GOSPEL NUGGET #431

Salvation by faith alone is not at all impossible to believe. We have been doing it for years now.

Consider, for example, taking in medication to heal our diseases. There are diseases in which we can't do anything on our own to make it go away.

So we go to the doctor get a prescription from him and religiously take it for ourselves. We don't do anything to help the medication. We don't add anything to it. We just simply allow it to take its course and heal us.

After some time, we ourselves experience its benefits and come out of the experience healed. We experience salvation from the disease just by relying alone on the medication.

As a result of it, we experienced a changed life---we can function well and do things that we normally do.

It is exactly the same with salvation. We are powerless to save ourselves. We have a spiritual disease and there is nothing we can do. But praise God He sent us the medicine in the person of the Savior.

All one has to do is to rely on Him and what He did on the cross to be saved. As a result, a saved sinner experiences a changed life. He can now function well for God, glorifying Him.

Joh 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes/trusts in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Ac 16:30 And he brought them out and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"

31 So they said, "Believe/trust on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved...

GOSPEL NUGGET #430

EX 6:6 “Say, therefore, to the sons of Israel, ‘ I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage. I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.

EX 6:7 ‘Then I will take you for My people, and I will be your God; and you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.

EX 6:8 ‘I will bring you to the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession; I am the LORD.’ ”

Notice the 7 "I Wills" of God here. Israel was powerless and helpless to free himself from the clutches of Pharaoh. It will take God to deliver them. Their salvation was all the work of God. Repeated seven times for emphasis.

Applying this to spiritual salvation, realize that salvation is of the Lord…all of it. Salvation is not the work of man but the work of God.

Just as Israel cannot deliver himself from the bondage in Egypt, so no sinner can deliver himself from the penalty, power and presence of sin. It takes the Savior to be saved.

Are you relying and trusting on the work of the Savior on the cross for your salvation?

GOSPEL NUGGET #429

EX 5:3 “Then they said, “ The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please, let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God, otherwise He will fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.”

You see, to avert the judgment of God, a blood sacrifice is a must.


Our good works can’t do it. Our religious activities won’t prevent it. Our good character is to no avail. God requires a sacrifice for His judgment to be averted.

And the one sacrifice that will appease the wrath of God against us sinners is nothing less than the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross.

Are you trusting in it for your salvation?

GOSPEL NUGGET #428

"Don't Sit On The Air - Sit On The Chair"

Salvation by self-effort can be likened to a man sitting on the air. Ultimately, he can't do it. His strength will fail and he will sag down by and by as time ticks by the second. Eventually, he will hit the ground.

Salvation by relying upon and trusting in the Savior and what He did on the cross is like sitting restfully on a steady and stable chair.

He knows that self-effort just can't do it. He needs something or someone to rely on. And so, instead of sitting on the air, he sits on the chair.

My friend, the Lord Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross is just like that steady and stable chair. You can rely on Him and His work completely for your salvation.

Don't sit on the air. Sit on the chair!

GOSPEL NUGGET #427

Exodus Chapter 1---The Enslavement Of The Israelites And Their Groaning 

It is often common with the dealings of God with men for God to cause men to become painfully aware of their bondage to enable them to see their need for redemption.

Pharaoh is a picture of Satan. Egypt is a picture of the world. Israel’s bondage in Egypt was a picture of the sinner’s bondage to sin in the world.

The problem with the sinner is that he does not see his deplorable condition. On the contrary, he enjoys the bondage of sin that is breaking him piece by piece, inch by inch.

Often, before God saves a sinner, He makes him painfully aware of his bondage to sin. He makes him aware that sin is a taskmaster and that his service is an affliction and grievous. That he is helpless and hopeless to free himself from this condition.

At this point, God is opening the sinner’s eyes, creating the need in his heart to be freed and redeemed from sin.

At this stage, the sinner is ready for “Moses.” Moses is just in the next chapters in his life, so to speak.

When a sinner becomes painfully aware that he is a sinner in bondage to sin, helpless and hopeless to save himself, the Savior is just around the corner. It is at this point that the sinner is ready for His salvation.

Have you seen yourself helpless and powerless to save yourself? As a result, are you seeking and longing for deliverance from sin?
 

GOSPEL NUGGET #426

Heb 10:19 ...having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus,

The temple and the tabernacle had an inner area where the dazzling presence and glory of God dwelt. It was called the Most Holy place or the Holiest place.

Only one person was allowed to enter that place once a year, and that with a sacrifice of blood.

It was a very dangerous place. For the holiness of God (God is a consuming fire) can break out on sinners if they come without a sacrifice or if their sacrifice was unacceptable.

No sinner can approach God and be with Him without an unacceptable sacrifice. Without it, we, as sinners, would all be consumed and damned by God's justice and holiness.

Not one among us, in ourselves, is good enough for God. However, I, as a sinner, can, boldly, with confidence, approach God by the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ.

My eternal acceptability before God depends not on me and what I did, but on the acceptability of my sacrifice. Knowing that God would never reject the sacrifice that the Lord Jesus did for me on the cross, I can come to Him boldly and with confidence through Jesus.

GOSPEL NUGGET #425

Isa 32:17 The work of righteousness will be peace, And the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever.

A lot of people are troubled, distressed and worried sick about their condition before God. They don't have peace, they don't have quietness and they are uncertain.

Their consciences, like a sore tooth, nag them to no end on and on. They want peace, quietness and certainty, but they can only have it if they are right with God. They are wrong and so they must be right with God.

Peace, tranquility and certainty are the products and effects of having a right standing with God.

And they can only have this right standing with God through faith in Christ Jesus.

Ro 5:1 Therefore, having been justified by faith (in the Savior), we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ