HOW CAN YOU ESCAPE?
Hebrews 2 : 3
3 how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him,
Dear friend, how can you escape if you neglect the salvation spoken of by Jesus and the Bible? How can you escape? One of my favorite movies of all-time is The Great Escape. It has a great cast, including Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Garner, James Coburn, and many others. The movie is about prisoners of war in a German POW camp. These prisoners are intent on breaking out of the camp, and they do, but most of them are recaptured, so they do not really escape.
When thinking of that movie, I thought of eternal destinations and eternal escapes. When we die, our bodies are buried awaiting the future Resurrection or Rapture, but our souls either go to Heaven or to Hell’s holding cell, and there is no escape from that holding cell. Jesus Christ, while He was on Earth, told you how to escape Hell’s bondage and get to Heaven.
John 14 : 6
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
Jesus Christ is the Way. He is the escape route. Jesus Christ is not the plan of salvation. Jesus Christ is the Man of salvation. When I rest in my eternal home, it will be Jesus that makes it possible. It will be His actions on Calvary that make it possible for me to be in Heaven. He perfected me forever when I accepted Him as my Savior, and I have no reason to escape, but if you have not accepted Him, how can you escape what is coming? How can you escape death? How can you escape judgement? How can you if you neglect such a great salvation? People have tried many ways in their attempts to escape the reality of Jesus. Let me show you some of the ways people have tried to escape.
I. TOO GOOD TO BE DAMNED WAY
Some people just think they are too good to be damned. They, and you might be one such person, believe their works are so good that there is no way that they will be judged for neglecting the great salvation. Their works is their escape route, but dear friend, works will not allow you to escape.
Matthew 7: 21 – 23
21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
There are many people who do many great things. There are some, who according to what Jesus says, can do all kinds of miraculous things. He says that some are able to prophesy. Some are able to cast out demons, and some are able to do many wonders, but these people are not doing them in the name of Jesus because they have neglected the great salvation. They are doing them, even if they are good people, through the power of Satan.
The great mistake of so many Christian people is that we underestimate the power of the true enemy, Satan. These people have fallen for the lies of the evil one, and they think they are doing good things for the Lord, but salvation is not based on good works.
Ephesians 2: 8 – 9
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Dear friend, the true escape is paved with grace and walked upon with faith. If we could save ourselves by our good works, we would all try to outdo one another; we would try to put on a show, and can you imagine the bragging that we would do? We would all be like James and John thinking that we deserve to sit on the throne with Jesus if we were saved according to what we could do, but do you know what the Bible says?
Isaiah 64: 6
6 But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
Romans 3: 12
12 They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one.”
There is nothing good in us outside of Jesus. When given the opportunity, everyone chooses sin, so how many good works does it take to cover one sin?Do 2 good works cover one small sin? How many good works does it take to cover a big sin, like placing other things before God? How many good works does it take to cover homosexuality and adultery? But wait a minute, there is a verse in some Bibles that say this; it is not in mine I don’t think.
James 2: 10
10 For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.
Do you mean to tell me if I tell a little white lie that I have brought down on me the whole condemnation of the Law? Unfortunately!!!! Dear friend, it is impossible for you to do enough good works to cover your sins. It is impossible. Think about how sinful you are, and you are a good person. We are all sinners, and it is absolutely impossible for you to do enough good works to escape if you neglect the great salvation. So, dear friend, if you are depending on what you do, your works, as a means of escape, you are going to be disappointed because you are not too good to be damned.
Romans 3: 23
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
II. I HAVE PLENTY OF TIME WAY
Hebrews 2 : 3 asks a poignant question. How shall we escape if we neglect? Neglect is the key word. There are people, and you might be one of them, who keep putting off what they know they need to do. They are procrastinators, but dear friend, procrastination means that you believe you will have another opportunity to do it in the future, but that is a dangerous, dangerous premise upon which you are standing. Did you know that as soon as you are born that you start to die? You are born to die. Do you know why?
Romans 6: 23
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Hebrews 9: 27
27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,
You and I are going to die, and we are going to be judged, and how can you escape if you neglect the great salvation? Many people think they have all the time in the world to decide, but if you think that way, you are neglecting some important biblical principles.
A. THE HOLY SPIRIT DRAWS YOU TO THAT GREAT SALVATION
If you are going to be saved, it is the result of the Holy Spirit drawing you to Jesus, preparing your heart to accept Jesus, and convicting you of your need to repent and be saved.
John 6: 44
44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.
The Holy Spirit draws you, and He is not going to always draw you.
Genesis 6 : 3
3 And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”
The Holy Spirit is not going to always call you; He is not always going to strive with man, and no man knows when the Holy Spirit stops drawing a person to salvation.
Proverbs 29: 1
1He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck, will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.
You cannot be saved without the working of the Holy Spirit, and God will only allow you to reject the working of the Holy Spirit up to the point that He says that’s enough, and when that happens it will be too late. Your procrastination will have gotten the best of you. Biblically, let me tell you, quickly what happens to a person when he or she crosses God’s deadline if you will.
Romans 1: 20 – 28 (NIV)
20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. 28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.
When a person crosses God’s deadline, society is drastically affected, just as society should be drastically affected when a person accepts Christ, but nowhere in the Bible does it say that I am to sit in judgement deciding if God has given a person over to his or her sinful desires. I think Jesus taught us what to do.
Matthew 10: 14 – 15
14 And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet. 15 Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city!
Dear friend, if God gives a person over, he or she will not listen to the gospel message. It does not alleviate our responsibility to share the gospel, but if they do not want to hear it, Jesus said, if I may paraphrase Him, “don’t let it bother you.” Jesus says that person’s judgement is going to be worse than what it was in Sodom and Gomorrah.
B. TODAY IS THE DAY OF SALVATION
2 Corinthians 6: 2
2 For He says: “In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.
Today is the day of salvation. What the Bible is saying is when you are called to salvation, stirred to action by the Holy Spirit, you better act on it. Nowhere in the Bible is it taught that tomorrow is the day of salvation. The book of Acts gives us an example.
Acts 16: 28 – 31
28 But Paul called with a loud voice, saying, “Do yourself no harm, for we are all here.” 29 Then he called for a light, ran in, and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 And he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 31 So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.”
The Holy Spirit convicted that Philippian jailer of his need for Jesus, and there was no way he could wait for tomorrow. In the middle of night, he fell at the feet of Paul and Silas begging them to tell him what he needed to do. Today is the day. You are not promised tomorrow.
James 4 : 13 – 14
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; 14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
You are not promised the next breath. The rich fool said, “I am going to eat, drink, and be merry. I am going to tear down my barns and build new ones, and the Lord said you fool tonight you are going to die.” You are always one breath away from eternity, and to think you can neglect salvation until tomorrow is the mistake of a fool.
65 million people die every year, 7,425 die each hour, 120 die each minute, and 2 people die every second, and many of them will die expecting to accomplish things tomorrow. If you die without accepting that great salvation found in the Way, your procrastinating soul will have followed the plenty of time to decide way to Hell. Today is the day of salvation. You never know when you will be one of those two that die every second. How can you escape if you neglect?
III. THE CHURCH MEMBER’S WAY
There are many who think church membership will make it possible for them to escape, but dear friend, church membership is not the great salvation. The church cannot provide you with a way to escape.
Matthew 23: 13
13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.
A hypocrite is a super actor, and that is what you are doing if you are depending on church membership to save you. You are acting out a role but notice the warning from Christ. If you join a church, and because you are living a lie, and turn others away from the gospel, Jesus says, “WOE!”
Church membership will not save you, and because you are lost without the indwelling Holy Spirit, the lost world sees you as a representative of the true kingdom, and the lost world wants no part of the gospel because of what they see in you, and Jesus says WOE! Your church membership without Christ will only serve to condemn you.
Luke 12: 47
47 And that servant who knew his master’s will and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.
If you sit in service after service hearing the gospel knowing that you need to get saved yet continue to reject Christ, your church membership will only add to your torture in Hell. It will provide no escape for you.
2 Corinthians 13 : 5
5 Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified.
Examine yourself. I would hate to know that you are disqualified from an eternity with Jesus because you were a member of a church and not a member of the Kingdom. There is no escape if you neglect the great salvation. Good works will not provide an escape route. Time will eventually run out on you, and church membership will only add to your misery if you have not accepted Christ.
Jesus Christ is the great salvation.
IV. THE GREAT SALVATION
What is the great salvation?
A. GOD LOVES YOU
John 3: 16
16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
How could God love you anymore than He does? He loved you so much that He sent His only Son into the world to die in agony and shame as your substitute on Calvary’s Cross. He only asks that you believe in His Son in return.
B. JESUS CHRIST DID IT ALL FOR YOU
Romans 8: 32
32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
Jesus Christ, in the council halls of eternity past, told God the Father that He would come to this earth, be born of a virgin, live a sinless life, and die on Calvary’s Cruel Cross to pay for the sins of man. He came to show us the Way.
Dear friend, make no mistake about it, when Jesus was on that cross, God the Father spared absolutely none of His holy wrath on Jesus. It was a violent, cruel, excruciating, dark, and bloody scene. There was enough blood shed that day to cover the sins of all the ages, but most important to you is the fact that He shed enough blood that day to cover your sins. You were born a sinner. You were born in debt, in bondage if you will, and each time you sinned in thought, word, or deed, your debt and your bondage increased. The debt was legal, and that debt had to be covered, but because you were born in sin and a sinner, you could not cover the debt. You could not pay what had to be paid because of your sin. What did Jesus do?
Colossians 2 : 13 – 14
13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
You were dead in your sins. You were marked for capital punishment. There was nothing you could do, but Jesus, to keep you from that cross, died to pay what you could not pay. He took your sins, and each one of those sins represent the nails in His hands and feet. Each of your sins was a thorn in His crown. Each of your sins was a lash on His back, but He endured the Cross so you would not have to bear it, and He cried from that agony and shame, “IT IS FINISHED.”
Dear friend, He did not whisper it either. He reached down deep inside and shouted from that hill IT IS FINISHED! He shouted it so loud that the veil of the temple was torn in twain. He shouted it so loud, that the graves were opened, and the dead walked the streets. When He shouted IT IS FINISHED, your debt was paid if you will only accept the payment. “Well, Jimmy, I know I need to be saved, and I believe Jesus died on the Cross, but how do you know for sure He can save me?”
C. GOD RAISED HIM FROM THE DEAD
Romans 8: 11
11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
Acts 2: 24
24 whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.
Acts 4: 10 – 12
10 let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole. 11 This is the ‘stone, which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.’ 12 Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
How do I know you can absolutely, 100%, undoubtedly, unashamedly believe that Jesus Christ is the great salvation? Because God the Father raised Him from the dead as proof that what Jesus had satisfied the law’s demands. He was seen by over 500 eyewitnesses. God brought Jesus out of the grave, and dear friend, there is no escape for you if you neglect that great salvation.
“Well, Jimmy, what if the Holy Spirit has stopped drawing me?” Dear friend, if you are thinking that it means the Holy Spirit is indeed drawing you, but it could be the last time He does. “Well, what do I need to do?”
Romans 10 : 9 – 10, 13
9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
13 For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Believe that the Lord Jesus died for your sins and that God raised Him from the dead and ask Him to forgive you of your sins and turn from those sins and call on Him as Lord, He will save you. There is something about confession that seals the deal so to speak.
Matthew 10 : 32 – 33
32 “Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. 33 But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.
Will you do that? How can you escape if you do not?