All-Inclusive Salvation

Our theme now is how to appropriate what God has provided through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. We have seen, I believe, I trust we have, that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross provided everything that could ever be needed for time and eternity for every believer. That’s complete but our appropriation of it is progressive. It’s important to understand that. In our previous session I pointed out that the first essential requirement is faith. The one who comes to God must believe. There’s no options. You must believe that God exists and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him.

I will warn you there will be times when you believe you’re diligently seeking God and you don’t seem to get any reward. I’m sure that I’m not the only person to whom that happened. That’s where you have to hold on in faith. The Bible says God rewards those who diligently seek Him. Whether you see it or feel it, whatever happens, you reward is sure. It may not come when you expect it, it may not come the way you expect it but it is sure. God does reward those who diligently seek Him. But not only is faith necessary, as I’ve pointed out, diligence is necessary. God has no rewards for laziness. And that requires adjusted priorities. Jesus said seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness. That has to take priority over everything else in our lives. So, when our priorities are adjusted and we have that attitude to God and His Word which permits faith to come in, we are on the way to receiving what God has provided for us.

Now I want to take you further in this session. You remember in one of the earlier sessions I spoke about the Greek word sozo. How many of you remember that? Which is normally translated faith. But I pointed out from the gospels specifically that it’s used for healing the sick, delivering people from evil spirits, raising the dead and preserving and keeping God’s people. In other words, what I want to suggest to you is this is the one word that describes everything that was provided by the death of Jesus. Now the noun you all know, is salvation, isn’t it? My definition of salvation is that it is everything that was provided for us by the death of Jesus—spiritual, physical, emotional—for time and for eternity. Salvation is everything that was provided for us through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

With that in mind, let’s go to the Old Testament for a moment and look at a passage in Psalm 78:21–22. This describes God’s dealing with Israel primarily on their journey from Egypt to the land of Canaan. And it describes the many, many times in which Israel were unbelieving and disobedient and missed what God had for them. So it says here in verse 21:

“Therefore the LORD heard this [that was their unbelief that He heard], and He was furious...”

Notice, God gets angry at unbelief.

“...so a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel; [Now why? Notice this:] because they did not believe in God...”

What was their basic problem? Unbelief. You remember what we said? The one who comes to God must do what? Believe, that’s right.

“...they did not believe in God, and they did not trust in His salvation.”

Now, if you analyze that psalm you’ll find that God’s salvation covers everything He did for them from Egypt to the Promised Land. It includes every act of mercy and blessing and provision. Their deliverance out of Egypt, their passing through the Red Sea, the coming of the cloud upon them, the provision of the manna, the provision of water from the rock, the fact that their clothes never wore out and their shoes never wore out; all that and more is summed up in one word: salvation. Salvation is not just getting your sins forgiven—although, thank God that’s part of it—but salvation is the total provision of God for His people through the sacrifice of Jesus.

Let me point out there’s a difference between being born again and being saved. As I understand it, being born again is a one time experience. It happens once, you’re born again. And praise God, that’s it. But being saved is a progressive experience. Being born again, in a sense, brings you into salvation but salvation is something that you have to walk out. It’s something that you have to explore, it’s something that you have to possess. It’s like the land of Canaan for Israel.

So, the problem of Israel was they didn’t believe in God and they didn’t trust in His salvation. Could it be that that is sometimes true of the church? We don’t believe in God as He wants us to believe in Him and we don’t trust in His complete provision for every need.

All right. You see, let’s turn to the New Testament to confirm that. Romans 8:32. This is one of those verses, I say they’re like a blank check. God has signed the check, He’s put your name on it but He hasn’t written in the amount. It’s up to you to write in whatever you need. Romans 8:32:

“He [that is God] who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”

Paul’s thought is if God was willing to give Jesus to die on the cross—the most precious thing in the universe, the thing that was closest to God’s own heart—if God was willing to give Jesus, then there’s nothing He will withhold. Is that logical? I believe it is. Notice the succession of words there. With Him, bearing in mind that without Him you have no claim on anything from God except judgment. But with Him He will also in addition to Jesus freely—we don’t have to do any more, we don’t have to pay any more, there’s no extra charge—give, it’s a gift, us means you and me, all things. It’s of tremendous worth, isn’t it? He will also with Him freely give us all things. That’s all inclusive salvation. It all comes through the gift of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

However, and now I want to introduce you to another stage in this process, there’s only one administrator of salvation. There’s only one who opens the treasure house of God and give us what we need. Now be careful and think before you answer. Who is it? It’s the Holy Spirit, that’s right. Here is one of the most neglected persons in the church, the Holy Spirit. Even Pentecostals and Charismatics, they talk a lot about the Holy Spirit but often they ignore Him. Let’s look at what Jesus said in John 16. My thought is that if you want to enter your inheritance, if you want to get what God has provided, you better make friends with the Holy Spirit. Because He has the key. John 16:7. Remember, Jesus is now getting ready to leave His disciples and is preparing them for what’s going to come. And he says:

“Nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is to your advantage that I go away: for if I do not go away, the Helper [or the Comforter, the Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I depart, I will sent Him to you.”

You notice that Jesus is talking about an exchange of persons. He said, “I as a person will be going back to heaven. But if I go back to heaven, then in my place I’ll send another person,” who is? The Holy Spirit, that’s right. Then He said something amazing, He said, “What’s more, it’s to your advantage because you’ll be better off with me in heaven and the Holy Spirit on earth than you are now with me on earth and the Holy Spirit in heaven.” Most Christians have never seen that. They say, “Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be back in the days of Jesus when He was on earth with His disciples.” It would be wonderful, I agree, but actually, Jesus is saying, “That’s not the ultimate. That’s just a stage. The ultimate is me in heaven and the Holy Spirit on earth. It’s to your advantage.”

And then He speaks about what the Holy Spirit will do. Let me point out He does not say “it.” He says, “He.” I don’t want to go into this but in the Greek language there are three genders. Do you know what a gender is? Masculine, feminine and neuter, that’s right. Now, neuter is that which is neither he nor she. So there are three pronouns: he, she and it. In the Greek language, the word for spirit is pneuma: wind, breath or spirit. And it is neuter. So the correct pronoun would be it. But the law of grammar are broken in this passage because Jesus doesn’t use it, He says “He.” When He, the spirit of truth has come. What is He doing? He’s emphasizing that in spite of the words used in Greek, the Holy Spirit is not an it but a he. He’s a person. He’s just as much a person as God the Father and Jesus the Son. I believe one of the great keys to success in the Christian life is learning to relate to the Holy Spirit as a person. Believing that if we invite Him and fulfill the conditions, the Holy Spirit will come as a person into a meeting. In a certain sense, I sometimes feel after I’ve taught the Word of God or preached that I can step back and let the Holy Spirit as a person do what needs to be done. In a way, I find it’s better if I get out of the way. I made room for the Holy Spirit. That’s just one of countless possible examples. We have to learn that He’s a person, treat Him as a person. Make friends with Him, He’s a good one to be friendly with. I’ll show you one reason in a few moments.

Jesus goes on now in verse 13 of John 16:

“However when He [notice that, not when ‘it’], the spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth: for He will not speak on his own authority [but I prefer to say He will not speak of Himself], but whatever He hears He will speak: and He will tell you things to come.”

See, the Holy Spirit is the person in the universe who least attracts attention to Himself. He never attracts attention to Himself. That’s why, in a sense, we tend to ignore Him. So when He comes He’s not going to say anything from Himself, He’s going to say what He hears the Father and the Son say. He’s not going to draw attention to Himself. To whom is He going to draw attention? To Jesus. You’ll see in the next verse, verse 14:

“He will glorify me...”

One of the great tests of whether a thing is really from the Holy Spirit is not the amount of noise but the question does it glorify Jesus. If it glorifies a human personality or focuses on a doctrine or a denomination, it is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit doesn’t glorify those things. He glorifies Jesus. And, if we want to attract the Holy Spirit—which is well worth doing—the thing to do is to start to glorify Jesus. When we start to praise Jesus and lift up the name of Jesus, the Holy Spirit says to Himself, “Now that’s what I like to hear. I think I’m going to go and spend some time with those people.” See? It is well worth learning what the Holy Spirit likes and meeting His conditions.

So He will guide us into all the truth and He’s the only reliable guide. John wrote to the early Christians and said, “You have an anointing and you know what’s true and what’s false.” Would to God that God’s people today had that anointing. I must not get involved in controversy but I think Charismatics are the easiest people on earth to fool. I’m sorry to say it but I really think so. They have not learned to distinguish between the noisy, the fleshly, the ostentatious, and that which glorifies Jesus.

We haven’t come to the verse I was looking for. Verse 15 of John 16, still speaking about the Holy Spirit, but I need to finish verse 14:

“He will glorify me: for He will take of what is mine and declare it to you.

Notice how modest Jesus is. He doesn’t want to leave us with the impression that it’s all His. He says, “Only mine because the Father gave it to me.” What a beautiful example of glorifying another. The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus, Jesus glorifies the Father. So He says when the Holy Spirit comes, He will take of what is mine and declare it or reveal it or impart it to you. And then He says:

“All things that the Father has are mine: therefore I say that He [the Holy Spirit] will take of mine and declare it to you.”

So, if you can accept this picture, the Holy Spirit holds the key to the storehouse of the treasures of God. All that the Father and the Son have are under the administration of the Holy Spirit. It’s worth making friends with the Holy Spirit, you understand? You see, lots of Christians have got all the doctrine and they know it all but they’ve never made friends with the Holy Spirit, it’s all doctrine. Here’s the Holy Spirit with the keys saying, “I’m the one that opens the treasure house.”

There’s a beautiful picture—we can’t go into detail—in Genesis 24. It’s a long chapter, it’s a true history but it’s a parable. It’s the story of how Abraham went about getting a bride for his son Isaac. You remember? And he said, “I’m not going to take a bride for my son from the daughters of Canaan. It’s got to be from my own people. [This is typical Middle East up to this day.] It’s got to be from my clan.” And so he got his steward, his servant, and said, “You go off and find the right girl and bring her back. Don’t you get any other kind of girl for my son.”

Let me say this, this is a parable. Abraham is a type of God the Father. Isaac the only begotten son is a type of Jesus Christ. Rebekah, the chosen bride, is a type of the church. There’s one more character. The servant, who is he a type of? The Holy Spirit. You see, Genesis 24 is the Holy Spirit’s self portrait and He never signs it. That’s typical. And the servant is never named, he’s just a servant.

Well, he sets out with ten camels laden with gifts. If you live in the Middle East, you’ll realize a camel can carry a great deal. So when the Holy Spirit comes, He does not come empty handed. He’s got ten camels with Him laden with gifts. You’re foolish if you don’t make friends with Him.

Then he comes to the place where you meet the girl, the well where the young women go to draw water. And he says, “Now, God of my master Abraham, I’m going to ask the girl that comes not only for water for myself,” which anybody would give, “but for water for my camels.” Well, you’ve got to think again because a camel drinks 40 gallons of water. So you have ten camels, that’s 400 gallons of water. Any young woman that’s going to do that is not just a little religious waif, she’s got muscle. I always think of one of my students in Africa. I mustn’t get side-tracked. I worked for five years with Africans, a teacher trainer of students, and I was walking around one day with one of my students and I would ask them questions without warning. So I just said to him, “Tell me, what kind of a girl do you want to marry?” And he didn’t change step, he didn’t hesitate. He said, “She must be brown and muscular.” I don’t know what color Rebekah was. I guarantee she wasn’t white. And she certainly was muscular. So along comes Rebekah and he says, “Give me water, please. My camels.” She draws and he says, “This is the girl.” That’s a picture of the church, you understand? It’s not a nice delicate little lady that sits in the front seat and sings hymns, it’s a woman with muscles who is prepared to work, lay down her life.

So then they go through the procedure and make the arrangements. Then they put the question to Rebekah. “Will you go with this man?” And she decided her destiny, she said, “I will go.” That’s faith. She hadn’t met him more than 24 hours. So she set out on a long and dangerous journey but she had a wonderful guide and protector, the servant, the steward. That’s like the church, you see. We’ve got a long, dangerous journey before we meet the bridegroom but we’ve got a wonderful guide and protector who is the Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, Rebekah had never seen the man she was going to marry until she was ready to marry him. All she knew about Isaac she learned from the servant, that’s right. And all we’ll ever know about Jesus till we meet him we learn from the Holy Spirit. You see? What I’m teaching you is it’s worth being friends with the Holy Spirit. You’re going to miss a whole lot if you don’t cultivate a deep, intimate, personal relationship with the Holy Spirit.

Let’s look in Romans 8:14. I think this is very important for those who are particularly interested in counseling. Romans 8:14:

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”

Who are God’s sons? Those who—I put in regularly because it’s a continuing present tense—those who are regularly led by the Spirit are the sons of God. In other words, how can I live as a son of God? By being regularly led by the Spirit?

And then I put in you need to be led by God’s Spirit; not by rules, principles, techniques, procedures and all the rest. I say that particularly because I have the feeling that in the course of your training you may have been given various rules or principles or even techniques. I’m not saying those are wrong. What I’m saying is it’s totally wrong to rely on them. There’s only one person we can rely on, that’s the Holy Spirit. If we rely on the Holy Spirit, He will guide us to any rule, principle, procedure or technique which is appropriate. But if we rely only on the rule, the principle, the procedure or the technique, all we get is what that will do. And as Christians we should be able to offer the world more than that. That’s what the professional, secular psychologists will do. He’s got his rules, his principles, he’s got his statistics, he knows these signs and those signs and he comes up with a statistical diagnosis which may or may not be right. That is not what we are called to do because we have a wonderful friend whose name is the Holy Spirit. We don’t rely on those principles, we rely on the Holy Spirit.

Let me say something to you, I hope you can receive this. Please don’t become an amateur psychiatrist. I think psychiatrists are dangerous but amateur psychiatrists are extremely dangerous! All right. When somebody comes to you for counseling, don’t go down this little list. Rely on the Holy Spirit. He may guide you to the list, the list may be right. But you can’t rely on the list.

I’m sure you’ve encountered people who used this technique, they’ll take you all the way back from your present age to childhood, to infancy and then even the womb. I am somewhat skeptical of that method, myself. But, I don’t have all the answers. Let me point out that when Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman at the well, He didn’t take her all the way back to childhood and infancy; He had a word of knowledge from the Holy Spirit. “You’ve had five husbands and the one you now have is not your husband.” He didn’t need to say anything more; that exposed her whole heart and life to him instantly.

I think of my first wife who is with the Lord now. She was a very unusual lady by any standards. She was Danish, she was a real Viking. We were contemplating buying a house and two rather hard boiled real estate ladies had come to tell us about the house they wanted us to buy. They were really determined to sell. We were sitting there, we were sitting together on the sofa and Lydia suddenly looked at one of them and said, “I think your legs are unequal.” She said, “Are they? Would you like my husband to pray for you?” How could you say no to that! So I knelt in front of her, her legs were unequal, they grew out and, I mean, she was in a state of shock. So I moved quickly over to the next lady and said, “May I check your legs?” They grew out, too. And I said, “What about your arms?” “Oh, no,” she said, “that’s enough!”

But why I’m telling you that is because from that time onwards they were totally different persons. Instead of the hard boiled salesladies, we had real people with real problems that they wanted to share with us. You see? Who did that? The Holy Spirit. Amen. Bless the Holy Spirit. Thank you, Lord.