“The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven;
his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man.
The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
Let him rain coals on the wicked; fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.
For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.” (Psalm 11:4-7)

WARNING: This message might be a shocker for some of you. This is probably the hardest message I’ll have to preach all week, so buckle up.

Scarier Than Satan

So last time we looked at the first recorded conflict in the Bible between the first humans, Adam and Eve, and that craftiest of serpents, Satan himself. We saw how God promised ongoing conflict between Satan and humanity, between the offspring of Satan and the offspring of Eve. And you might expect that the primary conflict in the Bible, and indeed in our lives, is this cosmic conflict between us and Satan.

But that is not quite what we find when we read the Bible. No, our primary antagonist is someone much scarier, far more powerful, and able to do far worse to us than Satan could ever dream of.

Now, before I get too far, let me ask you a simple question: How many of you would say you are “saved?”

Good. Now, what do we mean by that word? I think most of us would agree that when a Christian uses the word “saved,” they mean that they have trusted Jesus Christ for salvation and have been born again by the Holy Spirit. In other words, their faith is legitimate and real. They don’t just do churchy stuff, or fake an outward display of religious observance despite their dead faith. They truly believe. They are SAVED.

And this isn’t just cheesy, man-made jargon. It comes right from the pages of Scripture.

“And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Acts 2:21)

“I say these things so that you may be saved.” (John 5:34)

“Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”” (Acts 16:30-31)

But have you ever asked yourself, what are we saved FROM? Obviously the word “saved” means “delivered,” or “rescued.” But what do we need to be rescued from?

If you’re into the prosperity gospel and a certain theology that centers around your personal convenience, you might think the answer is that we’re saved from poverty, or being uncomfortable, or not having enough stuff. Remember Jonah, who looked to the plant “to save him from his discomfort?” There are a lot of people who think being “saved” means being rich and at ease, having what you want, when you want it.

If you’re into postmodern liberal theology or existentialism, you might say you’re ‘saved’ from a lack of purpose or low self-esteem. And if you’re into new-age spiritualism, you would probably say that the only thing you need to be saved from is the idea that you need to be saved at all!

But what does Scripture say that we are “saved” from? Kind of a lot. For starters, there are about a hundred references to the people of Israel being “saved” or “delivered” from their enemies in the Old Testament. These were usually rival nations or oppressive military forces that were bigger and scarier than they were. For example, Numbers 10:9 says,

“And when you go to war in your land against the adversary who oppresses you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, that you may be remembered before the Lord your God, and you shall be saved from your enemies.”

There are also many references to being ‘saved’ from distress, or hardship, or danger. In Daniel 6:27, God “saved Daniel from the power of the lions.” In Psalm 107 verse 20, it says that God “sent out his word and healed [those who cried to Him], and [He] delivered them from their destruction.” Even Jesus Himself was told to “save himself” by coming down from the cross. You get the picture.

But it goes even deeper. The Bible talks about how we need to be ‘saved’ from death and hell. For example, Psalm 89:48 says, “What man can live and never see death? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol?” And James 5:20 says, “Whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” 

By now, some of you are saying to yourselves, ‘Sir Ezekiel, I know where you’re going with this. Our greatest enemy—the one we really need to be saved from—is sin!’ And you’re right—almost. In Matthew 1:21, Joseph is told by an angel of the Lord that “[Mary] will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

But why do we need to be saved from sin? Why is sin so deadly to us? Take another look at our passage from Psalm 11, verses 5-6:

“The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
Let him rain coals on the wicked; fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.”

Who is our adversary in these verses, the one whose soul is set against us and who attacks us relentlessly? It’s not death. It’s not foreign enemies. It’s not even Satan. No, our greatest foe, our deadliest enemy, is God Himself!

Enemies of God

You see, the reason we need to be saved from sin is that it makes us enemies of God. Romans 5:10 says that in our natural state, all mankind are inherently “enemies” of God. James 4:4 says, “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” And Philippians 3:18 says, “For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.”

And how does God feel about His enemies? Again, Psalm 11:5 says, “His soul hates the wicked.” This means that God hates sin with every fiber of his being. We call that His “wrath.” And Psalm 7 says, “God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day. If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts.” 

But surely when the Bible talks about “the wicked,” it doesn’t mean us. Right? Well, Isaiah 64:5-7 says this:

“We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.”

Brothers and sisters, all of us are wicked. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, all of us have gone astray. It’s not just the worst among us—the mass murderers, the kidnappers, the thieves and scammers—who are guilty in God’s sight. It’s all of us. And what will God do to His enemies? Look again at verse six with me:

“Let him rain coals on the wicked; fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.” (v6)

Yikes! Now that’s scary. And we should be scared. Even Jesus says in Luke 12:4-5, “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” Satan can do a lot of bad stuff to you, but only God can cast you into hell. This is why we need to be saved from God, because all of us are under His wrath apart from Christ.

At this point, some of you might be thinking, “Sir Ezekiel, you’re making God sound like the villain in the story!” But that’s not at all what I’m doing. Think about it: if you take the Bible as a whole, who is the protagonist? It’s God! God is the hero of the story, the main character that drives the story forward and whose choices determine the future.

So who are the primary antagonists, the villains who are always trying to thwart God’s plans and oppose Him at every turn? It’s us! We are the bad guys, the enemies of God. We have set ourselves up in opposition against our most holy creator, the author of salvation and the sustainer of our souls. We are the ones in the wrong, not Him!

God’s wrath toward us is just. It is deserved. It is right for him to hate us, to despise us, to cast us into eternal suffering to pay the infinite debt for an infinite transgression against an infinite God. And that is the scariest thought I can imagine.

Jonathan Edwards, in his famous sermon Sinners In The Hands of An Angry God, famously said. “There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.” He goes on to say this:

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.”

No wonder it says in Revelation 6:15-17:

“Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?’”

So is that it? Is there no hope?  Are we all doomed to suffer eternal judgement at God’s righteous hands?

“O wretched man that I am! Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25)

Hope In Christ

“Weep no more! Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered.” (Rev. 5:5) He has come to earth to live the life of perfect righteousness we could never live, and to die the perfect substitutionary atoning death that we could never die. You see, in His death on the cross, Jesus paid for all the sins His people would ever commit. Our sins were laid on Him. And somehow, by His infinite mercy and grace, he offers us a trade: if we give Him our record of sin and unrighteousness, He will give us His record of perfect, blameless obedience to God’s commands.

Allow me to say it even more strongly: Jesus not only took our sins upon Himself, He became sin for us. And everyone who trusts in Christ is not only given righteousness to wear as a robe, they become God’s righteousness, to the glory and praise of God.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor 5:21)

This is the miracle of grace, brothers and sisters. God so loved His enemies that He gave us exactly what we needed: His only Son. We were in darkness; Jesus came to give us light. We were ignorant; Jesus came to give us the Word of God. We were enslaved to sin; Jesus came to set us free. We were spiritually dead; Jesus came to give us life. Everything that we need, Jesus is. He is light, He is truth, He is freedom, He is life.

Perhaps most of all, He is our salvation. The name Jesus in Hebrew is Yeshua, a common Hebrew name that means “salvation.” “The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my yeshu’ah (יְשׁוּעָה).” Slightly different spelling in Hebrew, slightly different pronunciation, but the same root word with the same root meaning.

And what does Jesus save us from? From not being as rich as we would like? Give me a break. From ingrown toenails and low self esteem? Come on! No, Jesus came to save us from what we truly need saving from. Does He save us from the power of death? Yes, He does! Does He save us from an eternity of suffering in hell? Amen, amen, He does! What about sin? Yes, He saves us from both the power and penalty of sin. And in doing so, Jesus saves us from being enemies of God. He saves us from God’s wrath, the divine judgement that we rightly deserve.

“Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” (Romans 5:9)

Amen!

“Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:10)

“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

And now that the salvation of Christ has come, we no longer need to fear death or hell or anything in this world, because God is on our side! Remember what David said about the upright in Psalm 11:7?

“For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face. “

This beholding of God’s face signifies a special kind of relationship with Him, the kind of perfect intimacy and closeness that exceeds what Adam and Eve had with God in the garden. Of course, in our current sinful state, no one can see God fully without being consumed—not even Moses could look upon God’s face and live. And yet, this doesn’t stop God from commanding Aaron and his sons to give the people of God this blessing:

“The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you shalom.” (Numbers 6:24-26)

Do you see how Jesus’ salvation makes the fullness of this blessing possible? Jesus takes us from being enemies who cower in God’s presence to beloved ones who forever behold His face and dwell with Him in bliss and harmony.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8)

Before I was a Christian, I hated Christmas songs like “Hark The Herald Sing” that talked about God’s love and Jesus being born and all that. ‘Stop putting all this blasted religion in my secular gift-giving winter celebration!’ I used to think. But after I came to know the Lord, I read the words to “Hark The Herald Sing,” and I was so blown away that it brought me to tears. I had heard these words a thousand times before, but never understood them, and their message just wrecked me:

“Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.”

God and sinners? Reconciled? How can that be? Do you see the enormity of that statement? That’s a bigger deal than if Harry Potter were reconciled to Lord Voldemort, or Batman was reconciled to the Joker. It should be impossible for two mortal enemies to reconcile like that; the gulf between them is just too vast. And yet, Christ has done it!

“All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” (2 Cor 5:18-20) 

Christ’s love has transformed evil, wicked, vile sinners like us into living, breathing trophies of grace. And not just trophies, but children—beloved sons and daughters who will inherit the kingdom of God and the whole earth as a bonus! And what’s more, He has made a place for us in heaven, so that He can dwell with us forever!

“In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:2-3)

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” (Rev. 21:5)

Amen. He is making all things new. He’s even making us new, day by day, when we believe and trust in Him.

Other Messages In This Series:

• Message #1: The Genesis of All Conflict
• Message #2: Saved from God
• Message #3: Our Eternal Enemy
• Message #4: The Flesh Vs. The Spirit
• Message #5: Never Avenge Yourselves
• Message #6: The Root Of Quarreling
• Message #7: Wrap Up & Encouragement