Take your Bibles if you would. Turn let's say we're going to start in numbers chapter 10 in just a minute. So, numbers chapter 10. So, you can find that. Numbers chapter 10.

Alright. Salvation of the Lord. Acts four twelve, I have it on the screen. Neither is there salvation any other for there's none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved and whose name is that? That's the name of Jesus Christ.

We're going to spend at least some of the next few weeks looking at terms in the Bible and in Christianity. Terms you need to know and terms you need to understand because I'm afraid there is a good bit of confusion among Christians and non Christians today over the meaning of certain words. Winning people to Christ and discipling them in the faith both requires teaching and teaching requires words and words requires meaning. It's hard to teach if you don't understand the meaning of the words that you're using. It's hard to understand what the Bible is teaching if you do not understand the meaning of the words it's using.

Words mean nothing if you don't understand what they're meaning and today, for many church members, some of these words are a bit confusing and misunderstood. We must be clear in our teaching. If not, we at best will fail to communicate everything we desire or at worse, we may just add to the confusion which we don't want to do. So, let me give you a little example of this. I'm not going to read the entire thing this morning but just to give you a touch here of what happens when you are using a word or in this tape an abbreviation and someone else has a different thinks it means something different.

So, a wealthy English lady, while visiting Switzerland, was looking for a room and asked the schoolmaster if he could recommend one. He took her to see several rooms. When everything was settled, the lady returned home to make final preparations to move. When she arrived home, the thought occurred to her that she had not seen a w c in the place. In England, a w c means?

Closet. Water closet or a bathroom. So, she immediately wrote a note to the schoolmaster asking him if there was a WC in the place. But the schoolmaster who spoke very poorly English had never heard of a WC. And asked the parish priest for help.

Together, they tried to find the meaning of the letters and the only solution they could find was Wayside Chapel. The school master then wrote the following letter to the English lady. I'll read just a portion of it this morning. Dear madam, I take great pleasure informing you that the WC is situated nine miles from the house. In the center of a beautiful grove of pine trees surrounded by lovely grounds.

It is capable of holding two twenty nine people. It is open on Sundays and Thursdays only. As there are a great number of people expected during the summer months, I suggest that you come early, although usually there's plenty of standing room. There is an unfortunate situation, especially if you are in the habit of going regularly. It may be of some interest to know that my daughter was married in the WC.

And it was there that she met her husband. I can remember the rush there was for seats. There were 10 people to every seat usually occupied by one. It was wonderful to see the expressions on their faces. I could go on.

I don't know if you all have heard that before. It continues. I will lose my composure if I keep reading it this morning. But do you get the drift? That might be funny.

But it isn't a laughing matter when it really matters, when it counts to understand what's being said. And there's a lot of confusion out there. Concerning about what sometimes is being taught even from the pulpit today. Most people do not have a background in theology. Most people today did not grow up in a Christian home like maybe you did.

They need these things explained more than sometimes we think. Words such as salvation, justification, faith, grace, repentance, redemption, sanctification. To some of us may seem clear but to many they are not. So, over the next few weeks, we're going to clarify some of these terms to help everyone understand what we mean beginning with what is the most obviously important one and that is salvation. What do we mean?

You must be saved. Saved from what? Saved by whom? The word saved can also be translated delivered or rescued and sometimes in the Old Testament in particular, it is translated. The Hebrew word is translated as delivered.

Through the years, I have asked many people if they were saved to which I often received an affirmative answer. Yes, I'm saved. Particularly in the South, most everybody is saved. Knock on their door, are you saved? Yes, I'm saved.

But that requires a little more digger, deeper digging, if you want to actually find out. If you ask the question more like this, do you know if you died today where you would spend eternity? You get a different answer, often times. Some will say yes, hesitantly. Some will say yes confidently whether they have the right answer or not.

Often, they will say, maybe or I hope so or I don't know fill in the blank and that's often the responses I get when asking the question about knowing where you'll spend eternity. Now, the two should go hand in hand. If you're saved, you should know where you're going to spend eternity, right? If you're not safe, well, then you probably don't know. And I need to tell you.

I discovered young people in particular to whom I ministered often were confused. They would come forward. They would pray the sinner's prayer and then I'd go visit them a few months later and say, do you know where you're to spend eternity go? I I I hope so. Did you get saved?

Oh, yeah. I got saved. Are you going to heaven? I hope so. It's like, you're missing something here.

It's certainly not what I taught you but it's not what was getting through into their into their head. Why the confusion? Because they didn't understand what it meant to be saved. We must, we just assume that they knew what we meant when we said, do we want to be saved? We as Baptist put so much emphasis on the need to be saved yet sometimes, we do not take the time to make sure everybody understands what we mean by that very common theological word.

I want to start in numbers chapter 10 and looking into the Old Testament at the meaning of the word saved. In the Old Testament, particularly in Psalms, the Hebrew word translated both saved is translated both saved and delivered and can refer to being saved or delivered from several different things. The comes common thing that you read about being saved from in the Old Testament are your enemies, okay? And I think I have numbers up here on the screen as well. Numbers ten nine, I'll read that with you.

And if you go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, then you shall blow an alarm with trumpets and you shall be remembered before the Lord your God and you shall be saved from your enemies, okay? A matter of fact, the word saved is used in this context more than it's used in the spiritual context in the Old Testament. I don't have these up on the screen. I'll just read a few quickly for you. Exodus fourteen thirty.

Thus, the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore. First Samuel fourteen twenty three, so the Lord saved Israel that day and the battle passed over unto Beth Haven. Second Chronicles thirty two twenty two, thus the Lord saved Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem from the hand of Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, from the hand of all other and guided them on every side. In all of those passages we see that the word saved is being used, meaning delivered from their enemies, okay? Whether it be the Egyptians or the Assyrians or whom whomever it may be and that is often the context of the of its use in the Old Testament.

David used it similarly as well. In second Samuel twenty two four, David wrote, I will call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised, so shall I be saved from mine enemies. Psalm thirty one fifteen, my times are in thy hand, deliver me from the hand of mine enemies and from them that persecute me. There, the word saved is translated deliver. Psalm eighteen three, I will call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised, so thou shall I be saved from mine enemies.

Same as second Samuel twenty two four and several many times, David uses the word saved meaning to be saved from his enemies. Oftentimes, most of the time, David is talking about literal, physical enemies. Though there is a spiritual realm of power often behind those spiritual enemies but it is those enemies that he wishes to be delivered from. One of those enemies from which we need to be delivered is the enemy of death. Exodus 117 and I mean, literal physical death and it's used often in this context in the Old Testament but the midwives feared God and did not as the king of Egypt commanded but saved the men children alive.

Now, it's not talking about saving them spiritually for eternity. It's talking about saving them physically from being murdered at the time of their birth. Joshua six twenty five says, and Joshua saved Rahab, the harlot alive. Now, I do believe that Rahab was saved in a spiritual sense as well because of her faith in the Lord but here in this verse, it's telling us that Joshua saved Rahab alive while the walls of Jericho came down, her house did not. God saved her, and then Joshua went in and escorted them out of Jericho, and thus Joshua saved her alive, as well.

And so, this is often a very common use of the word in the Old Testament. While and while God often saved and delivered his children from their enemies, including physical death and foreign enemies and oppressors. Saved is also used in reference to salvation from sin and self. Salvation from God's wrath against the sinner. It is also used this way though not maybe as often as you might think in the Old Testament but it is used to mean save from sin or save from the wrath of who?

To be saved from the wrath of God. Psalm thirty nine seven and eight. And now Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in thee. Deliver me from all my what?

Transgressions. He doesn't ask to be delivered from all his enemies here. He asked to be delivered from whose transgressions? His own transgressions. He recognized his sin against God and the wrath of God that he was due because of it, and he asked that God deliver or save him from God's wrath, from God's punishment to forgive him thus from his transgressions and his sin.

In Psalm, this maybe a little harder to read. It's a bit smaller but I'll read it for you. Psalm 85, he he wrote this, thou hast taken away all thy wrath. Thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger. Turn us, oh God, of our salvation and cause thine anger toward us to cease.

Wilt thou be angry with us forever? Wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations? Wilt thou not revive us again that thy people may rejoice in thee? Show us thy mercy, oh Lord, and grant us thy salvation. Salvation in reference to their what?

To their sin. And the wrath of God that were abiding on the people of Israel because of their sin. David was asking God to forgive them, to deliver them from their sins. Psalm 51 and I don't have this up there but it reads in verse nine beginning in verse nine. Hide thy face from my sins and blot out all mine iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, oh my God, and renew a right spirit in me. Cast me not away from thy presence and take not thine holy spirit from me. Restore, restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. What salvation is he talking about there? He's not talking about salvation from his enemies or salvation from physical pain or illness or death.

He's talking about salvation from his sin, his sin of having committed adultery with Bathsheba and having her husband killed in order to cover for it. And God did. Answer his prayer. Forgive his sin. Isaiah 4,517, but Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation.

So, we see this word saved or delivered is used in the context of being saved from sin and God's wrath in the Old Testament. As we come into the New Testament, we recognize that that is the most common use of it in our New Testament scriptures. Meaning to be salvation from sin or deliverance from sin and it's just punishment. Just punishment in a place called the what? The Lake Of Fire.

Whosoever was not found written the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. Revelation chapter 20. That is the just punishment that is due sinners. Jesus Christ came to save sinners. To save us from sin and to save us from the punishment of sin, the lake of fire.

From the just wrath of God upon sin. Turn if you would to Romans chapter five. Romans chapter five. Romans chapter five and verses eight through 10. You can follow along in your Bible or up here on the on the project screen if you like.

Romans five eight through 10. But God commended his love toward us. The word commendeth basically means demonstrated. God demonstrated or showed his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, those who had failed to keep God's law, who had broken it, who were rebels against God, have transgressed his law, and that is all of us but God commended his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We should have died.

He died in our place. Much more than being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. From whose wrath? From God's wrath upon sinners who have sinned and broken God's law, who are in rebellion against their maker and their creator. Much more than being now justified by his blood, he shed on the cross.

For us, we shall be saved from wrath to him. For if if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more being reconciled, well, shall we be saved by his life. So, there we see, God is using, he's used the word save twice very clearly. We are being saved. Jesus came and died on the cross for our sins, took upon himself the wrath of God that we might escape that due punishment, that we might be delivered from it by his sacrifice if we will by faith receive him and what he did for us on the cross and if we might put our faith and trust in him who is our risen Lord and savior.

We shall be what? Saved. John three seventeen or let me start in verse 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life, okay? So, we see in verse 16, if you believe in the son, Jesus Christ, you will have what?

Everlasting life. For verse 17, God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be what? Might be saved. Now, if you're saved through Jesus Christ, through faith in Jesus Christ, if you believe in him, you are saved, you're delivered from God's just wrath upon your sin, that also means you have what kind of life? Eternal, everlasting life.

You've been given eternal life in Jesus Christ and when you leave this world, you will be with the father. To be absent from the body is to be present with the father. Your life will not end. This body will cease to function but you will continue and you will continue in the presence of who? In the presence of God.

He that believeth on Jesus is not condemned but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God. Condemned is speaking of God's wrath upon sinners who will be cast into the lake of fire who have not been forgiven because their names are not written where? In the book of life. How do you get your name written in the book of life? Well, you need to get eternal life.

How do you get eternal life? You put your faith in who? Jesus Christ who came to save you from the punishment of hell and the lake of fire and to give you eternal life in the presence of God. In heaven. And this is how the term salvation and saved is used in the New Testament.

You see, the important thing to ask someone following a positive response to, are you saved is this, what have you been saved from? And I'm afraid there's a bit of confusion and sometimes that confusion is actually encouraged by the church today and by preaching. You see, some people want to be saved from alcohol or drug addiction. Now, can God save you from that? Yes.

Is that the focus of the use of the word salvation in the New Testament? No. That's not the extent of what it means. Christ came not to just save you from the consequences of addiction. He came to save you from the consequences of sin and eternal punishment in hell.

Some want to be saved from depression or misery or physical pain. Some want to be saved from their in laws or other demanding people. Praise God, I have good in laws. Wonderful in laws. But not everybody does.

Some want to be saved from punishment for their criminal activities. Some want to be delivered from their enemies imagined or very real. Some just want life to be a bed of roses and be saved from all trouble in life. Some just want to be saved because that is what people keep telling them they need. You need to be saved.

You need to be saved. You need to be saved. Saved from what? They don't know. They just know they need to be saved.

How do you get saved? Pray this prayer. You're saved. You need to make sure they know what it is. That they need to be saved from.

Christ can help you with many things on this list but so can a good clinic. Christ came to save you from eternal damnation. I know that's a term we don't like to use because it's thrown around as a cuss word but it's a word with a real meaning and it spings, it means the punishment that every human being, every sinner will experience in the lake of fire for all eternity if they do not turn to Christ and trust in him by faith to deliver them, to save them from that place. That is what we mean by salvation. God wants to do much more for you than make you get along with your in laws.

God wants to do much more for you. Than deliver you from drugs. God wants to do more for you. Than just deliver you from depression. God wants to save your soul and give you eternal life in Jesus Christ.

He wants to deliver you forever from the punishment of hell. That is what you need to be said. Why you need to be saved? That is what you need to be saved from. You need to be saved, delivered, rescued, and the only one who can rescue you from hell, from sin, from its power, and its bondage, and its grip, and its penalty is Jesus Christ.

He is the only one who can deliver you from that. He is the only one who can rescue you. For he is the only savior, sinless savior, son of God, who died in your place and is risen from the dead. God's wrath upon your sin and mine is just. In Ezekiel eighteen twenty, it says, the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

For the wages of sin is death. Praise God. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans six twenty three. God made us.

He created us for a purpose. What was that purpose? To serve, to worship, to fellowship with him. When Adam and Eve sinned, they turned from that path in the Garden of Eden. Being deceived by Satan, they disobeyed their loving creator and maker and they took a different path.

A path what Christ calls the broad way that leads to destruction in Matthew chapter seven but there is a narrow way that leads to what? To life eternal and that narrow way is through Jesus Christ. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the father but by me. There's only two paths you're on in life.

You're on the way that leads to life eternal in Jesus Christ or you're on the path that leads to destruction. Because you are a sinner. We're all sinners. We're all born on the Broadway that leads where? To destruction.

We have to get off that path. We need to be saved from it. If we if we are not, then we will face the just wrath of almighty God. The one who created us against whom we have all rebelled. We will not be allowed to experience the blessings of heaven.

If we do not deal with our sin and receive our savior. Matthew one twenty one. So, that's what we need to be saved from two things in this verse Matthew one twenty one and she shall bring forth a son and thou shalt call his name Jesus which means Jehovah is salvation. It means the Lord saves. That's what his name means.

For he shall what? Save his people from their sin, okay? Jesus came to save his people from their sin and that also includes us. Jesus came to save us from our sin. From that which is eating at our soul, that which condemns us, that which puts us at odds with our creator.

We cannot save ourselves from sin. A preacher cannot save you from sin. A teacher cannot save you from sin. Good works cannot save you from sin. Religion can't save you from sin.

Only a person who? Jesus Christ can save you from what? From sin and its eternal penalty in hell. We are bound, the Bible says, in sin. It is our nature but Jesus Christ can change your nature and he can change your heart.

He can free you from slavery to sin. And he can forgive you of the guilt and punishment that you are due because of it because he took your place. He took God's wrath on the cross. He became sin for us, it says, who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. That we might be made right with God, Jesus Christ took my punishment and yours on the cross of Calvary.

That he might save us from sin. And hell. And he is the only one who can. The Bible says in Ephesians two eight and nine, for by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Sad to say, most people in this world that are trying to get to heaven are trying to get there by doing what?

Good works. Essentially, they're trying to save themselves by doing works that to impress God, to please him, hoping that the good works will cancel out the what? The bad works. But does it work that way? No.

It doesn't work that way. You murder somebody and you go before the judge, and the judge says, did you murder somebody? And you say, well, yes. But but I give it the offering at my church every week. Yes, but I I I give to the panhandlers, Allen Street.

I I help people. I help them walk their dogs and I I mowed my neighbor's grass and I I'm just a really nice person. And the judge looks at you and says, oh, okay. Well, that's fine. Just don't worry about the killing somebody part.

Does it work that way? No. Do you think it works that way with God? No, it doesn't. God just can't overlook the bad things you've done because of the good things you do and even the good things you do are tainted by the sin that is within you.

In Isaiah sixty four six, it says, our righteousness, our good works are as filthy rags before God. What that means is this, change the oil in your car. When you change the oil in your car and some of you may have never done this and I haven't done it about, I don't know, won't say. I know my boys have never seen me change the oil in my car. But you change the oil in your car, you have to unscrew the oil filter from the bottom and the bolt, the nut that the plug on the bottom that holds the oil in to drain it and when you do that, this nasty black, hot oil just gets all over everything.

You just can't change oil without this grimy, oily mess getting on you and so you take a rag down there so that when you do this, the oil gets all over the rag and not hopefully all over you in the ground and so what if you came out from under that car, you would just change the oil, you came out from under the car and you looked at the windows on your car and one of your windows was really dirty. He said, oh, I need to clean that window. Oh, I have a rag in my hand. Okay, I'll clean the window. Okay.

Now, you get done cleaning the window and the window is clean or the window is dirtier. The window is dirtier. First, the rag has to be what? Cleaned and then you can clean the window. We're like that dirty, filthy rag.

We need to be cleansed. We need to be saved. We need to be forgiven. We need to be washed in the blood of Jesus Christ. Only then having been forgiven of our sins and saved from God's wrath and from the sin, the rebellion against him.

Can we then be used by God to do things that are useful, profitable in his sight. But first, you must be what? You must be saved. Not just saved from repression, not just saved from pain, not just saved from your enemies, not just saved from addictions, save from sin and hell. That's what Jesus wants to do for you.

That's why Jesus died on the cross to take the punishment for you. So, having taken your punishment upon himself, he could offer you in turn salvation. Salvation. From sin and hell. Salvation and eternal life.

In heaven. In closing this morning, two last questions to answer. Why did he save you? Or why will he save you? Because he loves you.

But God commended his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. God showed his love in sending his son. For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son. Why does he want to save you? Save you from hell, from sin?

Because he loves you and he doesn't want you to experience all of that. He didn't create you for that purpose. He wants to save you from it. He wants to change you. He he doesn't just want to save you from hell but in saving you from sin, he also wants to change you.

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate. That's a fancy phrase for meaning those whom he saved. He saved to be conformed to the image of his one. Okay, God wants to make you like who? He wants to make you like Jesus.

He wants to change you. He wants to change the way you think, the way you act, what you do, that you will bring glory to your creator. In this world, today. That's why he saved you. To make you a vessel fit for the master's use.

That you might be salt and light that others may see your good works having been saved and changed by Jesus and bring glory to your father which is in heaven and he saved you because he wants you to spend eternity with him in the place that he went to prepare for you. That's why he saved you. He loves you. He wants you to spend eternity with him and he wants you to be more like Jesus and bring glory to him here today in this life. So, that brings us to the last question.

How? Can you be saved? That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth, the Lord Jesus, that Jesus is Lord and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead. Now, that one by necessity would include that he died on the cross for your sin and therefore, after having died on the cross for your sin, God did what? He raised him from the dead to verify that Jesus is Lord, okay?

Nobody else has done that, just Jesus. Why? Because Jesus is Lord and God. So, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, shall believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be what? Saved.

Saved from pain, saved from sorrow, saved from addiction, saved from no, saved from sin and what? Hell. Saved unto eternal life. And by the way, when you get to heaven, You'll also be saved from all those other things. All those other things, they'll be gone.

No more sin, no more sorrow, no more pain, no more enemies in heaven. You'll get saved from all those two. But first and foremost, you must be saved from sin and hell and you can only do that by putting your faith and trust in who? Jesus Christ, who died on your cross, died on the cross for your sins, suffered in your place, and rose again from the dead. For whosoever, bottom of the phrase there, shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be what?

Shall be saved. Shall be saved. Is that you? Have you been saved? Was there a time and a place, a day you can remember?

You might not remember the date. I can't but I can remember the day and I can remember the moment. When I chose to put my faith and trust in Jesus Christ to be the Lord and savior of my life and I was saved from the eternal punishment of sin in hell and I became a child of who? A child of God and I was given a place in heaven. It's already reserved for me and one day when I get there, it's mine.

He has saved me. He is changing me. He's still changing me. He's not done yet. He still got quite a bit of work to do.

But he's changing me. But it all started. When I chose in my heart to believe Jesus Christ. What he did for me on the cross and that he would save me if I'd ask him. And going to him in prayer and saying, Lord, save me Understanding, I needed to be saved from sin.

If you've done that, then you have a home where? In heaven. You have eternal life which by the way, if you lose it tomorrow, it wasn't eternal. Eternal means it lasts how long? But if you haven't done that, if you're trusting in your good works, you're trusting your baptism, you're trusting in your church membership, you're trusting in your family heritage, are you trusting in just being a better person than the guy that got sent to jail?

You're not saved. You're still in your sin and Jesus wants to save you and he wants to save you today. We're going to sing a hymn of invitation here in just a second and as we sing that hymn of invitation, I plead with you, I beg you, I'll meet you right down here. I'll show you how be how to be saved today and know it for all eternity if you'll come as we sing. Let's pray.

Dear God, we thank you Lord for all that you've done for us. We thank you for what? You did for us on the cross of Calvary. Lord, we thank you for saving our souls and we pray if there be one in here today for whom you died, for whom you are pleading with them today to trust you, to trust you, put their faith in you, come to you today that you might save them. I pray as we sing this hymn of invitation, they would come.

And make sure that they know where they will spend eternity. In Jesus name, we do pray. Amen.