Beyond The Basics: Evangelism (part 5)

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Heaven, Hell and Everything In Between (part 6)

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Father in heaven, we thank you just to be here this morning, just to reflect on all that you have done on our behalf, even as we think about the
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Lord Jesus, how He lived the life that we are commanded to live, died the death that we deserve, was resurrected on the third day and now sits at your right hand.
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And Father, we just praise you for all that you have done for us through Him. Lord, just pray that this time would be pleasing to you.
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In Christ's name, we pray. Well, we've talked some about presuppositional apologetics.
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Sometimes you see things in the front of your Bible and they just make you forget what you were talking about. And I thought we would just briefly cover a couple of things because I think some good issues have come up through our discussion.
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And I want to invite you to look at first Psalm 19. And one of the reasons
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I want to turn here is because I think what we've kind of danced around, there are many apologetics approaches.
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There are many approaches to preaching the gospel. And one of them, has anybody ever heard of the idea of a first cause?
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Can someone explain what a first cause is? Frank? OK, there has to be a first cause to give everything else a cause.
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Yes, that's right. And basically, it's a philosophical argument. If we look at everything that exists and we say, well, that something had to come from somewhere, kind of a cosmological argument.
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And we're going to say that everything had to start from some place.
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And from that point, then someone would argue the existence of God.
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What's the problem with an argument like that? I think it can be very complex and overwhelming.
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Yep. What's another problem with it? Pam says they might ask, well, who made
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God? And so it gets into a circular argument over that. Yes. Any other ideas? How about this?
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There are a number of religions that have some explanation for first cause.
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You can believe in a God who created everything and not believe in the God of the Bible. And ultimately, what our objective is, when we preach the gospel to someone, is we want to confront them with the truth claims of Christ.
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And I think, though, that there is a place for using creation as an argument.
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Let's look at Psalm 19. And I'm going to read the first several verses here.
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The heavens are telling of the glory of God, and their expanse is declaring the work of his hands.
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Just on that first verse, just reading it, what do you think? It's obvious that there's a creator.
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Second verse, day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words.
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Their voice is not heard. They don't really speak. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their utterance is to the end of the world.
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In them he has placed a tent for the sun, which has a bridegroom coming out, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber.
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It rejoices a strong man to run his course. Its rising is from one end of the heavens, and its circuit to the other end of them.
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And there is nothing hidden from its heat. The whole point of this is, well, let's see it said another way.
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Let's look at Romans 1. And we'll get to the other issue concerning an argument from creation.
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Romans 1, beginning in verse 18.
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For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
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Now, that last part of there, last part, suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
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Well, what is it that they're suppressing? Paul thankfully tells us right there, because, in verse 19, he's going to tell us exactly what they're suppressing.
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Because that which is known about God is evident within them. For God made it evident to them.
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For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature having been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
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They look, men look around at the world. They see the organization. They see how, listen, some of these things
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I've said before, but the sun comes up in the east pretty much every day.
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If it comes up in the west tomorrow, well, you've got some concerns.
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You know, did the world flip around? It must have. The world is a world of order, and it reflects a
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God of order. A God made these things. God put them all in place.
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And that's what Psalm 19 is telling us. That's what Romans 1 is telling us. All these things are obvious.
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We know it intuitively. It is put in us, this knowledge that God exists.
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But what do men do with it? They suppress it. They hold it down. And so if I say, look, here's what you need to understand.
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There's a God, and he created everything. And you know why I can tell you that there's a God who created everything? It's because everything exists the way it is.
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The sun comes up in the east every day. It sets in the west. You know, cats have cats. Dogs have dogs, et cetera, et cetera.
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And therefore, you have to believe in God. And he just says, well, I've been suppressing that since my youth, so thank you.
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But no thank you. I've been holding down that truth. I've been ignoring it. I've been lying about it since I had any semblance of a conscience.
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So why would that impact me now? So now, all that said, it is only within the confines of, within the boundaries of a
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Christian worldview that truth can be understood. You cannot understand truth because you cannot understand anything about what exists apart from God.
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You cannot understand, let's put it this way. Mathematics, not explained in the
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Bible, but without the God who upholds order, who keeps everything exactly as it is now, mathematics is a farce.
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If you wake up tomorrow and somebody says, you know, they start putting things in mathematical journals, you know, 2 plus 2 equals 5.
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And then they go on and they spend page after page proving it. Well, then you'll know that something has radically changed in the universe.
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But that's not going to happen. There's a constancy. And so many scientific theories are based on this, are based on, well, it's the same yesterday as it was the day before, et cetera.
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It's called uniformitarianism. It goes on and on and on. And so without that, there is no basis for science.
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There is no basis for rational thought. There is no basis for truth. And these are exactly the sorts of things that on a philosophical page that everybody's wrestling with.
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But scientifically, the Bible is absolutely accurate in what it says.
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And it's true because God upholds everything. So we can't know anything apart from God.
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So people who run around saying they don't believe in God, but they believe in everything continuing on exactly the way it is, they have no basis for saying that.
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None. Any comments? I mean, some of you guys have studied this issue.
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I know Charlie and Bruce probably have. No one can say that they believe in evolution or anything else because these require leaps that we just don't see.
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They don't exist. They can't be cataloged. They come up with all these fossil remains.
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Well, this was such and such and such and such. And I'm just like, every time they come up with one of these discoveries, I don't know about you, but I just kind of go, well, what do we know?
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We know A, that didn't happen. So B, we just have to wait until they disprove it. How many historical missing links or whatever have been found?
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I mean, they should be embarrassed now to even come on the news and say, we found the missing link because give it time.
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It'll be disproven, just like always. That's just inevitable. I don't even worry about it.
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Of course, I don't worry about it. OK, any comments or questions about that?
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All right, we've been talking about, we're on page 45, talking about, in terms of evangelism, the obstacles of sin, self, and Satan.
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Got to like those S's, sin, self, Satan. We talked about total radical depravity.
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Doesn't mean that everybody's as bad as they possibly could be, it just means that everybody starts out opposed to God, enemies of God.
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It is God who reconciles us. We don't start out somehow neutral. We talked about man's profane reputation and heart.
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The heart is deceitful, wicked. We don't desire God in and of ourselves.
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And now we are down to man's perverted reasoning. We don't see things naturally.
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We don't see things rightly. We don't look at things the way God looks at them.
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We don't look at things truthfully. I mean, even just look at what we were saying there in Romans 1, what we read in Romans 118, that since the beginning of the world, the order of things, the nature of things, the truths about God that are in us have been evident by looking at the world.
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And what do we do? We suppress that truth. Let's look at Genesis 6, 5.
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Here we are at the time of the flood. God looks at the world. He's very satisfied with everything that's going on.
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Oh, wait, that's not right. Yes, yes,
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I do. They're absolutely free, no cost or obligation.
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And now I have no extra notes. All right, Genesis 6, verse 5, and who has that?
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Go ahead, Charlie. Pretty harsh, every thought.
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And we think, you know, sometimes we think, well, we have some, we live in a pretty wicked world, but God looks out at the world and He says that at the time of the flood that every person's there, every thought was wicked continually.
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Well, what does that mean? And how does that pertain to today? Well, that was just at the time of the flood. Things have changed.
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We're not going for that, I guess. Listen, apart from God, I mean, well, let's just think about the great commandments.
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Jesus says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. Are those things that we can do on Sunday only?
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No. So if we're to do those continually, that's the command. To do them continually, failing to do that represents sin.
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And what he's saying here, what Moses is saying in Genesis is that this is how man's heart is.
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This is how he thinks. This is what he does. Let's look at Ephesians 4, 17 to 19.
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I mean, any idea that somehow the people of that time or the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were especially wicked and all those kind of things,
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I mean, they were, but those kind of things could never happen again. Well, no, really, this is just pretty much the heart of man apart from the regenerating work of the
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Holy Spirit. Ephesians 4, verses 17 and 19, who has that? Go ahead,
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Joey. It doesn't really sound like people have changed very much.
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By Gentiles, basically we could just expand that to mean unbelievers, because it's how unbelievers think.
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This is the world. This is the people outside of Christ. So when we're confronting them, when we're talking to them, when we're trying to preach the gospel to them, we need to keep in mind that this is who we're dealing with.
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We're not dealing with somebody who's neutral. We're dealing with somebody who's suppressing the truth. We're dealing with someone who is darkened in their reasoning, who are ignorant to the truth, but not ignorant because they cannot know it, but ignorant because they choose to be, because they've hardened their hearts.
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Man's perpetual resistance, always resisting the truth. We started reading
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Romans 1, so I don't want to go back there. They suppress the truth and unrighteousness, and there's a chain of unrighteousness, as it were, from there.
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If Romans 8 represents the golden chain of salvation, then Romans 1 is kind of the golden chain of unrighteousness and sin begets sin, and further and further down the ladder you go as you reside in sin.
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Let's look at Colossians 1 .21, and who has that?
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Okay, Brad. Okay, and so this is describing, of course, believers.
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This is what they used to be, alienated, estranged from God, hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds.
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Again, not neutral, opposed, always opposed, resisting
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God. And I think sometimes we see a lot of evangelism that just says,
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I remember we used to go by this church in Southern California, and it was in Spanish. And so instantly, as soon as I read the sign, and I would always translate it in my mind, but it said,
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Jesus is the answer to your problems. I went, well, there's truth to that.
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There's definitely truth to that, but I don't think it was in the way that they meant it. Jesus as kind of like the salve for your troubled marriage, for your financial difficulties, for the problems you're having at work, for your depression.
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Those things are all true, but they're secondary results.
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The main thing that, if it just said, Jesus is the answer for your sins, that's the issue.
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All these other things are kind of secondary issues that after your sins are dealt with, and you're looking at the world rightly, yes, you'll have better marriage, you'll have better financial situations because you'll learn how to take care of them.
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You'll learn how to deal with people at work. You'll learn how to deal with a lot of problems in your life, but when we preach the gospel, we don't preach it as some kind of a, well, the classic example.
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I was at a funeral, a friend of mine had Lou Gehrig's disease and died. He was in the very first Bible study
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I was in. He was in my very first Promise Keepers group. Now, there's kind of a funny story. I didn't go to the
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Promise Keepers thing. I was the only one who didn't. The four guys come back, and they're all fired up, and so we're all police officers.
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We're all gonna be Promise Keepers, and we got the book, and we got together to talk about it, and we're sharing what we've, sharing.
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We're sharing what we learned as we read through the book, and so what'd you guys think?
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And there's like silence, and I don't remember which one of us went first.
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One of us just said, well, you know, I didn't really get much. I thought it was kind of worthless. Well, yeah, me too, me too.
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Oh, let's get rid of this book. And that was it. That was the end of it. You know, we started, you know, after that, we were railing against Promise Keepers, but it didn't take long.
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I don't even remember where I was going. Oh, I was at the funeral for my friend, and you know,
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I've told this story, but there were hundreds of people there, most of them police officers, and this pastor got up there, and he said, every head bowed, every eye closed, and he started praying, and he just said, you know, some of you have tried many things to deal with your issues, you know, your problems in life, and he said, alcohol, drugs, and I'm just like, who does he, you know, what is he talking to, heroin addicts here, you know,
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I don't know, but so we just went through this whole litany of sinful behaviors that people try to mask their pain and all this, and he goes, and he's praying all this, and he says, would you just try
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Jesus for six months? That's what
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I said. I'm just like, I'm going, six months? I wrote him a letter, and I just said, you know,
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I said, this is gonna sound a little blasphemous, but I want you to know that you made the Lord sound like laundry detergent.
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He'll get your shirts whiter and brighter. Six months, what is that? Where does it ever say anything like that?
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Give him a test run. Get rid of your old soap, try this. No, it's just, it is blasphemous.
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It's just wrong, and he wrote back, and he said, well, you know, I can see you have some really strong convictions on the matter, and I don't think it would be of any benefit to continue, you know, talking, and I'm just like, yeah,
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I have some really strong convictions. I think that if you're gonna preach the gospel, you should preach the gospel. Call me old -fashioned, which most of you do, but that's neither here nor there.
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It is embarrassing. People approach this, again, why would he do something like that, it's because he thought, you know what, if I just make the gospel less threatening, if I just make it seem like, you know what, you can just try it, and if you don't like it,
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Jesus said, consider the cost. Jesus said, if you don't hate your father, mother, sister, brother, if you don't put everything else aside and follow me, you're not worthy of me.
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And people left. His goal shouldn't have been to try to make 400 or 500 converts to six months of Christianity.
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His goal should have been to reach out to three, four, five, or 500, however many the
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Lord was willing to work on. Those are the people, the people that were being convicted of their sinfulness, that's what he needed to do.
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Not somehow just, you know, leave everybody feeling pretty good, well, you know, I think
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I'll try Jesus for six months, well, I don't really think I can, I really like my current, you know, program.
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This isn't comparative shopping, and we shouldn't appeal to people like that. Point E, total inability.
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Total inability. Unsaved people, in and of themselves, do not have the capacity to believe.
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They do not have the capacity to understand. Let's look at Jeremiah 13, 23.
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Who has Jeremiah 13, 23? Steve.
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What's the answer to that? Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard, you know, you could put in there, can the
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German change his skin, or the, the answer is no. They can't, no one can change, you know, just because, well,
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I think I'll just change. The point is, this is a matter of nature.
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People don't go from doing evil to doing good, just because they will it. Let's look at 1
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Corinthians 2, 14. This isn't a matter of willpower. I'm going to try better.
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It's like Pastor Mike used to say, and I'm sure he still does say it. Here's a picture, and I mean, it's even worse than the picture
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I'm going to give. It's a picture of being the guy who goes into the prison to preach the gospel to people.
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You just walk in there and you just say, hey, be good. I know you've been bad before, but be good.
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No, that's, that's not it. That is not the gospel at all. Look at 1 Corinthians 2, 14.
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I'll read this, but a natural man, an unsaved man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.
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He doesn't understand them, but listen to this, and he cannot understand them. Because they are spiritually appraised.
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Cannot. What's the difference between may and can? May I understand, you may.
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Can I understand, you cannot. You don't have the capacity.
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An unsaved person cannot understand the things of God. You say, well, I don't understand that.
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Well, okay, there might be a problem. I cannot understand, an unsaved person cannot understand.
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They can read the Bible all they want, and I've said this many times. There are hundreds of commentaries written by unsaved people.
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One of my least favorite ones, I'll never forget reading this. It's by, I have it, still have it in my library.
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Actually, I think I have it on computer now, but written by Andrew Lincoln. He wrote a commentary on Ephesians, technically very good.
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And in his preface, he explains, I don't know, must have been 30, 40 pages, on why
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Paul didn't write Ephesians. I'm like, okay, I, Paul. What part of that do you not understand?
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What's hard to understand about that? That's not, you know, some, but the unsaved mind will twist and distort and look at all these kind of reasons why, you know, well,
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I don't know, Paul didn't use exactly the same language as when he spoke to, well, of course he didn't.
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Different situations, different, I mean, you know, when you write your mom, do you send the letter, same letter that you send to your, you know, wife, your girlfriend, whatever?
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No, they're different things. If you're overseas, you know, serving in the military, do you send the same letter as you would as, you know, if you're writing from, you know,
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Worcester to Boston? No, it's a, you know, different context, different needs, different people that you're talking to, different vocabulary.
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Okay. No one can. No one can.
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One of the most fascinating things and infuriating things, I read a book called Debating Calvinism.
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One of our friends here, James White, been here on a number of occasions, co -wrote a book with not one of our friends,
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Dave Hunt. And, you know, I read this while I was in California and I used to tell my wife, you know,
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I was reading the book and I'd read Dave Hunt's thing and it'd be like 10 o 'clock at night and she'd go, aren't you gonna go to bed? And I'm going, no,
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I'm so mad right now. I've got to read the James White chapter before I get to this.
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And I'll explain why that's important here in a second. John six, verse 37.
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Would somebody read that please? John six, verse 37. Casey.
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Okay. Would you read 44 and 45 please? I mean, there you have it.
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You know, the key thing that I wanted to get to. I mean, this is all of God and that's the point of the first part.
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All of the Father gives me, so it doesn't have to do with our will. But if you look at just the first words there in verse 44, no one can, no one has the capacity, no one is able.
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And, you know, I read Dave Hunt and basically in about two pages, he takes no one can and turns it to everyone may.
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And I'm like, you know, some hidden Greek. He didn't, he wasn't using
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Greek, but he said, here was his reasoning. He said, there are literally hundreds of passages.
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He might've said thousands. I mean, it was hyperbolic because there was no asterisk in a list of hundreds of verses.
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So there are literally hundreds of verses that indicate that we can choose. So this cannot be the right meaning of John six, 44.
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What's the problem with that? Yeah, well, show me one would be a good thing.
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What's the other problem with it? Charlie. Yeah, how do you do that?
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Yeah, okay.
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Other verses that back it up, 1, 12 and 13. One says, you know, as many as received him in verse 12, but then in verse 13, it goes on to say that those who did so, what?
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Right, it was not of the will of man, but the will of God, right. So I mean, here we have, and the ultimate problem is, you know, if you're gonna say there are hundreds of passages that say that you have the capacity, and here, you know, it seems to indicate that you don't, therefore, we must not understand it right, is you are taking things, you're violating the number one rule of hermeneutics, which is context.
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The second rule of hermeneutics, which is context. And the third rule of hermeneutics, which is context.
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Context, context, context. You're saying, well, wait, wait, wait. That can't be what Jesus meant.
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Well, in the context, that's exactly what he meant. And how do we know that? Because we follow the whole context, and we went all the way through, you know, 64, 65, and all the way to the end of the chapter.
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What is it, 66, 68, 70, whatever it is. We go all the way to the end of the chapter.
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We're going to see that everybody just goes, wait a second, there's a multitude of people following him after all these miracles that he'd done.
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And they said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're setting the bar too high.
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You're saying that no one can. We don't get, that's a hard saying. You're saying we have to partake of you.
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We don't get this, we're leaving. And he's saying, no one can. Naturally speaking, no one is able.
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It's just like John, I mean, John three, again, where he says, you must be born again.
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How do you do these things? You don't naturally do them. It is only by the empowerment of the spirit of God.
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No one can. No one has the ability, the capacity to do so. So we have problems.
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Unsaved people are resistant. They're truth -proof, you could say.
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They don't, cannot naturally understand the truth. They don't have the ability to do these things.
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And there are other problems. Satanic opposition. Let's look at 2 Corinthians four, verses three to four.
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And I was even thinking, you know, the Bible tells us that Satan prowls the earth like a lion seeking people to devour.
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And I thought, you know what? How does he do that?
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Well, he does it, he is one person, and he seeks people whom he can devour.
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But he also has a multitude of helpers. We would call them demons, and we would also call them false teachers, people who destroy souls.
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They are soul destroyers. Satanic opposition. 2 Corinthians four, verses three and four.
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Dave, he is in essence,
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Satan is in essence, blindfolding them, keeping them in darkness. Now, certainly if the
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God of the universe unveils their eyes, they will believe. But Satan is busy keeping people buried in their own sin, in their own obstruction to the gospel.
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Our conclusion is a man -centered approach is doomed to fail. Telling people that, you know, lowering the bar for them, making it easy for them, telling people that they can try
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Jesus for six months, that is doomed to fail. Let's look at Romans six, verses 17, 18, and 20.
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I mean, we could go to many places. You know, the man -centered approach, also known as the seeker -sensitive approach is doomed to fail because there are no seekers.
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You got a problem. Bible says that none seek after God in Romans three. All right,
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Romans six, 17, 18, and a party upstairs. But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed.
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And having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. And I skipped 19 because it's just so long.
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Verse 20, for when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
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And what Paul's saying there is, there are two conditions in life. One is a slave to be a slave of sin before the cross and a slave of righteousness afterwards.
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You cannot appeal to slaves who do not have the capacity to just throw off the bonds of slavery by themselves.
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Roman numeral number eight, bottom of 45, in light of the obstacles, who can be saved? And that is the question.
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Who can be saved? How many times was Jesus, you know, the disciples said, oh, you know, that's true.
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Who can be saved? In different contexts, but still the same idea.
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I mean, it's just so, when we think about how depraved the human heart is, how filled with sin it is, how it suppresses the truth, how you've got satanic opposition, all these things going on.
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Well, how can anyone be saved? And the answer is in Ephesians two. Now I always like to recommend to people when they're struggling with election, different issues that they study,
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Ephesians one and two together, because, you know, in Ephesians one, Paul's just writing in verses three to 14, just about all the greatness.
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I mean, he just blows up in praise for what God has done to the lives of believers.
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And in Ephesians two, he tells us why all that was necessary. Let me just,
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I'll just read Ephesians two, one through 10. Because this describes, when we think about our former lives, this tells us everything that we need to know.
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And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, not mostly dead, not somewhat alive, not a slowed pulse, low blood pressure, dead, in which you formerly walked, which is to describe the course of your life, according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,
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Satan himself, of the spirit that is now working in the sins of disobedience. Among them, we too all, notice all, we don't say that we're better than anyone because we're not, but for the grace of God, we would be in the same situation.
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We were in that situation. We all formerly lived in the less of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature, children of wrath, even as the rest,
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Satan's children, and fit only for the wrath of God. And then the best two words in the Bible, but God, but God, we were in root, we were on that broad road that leads to destruction, but God moved us, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, not we loved him.
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Even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him.
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We are raised with Christ, and seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come, he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
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For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not as a result of the works of works so that no one may boast.
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For we are his workmanship. We are his trophies. We are his sculptures, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which
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God created beforehand so that we would walk in them. It's all of God from beginning to end.
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We had nothing to offer. We were dead. God takes us, shapes us. He does all the work.
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And because of that, we can have hope that when we are preaching the gospel, that some people will get saved.
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Because it is all of God, not of our slick presentation, not because we lowered the bar far enough for somebody to get over.
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In light of all the obstacles, who can be saved? Whomever God chooses by the sovereign grace of God.
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Titus 3, three to seven. And who has that?
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Yes, go ahead. Yes, yes. Well, it's probably not my favorite approach to say
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God hates you. It's kind of the opposite. God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
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Well, that's not true. But how about God hates you and has a horrible plan for your life? I don't know if I'd necessarily go there.
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I typically, it's a good question, but what I want to do is I want to let the Bible, if there's something harsh to say,
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I always like to say, I don't want them to argue with me. If they have a problem,
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I want it to be with the Bible. So I'd probably go to something like Psalm five, where it says, for you are not a
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God who takes pleasure in wickedness. No evil dwells with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes.
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You hate all who do iniquity, all who sin, all who characteristically sin. The Bible says that God hates sinners.
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The Bible says in Romans five that before Christ, we were enemies.
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You know, you don't say, I mean, we wouldn't expect someone to say, you know, I really, you know, somebody who was a victim of 9 -11, a family of someone who was a victim of 9 -11, we wouldn't expect them the next day to be on the news saying, you know,
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I really love Osama bin Laden. We wouldn't expect that. And in the same way, only multiplied millions of times, we wouldn't expect
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God to say, well, even though you sin against me, and every day you display how much you hate me, I love you.
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There is a holy wrath for sin. And so, you know, would
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I say that? The answer is no. But did you have another question besides that? And that's true.
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But I mean, and so my point in reading Psalm five to you is, I know that's exactly what people say. Well, God, you know, hates sin, but he loves sinners.
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Well, that's true, but he loves sinners who repent of their sin. That's why it says he hates all.
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He doesn't love them. He hates all who do iniquity, meaning all who habitually, as the course and pattern of their life, reject him and sin.
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So again, I always just like, if people are gonna argue and they do like to argue, I really like to have them argue with the word of God.
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And the reason for that is because the word of God is sharper than any two -edged sword is able to pierce between the joints and the marrow.
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And what I want them to be convicted by the Holy Spirit through his word and not, you know, argue them into the kingdom of Michael.
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Okay, well, let me just be the unbeliever for a second. And I'm gonna say, well,
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I know that God loves me because he's given me so many great things. I have a family, I have a house,
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I have a job, I have fill in the blank. So I know God loves me. In fact,
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I even got a big raise. Bruce.
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Yeah, that's right. And let's even get back though, to this idea that God loves sinners and hates sin.
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I would just say again to them, here's the ultimate question. How are you going to get into heaven?
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How are you gonna get into heaven? Well, I'm just gonna live however I want. And God loves me so much that he's gonna let me into heaven.
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What would you say to that? What's that?
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Okay, Jesus said in Luke 9 .23 that you have to take up your cross daily. I'd even go back to, again,
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Psalm 19. Listen, or Psalm 5, no evil dwells with you. You're not a
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God who takes pleasure in wickedness. How does one get into heaven? Well, God loves me so much, he's going to overlook my sin.
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Really? Well, let me ask you another question then. Why is it that Jesus died on that cross?
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Why is it that Jesus died on that cross? Well, he died for my sins. Well, if it's no big deal and God's just gonna overlook sins anyway, why didn't he do that in the first place?
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The picture of Jesus Christ on the cross is a symbol of how much shows us how much
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God hates sin. He hates sin enough that he sent his son to die the most excruciating death imaginable to pay the price for sin.
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And if you're gonna sit there and say, well, I don't believe in Jesus Christ, and maybe I do, maybe
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I don't, but I don't have to change my life one bit because Jesus paid for me, then
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I think there's some words from Matthew 7 that apply to a person like that.
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I mean, how would a person who says, well, God loves me too much to send me to hell, and that's why he sent his son,
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Jesus Christ, and it really doesn't matter what I do. And then if you look at, I mean, there are a number of things we could say, one being that if nobody's going to hell, and certainly if you don't believe you have to change your life at all, you're basically saying, well,
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I'm not so bad, and God has to let me in because he loves everybody. But Jesus said that not everyone who says to me,
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Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven will enter.
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That's pretty tough to get around. That's pretty tough for somebody to get around.
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What's the will of the father? Well, Jesus gave us the two commandments, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, love your neighbor as yourself.
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They can't even do that. So on that basis, then if somebody says, well,
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God loves me too much to send me to hell, on what basis, on what scripture would you say that?
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Even the people who say, Lord, Lord, and then they say they prophesied in their names, and they say they did all these other things, and he's going to say what?
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Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, as King James will say, but if Jesus spent more time preaching about hell than heaven, there must be a reason for it.
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If God created hell, there must be some reason for it. People must be going there. People who say that God loves me and therefore
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I have nothing to fear, don't understand sin. They don't understand the nature of sin.
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They don't understand the holiness of God. They're missing the whole point, and I just go through the gospel again and again and again.
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Your picture of God is too low. Your picture of yourself is too high.
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Your picture of sin is nonexistent. Your picture of Jesus Christ is irrelevant because you really don't understand what he accomplished.
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And so you are going to be in for one rude shock on judgment day because you don't know what the
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Bible says. And on top of asking somebody how they are going to get into heaven, the other thing you can always say, and I remember once talking with a young woman and saying to her,
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I listened to all her bizarre ideas, and I mean, she had taken kind of the cafeteria style, not just of Christianity, but of a bunch of different religions and just made up her own
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God. And I just said one very simple thing. What is the basis for your belief system?
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Where do you get that? How can others ascribe to what you say?
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And she just said, well, I just took, she just admitted it. Well, I just took a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And so I just said to her,
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I said, well, if there are 6 billion people, I don't know, what are there, 6 .8 billion, and everybody wants to make up their own
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God, take their own ingredients, you know, a little spoonful of this, a pinch of that, scoop of that, then really, ultimately, there have to be 6 .8
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billion different gods, because they're not all the same. There is only one authority for knowing the truth about heaven, hell, life, death,
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God, Satan, sin, man, and that's the word of God. And that's what we have to return to over and over and over again.
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And the better we know the word, the better we're able to just answer this thing. Somebody says, well, you know, God loves me too much and he hates sin, but he loves sinners.
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No, no, the Bible tells us he hates sinners. Bible tells us that sinners are his enemies.
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The Bible tells us that to redeem sinners, he had to send his own son who was perfect to die in their place.
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And then he poured out his wrath on Jesus Christ on the cross. Yes, I saw a hand over here.
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Okay, I guess I didn't. Any other questions quickly? All right.
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God takes the initiative in salvation. We know that, we've talked about that. Our weapon, as I've said, the word of God from Psalm 19,
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Romans 1 .16, let me just read that. It's so powerful when we consider, we read part of Romans 1 earlier, where it talks about people suppress the truth and unrighteousness.
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Right before that, Paul writes this in Romans 1 .16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the
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Jew first and also to the Greek. It is the gospel that saves people.
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It is the word of God that saves people. We need to actively proclaim that word.
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I'm basically wanna skip over the rest of this because we're gonna start something new the next time
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I'm here, but some guidelines, who, what, when, where. We need to always be appropriate.
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Can't spend our time at work when we're supposed to be working, evangelizing.
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At home, I think it's appropriate to evangelize. We'll go into all that. But to summarize, since this natural man is sold out to sin, self, and Satan, the one who is sharing, evangelizing, we have to use the word.
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This is what we have. And while we're preaching the gospel, we should be praying as well.
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And then when we're listening to what they have to say, I just say, continue to pray that God would bring the things to mind, not things that, and here's the trick.
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You can't expect God to just go, you're sitting there saying, okay, I'm just gonna give him my testimony and then trust in the
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Lord. And boy, I hope he gives me some scriptures because I really don't know any. Who knows what's gonna come out then?
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Let me just read in closing this quote from Spurgeon here at the end. The eternity of punishment is a thought which crushes the heart.
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You have buried the man, but you have not buried his sins. His sins live and are immortal.
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They have gone before him to judgment or they will follow him to bear witness, to bear their witness as to the evil of his heart and the rebellion of his life.
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The Lord is slow to anger, but when he is once aroused to it, as he will be against those who finally reject his son, he will put forth all his omnipotence to crush his enemies.
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Consider this, saith he, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces and there be none to deliver.
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It will be no trifle to fall into the hands of the living God. He will by no means clear the guilty.
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Forever his anger burns. We have nothing in scripture to warrant the hope that God's wrath against evil doers will ever come to an end.
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Oh, the wrath to come, the wrath to come, the wrath which after ages and ages will still be to come and still to come and still to come.
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God hates sin and will punish forever those who do not repent of it and believe on the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Lord, in light of eternity, in light of your promised goodness to those who trust completely in you, who repent of their sins and receive
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Christ, being cleansed from all iniquity, not because of any wisdom or goodness on their part, but because of your mercy.
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Father, in light of all that, would you make us those who just understand the weight of eternity, who understand the wrath to come and to come and to come.
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And on that basis, Father, would you give us just a sense of urgency for those souls who stand on the very precipice of eternity facing your wrath.
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Lord, would you give us a passion for the lost, a desire to see many saved.
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Would you equip us and enable us to carry out your work. In Christ's name we pray, amen.