Salvation: Is This Vehicle Safe To Drive Series

Life in the Fast Lane

Salvation: Is This Vehicle Safe To Drive?

Luke 18:26

Woodlawn Baptist Church

December 12, 2004

Introduction

Is safety an issue with you when you jump in a car to go somewhere? There was a time in my life when it wasn’t. I have always been the kind of guy who figured that I could get where I needed to be, and what sort of ride it took to get me there wasn’t a concern. I can remember times when I would take off on trips with no tread on my tires. I would let the steel belts show through, stick out, and I would ride on, figuring that I was going to get every last mile and dollar out of what I had. I drove my little Nissan pickup for almost a year with some bolts missing out of the front end that held one of the control arms to the frame. I drove that same pickup without 1st or 3rd gears for about two years, managing to shift through the other gears without too much trouble. You remember the blue Ford pickup I had last year. After I bought it something started squealing and grinding in one of the rear wheels. I knew it had brake trouble, and the sound kept getting worse until one day I was driving down the road and something snapped and broke with a loud clang. I thought I had been blessed since the noise was stopped! After the noise went away, I didn’t see any need to fix it.

I’ve driven some fairly unsafe vehicles since high school, but the worst was a little Ford Tempo that my brother got from my mother, and after he wrecked it I decided to fix it and drive it for a little while. He had run over a cement curb and tore the front end up on it: the CV joints and drive shaft that turned the wheel. I had never repaired one of those before, but I gave it a shot and took it for a drive. As I left the shop I began picking up speed, and then before I knew it, what I thought I had fixed popped out of place, and I went straight through the ditch and into a pasture. Needless to say, that car wasn’t safe to drive.

It has been my hope and prayer as we have worked through this series of messages that the Lord has challenged you in some key areas of your lives, and that as a result you have been willing to bring your lives into greater conformity with Him and His Word. But the reality of it all is that no matter what you do with God’s instructions on marriage or time or money or any of the other subjects, if you have never received Him as your personal Savior nothing else matters. It is one thing to take a chance by getting in an unsafe car and hoping it will get you where you want to go, but it is another thing altogether to gamble on your eternal destiny by trusting in things that will without a doubt fail you when you stand before the Lord. Jesus assured us of this truth when He said,

“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven…”

That brings me to the question that the disciples asked Jesus in our text in Luke 18:26. It is a simple question, but it is one of the most important questions you will ever ask. Do you see it? Looking into the searching eyes of Jesus they said,

“Who then can be saved?”

Think about it with me for a moment. If not everyone who thinks they are going to heaven is in fact going to heaven, then who can be saved? and who will be saved? What I want to do this morning is back up in this chapter, and along with some other Scripture I’d like for us kick the tires so to speak. In other words, let’s take whatever it is that you’re trusting and make sure it is going to get you where you want to go.

Tremendous Freedom

I want you to take your bulletin and answer that first question for me. In as few words as possible, write down what it is you’re trusting in for salvation. Are you sure of what you’re trusting in? Are you sure that it’s going to get you where you want to go?

Now one of the great things about the Lord God is this: you have the freedom to believe what you want to believe. It is up to you whether you believe in heaven and hell or Jesus and sin and the cross and so forth. You have the freedom to choose whatever savior you like. You are at liberty to take the claims of Scripture and do with them as you please, but when it is all said and done, you are the one that must lie in the bed you have made. You can trust that…