people live. They don't know anything any better or any different.
But you and I have been delivered from all that. We don't have to live the empty kind of life that people in this world live. But there's a future delivery. I have a friend at home. He's a very eccentric old gentleman. But his way of expressing things are very refreshing. One day he said to me, John, you know you're a lot better saved than you have any idea. That's right, too. You're a lot better saved than you have any idea. We don't know half of what God has done for us. We're constantly learning new things about God's deliverance. How well has the Lord saved us?
Well, he says in the seventh chapter of Hebrews in verse twenty-five, that he is able to say to the uttermost all men that come unto God by him, and seeing he ever liveeth to make intercession for us. Now that word to the uttermost is a comprehensive word according to Vines' Phosatory Dictionary, a New Testament word, which I think is the finest help that we've ever been given in the study of the Bible. I think that it's simply marvelous that the Lord not only saves to the uttermost as time, all through the life, all through eternity.
There is no limit to the extent in time or eternity, but that He saves to the uttermost as to every part of our being, every area of our life. He saves to the uttermost in every particular need that we may have. There isn't anything that you can't take to your Savior. God our Savior saves us to the uttermost. But more than that, He saves to the uttermost as to the kind and amount of sin. There is no sinner too great.
No one has sinned too much. for God to be able to save him. No one has too wicked a heart for the Lord to be able to deliver him and to keep him. Sin shall not have dominion over you. It doesn't matter how bad you've been, the Lord can still clean you up. It takes him a little while, but he can do it. He can save to the uttermost. And he does it because he ever lived to make intercession for it. It's been a good while since I heard anybody thank the Lord Jesus. for being our high priest. But I heard a young man do this in Las Cruces, New Mexico, about two weeks ago, a group of students with whom I was working there, a young fellow that's been saved less than a year, said, Lord Jesus, I do appreciate your being there as my high priest.
I thought, isn't that marvelous? A young man saved less than a year, and he's enjoying the high priestly work of the Lord Jesus. Are you? Well, you say, I know he's our advocate. Well, that's nice. You can go to him at the end of the day and he'll straighten the mess up. But wouldn't it be better to go to him at the beginning of the day and turn your life over to him so he can keep you from that thing? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Wouldn't it be better if you went to the high priest and got strength and help from him because he had touched with the feeling of our infirmities? That means our weaknesses. You could go to the Lord and get help for the day, before the day ever stopped. And then he is there, of course, as our forerunner.
That doesn't mean that he went ahead to get a place prepared. Some people think the Lord's in the construction business. They say he's busy building houses. Nonsense. He certainly is not going to put each one of us around and stick us around in a mansion here and there. He says, I go to prepare a place, singular, for you, all of you. And he did that the minute he went there. The place was prepared as soon as the Lord got there. He's not in the building business. What the Lord is doing now is interceding for it. And he's doing it day and night. And we need it day and night. And he ever lives to make intercession for us. And that's our forerunner. Going into the presence of God, he opened the way toward the veil and two, so that we could follow him in. I was in Chicago at a conference in the an anointing and a very able man gave some teaching on the rent veil.
and our ability to come right into the presence of God and be at home with our Heavenly Father. And after the meeting at noon, when the meeting closed, he was the last speaker, and we were coming down the stairway, and a young fellow opened the door to let this man out, and I was right behind him, and I heard the conversation. And the young man thought he ought to say something religious, you know, to this dignified old preacher, and so he said... Well, this would be a nice day to go to heaven, wouldn't it? And the old man said, why don't you go there? And he said, I say it, be a nice day to go to heaven. He said, I heard you the first time. But you didn't hear me.
Why don't you go there? He said, I don't understand. I'd be glad to go to heaven as the Lord came. And he said, where were you the last forty-five minutes? Well, he said, I was up there listening to you. He said, well, you might have been up there, but you weren't listening to him. Because what I've been talking about for the last forty-five minutes is that we have the privilege of going into the presence of God now. You can live in the presence of God. You can't take your carcass with you, but who needs that? What he's saying is that the deliverance of the Lord permits us to go right into his presence. Isn't that a marvelous deliverer? We don't even have to stay here in this miserable place, except in body, in mind that you go there.
And you know what I'm talking about. I can shut my eyes and be in San Diego, San Antonio, because that's where my wife is. I can just close my eyes and be there just that quick, and back here again. I just now made that trip. You can do the same thing in heaven, and that's what you ought to do. As a believer, any time that your mind is free from what necessarily occupies it here, it ought to go directly to the presence of God, because we have a forerunner, therefore. But I must wind this up. At the close of this life, we're going to see the completion of God's salvation. Now, part of me isn't redeemed yet.
That's the part you can see. We are waiting for the redemption, for the adoption, to which the redemption of our body. Now is your salvation nearer than when you believe. That doesn't mean you're nearer saved. It means that the completion of your salvation... which is the salvation of your body, is near now than when you believe. Won't it be wonderful to be completely saved? Won't it be wonderful to have a saved body for this saved soul and saved spirit to reside in forever? If God could give the children of Israel shoes that would never become too small, their feet would never outgrow them, and clothes that would never wear out for forty years in the wilderness, Just think how wonderful it will be for him to give us a body that will never wear out, and that will never weaken, and that will never get old and ugly.
It starts with your feet, you know. There's no such thing as a pretty pair of feet over seventeen years of age. And they get uglier as you get older. They get gnarled and all full of bumps. And this is, it just starts from there and just grows up until finally all the shingles fall off the roof. And here we are. And the Lord is going to deliver us totally. Totally. We're going to be saved totally when the Lord comes back. Brother and sister, it might be today. Tonight, yes. And not tonight, then maybe it'll be tomorrow. And I do hope that it will be soon. because I'm longing for that total delivery.
We trust in him that he will yet deliver us. Now, if he hasn't saved you, I hope you let him do so tonight.