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WORD FOR THE WEEK 10 April 2011 Christian Fellowship Church, Bangalore, India http://www.cfcindia.com
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Salvation by Faith and Not by Works
Zac Poonen
In Exodus 12, we read about the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt. They were told to use a bunch of hyssop and to put the blood of an unblemished lamb on the lintel over their door and on their door-posts, to escape the angel of death. That is a picture of faith applying the blood of Christ to our hearts. Hyssop was a common plant that was easily found in Egypt. Faith too is very easy to find. The Israelites left Egypt on the 14th day of the first month of their new calendar – and the Lord Jesus was crucified on the same date about 1500 years later. God looked into the future and saw the day on which the Pharisees would crucify Jesus, and chose that date to deliver the Israelites from Egypt!Here's the Calvinist case-in-point. God is made out to be weak in such a scheme as the above, in which he "looks into the future" to see what mere human beings are going to do, apparently unable to do anything about what they are going to do, and adjusts himself to them. This is not the omnipotent sovereign God of scripture. I understand that God's sovereignty is hard for many people to grasp and I am not going to call them heretics for that, but I'm also not going to just accept it if I have the opportunity of commenting on it. God DECREED both the date of the Lord's crucifixion AND the date of the exodus from Egypt. God oversees ALL history, nothing escapes Him. Every bit of it is His plan. And, thinking of this particular example, it's rather odd that God is thought of as able to decree the date of the Exodus but not the date of the Crucifixion -- as if the Pharisees were more powerful than God.
But pastor Poonen's message is a good one overall.
How were the Israelites delivered? Not by their good life or their good works. God did not go checking inside each house to see how each person there had lived during the previous 30 years. No.This may be a bit nitpicky, but God doesn't have to "check" anything. He's omniscient, He already knows everything, every minute detail of everything happening in past, present and future simultaneously.
He only checked to see if they had faith to put the blood of an innocent lamb on their doors. When they dipped that hyssop into the blood and put it on their doors, they were saying, “I am not trusting in my good works or my religious activities to protect me. I am trusting in the blood of this innocent lamb. I believe therefore that the angel of death will not enter my house.” That’s the way of salvation.
No man can boast saying, “I was saved because I lived a good life.” No. The man who had lived a good life and the man who lived a bad life were both saved that night in Egypt, by the blood of the lamb. If somebody in Israel had thought, “I’ve lived a good life, so I don’t believe God will judge me,” and therefore didn’t put the blood of the lamb above his door, what do you think would have happened? The angel of death would have come in and killed his eldest son as with all the other homes in Egypt.
I know that many people have taken advantage of the truth of salvation by grace through faith in the blood of Christ, and lived carelessly saying, “It doesn’t matter how we live.” But that does not negate the truth that salvation is still not by works but by grace through faith.
Ephesians 2:9 says, “Not as a result of works, lest any man should boast.” But then the very next verse says that after we are saved, God has created us “unto good works”. So the full truth is this:
We cannot be saved by any number of good works that we may do.
But if our “faith” does not produce good works after we are saved, that would prove that our faith was not genuine.
That’s what James says: “Faith without (good) works is dead” (Jas.2:26).
After putting the blood on the door, the Israelites were all commanded to eat unleavened bread that night. That is a picture of our feeding on Christ Himself, the Bread of Life. It’s not enough that we trust in His blood, we must feed on His life too. We are “reconciled to God by His death and saved by His life” (Rom.5:10).
They were also told to eat the bread in their travelling clothes – with a readiness to leave Egypt at a moment’s notice. That is how we are to live in this world too - always ready to go, as soon as Jesus calls us up to meet Him. This world is not our home. We must be ready to leave at any time.
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3 comments:
Thoroughly enjoyed reading this. Because I agree with you 100% as to how I love to hear Zac Poonen's teachings but have to find a balance between his teaching and Calvinistic views. Glad to know I am not the only one :) God Bless you!
Thanks, Anonymous, it's always nice to know something I wrote was enjoyed.
The main point here is How faith produce the good works after you saved? I feel the main point is missing here. What they did after crossed rea sea? They don't have water for drinking and they started grumbling instead go and ask for God to get help and they soon forgot their salvation. What i am trying say here is after you get salvation (here your faith is started by God) you should grabbed by two things 1) Our inability to obey his commandment 2) We have to faith on sovereignty of god and his promises. The good work is produce by Holy Spirit in me if we remain in the above 2 points.
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