Posted on Wed, Jul 1, 2009
Escape to Glory
Speaker - Elder Ayodeji Adesina (Lay Pastor, BHSDAC, London)(Message summarised by Sis. Ayobola Akwarandu)
Key Text - Hebrews 2: 3
We normally say how do you do? Or typically here in UK, we say ‘how is the weather?’ These questions are so trivial but we use them to strike up conversations with people. However, there are some questions that are a matter of life and death. Reflecting back to the September 11 terrorist attack in New York, it strikes me that many of the victims would have greeted each other in the usual ways, read the papers as usual and asked the typical questions. As people sat at their desks, settling down, something entirely unexpected happened, airplanes loaded with fuel crashed into the building. Why are we recounting this tragic story, you may wonder. It is because at the time of the attack, every other questions that had been asked that morning became irrelevant and the only significant question became ‘how can we escape…?’ This is similar to the question asked in Hebrews 2: 3. How shall we escape? But some may be asking escape from what?
We all realise after 9/11 that life has changed. There are people who are ready to give their lives for what they believe in, confusion fills our world. Men want to be women and women want to be men, the fat want to be thin and the thin want to be fat, the whites want to be black and blacks want to be white. There is greed and terror everywhere. In all this, we must know that a time of judgement is coming, a time of reckoning, so the relevant question to ask then is ‘how can we escape from the coming judgement?’ The writer of Hebrews is reminding us about the need to escape. If you read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, you will see the need to escape and there are few points we need to note:
- There is no other escape if we neglect this salvation. You cannot try to escape from God or hide from Him. God knows our thoughts as well as our deeds, there is no fooling Him. David said “you have searched me and you know me…where can I go from your Spirit?” No sinner will be able to escape from the wrath of God. This is why Jesus says ‘I am the way, the truth and the life… I am the door, by me if any man enters in, he shall be saved.”
- What does it mean to neglect this salvation? Neglect means not paying attention. The writer did not say how you can escape if you ‘hate’ or ‘reject’ this salvation. What he is saying is, how shall we escape if we do not pay attention to the gospel. Many times we are careless about our Christianity. Some of us don’t bother to pray each morning or night; mainly because we don’t seriously believe what is in the Bible. John 3:16 talks about believing in the Son so that we do not perish. So, even there in the most well known passage in the Bible, we see that some will be saved whilst some will ‘perish’.
- This is a great salvation first because of the greatness of the person who brought it to us – Jesus, the son of God. Some people when they need to commission a programme or building, would call an important dignitary such as governors, mayors or even royalty. God Himself became flesh and came to dwell with us. If an item is reckoned to be precious then it is brought with a great price. Jesus came to our world and bought us with His precious blood. When captured by the Romans, He could have called ten thousand angels to come to His rescue but He did nothing so as to pay the price for our sins. This salvation would still have been great if it saved just the Jews only, but actually this salvation is for every tribe and race. This salvation is great because it gives us the hope of eternal life.
Death is our arch enemy but it is also going to be defeated. The death of believers is described as ‘sleep’ because there will be a resurrection of the righteous dead, and death itself shall die one day when we shall escape to glory. The Apostle Paul said ‘comfort ye one another with this hope’ of Christ’s return. Some say we delude ourselves with the hope of heaven. Some even say it is positively wrong to tell others about Jesus and heaven, but the truth of heaven is real, it is the place God resides with the members of the Godhead.
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