Saved or Lost? Why We Must Be Saved

Why Acts 4:12 Says We Must Be Saved

Verse 12: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Notice those last four words: we must be saved. You and I, we must be saved. That is from the apostle Peter, speaking about the Lord Jesus Christ.

What the verse does not say

Before we read the next reference, I want you to think about what this verse does not say. It does not say we must be baptized. It doesn’t say we must join a church, or go to confession, or do the best that we can. It doesn’t say we must come forward or say a certain kind of prayer. But it does say we must.

If you understand that word, you will realize there is not really an option, is there? That’s exactly correct. There isn’t an option. If we are going to be in heaven, we must be saved. And if you don’t understand what that word means, I trust that in a few minutes, as we look at it, you will understand why the preachers of the New Testament used the word saved.

Why We Need a Saviour

We were just hearing from brother Brandon from 1 John 4:14, which says that God the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour. And a saviour saves. That is why He came.

If God thought, and obviously He did, that you and I needed a Saviour, then by the very definition of the word, if I need a saviour, I’m in trouble. I’m in danger. Could I say this very kindly, but pointedly, dear friends: if you don’t know Jesus as your Saviour, you are in eternal, mortal danger. You have heard over and over tonight that your sins are dreadfully serious, and they need to be gone if you are ever going to be in God’s heaven.

What Must I Do to Be Saved?

Turn with me to Acts chapter 16, and verse 31. This is just a verse or two from a story about a man whose name we don’t know. He was a jailer in Philippi, and he had a meeting with God one night. Thank God, I’m going to meet him someday in heaven, and apparently a lot of his family too, from what we read further down in that chapter.

The verse says, “And he brought them out.” Who is them? Two preachers, Paul and Silas, whom he had put in the innermost part of the prison after beating them and putting them in shackles, in stocks. At midnight he heard singing, and then a great noise, because there was an earthquake. He comes to these two men and says, “Sirs…” A couple of verses before what we read, this man was literally shaking. Talk about shaking in your boots! This was a tough, seasoned Roman soldier. Those were the men who became jailers, and he had seen a lot in his life. But what he heard and saw that night made him shake. He was so afraid.

“What must I do to be saved?” Notice they did not say, “Oh, you need to go to church. You need to clean up your act. You need to be baptized.” They said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.”

Saved by Mercy, Not by Works

Go toward the end of your Bible to the book of Titus, chapter 3. We have read this verse on past nights. The verse before it, verse 4, tells us, “But when the kindness and the goodness of God appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness.” Not because of our supposed good works. That’s not why He saved us. He saved us “according to His own mercy.” Understanding our need, and our inability to do anything to get to heaven, He rescued us. He saved us.

That is our prayer, and that is why these gospel meetings are being held: that you might hear how you too can be rescued from the penalty of your sin.

Peter’s Three-Word Prayer

The last place we will read is in Matthew, chapter 14. We will look at this in a little more detail in a few minutes, but Peter did something none of the other disciples did: he walked on water. It must have been quite a story later in his life. “I actually walked on water, and not frozen water either. I walked on real waves, because the Lord called me. He asked me to come out of the boat, and I did.”

But then, verse 30: Peter was afraid and, beginning to sink, because he started to look around at the waves and the darkness and the wind. He lost sight of the Lord Jesus. He cried out with one of the shortest prayers in our Bible, just three words. Sometimes people think you need a good, long prayer in order to reach God. No, you don’t. Three words will do it: “Lord, save me.”

He understood his personal danger and his personal need. And Jesus immediately reached out His hand and took hold of him.

Now, God has promised that He will bless His own Word.

Two Words, Two Conditions: Saved and Lost

When people hear that someone is sick, they often ask, “What is his condition? What is her condition?” In other words, is it really serious, or is it not too bad? We are all familiar with those questions.

In the verses we have read tonight, there are two words I want you to keep in your mind, even if you remember nothing else. The first is the word you have heard over and over: saved. The second is the word lost. What do these two words describe? They describe a condition. Your condition, not physically but spiritually. In this room tonight there are just two classes of people: saved and lost.

Look at Luke chapter 19, the last part of the story where we meet Zacchaeus. The Lord said this about Himself: “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save,” whom? “To save the lost.”

It comes to mind that back in April, in some meetings not far from here, a young man sat down with me in a little room, tears running down his face. He looked at me desperately and said, “I am so lost. I’m so lost.” The good news is that Jesus came for exactly those people. He came to seek and to save the lost.

Which seat would you have sat in?

I want to make this personal. Which one is it? Don’t try to evade the question. Imagine I had come into the building earlier tonight with a handful of these two placards, with the same two words, saved and lost. Imagine I went to every chair in this room and put one of those words on it at random. My question is this: if you were being totally honest, which seat would you have sat in? Would you sit in the chair that said saved? I hope so. I hope you can say that from an honest heart. Or would you have to say, “I’m not safe,” and the only alternative is that you are lost?

Please be honest tonight. It’s not to me, and it’s not for me. It’s for you, between yourself and God.

What Does It Mean to Be Saved?

It means simply safe. To be safe. To be rescued. We can think of all kinds of physical stories where people were saved and rescued, and we have no trouble understanding what that means to that individual. There was danger, there was a problem, and someone came along and became a saviour in that situation. That person can say, “I was saved. Here’s my story.” Maybe we will tell you how God saved us, as God permits, during these meetings.

Well, God says you must be saved. So, sitting in this comfortable gospel hall on a beautiful day, are you safe? I know that things happen in the physical realm that people never expect. I’m not talking about that. Before God, are you safe?

Remember, before you answer, that all sin must be punished. If I am in danger of punishment, I am not safe, because of my sin. So if saved means to be safe, and you’re not saved, then you’re not safe. That sounds so simple. It is. If you take the words for what they are actually telling you, and you’re not safe, then there is danger ahead. It is danger we are here to warn you about.

God forbid that any of you should face the judgment of God forever and ever when all the time there was someone who loved you so much that He took your judgment on Himself to make you safe. That is what a saviour does. That is what my Saviour did for me over 2,000 years ago.

What Does It Mean to Be Lost?

It means you are in danger. It means you are in great need, and unprotected.

Over the years, as I have thought about the gospel, I have kept coming back to a few magazine covers. In May of 2010, the cover of People showed a 22-year-old woman named Yeardley Love, a lacrosse player at the university she attended. The young man pictured with her was also a lacrosse player. She had tried to get away from him numerous times, but didn’t make the separation the way she should have, and he beat her to death. The magazine asked the question: Could she have been saved? The fact is that she could have, had she made the right choice.

Have you ever stood beside a casket, someone you know, or someone in your family, someone you love, lying there still and cold in death, and the thought crosses your mind: Where are they now? And if it was someone who knew the gospel, or a Christian who had tried to bring the gospel to that person, they would have to think, He could have been saved. She could have been saved.

What choice will you make? What does all this mean to you?

The Danger of Sin

You have been hearing about the danger already tonight. You choose to sin, and you choose to suffer. We heard already in this series of meetings from John chapter 8, where the Lord Jesus is speaking to religious people and says, “Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.” It is like a huge weight that holds you down. You can’t move, and eventually it will drag you under and cost you your life. You can’t do anything to take it away, and you can’t sever yourself from that sin. You and I naturally can’t help sinning. We can’t stop, and all of us know it.

How can I be delivered from this awful thing called sin? There is nowhere and no one on this earth who can give you the remedy, the cure. So the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour, because He is the only cure for our sin. All have sinned, and we are all going to suffer the consequences. “The wages of sin is death.” In the Old Testament it says, “The soul who sins shall die.” It is right across the board for every human being. So we can never be safe in our sins.

“I’m not that bad of a sinner”

Sometimes people say, “I just don’t feel like I’m that bad of a sinner.” I want you to think about this. Does the devil deserve to be punished forever in hell, the lake of fire? My guess is that you would say, “Of course he does. He’s evil.” But why? Is it because he wasn’t saved? That’s a strange question, I know. The reason I ask it that way is that I have talked to many people over the years, especially Christian kids, who know the gospel. I have asked them, “If all your sins were gone and you died that way, where would you be?” And they answer, “I’d be in hell.” “Why?” “Because I’m not saved.” There is a disconnect in understanding what saved means.

Was the devil cast out of heaven because he wasn’t saved? No. It was because of his sin. So the other question is: would God put me in hell because I’m not saved? The answer is no. If I’m not saved and I die that way, I will be in hell, but that’s not why. It is not because I’m not saved. It is because of my sin. God must punish sin, and either He will punish it as He already has on the person of His Son, or you will bear the punishment of your own sin. The consequence of my sin is the same sentence as the consequence of the sin of the devil.

You say, “Wow, is it that bad?” It is that bad. It is a place where we pray to God you never go.

A door shut forever

It is not only a place you are sent to be judged for your sin. It is a place you are forbidden to enter, because access is denied because of sin. I can’t be where God is. God is absolutely holy. Revelation 21, verse 27, says, “There shall by no means enter it anything that defiles.” Never, because God is holy. That door will be shut to you forever and ever.

You may say, “That is a lot of bad news.” But it is the truth, it is the reality, and God wants us to face that reality.

Saved or Lost: Lessons from the Titanic

In the early 2000s I had the opportunity to go with a man to the inner part of the city of Chicago to see a Titanic exhibit. He knew a little about it, and I had read a little about it. He said, “Let’s go.” So we did, on a Saturday. We paid for our tickets, and as we went in, we were each handed a boarding pass. They said, “Hang on to it until the end, and then you’ll understand why we gave it to you.”

We went through the exhibit, and of course you know the story of the Titanic. It was on its maiden voyage from England to New York City, and it hit an iceberg. I used to think there was a huge gash in the side of the ship. That’s not why it sank. There was no gash. The rivets broke, and the panels of steel bent, and the water rushed in like a funnel. That is why there was so much water.

Had you been on that ship and travelled first class, you would have had a cabin like the one in this picture. In today’s money, it would have cost about $75,000 to go from England to New York in first class. I don’t think it would be up to snuff in today’s regulations. We also got to see an actual section of the Titanic that had been brought up. You could see all the rivets and the sections of metal. When they hit that iceberg, the rivets were sub-quality and they broke. When they broke, the sheets of metal simply opened and the water came in. A very sad story.

In almost the last room we visited, there was a chunk of ice, and you were invited to put your hand on it and hold it there as long as you could. Of course I did, and it didn’t take very long before my hand ached as if a hammer had hit it. It hurt that badly from the cold. It was 32°F, when water becomes ice, and your body doesn’t like temperatures that cold. But in the Atlantic that night, the water wasn’t 32. It was 28°F (about −2.2°C). It’s no wonder so many people died so quickly of hypothermia.

The last room looked like this. All the walls were covered with panels listing the passengers: first class, second class, third class, and crew. You were supposed to turn over your boarding pass and find the name of the person on the back. The man on my pass was Edmund Nelson Kimble Jr., a wealthy man. You were supposed to find his name somewhere on the wall. I did, in first class. If you look at the columns, you realize some were marked saved and some were marked lost. This was a hundred years ago, but something inside me said, I hope he was saved. And I found his name under the saved column, along with his little girl. I knew nothing about him other than that he was on a ship that was going down, but that sense of hope struck me.

What struck me as well was this: if you read the story, you realize there weren’t enough lifeboats. Even if everyone had been able to reach a lifeboat, there was only half as much lifeboat room as they needed. Even God Himself couldn’t sink that ship. In the end, 711 people were saved and almost 1,500 were lost. It didn’t matter whether they were in first, second or third class. It was exactly the same. There is no difference. You are either saved or you are in danger.

Our prayer tonight is that, if you have never faced it before, you will face the reality of where you stand in the presence of God as far as being saved or lost, because that is really all that matters. And I ask you again: are you saved? You must have your sins forgiven in order for that to be true. And right now is the time to be saved.

A Saviour Who Came Close

We mentioned that for there to be salvation, for someone to be saved, there has to be a saviour.

When I was young, we lived in the Bahama Islands. Somebody had to do it, so we decided we would. My mom and dad were in gospel work at the other end of the island from the one in this picture. Our house was about where that little red star is. I am the oldest of four, and in that house, at that spot, my little brother was born. This isn’t a picture of him, but it was about the same age as my little brother Tim was at the time of this story.

One afternoon we were down from the house on the bay side, and Mom and Dad and my other siblings were along one side of the shore. My little brother Tim and I were at the other side, where our boat was docked. The water was fairly deep, with a steep drop-off from the sand. Before I could even realize what had happened, Tim went in head first. He was about 18 months old. All I could see of him was the white of the bottom of one little foot.

Now imagine you are there. This little guy has gone into the water. That little foot is already under. I couldn’t even see the rest of him. Mom and Dad are way over there with my sister and brother. Had we been able to ask Tim, “What do you need?” he would have said, “I need someone to save me, right here, right now.” So I grabbed him by the ankle I could see, and I lifted him up.

The Lord Jesus didn’t stay in heaven and tell us about salvation. He came into the world. He was born into the world and laid in a manger. And as you can see in the picture, as the artist has represented it, the shadow of the cross was always before Him. That is why He came. Christ Jesus came into the world to save, whom? Sinners. The lost.

It Is Finished

He came to take on Himself the sin that causes us guilt, and in doing so to take the punishment that sin deserved. It was a transaction I can’t begin to describe, between God and the sacrifice, who was His Son. On that cross, as we read in Isaiah 53, God put my sin on the Man on the middle cross. He suffered the nails. He suffered the thorns. He suffered the wrath of God, poured out on Him like waves, as we read about prophetically in the Old Testament, where He speaks of being in deep water where there was no standing, no footing. He couldn’t put His feet down. It was simply the rolling, terrible judgment of God, which, as we read in Lamentations, rolled like fire over Him.

And He willingly did it, thinking about you. Yes, you, as an individual, on that cross, thinking about you and all the punishment He was enduring. I love her. I love him. God, I do this for them. I don’t understand how You could forsake Me, but this I do, because this is God’s great plan, and I’m part of that plan. I’m the one who sacrifices Myself on behalf of those who are in their sins, those who are lost.

What Does “It Is Finished” Mean?

At the end of those hours of darkness, the Lord Jesus said, “It is finished.” Paid in full.

When someone says something is finished, you realize that there is nothing more you can do. If you tell your mom or dad, or your employer, “You gave me a job, and it’s finished,” then it’s all done. The Lord said that to His Father, and the Lord says to you and me tonight: It’s finished, and it’s all paid for.

You say, “All of that for just one sinner?” Yes. All of that for you. Have you ever understood that it was for you, and that He did it all on your behalf? God wants us to take in the joy of the truth of those words: Jesus Christ died for me.

There is a hymn that many believers love, and they love the words of this verse:

Because the sinless Saviour died, My sinful soul is counted free; For God the Just is satisfied To look on Him and pardon me.

Our prayer is that tonight you will simply rest on the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That you will trust the Saviour the Father sent. That you will be able to say, “I once was lost, but now I’m safe. Now I’m free.” That’s why Jesus came.

We present Him to you as the only Saviour of sinners. Our prayer is that tonight you would simply, by faith, trust Him.