Smith, Harold: Five Mysteries Of Salvation ~ The Bible Answers Ministry

Now we're going to read in the book of Isaiah chapter thirty eight. Isaiah chapter thirty eight. This is a man, a king called Hezekiah that speaks these words. Isaiah chapter thirty eight and verse number seventeen. Behold, for peace I had great bitterness. Not very much peace there, eh? But thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption, for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. Another verse in chapter twelve of the book of Isaiah, and verse number two. Isaiah chapter twelve and verse number two. I want you to notice the little word my in this verse. Isaiah twelve and verse number two: Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song. He also has become my salvation. Back in chapter thirty eight again, in verse number seventeen. I want you to notice the two mys in that verse. Behold, for peace I had great bitterness, but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption, for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. Five times we have that little word my. And that tells me something, that what the writer is talking about is very, very personal. You only use my when you're talking about something very personal. Now, salvation is something very, very personal. Not something collective. Christ died for the world, that's for sure. And the God- Christ died for us, but there must come that time in your life, as well as it did in my life, where salvation must become something very, very personal between you and the Lord. So I read about five mys. The first one is my soul in, in chapter thirty eight and verse number seventeen, Thou hast in love to my soul. My soul, that's the most priceless possession that you have. We look after our bodies, and that's all well and good. If we're not feeling well, we go to the doctor, and we try to keep ourselves well fed, and we try to keep ourselves healthy as we can, and that's very good. But our body is not very valuable compared to our soul. When I was first saved forty three years ago, almost now, I used to give out a little track, and it said you're worth eighty seven cents. And it went on to read that the chemical value of a body, about a hundred and fifty pound body, the chemical value of that body on the market at that time would bring about eighty seven cents. Now, with inflation, I'm sure it's up around five eighty seven now, but it's still not worth very much. It's only a composition of dust from the earth and chemicals from the earth. And I often tell people, if they want to prove where man came from, any chemist can take a body and prove Genesis two ve- two and verse seven, that God formed a man of the dust of the earth. But my soul, my soul. Now that's in the body, but it's not the body. In first Thessalonians chapter five and verse twenty three, there's three distinct parts of man mentioned there, yet just the one man. So we read in verse twenty three of, uh, first Thessalonians, we read Paul is praying for the Christians there, that the very God of peace would sanctify you wholly, and I pray God that your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved. Three distinct parts, just the one man, but three distinct parts. Man is a tripartite being, a three-part being, because he was made in the image of a tripartite God. God is a Trinity, a tri-unity. One God and three divine personalities. One man, three parts, body, soul, and spirit. Jesus said in Matthew chapter ten and verse twenty eight, fear not him that's able to kill the body but is not able to kill the soul. So that tells me that the soul and the body is not the same thing. You can't kill the soul, Jesus said. Don't be afraid of somebody that shoots you. They can kill your body, but they can't kill your soul. So you see the soul and the body is separate in a sense, although they're both in the one person to make up the one being. My soul, the most, most priceless possession that you have. We often think much about our bodies, and that's all well and good, about our homes and about our families and about our life and so on, and that's very good. But the most priceless thing we have is our soul. Your house is going to go. Your car is going to rust out. I just got rid of my van the other day. After fifteen years, it's rusty. It's for the scrap heap. And, uh, it's all going to go. This is all going to be over, but a hundred years from now, it'll all be over as far as this life is concerned. But your soul will still go on and on and on. Now, the soul is not immortal. Immortality has to do with matter. It has to do with the body. The soul is eternal, but it's not immortal because it, it, the soul is not the body. The soul is not something you can see. It's not something you can, you can touch. It's not matter. My soul, thou hast in love to my soul. That life that will go on and on and on eternity, eh, eternally is what the prophet here is speaking about, or the king is speaking about in this prophecy, that thou hast in love to my soul. He's talking to God about God loving his soul, because that soul will go on. It's true, the body will too, but the body will d- decay, the body will de- uh, die, but the body will be resurrected. It will rejoin the soul, and that man will be a complete person for eternity, but the body will die, but the soul will never die. The soul will never die. In Genesis chapter thirty five and verse eighteen, Rachel was bearing Gen- Benjamin, a son, and it says, as her soul was departing from her, for she died. That's physical death. The soul leaves the body, and that's physical death, but the soul does not die. When the Bible says, the soul that sinneth shall surely die, it's talking about that soul being eternally separated from God forever, that, but it doesn't cease to be. It goes on because the soul of man is eternal. It'll go on and on and on forever. The most priceless possession that you have, you ever think about your soul? You care about your soul? That's the most valuable thing that you have. Mark chapter eight and verse thirty six says, what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world? Imagine, have all of the Rockefellers' wealth, all of the Kennedys' wealth, all of the Astors and the, and the, and the, and the wealth of the world. You had it all, the works of it. What would it profit you if you gained it all and lo- lost your own soul, the most priceless possession that you have? In Je- in Revelation chapter six and verse nine, John saw the souls of them that had been beheaded. They were still living. Their bodies were in the tomb. I don't know whether they had an intermediate body or what he saw, but they were there. He saw them in a vision, in, in, in, in a heavenly vision. The soul goes on and on and on forever. A priceless possession. Something for you to seriously think about, your soul. The next thing I read about in chapter thirty eight and verse seventeen was my sins. Now, if your soul is the most priceless possession that you have, then your sins is the biggest problem that you have. It's the heaviest burden that you have. It's the one problem and the only problem that will keep you eternally separated from God forever. It's sin that puts sinners into hell, not God. It's sin. It's true, God is the judge, but he has no choice for those that die in the sin. Same as the judge in our courts. Somebody is a murderer, he has no choice. He can't say, well, I'll let the murderer go. He has to execute justice, and he has to give that murderer his due rewards, whatever the penalty, whatever the law might say. My sins, that's a heavy, heavy burden. Now, if your soul is something that's priceless and something for you to think about, your sins are something that you should acknowledge, that you should find out about. Sins is like an iceberg. They tell me that only one tenth of an iceberg is showing. Nine tenths of it's underwater. I've seen in the coast of Newfoundland some huge, huge icebergs. Huge, and I can't imagine what the other nine tenths are like underwater. A tremendous size. That's the way with a person's sins. There's only a little bit of them that we know about. What is sin anyway? There are several descriptions of sin in the Bible. John, First John chapter 3 and verse four says, sin is the transgression of the law. The breaking of any one of the Ten Commandments is sin. If you covet something, your neighbor's goods, that's a sin. If you lie, that's a sin. If you commit adultery, that's a sin. If you take the Lord's name in vain, that's a sin. If you have other gods beside the Lord God, that's a sin. Any violation of the Ten Commandments is a sin. Then in Romans chapter fourteen of verse twenty three it says, whatsoever is not of faith is sin. That's sin too, because you're doing something that's not in faith. James chapter four verse seventeen says, to to to them that know to do good and do it not, that's a sin. If you know there's something you should do that's right and you don't do it, that's a sin. Like Proverbs chapter twenty four verse nine says, the thought of foolishness is sin. Sin, all kinds of sins. There's moral sins, there's spiritual sins, sins of the spirit of man, like pride and greed and jealousy and envy and those type of things. Those are all sins. And the sinner must come to realize, in order to appreciate the love that God had for your soul, you have to come to acknowledge, in some measure, your sinfulness before God. Sin is a heavy, heavy burden. That is, when you know it. Now, if you don't know your sins, then you're very conceited, and you're very deceived, and you don't have too much of a burden. Because the burden of sin is guilt. And if you don't know your sin, how can you pay, how can you have that load of guilt upon you? But it's when you come to realize and to acknowledge your sin, then the weight of that sin, the guilt of that sin comes down upon you. Now it's there, whether you know it or not. Everybody, they has sort of a guilty complex about them when they're born, and they carry that complex through life. And even secular psychologists and psychiatrists will tell you that, that people have a guilty complex. You ask them what they're guilty over? I don't know. Well, what have you done? What's bothering you? I don't know, but I've got a guilty feeling. That's the burden of sin. Though you don't know your sin, it's there, there's a burden, but when you come to know your sin, then that burden becomes very, very heavy. And that's something you must. My soul, the most priceless possession that I have, thou hast in love to my soul done something to deliver it from the pit of corruption. God never watched the souls of men that he made, that man that he made, he never watched the souls of men that are eternal, that will go on forever. He never stood back and watched them go all their way toward that pit of destruction because he loved the souls of men. This prophet, this king says that God, in love to my soul, he's done something about it. He sent his son to die for that soul, that that soul might be saved. That soul was so valuable to God that he sent his son to die to deliver that soul from the pit of corruption. My sins, what has he done with them? He's cast them behind his back. That's great. When you think that God isn't looking at our sins anymore, they're behind him, and God has no eyes in his back, though he knows everything. He's omniscient, he knows everything, there's nothing he doesn't know, but the idea is he's pre- he's presenting himself as a man there as a- as we would understand him, and he says, I've taken my sins that were before me, the sins that I- I- I died, sent my son to die to put them away, and I've taken those sins and I've cast them behind my back. They're behind me. They'll never be brought to the forefront again. That's great. That's wonderful. My sins, a heavy, heavy burden. Then in the other portion in chapter twelve and verse number two, I read about my salvation. God is my salvation. See, that's where salvation's at. That's where it comes from. He's the author of salvation, and he's the, and he's the produce- provider of it. He's the producer of it. Behold, God is my salvation. Now that's a great provision, a great provision that he's made for us. He's provided a way of salvation that's so simple and so, uh, easy, as it were, that a child can enter into that salvation. And in fact, he even says that adults should become as little children to enter in. In Matthew eighteen and verse thir- uh, three says, except ye be converted and become as little children, you will not enter in the kingdom of heaven. It's that childlike faith in what the Lord has provided for us. That's God's salvation. Simeon saw the child Jesus when he was about a month old, and he said, behold, uh, uh, he says, mine eyes have seen thy salvation. That's a great thing to see. There was a man that spent forty two years sitting and listening to the gospel and still wasn't saved. And finally this man got saved, and he said it took him forty two years to learn three things. First, that there was nothing he could do to save himself. Now, that doesn't mean he couldn't repent or couldn't believe. He's talking about there's no good thing he could do, no good work he could do, no, no reforming or anything he could do. So it took him forty two years to learn there was nothing he could do to save himself. And the second thing was that God never asked him to do anything to save himself. God doesn't say, improve your life and I'll save you, or turn over a new leaf and I'll save you, quit this or quit that and I'll save you. That's what he does, and you have to come to him. So he said it took him forty three years to learn that God didn't ask him to do anything to save himself. God didn't, uh, God didn't, he, there was nothing he could do to save himself, and God never asked him to do anything to save himself. And the third thing was he learned that Christ, uh, did it all at the place called Calvary. When he cried, it is finished. Salva- salvation is a p- a provided gift for all those who will receive it by faith. There's no other way to get it. And it is a gift. You can't pay for it, and you don't have to pay, you don't have to pray, you don't have to say, you don't have to do anything like that to get God's gift. You have to take it by faith. With all your heart, you have to receive that salvation that's been provided for us in our Lord Jesus Christ. So this salvation is something that we are to claim. My soul is something we should think about, a priceless possession. My sins, a heavy burden that we should acknowledge. My salvation, a great provision that we should claim by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Once we do that, then in Isaiah chapter twelve and verse two, he says, the Lord Jehovah becomes my strength. My strength. See, we don't have any strength on our own, even after we're saved. Once the Lord Jehovah becomes our salvation, he automatically becomes our strength. See, we can, Jesus put it this way, he was like a vine, and he said, you're like a branch, and he said, if the branch abides in the vine, then it it it it can bear fruit, but without me you can't do anything, he says. You're absolutely helpless without me, without abiding in Christ. So when a person gets saved, the gospel becomes the power of God unto salvation to those that believe it. Romans chapter one verse sixteen. Paul said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, the good news of how he died for my sins, was buried and rose again. I'm not ashamed of that gospel, he said, because it's God's dynamite, God's power to save people, that is from sin, to all those that believe it. And this is what God saves people from. You see, the Bible does not say God saves people from hell, that's true. But the way he saves this person from hell and the penalty of sin, he saves them from their sins. So if he can save you from your sins, he automatically is saved from hell. You're saved from his penalty. Your sins are gone. They're, they're forgiven. They're cast behind his back. And, and once you trust him, once he becomes your salvation, once you can say the Lord is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid, then the Lord Jehovah becomes your strength. He becomes your strength, and you can live in the strength of the Lord. Paul put it this way, I know that in me, as a Christian, he says, that is in myself, dwelleth no good thing. In Romans chapter seven verse eighteen. and all along those verses he said, I got a desire to do the right thing, but I haven't got the power to do it. And he says, I don't want to do certain things, but I end up doing it. So he's got a seesaw battle of trying to live, uh, in his own strength, and it doesn't work. Then he could say, in Philippians four and thirteen, I can do all things through Christ, who keeps on strengthening me, because the Lord is the strength of those people that are saved. There's no doubt that this is a lot of the failure in modern day profession. I remember forty two years ago, this fall and this coming winter, there were over two hundred people in the Argylls that made professions of faith in Christ. Forty three years ago, this fall it would be, just a couple of months after I was saved. Over two hundred people had professed to be saved in the Arak Isles. I know a lot of those people now. They're still with us. Some of them have gone. I know a lot of those people now. And in the past forty three years, there's absolutely no evidence in many of their lives that they were ever saved. They made professions. Some of them have made several professions since. And it's simple. I don't know what the problem is. I don't know whether they're saved or not. I'm not saying that, but I am saying this. If the Lord is their salvation, he is not their strength. If the Lord is your strength, there's going to be a tremendous change in your life, because that works in you. That's a mighty power that works in the lives of those people in God. It is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do his good pleasure, we read in Philippians two and verse thirteen. See, God does, Christ has done a work for us on the cross. When you trust him as your savior, God does a work in you. He starts the work in you, and he continues that work in you, and he, and he becomes your strength. My strength. Then the last one in chapter twelve and verse two, he not only becomes my strength, but becomes my song. Everybody has a song. The world, somebody said the universal language of mankind is music. And you go everywhere, music is all you can hear. You can get a ho- a hundred thousand teenagers out to a, to a rock concert. They're fascinated by that, and the world has a song, but listen, a Christian has a song too. He's my song. Psalm chapter forty and verse three says, he's put a new song in my mouth, even praises unto our God. And when the children of Israel were redeemed out of Egypt in chapter twelve and thirteen and fourteen, and once they got across the Red Sea and, and Egypt was cut off from them, then sang the, the, they sang a song unto the Lord who had redeemed them and gained a great victory over their enemies. The song of Moses is called in Exodus chapter fifteen. They had a song to sing, a song of rejoicing. Every redeemed person has got a new song, not the song of the world, but a new song. In Revelation chapter five and verse nine it says they'll sing a song unto the Lamb who hath redeemed them by his blood out of every nation and kindred and tongue. In the Bible, people that were saved in Acts chapter eight, I'm thinking of that eunuch confused and and didn't understand, riding along in the chariot, and all of a sudden Philip joins him and explains salvation to him. He got saved, he got baptized, and it says he went on his way rejoicing. What was he doing? Likely singing the new song. God put a new song in his heart, put a melody in his heart, a harmony in his heart because he was in tune with God. He was saved. His sins have been cast behind the, the, the back of God. God had become his salvation. God had become his strength, and he was going on his way, rejoicing, singing a new song. That jailer came in and fell down before Saul and, uh, Paul and Silas and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? He was trembling. He was afraid. I know song. But then, then is they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. He believed, he was baptized, and it says he rejoiced with all of his house. He had a song to say. I tell you, the world doesn't have a song. They have a song, but it's not a song that will do any good. My soul, a great pos- a priceless possession. My sins, a heavy burden. My salvation, that's God. My strength, that's God. My song, that's the Lord. Behold, God is my salvation. Look how simple in chapter 12 and verse two it is together. I will trust and not be afraid. I will trust and not be afraid. You know, when Adam sinned, God says, where art thou? You know what he's saying? I was afraid. Sin brings guilt. Guilt brings fear. You break the law of the land, you're afraid. As soon as you see a cop come, you're afraid because you're guilty and you're afraid. So they, uh, the, the, the writer here says, I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song. He also has become my salvation. Can you say that? Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid. Can you say he's my strength, he's my song, and he's become my salvation? That's personal, and that's between you and the Lord. And when you just, when you see the value of your soul, and you see the, the, the, the awfulness of your sins, then you can lay claim on the one who is your salvation, your strength, and your song. Shall we pray? Our Father, we thank thee for the great provision that thou has made for poor sinners at Calvary. We thank thee for thy long suffering, extending the day of grace, the day of thy mercy, and the day of thy salvation, so there's opportunities everywhere for mankind to be saved. So we ask thy blessing upon us here, for those that are among us that might not be saved, we ask thee to help them to realize the seriousness of being right with thee and being saved by thy grace. So we pray in the name and for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.