In this sermon, Dan Kent helps us understand the meaning of the proclamation “salvation belongs to our God.” While we might assume salvation is about personal sin and guilt, Dan demonstrates that it is much more extensive than that. He shows us that salvation is centered around God’s work to establish the rightful King of all creation. 
Dan focuses our attention on the salvation the Lord brings by highlighting three points. In the first, he asks the question: “What is salvation?” The Greek word literally means something like deliverance, entrance into safety and the experience of well-being. In this passage, the great multitude is acknowledging that God has brought this deliverance to them. However, we must ask a follow-up question: “What exactly are we being delivered from?” This leads us to the second part of Dan’s sermon.
The second theme Dan highlights is the image of the throne which helps us understand the nature of our salvation. It is tied to the New Testament word for “good news” which is euangelion in the Greek. It means the announcement of good tidings, and it is often translated as “gospel.” Typically, our telling of the gospel is focused on how we are saved from our personal sin and guilt. And while this is part of the good news, the New Testament is clear that it is much larger than that. Yes, Jesus saves us from our sin, but the good news is really about the fact that Jesus has taken back the throne from the enemy who entraps us in sin. The good news is not simply that our sins are fixed. It is that reality itself has been liberated and redeemed from the hostile powers that have ruled the world.
This leads us to the third theme, which seeks to answer the question: “How do I get in on this good news?” Ephesians 2:8-9 says that we are saved through faith by grace. If we understand salvation as a personal experience of managing our sin and guilt, then this verse is about believing the right things about Jesus. Faith can mean such a thing, but the word here means so much more. It also entails faithful trusting or allegiance. It’s not about giving mental assent to the facts about Jesus. Salvation only comes through faithful relationship. In other words, the salvation of the gospel is founded upon the reality that a new king is established on the throne, and we experience this new reality through allegiance. This is what the great multitude was proclaiming in the passage from Revelation 7.
The takeaway from this clarification about the nature of God’s salvation also comes in three parts. First, it entails a shift from a passive stance to an active one. God wants a relationship with us, not a transaction where we get our sins dealt with and we go on living how we want. Second, it moves me from the center of salvation, where it’s all about dealing with my problems and puts God’s action and God’s goodness at the center. Our personal experience is drawn up into the grand work of God to put right the whole world. Third, it calls each of us out of the cul-de-sac of a “me” focus where there’s nothing left to do after salvation, and instead, moves us into a posture of living in such a way that our actions change the world alongside God.
This is the work of salvation of and by the king, the one who has dethroned the enemy of our lives and the world. We can experience salvation as more than a private peace. Salvation can be a new freedom that aligns with the way creation was originally designed to work in the first place.
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