GOSPEL LIGHT #704

The Bible's Scandalous Message Of Salvation 

One of the reasons why people don't read the Bible is because they think that they know what's written in the Bible already.

They think that the Bible teaches a be-good-and-do-good-to-be-saved method of salvation. "Why bother to read and study it seriously? The point is simple --- just be good and do good and you'll go to heaven!" so they think and say.

Do a survey. Ask around. Almost to a man, people will say that in order to be saved one has to be good and do good.

Ask a young kid, who has never been exposed to the teachings of the Bible, and he'll answer "Do good in order to go to heaven."

Examine all the religions in the world. In fact, almost all of them, except one, teach that salvation is by good works. If all the people in the world today were given 1 million years to figure out how a sinner is saved, they would all come up with a variation of the salvation-by-being-good method, at the end of it.

Why? That's naturally what comes into a man's mind.

The Bible turns heads with its teaching that salvation is not by works but through faith alone in the work of the Savior. It iconoclastically breaks the mold. It controversially presents a paradigm shift. It turns their belief system upside down. It offers a road that's less traveled. It defies the conventional. It shockingly goes against the grain. Scandalous! Bizarre! A sucker punch! Nobody saw it coming! Totally out of this world!

It is something that is completely unlike any other belief system in the world. It could not be the result of man's devices, because it is something that is totally different from anything that humans could create.

My friend, I invite you to unlock the secrets of salvation. Dive into the Bible's pages and discover for yourself the life-transforming truth it contains, finding salvation by faith alone in the work of Christ on the cross. 

GOSPEL LIGHT #703

Ex 1:13 The Egyptians compelled the sons of Israel to labor rigorously; 

Ex 1:14 and they made their lives bitter with hard labor in mortar and bricks and at all kinds of labor in the field, all their labors which they rigorously imposed on them.

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.