You Are Saved for God, Part 1
Tom Shrader launches a new series built around the phrase 'saved by God, from God, for God,' arguing that while God's plan for salvation covers the first two, most teaching neglects the third. Drawing on Isaiah 6, he traces how Isaiah's vision of God's holiness leads to confession and forgiveness, then immediately to a calling — 'Who shall I send?' — as a pattern for every believer. He grounds the practical dimension of the series in Matthew 5:16, calling Christians to let their transformed lives be visible and then to direct the glory explicitly to God, making the invisible God visible through good works and bold proclamation.
“Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: You are Saved for God
Recorded: 2006 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 40 min
Themes: purpose, calling, holiness, good works, salvation, glorifying god, mission, confession, new believer, feeling purposeless, questioning my faith, young adult, church member, searching for calling, spiritually stagnant, wanting to make a difference
Scripture: Psalm 3:8, Isaiah 6:1-11, Matthew 5:1-16, John 12:41, Philippians 2:6-7, Philippians 3:20, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 2 Chronicles 26:16-20, Romans 1, 1 John 1:9
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, soteriology, salvation doctrine, vocation, divine calling, Isaiah 6, Matthew 5:16
Full Transcript
Introduction: Saved by God, From God, For God
This is something I am not even sure what to call. I was going to call it a series, but that feels unfair. Let me tell you what we are going to do. When I have historically completed the series *God's Plan for Salvation*, we then go back to a series we had to interrupt, or we just begin something new — usually a book study. But for months now I sensed I did not want to do that, that I wanted to do something different. This is going to be the first of some, and I do not know if there are three or four, or six or eight or ten. It is going to continue until I feel like I have just emptied myself before you.
I am filled up with something I want to say. I think I know what it is, and yet I want to say it over and over again until it is so through me and so through you — and this is what is really key — so through us as a body, that we are on the same page. This phrase started all of it, and it actually began last summer. Here it is: I am saved by God, from God, for God.
Now, *God's Plan for Salvation* is all about being saved by God, from God. Psalm 3:8 says it, and it is all through Scripture: "Salvation belongs to the Lord." This book — the Bible — is essentially about three things: creation, man's fall, and redemption. Here is what is interesting. Creation and the fall are done by page 20, including footnotes. Everything after that is redemption. I am saved by God, from God, for God. All of our salvation, any credit that is due, all the praise, goes to Him and to Him alone. Salvation belongs to the Lord. God saves sinners.
Saved by God, from God — that is what we talk about and focus on in that series. What occurred to me in the midst of this, literally over the last few months and even back into summer as I was preparing, is that as I do *God's Plan for Salvation*, I should also be doing a series titled *God's Plan for Sanctification*. In other words: God's plan for salvation — I am saved by God, from God. God's plan for sanctification — I am saved by God, for God.
I know this is dramatic terminology, and those of you who have been around know I do not usually talk this way. But this thought so filled me up that I have not been able to get it out of my mind. There has not been a day since around last summer that I have not thought about being saved for God. Saved by God, from God — that is God's plan for salvation, the doctrines of grace, what He does. But He does it for a reason.
What Are You Doing in the World?
When Robert Gelinas was here — and if you are part of 710 you will remember his visit, as he kicked off 710 this year — he was speaking as the pastor of Tyler's Church in Denver. He had just gotten back from Africa, and he was talking about how when you travel to different countries, especially where people are learning English, they want to practice their English on you. He said he got into a cab, and the cab driver was trying to capture a particular English expression.
The phrase we would normally use is this: "What in the world are you doing?" That is how I tend to think of it — what in the world are you doing up on a ladder putting up Christmas decorations? But this cab driver used the same seven words and created a question by rearranging them, and the question he asked was this: "What are you doing in the world?" Those are two very different questions. What in the world are you doing? What are you doing in the world?
Saved for God. Now this is all coming together. When I am saved by God, from God, He has changed my designation — I am a saint. My destination is now heaven. But He left me here. My citizenship, Philippians 3:20 tells us, is in heaven. So in a sense there is a duality, a dual passport.
Heaven on Earth: Living in Between
I finished a book a couple of months ago written by Stephen Nichols, titled *Heaven on Earth*, subtitled *Capturing Jonathan Edwards' Vision of Living in Between* — he means in between heaven and earth. What do we do here? I want to read you a fairly long passage from that book. I thought I could paraphrase it, but the reality is I cannot, so I want you to get this directly. What Nichols is discussing is Philippians 3:20 — "Our citizenship is in heaven." Here is what he writes:
"Paul's metaphor of citizenship only makes sense in its first-century context. Paul could rely on his citizenship to help him out of a legal bind, for being a Roman citizen meant having great privileges. We read about that in the book of Romans — Paul calls upon his citizenship. For the citizenship metaphor, however, extends far beyond privileges and rights, such as a fair trial. The Roman Empire was a conglomerate, a patchwork quilt of nations and city-states. For the empire to run smoothly required uniformity. Greek was the official language, the pantheon of gods the official religion, and Caesar and the Roman Senate the law of the land. This uniformity also came about through Rome's program of decreasing national and ethnic identities and increasing their central identity. One's allegiance was not first to Philippi or Israel or Alexandria — it was first to Rome. Rome would deport citizens to various nations and city-states it conquered, dispersing them throughout the empire. Rome would also force its citizens to establish cities, to move even to the far reaches..."
Citizens of Heaven on Earth
Long before the wave of immigrants made America the great melting pot of the modern world, the Roman Empire attempted to bring the entire Mediterranean world under one roof. One was a Roman first, a Philippian or Jew or Alexandrian second. To be a Roman citizen living in Philippi, or wherever, did not mean you spent your time pining away for the good life in the city of Rome. It did not mean you longed to get back out of Philippi or out of Asia Minor, back to where your heart was. Instead, it meant that you were entrusted with the task of bringing Rome and all of its achievements and glory to Philippi or Jerusalem or Alexandria, wherever you found yourself.
Now obviously, Paul understood what he was using when he uses this picture, this metaphor. Not all metaphors are perfect — for example, Paul said, "Absent of the body, present of the Lord," and he was torn in two directions. But what this metaphor captures is our privilege of being here on this earth, though our citizenship is in heaven, and representing that kingdom on this earth. If one were to rework that sentence, it would read: you are entrusted with the task of bringing heaven and all its achievements and glory to Gilbert or Mesa or Phoenix, wherever you found yourself to be.
Gordon Fee, another author, writes this: "Just as Philippi was a colony of Rome, whose citizens thereby exemplified the life of Rome in the province of Macedonia, so citizens of the heavenly commonwealth were to function as a colony of heaven in that outpost of Rome." In other words, what are you doing in the world? The Heidelberg Catechism has a clear answer: the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
Converging Thoughts: Philippians, Corinthians, and Matthew
Here is what happened. Certain thoughts were converging — reading Stephen Nichols, working through the ideas of being saved by God, from God, and for God, and spending a great deal of time thinking about that last phrase, "for God." Two specific passages kept returning: Philippians 3:20 and 2 Corinthians 5:17. And in the middle of all of this, a rereading of the Gospel of Matthew brought everything together.
With that in mind, turn to Matthew chapter 5. Those familiar with Scripture will recognize that Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7 deal with a section identified as the Sermon on the Mount — Jesus' teaching. Matthew chapter 5, verse 1: "Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain, and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. He opened His mouth and began to teach them." He sat down not because He was tired, but because His disciples would have understood that a rabbi taking a seated position was signaling he was ready to teach.
The Beatitudes: A Deep and Rich Happiness
The Sermon on the Mount begins with "blessed," appearing in verses 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. The word means happy — but not happy in some superficial way, the way we ordinarily use that word. We say we're happy when the climate is right, or we're full, or a sports team wins. That is temporary and superficial.
What Jesus is describing is a deep, rich happiness that comes from life and from understanding life — understanding all that goes on in life, understanding God and who He is. With that in mind, consider how those Beatitudes read: happy are those who mourn, happy are the gentle, happy are the hungry and thirsty, happy are the merciful, happy are the pure in heart. It does not seem to make sense humanly.
This is a picture of the Christian life. It begins with spiritual bankruptcy, or at least the acknowledgment of it — the recognition that I am nothing in and of myself. And then there is this progression. That is how one grows. That is how one moves forward.
Salt, Light, and the Purpose of Good Works
Look at verse 13: "You are the salt of the earth." Verse 14: "You are the light of the world." And verse 16, the verse that kept returning again and again: "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven."
You are supposed to be salt and you are supposed to be light. The goal of that salt and light is not that people would see you, but that they would see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
Letting Your Light Shine
Verse 16 is the verse I kept coming back to again and again. Jesus said, "Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven." Your life ought to be such that the people around you look at you and see your good works. My Christianity should be visible.
Here is the way we have said it historically: I have two tasks — to make the invisible God visible, and then to speak the truth boldly. The first part of verse 16 is to let my light shine in such a way that people will see your good works. They will see something about you. There will just be something different about you.
The second part — "glorify your Father who is in heaven" — will not happen unless you tell them about Him. If they just see your good works, they are going to glorify you. They are going to say, "You are really something special. I have never met anybody like you. I have never had a boss like you, a teacher like you, a student like you, an employee like you." They will write it off to your personality, your temperament, or just the way you are.
Seeing your good works is not enough. They are to glorify your Father who is in heaven, and for that to happen, you have to tell them that He is the one who generated those good works. Right in there is the kernel of saved by God, from God, for God.
Glorifying God and Enjoying Him Forever
The Heidelberg Catechism says the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. The second part — to enjoy Him forever — is the message John Piper has captured. If you have read one chapter of one of his books, you have read them all. It is to enjoy God, to find life in Him. He is life. I find life in Him and Him alone.
Sin, then, becomes what happens when I try to find my identity, my meaning, my purpose, or my happiness in anything but Him. Nothing is going to fill me but Him. No person, place, or thing will fill me but Jesus.
My privilege here, my purpose here, my meaning here is to glorify Him. And apparently, if I am reading this correctly, there is a visible manifestation of this. You should see my Christianity. You should see my good works, and I should see yours. And then we should tell people it is Jesus.
Turning to Isaiah 6
That is where I want to land — Matthew 5:16. I will use a measure of Philippians 3:20 and 2 Corinthians 5, but I want to start in what might seem like the most unlikely of places. Turn to the left, into the Old Testament, to the book of Isaiah. That is where we are going to spend the balance of our time today.
Isaiah chapter 6 is a familiar passage. If you are part of the worship and arts ministry here at East Valley Bible Church, you know it well, because Gary talks about this passage over and over again. It is a wonderful passage.
A Word About Books
As I was putting this together, last summer Beth Hancock knew I was working on some things about the doctrines of grace, and she gave me this little pamphlet. It is thirty pages, and it is called *What Is a True Calvinist* by Philip Rankin. I love to hold up books like this, because there is a chance — not that you will buy them, but that you will actually read them.
Do you have a lot of books you have never finished? I will tell you why: the author runs out of things to say. Have you noticed how all the good material is at the beginning of a book, and then it is just a rehash? I was in a well-known author's office one day — someone you would recognize, though I will not use his name since he did not give me permission. He asked if I wanted to look at the storyboard for his new book, and I said yes. He asked what I thought, and I told him it was all out of order. Chapter one made sense, but chapters two, three, and four belonged at the end, and chapters seven, eight, and nine belonged at the front. He said I was exactly right. The publisher had sent it back that way, with all the good material at the end. He said you have to put it at the beginning, because nobody is going to read past the first few chapters. It was a great moment for me — exactly what I had suspected.
Isaiah 6 and the Story of Uzziah
Everything is coming together and lining up. There is a book — some copies are around somewhere, and you ought to grab one — called *What Is a True Calvinist?* In that book, the author goes right to Isaiah 6, and I just smiled when I got there. Now, look at what happens in Isaiah 6. Isaiah sees God for who He really is, and the minute that happens — verse 5 — Isaiah sees himself for who he really is. He diagnoses his problem, which is sin. He realizes the only solution, which is God.
So if you look at Isaiah chapter 6, verses 1 through 6, the pattern is clear: I am saved by God, from God. Then look at verse 8 — "Who shall I send?" — and Isaiah answers, "Send me." The full picture is: I am saved by God, from God, for God. When God reveals to Isaiah His glory and His majesty and His holiness and His grace, Isaiah's life changes. Just like for you and me — when we understand the doctrines of grace, we see His glory and His majesty and His holiness and His grace, and our lives begin to change.
I have had an alarmingly high number of people say to me, when we decide to go through God's plan for salvation again, "I've heard that before — I think I'll use this time to visit other churches." I don't take things like that personally, but I do think there is a level of arrogance to that I can barely stand. Jonathan Edwards — a smidgen smarter than you, way smarter than me — would say at the end of his life that he still hadn't figured out all of the doctrine of grace and its implications. If that is how you think, then my guess is you haven't grasped the full implication of it. Or — and I'll accept responsibility for this — I haven't delivered it to you. What could be missing is what we are going to talk about now: being saved *for* God.
The Rise and Fall of King Uzziah
"In the year that King Uzziah died" — that is 739 B.C. Uzziah was the king of Judah, the two tribes to the south, while the ten tribes to the north were known as Israel, in the land of Samaria. By and large, Uzziah was a really good king, though he had a tragic flaw. Keep your place in Isaiah 6 and turn to the left to 2 Chronicles chapter 26.
Uzziah reigned for 52 years and by all accounts was a pretty good king — certainly a stabilizing force in the land. But look at what happened to him in 2 Chronicles chapter 26, verse 16. If you look at the few verses before it, you will see numbers, and horses, and warriors, and households, and money — he has all of this. Then verse 16 says: "When Uzziah became strong, his heart was so proud that he acted corruptly and was unfaithful to the Lord God, for he entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense."
Here is what happened. He had ruled for a while. He had been very successful. His favorite song had become "How Great I Art," and that song was playing a lot. He was looking at everything he had accomplished. Put it in our context: he would say, "I closed this deal and that deal, look at this, look at the Super Bowl rings, look at the scholarships" — whatever success looks like in your life. Phoenix Magazine in its current edition has a kind of 40-year retrospect of Phoenix — 40 things we would have never expected to happen in the valley. If they had done that for Judah, Uzziah would have been on every page. He was a person of enormous strength and influence — a CEO, a person of the year, a king who had been blessed and successful with everything around him.
That blessing of God resulted in him becoming proud, and when he was proud, he acted corruptly. Specifically, he usurped the role of the priest by taking incense into the altar of incense — a duty forbidden to anyone but the priests. They warned him in verses 17 and 18: "Get out of the sanctuary." But Uzziah, with a censer in his hand, was enraged. While he was enraged at the priests, leprosy broke out on his forehead. God was not going to put up with this.
Isaiah's Vision of God on the Throne
All the priests looked at him. Behold, he was leprous on the forehead. They hurried out of there, and he himself was also hastened to get out of there, because the Lord had smitten him. King Uzziah was a leper. Ceremonially, he had been thinking he was a priest, and now he was ceremonially unclean — nothing he could do about that. The result was that he would live in a separate house, being a leper, cut off from the house of the Lord. That was a pretty good king who had ruled for a while, and that is his story, that is his background.
So we go back to the story in Isaiah 6. In the year that King Uzziah died, 739 B.C., Isaiah has a vision, and here is what he sees. He sees the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty, exalted, the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each with six wings — two covered their face, two covered their feet, and two they used for what you typically use wings for: flying. One would call out to another, and you get this beautiful, almost surround-sound thing going on: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts." The earth is filled with His glory — it is all around, it is Romans 1. The foundations of the threshold tremble at the voice of Him who called out while the temple was filled with smoke.
We could stop and unpack all of that, but what we are seeing is God on the throne. Not God the Father — no one is seeing God the Father, because God is spirit. So who is Isaiah seeing at this moment? In John chapter 12, Jesus is performing miracles, and John tells us this was to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah. Then, in Isaiah chapter 12, verse 41, John writes: "These things Isaiah said because he saw His glory and he spoke of Him." The person Isaiah saw was Jesus — a pre-incarnate Christ.
So in Philippians 2, when Paul said, "Have the attitude in yourself which was also in Christ Jesus, who although He existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, being made in the likeness of man" — what did He empty Himself from? Isaiah 6. He is the one seated on the throne. That is where He is.
One author writes this, and I think it is helpful: Isaiah's vision is not simply a dream of the past, it is a present reality. To this day, the Lord of glory sits at the center of heaven and receives the praise of countless angels. It is perhaps God not only helping Isaiah understand who God is in the grand scheme of things, but also offering a kind of comfort. If this good king has ruled for 42 years, there is a sense in the land of, what are we going to do now? What is going to happen? And God says, wait — look at this. I am still on the throne.
He Is on the Throne
Let us apply it to our lives. That job that just got terminated — He knew that was going to happen. Where is He? He is on the throne. That relationship, that hardship, that difficulty, that suffering, the persecution, the trials — all of that stuff that comes into your life — where there is that temptation to say, where is God? Here is where He is. He is high, lifted up, exalted, sitting on the throne in absolute control. So relax. He is right where He has always been. One day we are going to see that. Is there not great comfort in that? He is sovereign.
Isaiah sees this. The seraphim are crying out, "Holy, holy, holy." That word holy means other — separate, different than us, distinct from us. We cannot even begin to fully define it. It is everything that we are not. And they are singing this all around him.
Seeing Ourselves as We Really Are
Verse 5 — when Isaiah sees this, he says, in the New American Standard, "Woe to me for I am ruined." The King James reads, "Woe to me for I am undone." The English Standard Version says, "Woe to me for I am lost." Once he looks at his life and compares it to God and who He is, he suddenly sees himself for who he really is, and it is devastating. He is ruined. He is undone. He is lost. He sees the sovereign God and cannot in any way compare or compete with Him. The minute Isaiah understands who God is, Isaiah is devastated — a new self-image, and he cannot stand the comparison.
By the way, when you are talking with friends, one of the great challenges is helping them see that they have a need. I have a good friend whose father was a man I knew about and knew a lot about — a pretty successful businessman. I asked my friend, is your father a Christian? And years ago he said to me, no, he is not. He sees no need — meaning he has everything he wants, everything he needs, very successful.
That calls for a little adjustment in thinking. See if this connects for you, because it made me laugh. I got tired of writing out "God's plan for salvation" in my notes, so I abbreviated it to GPS. When I did that, I thought — that is familiar, a global positioning system. I wanted to make sure I had it right, so I did a little research. As you know, it was developed by the defense department originally and opened up to the marketplace in the 1980s. Using triangulation — taking satellites and honing in on one location — it can tell you exactly where you are. And here is what made me laugh: God's plan for salvation, GPS, has a tendency to triangulate you and show you right where you are, and you are not much. He is everything. Isaiah comes to the realization that he is a sinner, that he needs help, but there is nothing he can do.
The Burning Coal
Verse 6: "Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with a tong, and he touched my mouth with it and said, 'Behold...'"
The Weight of Unclean Lips
Isaiah sees God, and by the comparison he says, "Woe to me, I'm undone, I'm ruined, I'm lost." His expression of this is interesting: "I'm a man of unclean lips." Is he saying he talked like a sailor? Is he saying he swore a lot? There may be part of that, but I don't think that's what he's saying. I think he's saying that his lips are an expression of what's in his heart.
I'm a huge Seinfeld fan. When the incident with Kramer happened, I don't even know how to say it — it was just sickening to watch. I had a physical reaction to that language. Growing up, although I'm a white guy, the N-word was totally unacceptable in any culture I was in. I wouldn't even think to use that word, it would never be used in our house, and yet there I was watching this stuff pour out of him.
What was interesting is that the next night when I turned on Seinfeld, I couldn't watch it. I'm listening to him say he's not a racist, and I'm thinking, that stuff I heard sounds pretty telling about what's in his heart. And I thought right of Isaiah — that's exactly what Isaiah is saying.
He's not talking about racism specifically. He's talking about all of sin. He's saying that whatever is coming out of your mouth is showing what is in your heart. Isaiah says, I'm getting a real clear glimpse of what my sin is — maybe gossip, maybe slander, whatever it is, it's coming out. And he said, I'm in real trouble, I need help, and there's nothing he can do.
Atonement and Forgiveness
God goes to the altar. It is a place of sacrifice. The coal comes from the place of sacrifice. God is about to remove Isaiah's guilt. God is about to atone for the sin. For you and me, 1 John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sin, God is faithful and righteous to forgive us and to cleanse us." It's not just forgive — it's to cleanse. It's that picture of cleansing. Something happens to Isaiah here: his sin is forgiven.
So what we have in these first seven verses is this: I'm saved by God, from God. That is GPS — God's plan for salvation.
Saved for God: The Call to Go
Then we come to verse 8, saved for God. "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?'" There is a subtle but important detail there — the use of the plural personal pronoun: "Who will go for us?" It is a picture of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The triune God.
God does not say, "Where are you, Isaiah? We've done all this, now it's time to go." This is a call, I think, not just to Isaiah, but to every person. Who will go? Whom will I send? And Isaiah is there and he says, "Here I am, send me."
Now there is a difficult passage to work through — it is just verses 9 and 10. God calls Isaiah to go and be a prophet, but tells him they are not going to listen. He paints a picture that this assignment is not going to be happy. So bad is the assignment that, in verse 11, Isaiah says, "How long do I have to do this?" This doesn't sound very good — I'm a prophet, I'm going to take this message, and they won't hear it, they can't hear it, none of them are going to respond. How long will we be doing this, God?
Pulling It All Together
Let me pull this together. I'm saved by God, from God, for God. Once I understand who God is, I immediately see my sin, and then God gives me the provision. And having received that provision, the call goes out: who will go?
That is the movement of these verses. It begins with a vision of God in His holiness, it produces in us an honest reckoning with our sin, it leads us to the atoning work of God on our behalf, and it ends with a life sent out in His name.