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This morning I’m going to continue going through a series I’ve been doing called God Is. Essentially looking at the character of God, the attributes of God and who God is because I believe that’s foundational to everything else. An essential thing to life, who is God and what does it mean that He is loving? And what does it mean that He is a judge? And what does it mean that He is good, He is a provider, that He heals? And what does that mean, what does that not mean? How does that affect everything in your life?

So we’ve been going through many different aspects, many characteristics of who God is and this morning, we’re going to look at the God who saves. The God who is Savior. God who saves. That’s what we’re going to look at this morning. And obviously, by saying that one of the characteristics or attributes is that He saves implies that there’s something that you need to be saved from. Implies that somehow you need to be rescued from something or delivered from something. That in some way you’re either in bondage or slavery or somehow, there’s something going on in the reality of who you are and your existence, that you need a savior. You need to be rescued from.

That’s what we’re going to get into this morning because I think if you stop and you think about it, many of us can think of – okay, I can see that there are ways that I could use a rescuer, a savior. Maybe it’s from my loneliness. I’m so lonely I could really use someone to rescue me out of that or to save me out of. I feel that it’s just a meaningless existence. Or a dead end job, or just an existence that just doesn’t really add up to what I thought it would be. Or maybe it’s from addiction. That there’s addiction going on in your life that you feel like you need someone or something to save you from. Or depression or physical illness that you can really use a rescuer from. And I think that even just talking about being saved or being rescued, many of us can identify and say, I can look at a characteristic or a part of my life where I can really use someone to save me, to rescue me out of what I’m going through. But there’s something beneath all of that. There’s something foundational, beneath all of that, that according to the Bible, everyone needs a savior for. Everyone in the whole world needs to be rescued from, and that’s what we’re going to get into this morning. That foundational thing that’s critical, essential to everyone in the whole world. Why God is Savior.

And if there’s any aspect that sums up the Bible, it’s this, that God is Savior. And this is not so much maybe an attribute as it is part of the story. The grand story of the Bible. That God foundationally is Savior. That He saves His people from whatever that foundational thing is. It started in the Old Testament, you have the people of God turning away in rebellion, starting with Adam and Eve. Turning away in rebellion from God. And eventually finding themselves in slavery in Egypt. And the central story of the Old Testament is that of the exodus. That God comes to them, raises up Moses and Aaron, and rescues His people from slavery. And brings them out to the promised land. The central story of the Old Testament is the story of God as Savior, God as Rescuer, God as Deliverer. And He brings them out and He forms them into a people. He sets up kind of a pattern of how they’re going to live and some of the feasts and important days that they’re going to observe, like the Day of Atonement. Once a year they’re going to come together and they’re going to slaughter this goat that’s going to be the sin offering basically. To save them from all the evil and wickedness that they’ve done. That this kind of goat will take on itself all the sin, all the evil. Again, they’re going to save them from the punishment that could come on them.

But of course God’s people continue to go against God and turn away from Him and eventually, they find themselves in slavery again in Babylon. They find themselves in captivity again. And then the prophets, at the end of the Old Testament, you have all these prophets rising up because they’re crying out. The people of God are crying out again for a second exodus, asking God once again to be their savior to save them from slavery. And the prophets come and they start to talk to the people of God and say to them that there’s going to be a greater exodus. That God just doesn’t want to save them again from physical slavery, but that He wants to raise up a Messiah who is going to save, not only them, but the whole world from a greater captivity. The captivity to sin. The slavery that the whole world is under to sin. He’s not going to just save you from captivity of Babylon, you know, that’s one thing I’m going to do, but there’s something even greater that you need and this world needs. And that is a Savior, a Messiah, who is going to come and is going to save the world from sin, and essentially from this broken relationship that my people have with me, with God.