14.Salvation From Sin - Zac Poonen

today we want to look at the work of salvation that Jesus came to accomplish we've considered man's fall into sin and we have seen how God has allowed the devil to exist how he became the devil etc we want to see something about the work of salvation first of all let's look at Matthew 1 and verse 21 this is the first promise in the New Testament and it says here that you must call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins so the meaning of the name Jesus is one who saves people from their sins now this is very important for us to recognize right at the outset because many people today are preaching about Jesus doing a lot of other things now it's true that the Lord does many many things for his people he blesses us materially physically so many things and there's no doubt he does that but the great danger I find today in a lot of Christian preaching is that the emphasis has shifted from that which is major to that which is minor and the end result of that is that Christians are not experiencing the full blessing of what Christ came and did for them on the cross what exactly did Jesus do for us on the cross why did he do why did he die on the cross and why was he raised up from the dead it was not to bless us with material things and to heal our sicknesses as if those were the greatest problems we have now if those who are man's greatest problems certainly the Lord would deal with those primarily but in the very first promise in the New Testament we read that you will call his name Jesus because he's going to save his people from their sins sin as we have seen is man's biggest problem and Jesus came to save us from the biggest problem and when the biggest problem was solved those other things take care of themselves it's very important to see this you know in the Old Testament we can see an example of this where David confronted Goliath the giant of the Philistines and David there is the picture of Christ who is called the son of David and Goliath there we could see Goliath there is a picture of Satan or is a picture of sin but we read there that when Goliath was defeated in 1 samuel chapter 17 and verse 51 it says that when the Philistines saw that their champion was dead the last part of that verse they fled so when the champion was defeated all the Philistines ran away when the major problem was taken care of the minor problems were solved on the other hand if David had concentrated on fighting the Philistines the problem would not have been solved Goliath would still have been hale and hearty defying the Israelites and the smaller Philistines would have been killed the problem would not have been solved that's a picture of how if you look at man's problems and deal with the minor ones first the major one still stands there like a Goliath and sin is the root cause of all the other problems it's just like we could say if man has some sickness within his body and which manifests itself in sores on his skin you can give him a tube of ointment that deals with the source but once he D it gets it off gets rid of it on one hand it can come on the other hand then he rubs it there he can get rid of it there it'll come on his legs and then one day the doctor tells him there's a new antibiotic that's been discovered you take this antibiotic inside he tells his patient and that will deal with the root of the problem inside and then these other things are taken care of automatically you won't get any source sin is like that and the salvation of Christ is like an antibiotic that deals with the root of man's problem within and not with the minor things outside it's not like an ointment to remove the source no it's like an antibiotic that goes inside and deals with the root problem so that these other problems get solved automatically and sin is man's root problem that's why the very first promise in the New Testament is you shall call his name Jesus because he's going to save his people from their sins now there's a difference between being saved from sin and having our sin forgiven a lot of believers have their sins forgiven all believers if they're really born again their sins are forgiven but you can't say that they have been saved from their sin see for example if I get angry that's a sin by lust with my eyes that's the same if I bitterness against somebody that's a sin I can confess these sins to God and say Lord I'm sorry I got angry I'm sorry that I love stood with my eyes I'm sorry that I got bitter please forgive me I'm forgiven but I'm not safe because tomorrow I go and do the same things again how can I say I'm saved if I'm still inside the prison I'm not being rescued I'm still sitting inside the prison of sin here the promises you shall call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins we're not supposed to save ourselves we can't save ourselves from the penalty of sin we cannot save ourselves from the power of sin we cannot save ourselves from the presence of sin everything has to be done by Christ when he died upon the cross he saved us from the penalty of sin but more than that he also made a way when he died for us to be delivered from the power of sin this if this is also not preached we can say half the gospel is not preached the gospel has two parts to it and both are here in the first promise in the New Testament we can see them combined in the words of Jesus to the woman caught in adultery you know that story where there was a woman caught in adultery that was a terrible sin that she committed and she was brought before Jesus for a verdict and Jesus of course told the disciples the Pharisees who wanted a STONER saying he who is without sin throw the first stone and they all went away and then Jesus looks at this woman and says in verse 11 has nobody condemned you he has her first and then says to her when she says no one Lord two things and there you have the full gospel in one sentence you have two things which are the full gospel I do not condemn you now on sin no more in those two statements you are the full gospel I do not condemn you in future don't sin do you know that's what the Lord tells us today because he died on the cross if you receive that forgiveness his death on the cross Jesus I don't condemn you but don't stop there don't sin anymore those are two sides of the same coin if you get a coin with only one side printed it's a counterfeit you need both you need I don't condemn you and you also need don't see many more so when it says in Matthew 1:21 that Jesus has come to save us from our sins it is to save us from the guilt and the penalty of sin and also to save us from the power of sin in our day-to-day life and one day when he comes back in glory he will save us from the very presence of sin so there are three areas like past present future tense in the past he saved us from the penalty of sin if you received Christ as your Savior in the present everyday he wants to save you from the power of sin and one day in the future he will save you from the presence of sin so it's very important to see that the Gospel message is primarily dealing with the root problem and unfortunately in today's preaching the preachers have got taken up with the results the symptoms of the sickness rather than the sickness itself and that's foolish I mean a man can have tuberculosis and one of the symptoms of that may be fever in the evenings or something like that so if a man if the doctor just gives him a national crossing or something like that to take care of his fever it doesn't cure his tuberculosis it's just dealing with a symptom no doubt he gets a relief from the fever but the disease is not healed the same thing with because of sin a man can be sick that's a symptom of his sin or he can be in some financial difficulty and you deal with the sickness in the financial difficulty it's like giving a man treatment for his headache but as his real sickness is the tuberculosis and so the same problem remains the man live still lives in sin but maybe he's healed of a sickness or his financial problem is all in some way he does not solve the root cause of the problem and if he's not saved from sin no matter how much he is blessed with physical healing or material prosperity he finally goes to hell separated from God so we got to be very careful of this counterfeit gospel being preached today in many places which does not deal with the root problem of sin Jesus came to save us from our sins let me repeat not just to forgive us but to save us let me use an illustration posing I have a five year old boy at home and I tell him son don't go outside the gate because the road crew are digging the road there and there's a deep pit there they're doing some work on the ground and if you go there you'll fall into that pit and let's say that he disobeys me and goes near there to watch these men or when they had gone away from where and he falls into the pit and from inside the pit he cries out saying dad and I go there and say what happened son this is dad I'm sorry i disobeyed you and Here I am at the bottom of this pit please forgive me and I say to him okay son you're forgiven goodbye have i forgiven him I certainly have for disobeying me have I saved him no he's still in the pit so is that all that Jesus has come to do for us that we say Lord I'm sorry for what I did he says okay you're forgiven goodbye that would be a very poor gospel gospel means good news would my son think it is good news if I have forgiven him for his disobedience but left him in the pit certainly not that is not good news that's bad news for him so the gospel is good news which means I not only forgive him but I reach out and pull him out of the pit and save him and so remember this that Christ came to save us from our sins and that was not possible in the Old Testament there was not a single person in the Old Testament who could say Lord thank you for saving me from my sins such a word is not their salvation from sin what they did have in the Old Testament as we read in Psalm 103 is forgiveness of sins their sins were forgiven their david says in psalm 103 bless the Lord O my soul and all that's within me bless His Holy Name and bless him because he pardons all your iniquities he heals all your diseases who redeems your life from hell he experienced forgiveness from all his sins he says that also in psalm 32 how blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven whose sin is covered blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity so forgiveness of sins is mentioned a number of times in the Old Testament as something that they actually experienced a thousand years before Christ came but not a single one of those people could ever say thank you Lord for saving me from my sin they were forgiven like I forgave my son who's lying in that pit but I didn't save him that was Old Covenant and the mark of people living under the Old Covenant is their sins are forgiven but they are still in the pit they're not saved and so we see this is where the glory of the New Covenant is that he not only forgives us but saves us from the very thing that held us as slaves this is the glory of the New Covenant message in 2nd Corinthians in chapter 3 when the Apostle Paul writes comparing the Old Covenant with a new covenant he says here the old covenant was a Ministry of condemnation and second Corinthians in chapter 3 and verse 9 but the new covenant is a ministry of righteousness he says there is a greater glory in the New Covenant ministry than in the Old Covenant ministry because that preaching of the law only resulted in condemnation even though their sins were forgiven the more they heard the law the more they felt condemned that they couldn't keep it they couldn't come up to God's standard so all the preaching only condemned it and so when we preach today in a way that people feel condemned that's Old Covenant preaching whereas under the New Covenant it's a ministry of actual righteousness righteousness is the opposite of sin when we are saved from sin we come to a righteous life and that is what the New Covenant offers that is what Jesus Christ has come to offer us a salvation from sin think of wonderful promises like this he is able to keep you from falling Jude and verse 24 the Lord is able to keep you from falling he doesn't say you can keep yourself from falling you can't you don't have the ability to get to forgive your own sin or to be saved from your sin none of us have that but if you allow the Lord if you receive him he will forgive us and he will save us by keeping us from falling it's another life let me show you another verse in Romans and chapter 8 see these are distinctively New Covenant promises Romans chapter 8 it says in verse 2 the law of the Holy Spirit this is different from the law of Moses the law of Moses was Ten Commandments do this do this don't do this don't do this do this don't do this and people try to keep it they couldn't keep it entirely and they felt condemned but here in contrast to the law of Moses is the law of the holy spirit and the law of the holy spirit is described in this verse Romans 8 and verse 2 as not a list of Commandments but a life the law of the Spirit which is life in Christ Jesus Romans 8 verse 2 so this law is alight and when I receive this life it sets me free from the law of sin and death there is another law called the law of sin and death which is just like the law of gravity you know what the law of gravity does it keeps pulling people down down down down down down wherever you go the law of gravity always pulls people down it could be a Bible even the Bible operates under the law of gravity here's a book the law of gravity pulls it down if I drop it it just falls but since there is life in my body if I allow this life to hold this book up then we can say the law of life in my body has set this book free from the law of gravity now do you see how this is a picture of what is described in Romans 8 and verse 2 the law of life in my body has set this book free from the law of gravity so that this book is not falling down it's kept from falling I am keeping it from falling now think of this book as a picture of you the law of sin just keeps on working in your life and keeps on pulling you down you just go down down down you you can't stay up without sinning even a moment some of those things are serious some of those sins you don't even know there's a lot more unconscious silliness than conscious sin we commit we commit sin consciously but there are many other sins which are unconscious and but if I allow the life of Jesus to come in me it can keep me from falling the life of Christ Jesus will set me free from the law of sin and death that is the law of the Holy Spirit and it wasn't possible for a man to experience that under the Old Covenant under the Old Covenant the Holy Spirit did operate on certain people but it is only on the outside it could work in a Samson to make him kill a lion but it could not help him to overcome the lion of lust inside his body no he was defeated by the lion of lust inside his body even though he could tear a physical line to pieces so which is stronger that physical roaring lion that comes out of the forest of the line of lust within a heart we are terrified at a physical lion I mean if you were in the forest and a lion came jumping at you you'd be scared and I'd be scared why are we not so scared when the line of lust comes up it's actually much more dangerous and much more powerful a physical lion can't send you to hell it can only send you to the grave but the line of lust with him can send you to hell and in the Old Testament there was no way by which a man could be saved from the line of lust God the Holy Spirit could give a man power to tear an external lion to pieces but because the Holy Spirit could not live inside man in Old Testament times there was no way by which he could give power to the man inside the Holy Spirit could only operate on a man on the outside and help him to be free externally given power externally to do various things so in the Old Testament we read of the Spirit coming upon people clothing them just like I wear a shirt the spirit clothed people on the outside but in the New Testament this is the distinctive blessing of the New Testament that the Holy Spirit can now come inside and fill me and control every part of my being and give me power within to kill the Lions inside of anger and lust and bitterness and every other wretched line there is so that what Samson did two lines on the outside I can do the lines inside Jesus never killed any external lines but he overcame every temptation that he ever faced and he says to us follow me so this is the message of the New Testament he came to save us from our sins we have many other problems many of us may have problems with sickness financial difficulties difficulties in the home many other difficulties but remember this every problem arises out of the root problem of sin and if the root problem of sin is dealt with we can hope for a solution to many of these other problems they Mina we may not get cured of every sickness God allows and many reasons for sickness still existing on earth - I don't have time to mention all of them right now but the root problem if it is solved it solves many other problems in our life as well so concentrate on the root one let the Holy Spirit deal with thing within in other words when you slip up inside take it seriously don't take it seriously only when you slip up on the outside say lord I slipped up on the inside I slipped up in my thoughts I slipped up in my attitudes towards people I'm sorry I sinned please set me free please forgive me if I take sin inside seriously the Lord will help me to be free from the root of sin within but if the Lord sees that I'm only interested in avoiding sin on the outside because I don't want to lose my testimony I'm quite happy if other people see that I'm a holy person it doesn't matter if I'm filthy inside then the Lord sees I'm not interested in real holiness I'm only interested in just having an appearance of holiness before people and you never get free from sin within you've got to show God that you're really serious about being delivered from sin within you're really serious about getting rid of this disease within and the only way you can prove that to God is when you sin in secret in your thoughts your attitudes you cry out to God and say Lord forgive me nobody saw me there but I sinned against you I want to be free if God sees that new I assure you you will come to an experienced this deliverance from this bit of sin very quickly god bless you

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Length: 26min 42sec (1602 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 07 2017