Salvation Assured                        NOT PEACE BUT A SWORD
 
        Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.  Matt. 10:34.
 
    The Baby and His parents were obviously poor.  Dedications were common happenings in the Temple, and the priest who preformed the service was unaware of anything unusual.  But there were two aged people in the Temple that day, Simeon and Anna, who had looked longingly for the Messiah to come, and they had not looked in vain.  Simeon took the Baby from Mary, "Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against" (Luke 2:34).
 
    The prediction of Simeon was fulfilled in the life of Jesus.  The gospel that Jesus presented never left people the same.  They went either one way or the other.  There was no neutrality.  They became either patriots or traitors to His cause.  This polarization was steady, and increased in severity every day of His life, until the final showdown at Calvary.  Although the idea that Jesus saves is beautiful, and we love to sing about it, Jesus also divides.  He comes not to bring peace, but a sword.  Jesus shakes people up.
 
    We also notice here in this scripture that Jesus was set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel.  We are not talking here about the Greeks and the Romans.  Jesus came, and was set, for the polarizing, the decision making, of people already in church pews.  As a result of Jesus' coming, people within the church polarized, went one way or the other.  We notice again and again throughout the Gospels that there are only two ways to go.  As the old song says, "Two ways for travelers, only two ways."  There is no third option.  We can never be in charge of ourselves.  We can choose only who will control us.  Either we accept His grace, we believe in Him, or we perish.
 
    The lifting up of Jesus and Him crucified, the focusing on His life, will bring the same results today as when He was here on earth.  The elements of human nature that were present at the time of Christ are still present today.  As we come to a true knowledge of Jesus, we will also be compelled to choose to submit to His control or to refuse it.  We cannot remain neutral.

 VICTORY FROM SURRENDER
 
        O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.  Matt. 26:39.
 
    Surrender always requires a struggle.  The basis of every temptation is to go it alone in some way, and depend on self instead of God.  Jesus was constantly tempted to go it alone.  As His inherent abilities were greater than ours, so much greater was His temptation to rely on self instead of on His Father.  In Gethsemane, He faced the final struggle of surrender.  If Satan failed here, his kingdom was forever lost.
 
    Notice the basis of the final temptation.  "He [Jesus] seemed to be shut out from the light of God's sustaining presence."--The Desire of Ages, p. 685. (Italics supplied.)  Christ had spent His entire life on earth in fellowship with His Father.  Never once had He broken from that abiding dependence upon God.  He had done nothing on His own, only through His Father's will.  But now, "so dreadful does sin appear to Him, so great is the weight of guilt which He must bear, that He is tempted to fear it will shut Him out forever from His Father's love."--Ibid.
 
    Do you see the temptation?  Satan made it appear that the only way Christ could save mankind was to break from His relationship with His Father.  He had tried for thirty-three years to get Christ to rely on His own power.  Now it seemed that the only way Christ could save us would be by going on His own, for if He took our sin it would separate Him from God.  Satan said, If You don't rely on Your own power now, You won't be able to save man as You came to do.  Sin is too offensive to God.  He can't help You now.  You've got to do it Yourself, Jesus, or fail in Your mission to save mankind.
 
    But notice that the separation was only in feelings--in reality Jesus was not alone.  "God suffered with His Son.  Angels beheld the Saviour's agony."--Ibid., p. 693.  God separated from Jesus every beam of light, love, and glory.  But He was still there!  And it was in surrender to the will of His Father that Jesus was conqueror.  In Gethsemane, and upon the cross, Jesus relied upon the evidence of His Father's love already given.  "As in submission He committed Himself to God, the sense of the loss of His Father's favor was withdrawn.  By faith, Christ was victor."--Ibid., p. 756. (Italics supplied.)  Surrender is the only way to victory.

   YOU CAN'T CRUCIFY YOURSELF
 
        He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.  Matt. 10:39.
 
    Whenever Jesus spoke of the cross, He always referred to it as our cross, never as His.  "He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me" (Matt. 10:38).  "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me" (Luke 9:23).  It was on our cross, in our place, that Jesus suffered and died.
 
    If you were to decide to take your own life, there would be many routes available.  You could put a pistol to your head and pull the trigger.  You could take an overdose of any number of drugs.  You could jump off a high bridge or building.  But there is one thing you can never do.  You cannot crucify yourself!  If you are going to be crucified, someone else must do it for you.
 
    "The yoke and the cross are symbols representing the same thing--the giving up of the will to God"--The SDA Bible Commentary, Ellen G. White Comments, on Matt. 11:28-30, p. 1090.  The very symbol used by Christ to represent complete surrender demands that the thing be accomplished by someone other than ourselves.  No matter how hard we might try to crucify ourselves, we simply cannot do it.  No matter how hard we might try to surrender ourselves, we can't do that, either.  We can only consent for Someone to do the work for us.
 
    If we cannot crucify ourselves, if we cannot surrender ourselves, then it is inevitable that we cannot set up the timing, either.  Every event in Christ's life moved according to God's timetable.  Christ did nothing to hasten or delay the crisis, nor did He attempt to escape when the crisis came.  He accepted God's plan for His life on a daily basis, and did not try to work out His own plan.
 
    So it must be with us.  Jesus Himself allowed room for growth.  "First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear" (Mark 4:28).  Our effort toward hastening either growth or surrender is fruitless.  We can only seek to know Jesus, seek personal fellowship with Him, and trust Him to finish the work He has begun in our lives.  He will lead us on to complete surrender to Him.

 NOT MY WORK, BUT HIS
 
        Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace but of debt.  Rom. 4:4.
 
    When a person first begins to understand that God offers a life of freedom, peace, and fulfillment through righteousness by faith in Jesus, the devil gets nervous.  He has worked for as long as possible to keep everyone away from any interest in God whatever.  He doesn't want anybody to come to Jesus and find rest.  The further away we stay, the better he likes it.  But if he fails to keep us from being drawn, to keep us from searching into things of God, he still has other tactics.
 
    The first of these is to try to get us to work on righteousness.  It is possible to spend years of futile effort working hard on the externals, trying to make yourself good enough to be accepted by God.
 
    Finally, the realization comes that righteousness is by faith in Jesus alone.  We learn that external goodness is insufficient.  We see that our hearts are evil and we cannot change them, even if we are successful in improving our behavior.  At this point the devil comes in with another clever sidetrack.  He tries to get us to work on our faith.  He brings in all his arguments in favor of positive thinking and urges us to concentrate on making ourselves believe.  He tries to get us more interested in claiming promises than the One who made the promises.  When we pray primarily for answers, and we don't get the answers we expect, he can then destroy our faith in God while professing to be exercising it.
 
    When we realize that we cannot develop either righteousness or faith by our own efforts, the devil makes his final attempt to keep us from coming to Christ.  "Now you've got it right,"  he says.  "What you need to do is to give up.  You must try hard to give up."
 
    It has been good news for many of us who have tried time and time again to make ourselves surrender, that surrender is a gift also, as surely as righteousness and faith are gifts.  "No man can empty himself of self.  We can only consent for Christ to accomplish the work."--Christ's Object Lessons, p. 159.
 
    Every gift that God has to give us, righteousness, peace, faith, victory, eternal life, and even surrender, is available in only one way--by coming into relationship with the Giver, through a personal communication with Him.

 THE CRISIS OF SURRENDER
 
        And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.  Matt. 21:44.
 
    "Day by day God instructs His children.  By the circumstances of the daily life He is preparing them to act their part upon that wider stage to which His providence has appointed them.  It is the issue of the daily test that determines their victory or defeat in life's great crisis."--The Desire of Ages, p. 383.  So there may be a series of little events, all based upon one issue: Am I going to do it myself, or am I going to trust God to do it?  If I fail and continue to fail day by day, I can plan on a big wrestling with the angel some night by the brook Jabbok.
 
    It happened to Jacob.  It happened to Joseph.  He must have failed a number of little crises, such as thinking he was pretty big in compassion to his other brothers.  But you see him bound as a slave, on his way to Egypt, crying his eyes out.  Peter found himself clutching the ground and grinding his face in the dirt in Gethsemane, wishing he could die because he had failed the crisis on the lake, failed again in the discussion about the Temple taxes.  Not until after he realized his weakness, by the fire, as he saw the pain he had brought to the One he loved the most, did he experience absolute dependence upon Christ.
 
    If conversion got by you imperceptibly, and you're one of those people who could never point to a time or date, or even year; if you've just been a good church member all your life, remember that absolute surrender is not going to come easily.  "The warfare against self is the greatest battle that was ever fought.  The yielding of self, surrendering all to the will of God, requires a struggle."--Steps to Christ, p. 43.  The crisis of surrender, the being broken, the falling on the Rock, is a big crisis in the life of the Christian.
 
    We are not indicating that you have to be totally transformed to be accepted by God.  Jacob was accepted by God at Bethel.  We are talking about the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.
 
    Whatever form that great crisis takes in your life, just remember that when the hand of God is placed on your shoulder it's not the hand of an enemy.  It's the hand of the best Friend you will ever have.

WHEN THE LIGHT DAWNS
 
        And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.  Gen. 32:24.
 
    There are several things that were characteristic of Jacob before his experience at Jabbok.  First, the sin of his deception of his father was ever before him.  It had been twenty years, but for twenty years he had been struggling with guilt over the fraud.  Something else had continued in his mind.  He was aware that the angels were protecting him, but Jacob still thought that he had to do something to secure his own safety.  He didn't believe that God could fulfil His promises made at Bethel without his help.
 
    Have you ever considered what one angel can do?  What about the camp of the Assyrians, 185,000 strong?  You know that story: "And when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses" (2 Kings 19:35).  It was the work of one angel walking through the camp.  Jacob knew that there were two companies of angels, one before and one behind.  He even named the place after the two companies, but he must not have known much about the strength of angels or the power of God to fulfill His promises.  He still thought he had to do something.  This is characteristic of the unsurrendered stance, thinking I have to do something myself.
 
    "This...will prove the ruin of many souls in our day.  Thousands are making the same mistake as did the Pharisees whom Christ reproved at Matthew's feast.  Rather than give up some cherished idea, or discard some idol of opinion, many refuse the truth which comes down from the Father of light.  They trust in self, and depend upon their own wisdom, and do not realize their spiritual poverty.  They insist on being saved in some way by which they may perform some important work.  When they see that there is no way of weaving self into the work, they reject the salvation provided."--The Desire of Ages, p. 280.
 
    We are told that Jacob came from that night of wrestling by the Jabbok a different man.  This was twenty years after his conversion.  Self-confidence was finally uprooted at Jabbok.  Absolute dependence upon God was discovered by Jacob that night.  From that point forward, the early cunning was no longer seen.  His life was marked by simplicity and truth.  He had learned the lesson of simple reliance upon heavenly power.