Suppose an Unholy Man Went to Heaven 

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Mike reads a J.C. Ryle tract. Will he agree with Ryle? The answer might surprise you!

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministries. My name is Mike Cavendroth.
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Welcome, welcome, welcome. Duplex Gratia Radio here. Yes, it has been a long, long week since I talked to you last.
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I have been doing quite a bit, thankfully. I don't really have much energy, but I'm just going anyway.
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So I figure I am about 60 miles in on a bike ride that needs to be 100 miles, and the last 40 you just buckle up.
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You just suffer through. It's sufferfest. And compared to so many others, I'm not suffering.
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So anyway, thank you if you're praying for me. The last week was long and hard because I did my normal job, but since my wife was out of town at night, especially,
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I wrote. Not rode, but I wrote. And so I have first pass done.
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Cancer is not your shepherd. A 31 -day guide to suffering.
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Now I still have to go through it again. Again, it was just first pass. I'm probably needing to work on it for another month.
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Then typeset and all that stuff. So my guess is April, May or something like that.
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It should come out. Now, gospel assurance, a 31 -day guide. I wrote 6 ,000 -word intro, and then every other chapter was by a
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Puritan. Thomas Mattin, Thomas Brooks, Thomas Watson. Every good Puritan starts with Thomas, except John Owen and William Perkins.
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I don't even really want to call them Puritans, but you know what I'm saying. In the small P, not technical
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P, capital P. And I think I wrote, well,
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I wrote the introduction, and I wrote I think the first 17 days, 3 or 4 of those days,
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I think I pulled from other books that I had written. And then the remaining days are by Thomas Brooks, Thomas Watson, Thomas Aquinas.
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No, no, no. See, I don't even think I've ever said Thomas Aquinas on the air. I've never said
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Thomas Aquinas on the air until now. That's a whole other show.
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That gets people in trouble. I don't quote Thomas Aquinas from the pulpit because I'm a pastor.
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I know how the academic world works, and the little
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Aquinas that I've read, I've read on topics that I agree with him on. He's very thorough, and he dissects problems kind of in a
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Turton -like fashion, or maybe Turton since he's later than Aquinas, still Aquinas, but very these are the objections, these are the objections from the other side.
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These are the answers. This is affirming. This is denying really in -depth analysis, and so I appreciate that.
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But anyway, I don't quote Aquinas because I'm a pastor, and I don't want people to think, oh, I should probably read
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Aquinas when some people are not equipped to read Aquinas because of soteriological issues.
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So anyway, back to the point. Chapters about day 17 through 31 or something are people that are, you know,
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Charles Spurgeon, that type of thing. So the first 17 chapters specifically designed to talk to people with cancer or those relatives of those suffering with cancer, but it easily could just put in a different word, put in ALS, put in MS, put in Alzheimer's.
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You could just put in anything you want, and so the overall book is about suffering, but with a flare toward cancer, and I just needed to get something done out of this, right?
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You're being afflicted with something, and all day, every day, as I said on my show a few weeks ago, you have cancer, and by the way, that's what spurred this on.
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Writing this book was thinking about that and getting good reports from people that listened. Quite a few people. I'm just thankful for that, and I just needed to do something, right?
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Remember in Ephesians, it says, be angry and do not sin. Don't let the sun go down in your anger and give, you know, the devil an opportunity, etc.
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Well, how can you be angry and not sin? And how do you not let the sun go down in your anger?
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Well, one of the things that you can do there, and I'm not going to give you the complete answer, a thorough answer,
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I'll give you an answer though, and that is when you're all revved up about something, you need to do something about it.
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You just don't go to bed all revved up because it's just going to be worse in the night, worse in the morning. If you're so worked up about something righteously, not sinfully, then get something done.
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And so that's what I wanted to do, and that's why I just started typing. I had the little dictation icon on my
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Microsoft Word and Mac, but I never used it. I probably should have, except writing and talking are two separate things.
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I did write the book in a no -compromise sexual fidelity style, very non -academic, very just the way we talk.
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If I were sitting at your bedside, how do we talk? And a variety of different chapters, no particular order, redeeming blood tests, you know, stuff like that, just things that popped into my mind.
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So Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio. You can write me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com.
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I'm trying to think where I'll be speaking. I don't try to go too many places because I'm trying to just hunker down here at the local church.
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October, the Pactum Conference with Pat Abendroth, 2024, October. You can register now.
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By the way, Pat and I want to take a group to Israel in 2025, but as I read the
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Times of Israel and Jay Post, drew some posts every day, I don't read the whole thing, but I go to the sites every day.
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It's not looking too good. I mean, maybe if I needed to go to Israel for, you know, just to go see something myself, fine.
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But then you have a group of people that you're responsible for, you know, parents that want to go and they leave their three -year -old to get babysat and then they never come home or whatever.
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They're just so complicated. So if you're interested, though, write me and say, I'd still be interested in going, no matter what's going on in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Iran with the
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Houthis, with the Gaza issue,
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West Bank issue. Let me know. So anyway, hope you could be benefited by the book.
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I was benefited just by the cathartic just release of the whole thing.
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And then for a couple of days, I just didn't really do much. I just sat there and thought, I'm just going to take myself a sauna.
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Every time I say sauna, people go, what are you talking about? Well, the Finnish who invented the sauna are famous for the sauna.
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They pronounce every letter. So it's S -A -U, a sauna, not sauna, sauna.
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Sounds like you're sawing along, sauna. It's a sauna. Come on, sauna.
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J .C. Ryle, Engelken, Bishop, 39 articles, lived in the 1800s.
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Here's something that's fascinating to me, and this regularly happens. If you think about something that was happening in one place, then it's weird to think simultaneously in another place, in another country, continent, something else is happening.
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So to think that Spurgeon was alive during the Civil War, it's just interesting to me. To think
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J .C. Ryle was alive when Spurgeon was alive, which means he was alive during the Civil War, very, very interesting.
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Died in 1900, J .C. Ryle. And J .C. Ryle, I can commend his books.
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His book Holiness is probably his most famous, although Warnings to the Churches, I like that.
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You have Old Paths, I think, a variety of Ryle books.
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And the Holiness book I really like where it says, this is what's different when it comes to justification and sanctification.
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And these are some similarities, i .e. God is the author, etc. Anyway, there's tract here
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I have in front of me, a chapel library tract, because I just picked this up from the Laff Tract. No, the tract rack.
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That's hard to say. Tract rack. Sauna. How long have you been on that medication?
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Quite a while. I've got ten more months to go. Here's the tract.
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Suppose an unholy man went to heaven. Very interesting.
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Hebrews 12, 14, Without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Which obviously can't be a certain amount earned by ourselves.
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That's another story. See Stephen Baugh. Heidelblog .com
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.org .net. I think it's .net, isn't it? I don't know. I'm going to read some of this and make some comments.
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Suppose an unholy man went to heaven. Suppose for a moment that you were allowed to enter heaven without holiness.
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What would you do? What possible enjoyment could you feel there? To which of all the saints would you join yourself?
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And by whose side would you sit? Their pleasures are not your pleasures. Their tastes are not your tastes.
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Their character not your character. How could you possibly be happy if you had not been holy on earth?
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Now perhaps you love the company of the light and careless, the worldly -minded and the covetous, the reveler and the pleasure -seeker, the ungodly and the profane.
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There will be none such in heaven. Now perhaps you think the saints of God too strict and particular and serious.
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You'd rather avoid them. You have no delight in their society. There will be no other company in heaven.
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Now perhaps you think praying, Scripture reading, excuse me, think praying, Scripture reading, and hymn singing dull and melancholy and a stupid work.
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A thing to be tolerated now and then but not enjoyed. You reckon the Sabbath a burden and a weariness.
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You could not possibly spend more than a small part of it in worshiping God. But remember, heaven is a never -ending
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Sabbath. The inhabitants thereof rest not day and night saying, Holy, holy, holy,
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Lord God Almighty, and singing the praise of the Lamb. Revelation 4 .8
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How could an unholy man find pleasure in occupation such as this? Think you that such a one would delight to meet
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David, Paul, and John after a life spent in doing the very things they spoke against? Would he take sweet counsel with them and find that he and they had much in common?
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Think you, above all, that he would rejoice to meet Jesus, the crucified one, face to face, after cleaving to the sins for which he died, after loving his enemies and despising his friends?
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Would he stand before Jesus with confidence and join in the cry, This is our God. We have waited for Him.
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We will be glad and rejoice in His salvation. Isaiah 25 .9
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Think you not, rather, that the tongue of an unholy man would cleave to the roof of his mouth with shame, and his only desire would be to be cast out?
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He would feel a stranger in a land he knew not, a black sheep amid Christ's holy flock.
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The voice of cherubim, seraphim, the song of angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven would be a language he could not understand.
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The very air would seem an air he could not breathe. Ryle goes on.
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I know not what others may think, but to me it does seem clear that heaven would be a miserable place to an unholy man.
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It cannot be otherwise. People may say, in a vague way, they hope to go to heaven, but they do not consider what they say.
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We must be heavenly minded and have heavenly taste in the life that now is, or else we shall never find ourselves in heaven in the life to come.
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And now, before I go any further, let me say a few words by way of application.
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For one thing, let me ask everyone who may read these pages or listen to this podcast, are you holy?
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Listen, I pray you, to the question I put to you this day, do you have anything of the holiness of which
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I have been speaking? I do not ask whether you attend church regularly, whether you have been baptized and received the
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Lord's Supper, whether you have the name of a Christian. I ask something more than all this.
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Are you holy or are you not? I do not ask whether you approve of holiness in others, whether you like to read the lives of holy people, to talk of holy things, and to have on your table holy books, whether you mean to be holy and hope you will be holy someday.
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I ask something further. Are you yourself holy this very day or are you not?
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And why do I ask so straightly and press the question so strongly? I do it because the scripture says,
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Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. It is written. It is not my fancy. It is the Bible, not my private opinion.
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It is the word of God, not of man. Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. Alas, what searching, sifting words are these?
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What thoughts come across my mind as I write them down? I look at the world and see the greater part of it lying in wickedness.
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I look at professing Christians and see the vast majority having nothing of Christianity but the name.
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I turn to the Bible and hear the Spirit saying, Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. Surely it is a text that ought to make us consider our ways and search our hearts.
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Surely it should raise within us solemn thoughts and send us to prayer. You may try to put me off by saying you feel much and think much about these things, far more than many suppose.
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I answer, this is not the point. The poor lost souls in hell do as much as this.
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The great question is not what you think and what you feel, but what you do. You may say it was never meant that all
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Christians should be holy and that holiness such as I have described is only for great saints and people of uncommon gifts.
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I answer, I cannot see that in Scripture. I read that every man who has this hope in Christ purifies himself.
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1 John 3 .3 Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. You may say it is impossible to be so holy and to do our duty in this life at the same time.
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The thing cannot be done. I answer, you are mistaken. It can be done. With Christ on your side, nothing is impossible.
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It has been done by many. Daniel, Obadiah, David, and the servants of Nero's household are all examples that go to prove it.
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You may say if you were so holy, you would be unlike other people. I answer, I know it well. It is just what you ought to be.
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Christ's true servants were always unlike the world around them, a separate nation, a peculiar people.
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Titus 2 .14 And you must be so too if you would be saved. You may say at this rate, very few will be saved.
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I answer, I know it. It is precisely what we are told in the Sermon on the Mount. The Lord Jesus said so 1 ,800 years ago.
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Straight is the gate and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
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Few will be saved because few will take the trouble to seek salvation.
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Men will not deny themselves the pleasures of sin in their own way for a little season. You may say these are hard sayings.
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The way is very narrow. I answer, I know it. So says the Sermon on the Mount. The Lord Jesus said so 1 ,800 years ago.
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He always said that men, if they should be his disciples, must take up the cross daily and that they may be ready to cut off hand or foot.
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Matthew 18 It is in religion as it is in other things.
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There are no gains without pains. That which costs nothing is worth nothing.
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Mike Ebendroth, reading a little tract called Suppose an Unholy Man Went to Heaven, J .C. Ryle. All right.
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What do you think of that? Now, full disclosure, I picked it up.
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I generally like Ryle. You know where this is going to go. And I would still commend him to you.
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Yet, in this little tract, and maybe the chapter before and the chapter after helps.
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I'm sure it does. Because after reading the holiness book by Ryle, and even reading his commentaries, like in the gospels, excellent stuff.
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But if that's all I read, it was just that, I don't think my assurance is too high.
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Is yours? How holy are you without holiness? It's almost like Ryle thinks that there's a certain amount of holiness needed to get to heaven.
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And to that I answer, well, that's true. Perfect holiness needed to get to heaven. Perfect righteousness needed to get to heaven.
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We can't make the law light now and say, well, we'll try our best and God will make up for the rest. That sounds like a different religion to me.
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If you need to be personally, practically holy, notice
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I didn't say positionally yet. We'll see where we're going though. If you need to be personally and practically holy, how holy do you have to be to see the
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Lord? 10 % holy? Working your way to get better?
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More holy than we were last year? Less backslidings this year? Less sins this year? Better than the pagan?
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Better than the new convert? We have to be careful. We just go to Hebrews 12, 14.
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Like many people today, with a probably good desire to spur people on to holiness, but then they use it as kind of a club to say, you better get going if you're going to ever make it.
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So before I tell you a little bit more about holiness, let's think through this tract a little bit more.
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I really, really enjoyed the first part where you have unbelievers who somehow have this vague notion of, well,
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I'd like to get to heaven one day. They think it's good. They don't want to be tortured. They're not masochistic. They don't want to go to hell.
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And so they say, I hope to make it there. But they have no desire for holy things, including the
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Lord Jesus, the ultimate holy one of God. Even the demons recognize that in Luke 4. So I like that part, right?
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We have to be telling people that are unbelievers that desire heaven for what they get only, not for the person in heaven, the
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Lord Jesus, the center of heaven. Are you sure? Stop and think. You're not even being rational.
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You're not even being logical. You hate the things of God and you want to be in heaven with God. You hate the people of God.
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You want to be in heaven with the people of God. You love lawlessness and you want to be up in heaven where there's no lawlessness.
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So I think that part of the tract is really good, right? You're going to get to heaven and meet David, Paul and John and Daniel and these other people when, if you met them on earth, they would really convict you by their godly lifestyles.
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I think that's certainly an excellent part. And I think it's a good question to ask an unbeliever, are believers, are you holy?
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Because that gets them to think, are you holy? Fair, right?
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We know there are false converts. We know that people are saying one thing and they keep saying that they have faith, that they keep having no works and that faith can't save them,
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James 2. We know that. But for the Christian, for the Christian that is trusting in the
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Lord Jesus, looking to the Lord for favor alone, realizes there's no grace outside of the triune
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God, realizes that there's no amount of work that they could ever do in order to please God because God requires perfect, entire, exact, perpetual obedience.
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And so they look to the Lord Jesus and they throw themselves on Jesus. They rest on Jesus. They receive
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Jesus as the sin bearer, as the representative who came to obey.
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To obey is better than sacrifice. Behold, I've come to do your will, Psalm 40, Hebrews 10. And they trust in his resurrection for their justification.
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For those Christians, I don't want to have people use this verse, whether it's
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J .C. Ryle or John Piper or anyone else, without holiness, no man shall see the Lord.
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I don't want that to happen because it's not meant to be a club. There were some Indians, some locals up in Quebec, and they would have a club, and that club would be used to kill the fish.
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They'd catch the fish in nets, bring them back to the shore, and then they'd beat the heads with sticks to kill the fish, the big fish.
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And the nickname for those clubs were priests because that's what they got when they went to the
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Roman Catholic service. And by the way, I'm not just blasting Catholicism because many evangelical circles do the very same thing, and especially liberals and especially word -faith people, prosperity.
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It's just all law. Do this, do this, do this, do this. And there is a place to obey
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God's law as a Christian, right? We want to say no to sin. We want to say yes to righteousness. We want to deny self.
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We want to pick up cross and follow Him. We want to do all those things. May it be never less than odious for us to think that anything but righteousness is what
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God wants in our walk with Him in a daily way. But without holiness, no one will see the
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Lord. Probably the best thing you can do when someone quotes to you anything in the
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Bible, you ought to think of context. And what is the context of Hebrews?
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What's the context of Hebrews? I think there's 11 chapters before chapter 12. And what are those 11 chapters?
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It's all about the Lord Jesus, this great high priest, a holy high priest.
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And this holy high priest is truly God, chapter 1. He's truly human, chapter 2, to sympathize with our weaknesses.
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He's greater than Aaron. He's greater than Moses, chapter 3. Hear Jesus when you come to Him instead of a throne of judgment like every other throne room, like every other judgment hall.
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Because the Lord Jesus and what He's done, sent by the Father in love, gone in love, assisted by the
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Spirit in love. He rescues sinners and He sympathizes with them.
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He, the sinless one, still knows what it's like to be tempted and sympathizes. And He rescues and delivers and He doesn't help angels.
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He stoops down and He helps sons of Abraham. He helps believers. He helps believers like you that are sorry for their sins and want to obey more and want to have more holiness.
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Be holy for I am holy. They want that. But they realize that in the context of sanctification, in the context of our response to God's work, we're never going to be completely holy.
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And God never requires something less than perfect holiness. And that is why, whether you want wisdom, righteousness, holiness, sanctification, justification, it all comes with Jesus Christ.
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United with Him. And so you, dear Christian, are holy enough to get into heaven.
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Did you hear that? You are holy enough, dear believer, to get into heaven. Well, you don't know what
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I just did this last week. You don't know what I did this morning. You don't know how I treated my husband last night. You don't know how
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I treated my wife yesterday. I know. But you're a child of God, adopted.
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And you confess your sins and Jesus is faithful and just to forgive. And Jesus has an advocate we have before the
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Father's face. 1 John 2, verses 1 and 2. And you could study the rest of the language in Hebrews 12, verse 14, as I said before with Steve Baugh's article and his interview on Office Hours.
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Excellent stuff. But I'm just saying big picture. If you can't get into the Greek and you don't know this, that, or the other, okay, what does it mean?
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If it means I have to have a certain amount of holiness to get into heaven, in terms of holy living, how much do
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I need? Now, maybe you say, well, there has to be some amount because sanctification and justification are always tethered together, separate though they may be in concept.
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When justification is declared, sanctification begins. Okay, fine.
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But the way to get into heaven is perfect obedience, perfect holiness, set apart for God perfectly, not sinning against God perfectly.
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And will we have desires then to be obedient? Yes. Will we have holy living?
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Yes. But I would have to take a disagreement with the venerable
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Bishop Ryle, at least in this tract. Maybe it's with Chapel Library selecting this part without giving me the front end or the back end and explaining it a little bit more.
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But I just want Christians not to be robbed of assurance. So I commend the first part of the tract. The last part of the tract,
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I don't like so much. And if you keep hearing as a Christian over and over and over, are you holy?
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Are you holy? Are you sure you're holy? Are you holy? Are you holy? Without holiness, no one will see the
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Lord. Are you holy? The answer is, if you're a Christian, yes, I am. I stand in the stead of Jesus Christ and I'm in Him, the
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Holy One. And when God sees me, He sees Jesus' perfect holiness, the
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Holy One of God. Holy, holy, holy is Lord God Almighty. He sees me in Him, so yes,
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I am holy. Christian, are you holy? Yes. Positionally, practically, I'm working out my salvation with fear and trembling.
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Simple. You're holy in Christ Jesus. H -O -L -Y and W -H -O -L -L -Y.
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My name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. Without holiness, no one shall see the