Sin or Salvation
Everywhere I preach, which right now is Matthew on Sunday morning, Isaiah on Sunday night, and Revelation on Wednesday evening, I’m reminded of what is most serious. Jesus took it very seriously, but according to many measures, people around the world don’t take it seriously. To start, it’s hard to get people’s attention on what is serious. They don’t think about it, which is why it is even more serious than ever. What is it? To describe it in one word, I would use one of two interrelated words — either “sin” or “salvation.”
Sin is the problem; salvation is the solution to the problem. Salvation is the problem, too, because it is the solution to sin, and everywhere Satan orchestrates massive amounts of corruption of salvation. The history of the world reveals widespread disregard for sin and indifference to its consequences, the curse of sin, and God’s judgment of sin. Sin ruins life on earth, but something even more serious continues to come, that is, the deserved, eternal punishment for sin.
Isaiah
In Isaiah 7, the Southern Kingdom of Israel, Judah or Jerusalem, faces the threat of an invasion by a Syro-Ephraim coalition, a confederation of Syria and the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Because of this impending attack, King Ahaz of Judah prepares an alliance with the Assyrian Empire. God denounced this alliance with Assyria, and he sent the prophet Isaiah to warn Ahaz against it (Isaiah 7). It was a sin to ally with the idolatrous, pagan Assyria. God required separation from Assyria. He also wanted Ahaz to trust Him for protection. Both not separating and not trusting Him were sins against Him.
Salvation, both short-term and long-term, was of the Lord. God communicates the more important long-term salvation in Isaiah 7:14 and 9:1-7. As always in the Old Testament, God would provide long-term salvation through the promised seed: the seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15), the seed of Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3), the virgin-born child (Isaiah 7:14), and the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Father of Eternity, and the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). The long-term salvation solves the most important, sin problem. Ahaz ignored both short-term and long-term salvation.
What I’m saying is that Ahaz was not concerned about whether he offended God. His concern was the short-term quality of lifestyle, which would affect human flourishing in Judah. He was more concerned about his human enemies than if God was his enemy. God didn’t want to kill body or body and soul of Judah. Ahaz feared man who would kill body more than God, who could kill both body and soul forever. Even if it were possible to survive a Syria and Ephraim invasion by allying with Assyria, God wouldn’t accept it, but that still didn’t matter to Ahaz.
Revelation
Meanwhile, I’m preaching through Revelation, and I’m in chapter 17, the destruction of religious Babylon. What is bad about religious Babylon? Throughout history, Satan uses religious Babylon, the coalition of false religion, its idolatry, and false gospels, to tempt men to sin and fool them about salvation. This dooms the vast majority of people throughout all time. You can open your Bible and read what will happen to it. Revelation 17-18 serves as a kind of summary of a major accomplishment of what God did in Revelation 6-16. It fulfills the scroll, the inheritance of all things, that God the Father gives the Son in Revelation 4-5.
God the Son, Jesus Christ, the inheritor and true owner of all things, takes the written will from the Father and completes the requirements to fulfill the reclamation of all things. He undoes each of the seven seals on it, unleashing the necessary actions to prepare the world for His reign over it with a rod of iron. Revelation 17-18 gives an overview of the results.
What was religious Babylon doing? It was leading people astray from God, dooming their relationship with Him, and sending them to eternal judgment. God doesn’t destroy religious and political Babylon, as prophesied in Revelation 17-18, because it cheated on fair trade and bottled up the Strait of Hormuz, raising gas prices. He doesn’t annihilate the world system because it squandered taxpayer money and burdened everyone with overregulation. Instead, the world replaced God in men’s affections. Instead of loving Him, they loved themselves and worldly things.
Matthew
In my series through Matthew, the people did not receive Jesus Christ. They might even say, Lord, Lord, without in reality ever acquiescing to His Lordship. Instead of acknowledging their sin, they continued to embrace their own goodness. They denied Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Even Peter protested His suffering in Matthew 16, and Jesus told him he savored not the things of God, but the things of men. As a sample of future glory after suffering, Peter witnessed Jesus’ majesty on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17), where He shone like the sun.
The actual event will occur in Revelation 19 with the second coming. Then “the government shall be upon His shoulder” (Isaiah 9:6),
Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. (Isaiah 9:7)
All of these circumstances provide salvation from sin. God destroys the world of sin to save His people from the presence of sin after having already saved them from the penalty and power of it. Sin will no longer reign on earth.
The Work of Religious Babylon
In so many ways, today, religion and its institutions, including independent Baptist churches, distort salvation. All of this relates to religious Babylon, worldly alliances, and fleshly lust that wars against the soul (1 Peter 2:11). The world distracts from the true doctrine of salvation. The worldly success of church growth eradicates repentance or perverts it by redefining it. A vast majority finds little interest in warnings against soul-damning gospel corruption. They don’t even know what they’re missing, and they don’t care. It’s worse than what I’m explaining.
Churches don’t tolerate biblical exposition of sin. Attendees require something different, or they’ll leave. What was sin isn’t anymore. Their salvation saves only from the penalty of sin, but not sin itself. It surely doesn’t save from a longer and longer list of sins no longer mentioned. Instead of listening to God, people barter with God. They negotiate down His demands. Leadership cooperates, because it must.
It is a circus out there in religious Babylon, run by various iterations of Barnum and Bailey circus masters. They distort the real, true purpose of the church. The church itself becomes irrelevant as an institution. Churches move services to Saturday or drop them due to inconvenience. Pastors quit at epidemic levels, and exponentially fewer are available to replace them. Some might hang on. They can’t quit because they have little to nothing in savings to make it to the end.
The god of This Age
The god of this age is not the God of the Bible. The adherents worship the false god of their imagination by means that the true and only God would never accept. The atmosphere either lost its reverence completely or reverted to a dead going through the motions. When I talk about the perversion of God, I’m relating this to sin and salvation. The God of salvation is light, and in Him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). Those who say they know Him and then walk in darkness are liars who know not the truth. This is a faith that cannot and does not save, or even a different god.
As I write this essay, I admit I’m not even serious about what’s serious. I’m more serious than a large majority of people, but not serious to the extent that sin and salvation deserve my seriousness to be. If I wanted to judge my seriousness against the seriousness of others, I guess I’m okay. If I judge my seriousness against God, I know I’m not okay. I confess: I don’t care enough about what I’m warning you.
The Task of Isaiah
Isaiah may have thought he was fine before his vision in Isaiah 6. There he found that he wasn’t. He was a man of unclean lips, not ready to speak the gospel message for the Lord. Jesus (Jehovah, compare Isaiah 6 with the end of John 12) got Isaiah back on track, but it would be tough. Very tough. Here was his job, one that looked identical to our job today still (Isaiah 6:9-10):
Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.
He would talk to people who didn’t want to listen to him. They wouldn’t listen to him. In the end, they killed him. Every day presents this task. It’s a deal-breaker for most professing Christians. The audience today is more like Isaiah’s than at any point in my lifetime. We shouldn’t be surprised. Jesus said in this age, His disciples had the same task as Isaiah (Matthew 13:13-15). With that responsibility, Paul warned against using carnal weaponry or war after the flesh (1 Corinthians 1:17-3:23, 2 Corinthians 10:3-5). God still requires us to use honest, sincere, and humble methods. He’s got His good reasons.
Taking Sin or Salvation as Serious as They Deserve
The experts today warn against using these methods that God requires and “don’t work.” Using fleshly and worldly methods doesn’t glorify God and contributes to the perversion of the gospel, which brings us back to seriousness again. The modern methods disobey what God said to do and misrepresent the crowd to whom God sent us to preach. Believing in God requires trusting Him as He required of King Ahaz in Isaiah 7-8. It would take dozens of years to understand all the ramifications of Ahaz’s worldly, fleshly strategy. In the short-term, the one pointing it out, Isaiah, would have it even worse.
You’ve got the people doing the wrong thing, getting short-term success, leading to long-term vanity and catastrophe. Then you’ve got the person or people warning against the wrong thing, facing short-term failure, leading to long-term glory. Again, for as bad as it is out there, and as true as what I’m writing here, I don’t think I’m as serious as it merits. And this situation won’t change if people don’t take sin and salvation seriously as much as they deserve.