Deliverances

I have been made to think lately of all the different deliverances that we encounter in this life as we travel our journey homeward to that great place that is higher than the heavens. We find recorded early in the book of Genesis how that Noah and his family were delivered from the flood after it rained for forty days and forty nights. We read about the three Hebrew children that were cast into the fiery furnace and were delivered even from the smell of smoke on their clothes. We find one cast into a pit of lions and Lord delivered him. We read about the children of Israel being delivered out of the land of Egypt, how they crossed the Red Sea on dry land. How they were delivered from thirst when branches were cast into bitter water and made sweet. How it rained manna from heaven and fed the many. How the Lord told Moses to smite the rock and out flowed water to water the thirsty. We find where Peter lost faith and took his eyes off the Lord and begin to sink in the water. He looked up and said Lord save me.
The list of deliverances recorded in the scriptures are many, and the list just goes on and on. In our own lives we can recall many different deliverances that we have been through, knowing that our labouring would have been in vain if the Lord had not delivered us. Then we find in the scriptures of different deliverances, some that we are passive in, and some that we are active in. Some are eternal and some are timely. On behalf of our eternal salvation from the curse of sin to a life in Christ we are passive in that deliverance, but God is active. Then there are times and events that unfold in our life in which both the Lord and you are active in. We have this access through the power of prayer to our maker and through our obedience to Christ that delivers us from many a pitfall as we travel onward in this life.
So much of the time when deliverance comes our way, we fail to give God the honor and glory that he deserves from the fruit of our lips. As we think about the wages of sin in our lives, things that we have earned by our labors we would very well get if it were not for being delivered by the hand of God through his Son Jesus Christ. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.” A short stay in the hospital this past week has made me to think again how the Lord has his hand round and about us, preserving and keeping us in his love. Sometimes we may get to the point in some of our sufferings that we might think it better to just go on home and be with the Lord. Then the Lord reaches forth his hand one more time and delivers us from ourselves. As I was traveling home today from the hospital I was made to think again how good it is to be alive and to realize how the Lord watches over us. Salvation is such a vast subject and as I think about it now I have not even touched the surface in what all I understand about it. There is one thing that I know and that is “Salvation is of the Lord.”

Now as we go back to the text; “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;” We find that Jesus paid the sin debt, that Jesus fulfilled the law to a jot and to a tittle, that Jesus was the perfect sacrifice for sin, that he is our surety, that he is our righteousness and that we stand just before a Holy God as if we had never sinned. But his work did not stop there because he has the power to give life, because he is life in itself. He is still on his throne quickening, giving life to those that are dead in trespasses and in sins. He speaks to the hard and stony heart of a sinner, and he takes out the hard and stony heart and puts in a new heart, a heart that has feelings. Therefore we are not dead anymore, we have been made alive in Jesus Christ and his blood has been applied and hath washed us, cleansed us, and made us to be the righteousness of God in him.