YOUR DELIVERANCE CAN HAPPEN TODAY

(A series in the book of Isaiah: Chapter 35)

I personally thought that the concept of salvation is talking about me going to heaven. I thought it is all about the process of making me go to heaven. Yes, Christ is making me go to heaven.

Then, one day at our class my professor introduced us to the concept of salvation. Salvation is not that future event that you will receive when you are in heaven. It is not also a title that you will be receiving when you go to heaven. Salvation is a present event for each person. What? I couldn’t get it. How can salvation be a present event? So, salvation can happen now?

Then my professor brought us the meaning of salvation from the original language in the Bible where it is mostly used. The very common meaning of the word salvation in the Bible is DELIVERANCE. SALVATION IS AN ACT OF DELIVERANCE initiated by GOD to save or deliver HIS PEOPLE. It is the act of being given deliverance. What is this deliverance? When we talk of deliverance from the Bible this points us directly to a great type of deliverance during the time of Moses and they call it the Exodus.

The Exodus is the greatest picture of the type of deliverance that God will always do for His people in the Old Testament and the ultimate fulfillment of Exodus in the New Testament is the CROSS—the coming of Christ to perform the greatest act of deliverance at the cross.

WHAT IS THIS DELIVERANCE all about? The Exodus in the OT talks about the physical deliverance of an oppressive power of which the spiritual meaning is extended on the deliverance of Christ at the cross from the oppressive power of sin in the lives of men. When we examine today’s chapter we find there is a much greater and grander Exodus that is coming for God’s people.

Isaiah chapter 35 tells us of the joy of the redeemed. When that great Exodus will finally come to happen.

1The desert and the parched land will be glad;

the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.

Like the crocus, 2 it will burst into bloom;

it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.

The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,

the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;

they will see the glory of the Lord,

the splendor of our God.

3 Strengthen the feeble hands,

steady the knees that give way;

4 say to those with fearful hearts,

“Be strong, do not fear;

your God will come,

he will come with vengeance;

with divine retribution

he will come to save you.”

5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened

and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

6 Then will the lame leap like a deer,

and the mute tongue shouts for joy.

Water will gush forth in the wilderness

and streams in the desert.

7 The burning sand will become a pool,

the thirsty ground bubbling springs.

In the haunts where jackals once lay,

grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.

8 And a highway will be there;

it will be called the Way of Holiness;

it will be for those who walk on that Way.

The unclean will not journey on it;

wicked fools will not go about on it.

9 No lion will be there,

nor any ravenous beast;

they will not be found there.

But only the redeemed will walk there,

10 and those the Lord has rescued will return.

They will enter Zion with singing;

everlasting joy will crown their heads.

Gladness and joy will overtake them,

and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Friends, your salvation is not only for you to be in heaven. Your salvation is to set you free from the oppressive power of sin forever. Your salvation is a gift from God through the works of Christ to make your life free from the dominion of sin. Salvation is about your deliverance from sin and makes you a child of God again. It is not by your works of righteousness but by the works of Christ’s righteousness paid on your behalf. Someone, who is perfect, is the only One worthy to pay the price of what sin broke in the law of God. From what Christ did in the works that we can never accomplish for ourselves the people of God are called the redeemed.

Your deliverance, your salvation, your redemption can happen today. Salvation is not a future event, it is an event between you and your decision to believe in the deliverance that Christ gives today.