Our God is a God of salvation!

   Greetings to you in the name of Jesus Christ the Lord.  Have you ever thought about the reputation of God?  I mean the word God gets used in all sorts of contexts that can be argued whether they are really speaking about the one and only true God.  But even more than that, think about all the ways people talk about God.  Hopefully you have heard God be called gracious, loving, and merciful.  However, you might have also heard Him called angry, mean, spiteful, even hateful or evil.  We learn God's attributes as all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present.  Now just imagine if you took a poll of every person in the world on what they thought about God, what would those statistics look like?  If you organized the stats into a pie chart, how many slices would there be and which would be the biggest slice?  A lot of different people have a lot of different views of God.  What would your answer be?  If you had to to answer the question, "How would you describe God in one sentence?"   How would you answer?
   I think my first instinct might be to use the adjective gracious or loving.  I might try to sneak a little language of the creeds in there and include that My God, the one and only true Triune God, is a loving and gracious God.  However, look at how the psalmist from Psalm 68 speaks about God.  Our God is a God of salvation.  This is most certainly a correct way to answer the question, but is it one that would jump into your mind?  Now I am not trying to say that this is the best possible answer or anything like that.  I am simply trying to point out one more way God's Word shows us how He is as our God.  The Bible is the revealed knowledge of God which reveals to us who our God is, how He works in our lives, and what His will is for our lives.  So the psalmist's claim that our God is a God of salvation is just one more way of showing us who our God is.   He is truly a God of salvation.  Look at the extent He is willing to go to in order to give us our salvation.  He forgives Adam and Eve when they sin for the first time, He remains with His people and frees them from slavery in Egypt, He guides them through the wilderness, He rescues them from countless enemies during the judges and kings reign, and sends His one and only Son  to redeem all of us.  The entire story of the Old Testament is leading up and pointing towards God offering salvation to His people.  The four Gospels are obviously pointing to God's salvation for mankind with Jesus as the main character of all four.  The life, death, and resurrection of His Son was purely for our salvation.  And now during the life of the church, we are constantly reminded of the salvation we have in Christ as a free gift from God.  The promise of eternal life which is our Easter hope is the completion of the salvation God has already given us.  The entire narrative of God and His people is about salvation, and since He has done all the work for us, He truly is a God of salvation.  So there is nothing wrong with saying God is a gracious, loving, or merciful God.  But He shows us His grace, mercy, and love in the free gift of salvation He offers to all who believe in His Son Jesus.  So maybe the psalmist's answer of our God is a God of salvation does rank up there among the best answers, I'll let you rank them yourselves.  But be reassured, our God is most certainly a God of salvation as He offers salvation freely through His Son to you!  In the name of Jesus, Amen.