A dying man said to a Minister, "I will not go on unless I know I'm saved, or else know it's hopeless to seek to be sure of it. I want a definite witness, something I can't be mistaken about!" The Minister replied, "Suppose you had a vision of an angel who told you your sins were forgiven. Would that be enough to rest on?" "Yes, I think it would. An angel should be all right."
The Minister then continued though, "But suppose on your deathbed Satan came and said, 'I was that angel, transformed to deceive you.' What would you say?" The man was speechless, and the Minister then told him that God has given us something more dependable than the voice of an angel.
He has given His Son, who died for our sins, and He has testified in His own Word that if we trust Him all our sins are gone. The Minister read from the First letter of John (5:13) ,"I write these things to you so that you may know that you have eternal life…" Then he said, "Is that not enough to rest on? It is a letter from heaven expressly to you."
In those words the man found the assurance that he was looking for, but this question of assurance of salvation is often a very difficult one for many people. In the reading we have heard tonight from the second letter to the Thessalonians we see an assurance that although people may have been anxious about what would happen at the end of time God was still with them.
In the reading there is a sense that the people are not to be “shaken” but they are told to hold fast to what they know is the truth. This truth is that God had brought these people salvation, as He has brought us salvation.
I think a lot of people believe it’s arrogant to suggest that God has given them salvation, and yet the words of this letter as it looks towards the end of the world and the end of our earthly lives, and indeed the characteristics of Jesus himself, surely point us to a realisation that we can be confident in God’s promise of salvation if we are prepared to trust him.
And there lies another problem, because all of us have trouble with trusting God at times, or at least as much as we should. There’s a true story about a minister who was working late one Saturday evening, and he decided to phone his wife shortly before coming home. The phone rang for a while but there was no reply, and so the minister continued doing a couple more things before trying to ring once again. This time his wife answered straight away, and when he asked why she hadn’t answered earlier she said that the phone hadn’t rung earlier.
He’d obviously dialled the wrong number. The following Monday morning the minister was sitting in his office in the Church when the phone rang, and a voice on the other end said, ‘Why did you phone me on Saturday night ?’ After the minister had realised this was the person he had rung by mistake, he explained and apologised.
But the man continued, ‘Let me tell you my story – The phone rang but I didn’t answer. You see I was planning to commit suicide on Saturday evening, but before I did I prayed that God would give me a sign if he didn’t want me to do it, and at that point the phone started to ring. I looked at the caller display ID and it said simply “Almighty God” – naturally I was afraid to answer !’
The reason that it had shown Almighty God was that the minister was phoning from ‘Almighty God Tabernacle Church.’
That sign, whether coincidence or God inspired, was enough to change that man’s life – he had received in his mind an assurance that God was there, and was ready to step in.
For us, signs of God’s presence don’t always come easily, but if we are lacking the assurance of salvation, and not accepting that God has chosen us and called us then we are lacking confidence in God and in his promises, and as any sports team will show, playing and living without confidence inevitably means that we will not be doing our best.
And so we are called to have faith in the grace and mercy of God, and be confident that he has accepted us, with all of our faults and failings, into his wonderful worldwide family. We haven’t deserved it, we haven’t earned it, we haven’t paid for it – and we can’t do any of these things ! We have been given salvation because God wants us and loves us, and we have asked him for it…
During the Spanish-American War, Clara Barton was overseeing the work of the Red Cross in Cuba. One day Colonel Theodore Roosevelt came to her, wanted to buy food for his sick and wounded soliders. But she refused to sell him any. Roosevelt was perplexed. His men needed the help and he was prepared to pay out of his own funds. When he asked someone why he could not buy the supplies, he was told, "Colonel, just ask for it!" A smile broke over Roosevelt's face. Now he understood- the provisions were not for sale. All he had to do was simply ask and they would be given freely.
That is all God wants from us – to ask and we will receive.
And confident of that promise we can rest safely in Jesus, trusting that through the good times and the bad times in life, he will be there with us, we can be sure of his love and we can be bold in proclaiming his power, glory, love and compassion to all, and the message that ‘God chose you for the first fruits of salvation’. AMEN
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