Sermon Central
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Saved – Saved From What?
Contributed by Jerry Flury on Feb 16, 2013 (message contributor)
Summary: We ask people “Are you saved?” expecting them to understand what we are talking about. When asked, the response we get might be “Saved? Saved from what?” What does it mean to be saved? If we are saved, from what are we saved?
Saved – Saved From What?
Often we use terms that we assume others know exactly what we are talking about. One of these words is “saved”. We ask people “Are you saved?” expecting them to understand what we are talking about. When asked, the response we get might be “Saved? Saved from what?” What does it mean to be saved? If we are saved, from what are we saved?
I. Saved - What does that mean?
A. The word "saved" comes from a Greek word sode'-zo. Its basic definition is “to deliver or rescue”
B. It is used in a number of ways
1. to save one (from injury or peril)
2. to save a suffering one (from perishing), that is, one suffering from disease, to make well, heal, restore to health
3. to preserve one who is in danger of destruction, to save or rescue
C. In the biblical sense the word speaks of the redemptive work that takes place when an individual turns from his life, which was alienated from God, to Christ as Lord and Savior.
D. Romans 10:9-10 “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
E. Salvation is the supernatural act of God whereby God enables sinful man to realize his sinfulness in light of God’s holiness, and through acknowledgment of Christ’s lordship surrenders the ownership of His life to Christ. The result of which the individual receives both forgiveness and deliverance. That moment by God’s grace he has been saved.
F. But... Deliverance from what? Saved from what?
II. Saved from the Wrath of God
A. John 3:36 “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides (remains) on him.”
B. God's word clearly teaches that those outside of a saving relationship with Him through Christ are presently under wrath.
C. The word that is used does not refer refers to a sudden outburst of rage but of a teeming or swelling anger fixed and controlled that one day will be released.
D. The wrath of God is not just taught in the Bible, it is a prominent truth in the Scriptures as A. W. Pink calls attention to in his book: A study of the concordance will show that there are more references in Scripture to the anger, fury, and wrath of God, than there are to His love and tenderness.- Bob Deffinbaugh, The Wrath of God
E. Arthur W Pink wrote in his book “The Attributes of God” of the Wrath of God that, “The wrath of God is His eternal detestation of all unrighteousness. It is the displeasure and indignation of Divine equity against evil. It is the holiness of God stirred into activity against sin. It is the moving cause of that just sentence which He passes upon evil-doers. God is angry against sin because it is a rebelling against His authority, a wrong done to His inviolable sovereignty. Insurrectionists against God’s government shall be made to know that God is the Lord. They shall be made to feel how great that Majesty is which they despise, and how dreadful is that threatened wrath which they so little regarded.”
F. Isaiah 13:9-13 “Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with both wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; and He will destroy its sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be darkened in its going forth, and the moon will not cause its light to shine. “I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will halt the arrogance of the proud, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a mortal more rare than fine gold,a man more than the golden wedge of Ophir. Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth will move out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts and in the day of His fierce anger.
G. “O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in; it is a great furnace of
wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as many of the damned of hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder…” – Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God
