Twelve Inches from Heaven (Presenting the Gospel - My Story)
Matthew 7:15-23
“Call his name, Jesus (The Lord saves), because He will save His people from their sins.” -Matt. 1:21
“Save yourselves from this crooked generation.”
– Acts 2:4
DEFINING SALVATION
FORGIVENESS
The word “save” means, “to rescue or “deliver” to a place of safety. When Peter was drowning he cried out to Jesus, “Lord save me!” (Matthew 14:30) We speak of firemen “saving” people from a burning building. When we turn to Christ he “rescues” us from the penalty of sin in forgiveness; the controlling power of sin by changing our character and from the presence of sin when we get to heaven. First is forgiveness.
1 Corinthians 6:11
“The wicked will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. The immoral / the idol worshippers / the adulterers /the homosexuals /the thieves / the drunkards / the slanderers. And some of you were like that. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified, in the name of the Lord.”
Paul’s favorite word for forgiveness was “justify” which means to “be declared righteous, innocent of all charges.” When we become Christians we are innocent in the sight of God. To Him it is like we never sinned.
We will sin until the day we die, so how can God, who knows all about us (Psalm 139) say we are innocent. It is because He came to earth in Jesus (John 1:1,14) and was punished in our place. Romans 3:24-27 says
:
“We are justified through the redemption (a price paid to buy something) in Christ Jesus, through faith in His blood. God put Him forward as an atoning sacrifice. He did this to demonstrate His justice because in His patience with us he had let our sins committed beforehand go unpunished.”
Second Corinthians five says “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin so we in Him can become righteous.” God “laid our sins on Jesus” (Isaiah 53) and sees Him as guilty so He can see us as innocent.
In a tract written for “911” workers who pulled broken bodies from the rubble, Max Lucado said:
“Jesus looked at the cross and saw hell. But He went there anyway because He did not want to go to heaven without you.”
The Bible uses many different pictures and illustrations of forgiveness. It says: God remembers our sins no more (Heb. 10:17) / He covers them (Ps. 32:1) / He blots them out (Isa. 44:22) /He will never mention them again (Ezek. 33:16). Our sins are behind God’s back (Isa. 38:34) / thrown into the depths of the sea (Mic. 7:19) / purged like a wound (Heb. 1:3); cleansed (1 Jn. 1:7) and erased (Acts 3:19).
God empties the dictionary to show us that in His sight, when we accept Christ, as far as He is concerned, our sins are gone. It is, to Him, as though we never sinned.
When Jesus first comes to us He does not just talk about the nice things we have done, but also about the mean and selfish things we have done - not just about the people we have helped but about the people we have hurt and the many people we have failed to help. And He comes not to condemn but to forgive (Jn. 3:17)
The door of forgiveness is OPEN TO EVERYONE. First Corinthians five says homosexuals, drunkard, adulterers, etc. will not go to heaven. And then it adds, “and some of you were like that but you were washed and justified.”
Our hymn book says:
The vilest offender who truly believes
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives
There is no sin you and I can commit that Jesus will not forgive if we ask Him to.
The “unpardonable sin” (Matthew 12:22-32) Jesus talked about was addressed to religious people who knew and taught the Bible and looked at Him, the God of the Bible, who came to earth and called Him Satan. Their hearts were so hard - calloused (Psalm 95:8-9 / Hebrews 3:7-8) that they saw no need of being forgiven and would never ask for it.
The “unpardonable” sin is rejecting God’s offer of salvation through the Holy Spirit’s witness so much that we no longer hear it or feel like doing it. As long as anyone has a desire to be forgiven and changed, he has not committed this sin and can come to God and receive it.
A CHANGE OF CHARACTER AND LIFE
“A new heart will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you…I will put my Spirit within you to cause you to walk in my statutes….I will save you from all your uncleanness.” (Ezek. 36:26)
Jesus saves us from the controlling power of wrongdoing. He told Nicodemas, a Jewish religious leader who was trusting in Jewish circumcision and good works to get him into heaven, “Unless a person is born again he will never see the kingdom of God - heaven (John 3).
God never forgives a person He does not change. He never lets us into heaven unless He first gets heaven into us. He never saves us from hell unless he first gets hell out of us. He changes our heart or character. And this, in turn, leads to a changed life. Matthew Henry says if a sinner made it to heaven unchanged he would pick the angel’s pockets.
This change is called: - being born again (Jn. 3); - dying to sin – as a way of life (Rom. 6:1-2); being converted–receiving repentance and faith (Acts 20:21) - becoming a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17); and regeneration- to be birthed again. (Titus 3:5)
We are not and never will be PERFECT. First John was written to Christians (5:13) and it says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and there is no truth in us.” (l Jn. 1:8) That is a nice way of saying they are lying. Jesus teaches children of God in His pattern prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, to pray, “forgive us our sins.” (Matt. 6).
Our forgiveness as Christians is not the same as our forgiveness at salvation. Initial forgiveness gave us a new relationship with God, as our Father. (John 1:12) Forgiveness, when we are Christians, restores our fellowship with our Father. After committing adultery and murder (2 Sam. 11-12); David asked for and received forgiveness (Psalm 32) and in Psalm 51 he didn’t ask for his salvation to be restored; he asked for the “joy” of salvation to be restored. Jesus tells us to pray, “Our Father before we pray, “forgive us of our sins.” (Matthew 6)
We will sin until the day we die because our goal is to be like Jesus (1 John 3:16). But as new people in Christ we hate it, fight it and want to be delivered from it. (Romans 7:14-25) After Paul had served Jesus for many years and suffered a great deal for him (2 Corinthians 11), he wrote the Christians in Rome and said in chapter 7:
“The good that I want to do I don’t do. The bad I do not want to do, I do. I do the thing I hate. Who will deliver me?”
He didn’t have a girlfriend on the side; he did not have a “Playboy” magazine in his pulpit and he was not stealing money from the church. He was just aware of all the things he did that were not like Jesus.
Early in my Christian life, when I was in my first year of seminary, my sins that held on to me like leeches, made me believe I was not a Christian. The lives of other students around me, most of whom had been Christians for years, made me feel that way.
They were getting up at 6 AM to pray, and I had a hard time getting to class at 8 AM. They were witnessing on the streets and I did not have the nerve to witness to my family. Old habits kept coming back, especially profanity, when I was upset.
Then I read a book by Billy Graham that showed the difference between committing acts of sin and living in sin.
He said when a cat falls in the mud it gets out as quickly as possible and spends hours cleaning itself. But when a hog falls in, it wallows in it. The cat hates mud and the hog loves mud. The same is true of a Christian and his sins.
Before I became a Christian I was “living in sin”. I remember the time I was fishing with some friends. A storm came up and we started in. About half way to shore, one of them said to me, “Man, quit taking God’s name in vain, its lightning.” Cursing was so much a part of me that I didn’t know I was doing it. Cursing was natural to me. It was who I was.
Tonight if I get up to answer the phone at 3 AM; stump my toe and fall head first into my TV and my wife says, “Why don’t you look where you are going”, I cannot promise you I would not take God’s name in vain. But I can promise you I would be devastated and would not go to bed without asking God to forgive me and help me to never do it again. As Billy Graham said, “Sins will intrude but they do not have to rule.” (Romans 6:12-13)
THE RIGHT TO GO TO HEAVEN
“Nothing impure will enter the city.” (Rev. 21:27)
“When He appears we will be like Him.” (1 Jn. 3:2)
A man overheard a Christian witnessing on the street and said, “Why don’t you Christians stop bothering us? We are nothing but things like sulfur, iron, sodium, magnesium and water. When we die we just crumble away.
When the Christian did not answer, he said, “You have no answer do you?” The Christian replied, “I do, but I am not in the habit of carrying on a conversation with a pile of sulfur, iron, sodium, magnesium and water.”
You say you don’t want that – we don’t get a vote. You say you don’t believe that – that does not change the fact.
That part of us that thinks, feels and makes choices will survive death. Hebrews says, “It is appointed to men, first to die, and after that comes the Judgment.”(Hebrews 9:27)
The third blessing of salvation is that we get to go to heaven when we die. We will be rescued from the very presence of sin. First John says when Jesus appears at His return (or appears to us when we die – John 14), we will be like Him and He was sinless (Hebrews 4).
There will be no sin IN us. Revelation 21 says no impure thing or person will ever enter heaven. There will be no sin AROUND us. . Sin and suffering will be gone forever.
My mother and I could never get along. Even after I became a pastor, our past seemed to bring out the worst in each of us. When she died, I sat by her coffin and talked with her and the Lord. (I was not talking to the dead. I was mostly talking to the Lord and I felt if she needed to hear it He would pass it along.)
I forgave her and asked for her to forgive me. Then I said, ‘Mama, I can’t wait until I get to heaven where you and I will be best friends forever, with nothing between us but love. It was selfishness and sin that caused us to scar each other. But in heaven there will be no selfishness, no sin and no scars.
Of course, the negative side of this is that if we don’t go to heaven we go to a place where we will receive the punishment our actions deserve. No one knows for sure what this will be like. The Jews in the First Century pictured it as the garbage dump outside the city that burned day and night. Whether it is fire or not, it is bad and I don’t want to go there.
Hell is not the invention of priests and preachers to scare us out of our money. It is something Jesus believed was real and something he died a shameful, painful death to save us from. E.V. Hill, the great African American preacher had a sermon on, “I don’t want to go to Hell”, and he gave some reasons:
- You won’t like your neighbors (Like Charles Manson).
- You can’t get out. You can’t try it for awhile and leave.
- You won’t be with a lot of people you love
RECEIVING SALVATION
“He came to His own but His own did not receive Him. But to all those who did receive Him He gave the right to be called the children of God.” (John 1:11-12)
“Jesus came into Galilee saying, ‘The kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)
“The people said, ‘What must we do?’ And Peter said, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you for the forgiveness of sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (the new birth) – Save yourselves from this crooked generation.’” Acts 2:37-38
“Repent then and turn (convert) to God, so your sins can be wiped away.” (Acts 3:19)
CONTACT BY GOD
When God is bringing us to salvation, He makes the first contact. Romans 3 says, “no one looks for God” (3:11). I went to church when I was young but all I thought about was football, cars and girls. I didn’t hear what was being preached because I was not interested in what was being preached. Adrian Rogers says sinful people no more look for the true God of the Bible than a mouse looks for a cat.
John, after sixty years of being a Christian said, “We love Him because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) When he was young he heard Jesus say, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me, draws him”. (John 6:44). And since the Father wants everyone to come to “repentance” and salvation (2 Peter 3:9), we are all “drawn” towards Jesus and salvation at some time in our life..
God uses many ways to draw us. The Scottish humorist, Harry Lauder, said when his only son died, “For me it was alcohol, suicide or God and I chose God.” For some it can be the birth of a baby or the death of a baby. For some it is a serious illness and for some it is the gift of good health. For some it is the fear of hell and for others it is the desire to go to heaven to be with a loved one. For me it was the desire to have a good, loving family.
CONVERSION FROM GOD
After God contacts us and we are interested in salvation, He converts us. Three terms that go together like fire, heat and smoke, describe this. The word “convert” (Acts 3:19) is the picture of turning around to walk in a different direction. The term “repent” means we turn “from sin”. And the term “believe” or “faith” means we turn to Jesus.
REPENTANCE
Repentance means we are willing, with God’s help, to commit to try to stop living a life of disobedience to Him to one of obedience; to stop living a life we control to a life He controls. And this is a baby step. A lot of people will tell you a lot of things you need to stop doing and start doing, to become a Christian, but you need to take baby steps and let God tell you
We start with those things we believe are wrong. For me, it was it to stop using profanity, to stop drinking too much alcohol; to be more faithful to the church and most of all to love and help people more.
We must remember that repentance is willingness not ability. We can’t lose weight, much less live like Jesus.
Telling people to give up a list of things is like telling a child he cannot come to First Grade until he can do algebra.
If we could change our lives we wouldn’t need Jesus. He enables us to change in the new birth where He changes our desires. He changes our “want to”. Adrian Rogers says God does not change us so He can love us. He loves us, in spite of who or what we are, so He can change us.
When I was in my early twenties Jesus’ teachings on forgiving people who hurt us kept me from committing to live for God. I talked with my Pastor about getting right with God (that is how I phrased it). I told him I didn’t want to be a hypocrite and I could not commit to turning the other cheek.
I told him that I grew up on a Mill Hill where bullies beat me up for my lunch money, or for the fun of it and that produced a rage in me that would not allow me to turn the other cheek, like Jesus commands.
That wonderful man of God said, “Bob, I’m not sure I can turn the other cheek. I hope I can, but I don’t know it.” I said, “Man, you’re the preacher, you have to do it.”
He laughed and said, “Bob, let me ask you this. Would you like to be able to turn the other cheek, and are you willing to ask Christ to help you to one day become that kind of person?” I answered, yes, and he said, “That is all God wants. That is repentance.”
Today, like him I don’t know if I can turn the other cheek, especially if somebody hurts someone in my family. And I am still working on profanity. I am getting better, and I don’t do it very often, but it is always just below the surface ready and waiting to jump out.
I’ve been in three wrecks where I saw what was coming and each time I used one particular old “mill hill” curse word. What I’ve done is ask God to forgive me “ahead of time” if I die in a wreck, see it coming and blurt out that word.
FAITH
We do not have to believe EVERYTHING people tell us is in the Bible. Again, that is like telling a kid he can’t come to the First Grade until he can do algebra. In a message one Sunday I mentioned “Mother Teresa”, a lady who spent her life helping “street people” with “aids” and similar diseases. Billy Graham said, next to his wife Ruth, she was the best Christian he has ever known.
A lady visiting our church told me I shouldn’t use her as an illustration of Christian love because she was not a Christian because she believed that in the end every person who has ever lived will be saved and end up in heaven.
I told her I would like to believe it but I can’t because I don’t see it in the Bible. I also told her that all through Christian history good and godly leaders have believed and taught that the Bible may teach this.
And then I told her - this has nothing to do with salvation. These are the kind of things we think about, study about and pray about after we become Christians.
To be saved we must believe that WE ARE SINNERS We know we have violated our own sense of right and wrong. Romans two says at the Judgment our own conscience will judge us.
Romans 2:15
God’s “laws are written on our hearts and our conscience, will sometimes accuse and something defend us on that day when God judges the secrets of men.”
Jesus said “nothing is covered up that will not be revealed. What we “have done in secret will be shouted from the roof-tops”. (Luke 12:3)
When we are honest with ourselves, we stop making excuses for our bad behavior and take responsibility. Spurgeon says we come to God with the noose around our neck saying “guilty”.
We must also believe that God takes our wrongdoing SERIOUSLY. If God is like Hugh Hefner he says, “Party On!” If He is like many grandparents, he pats us on the head and says, “You didn’t mean to do it.”
But this is not the God we find in the Bible. Romans 2:5-6 says, “God’s righteous Judgment will be revealed and He will render to every man what his actions deserve.”
We see this not only in Scripture but also inNATURE. Romans 1:18-19 tells us God’s “wrath” is revealed “from heaven” (the created universe). In Genesis three when sin came into the world suffering came in. Every hospital, every disease and every hurricane that brings loss of life should remind us of just how seriously God takes our wrongdoing.
We also must believe that we CAN DO NOTHING to make ourselves right with God and end up in heaven. RITUALS, like baptism, won’t do it. The OT ritual for being part of the people of God was circumcision and Jesus told the Jewish teacher, Nicodemas, that he had to let God change him on the inside, be born again, if he wanted to make it to Heaven.
RIGHT LIVING won’t do it. Jesus says “a bad tree cannot produce good fruit”. (Matthew 7) We can do “good” things but that doesn’t make us a good person. The soldier who falls on a grenade to save you, if he lives and gets out of the hospital, might commit adultery with your wife.
Not only can we not become truly “good” people, most of us can’t even become better people. It is like mopping a dirt floor, the harder we work the dirtier we get. It is like putting talcum powder on cancer. It is like painting a pump to purify the water. (Jeremiah 17:9)
The Pharisees were so obedient to the Rabbi’s (Scribes) teachings of the OT that they would not take up arms and defend themselves on the Sabbath because they were told (wrongly) that it would break God’s command not to work. (Exodus 20) The Romans knew this and often attacked them on the Sabbath.
We must never forget that religious people tithed their income; went to church every week; prayed twice a day; fasted twice a week; gave alms to the poor; knew and studied their Bibles; killed Jesus and went to hell (Matthew 7:3-5)
If we do improve ourselves, like the Pharisees, it makes us PROUD. We become like the man Jesus talked about who was in church. (Luke 18:9-14) He told God how good he was and looked at a sinful man there in church with him and prayed, “God, I thank you I am not like him.” The sinful man, however, said, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner.’ And Jesus said he went home forgiven.
Evangelist D.L. Moody said he was glad doing good things could not get people into heaven because he didn’t want to spend eternity having to listen to people brag about how they got there.
Doing good things cannot bring forgiveness. We are guilty of the same sins that had Jesus killed – Pilate’s love of money; the religious leaders’ jealousy and anger; and the crowd’s brutality. Forty years after the cross Hebrews six told some people they were “crucifying the Son of God all over again.” (Hebrews 6:1-8)
Paul brutalized people in the churches (Acts 8-9 / Galatians 1) and Jesus asked him, “Why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9). At the Judgment, Jesus says if we didn’t love and help people on earth, we are guilty of not loving and helping Him. (Matthew 25:31-46)
Forgiveness, by its very nature, is ALWAYS A GIFT that cannot be earned. If we are drunk and kill a couple’s child on the highway, no amount of good things we do for those parents can earn their forgiveness. It has to be their “gift” to us. The NT word for this is “grace” and Ephesians two says’
“It is by grace (a gift) that you have been saved through faith. It is the gift of God so no one can boast.”
The Cross
We must believe that Jesus was sent into the world TO DIE ON A CROSS so we can b FORGIVEN (Matthew 26:26-29) and that God put His seal of approval on it by RAISING Him from the dead. (Romans 1:1-7 / 10:5-11). We don’t know, for sure, exactly why Jesus had to suffer at our hands for us to be forgiven. Even Jesus on the cross, said, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:45-50)
Romans 3:24-27 seems to teach that He was punished in our place. But I didn’t even know there was a Book of Romans when I became a Christian. What I did know, from somewhere that I heard it or read it, was that from the cross Jesus prayed for his murderers and said, “Father forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:32-49)
(They didn’t know they were killing the Son of God but they did know they should not be treating a fellow human being like this.)
The important thing is that Jesus, although He may not have been fully aware of all that was involved in His sacrifice, went to the cross because He loved and trusted the Father and because He loved people like you and me.
He knew the OT sacrifices he read about and heard about in the synagogue, all put together, tell us, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Heb. 9:22).
The night before He died He said in the memorial supper we observe in our churches, “This is my blood of the new covenant shed for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Mt. 26:28)
We can only imagine the horror Jesus felt when as a boy or young man He read Isaiah 53 or Psalm 22 and realized this was his destiny. The important thing is – He accepted it.
And this was His choice. He said, “No one takes my life. I lay it down of my own accord.” (John 10:1-18). When Peter drew his sword to keep him from being arrested Jesus told him to put it up because if he wanted to he could ask the Father to send ten thousand angels to rescue him. (Matthew 26:36-56) The song is right:
He could have called ten thousand angels
To destroy the world and set him free
He could have called ten thousand angels
But He died alone for you and me
THE PRAYER OF FAITH
To be saved we must pray. Romans ten says, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:13). Prayer is faith in action. It is believing, trusting and entrusting. You may believe a doctor can remove a tumor from your body but it becomes faith and trust when you ask him to operate and let him put you to sleep, open you up and remove the tumor.
We must talk to God (or Jesus), one on one, personally. We must confess our sins and ask for forgiveness personally. We must accept forgiveness personally. Then we will love Him personally and serve Him personally and say with Paul, “The life I now live as a human being is by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
The sinner in the Temple prayed, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13), and Jesus said he went home saved. The criminal on the cross beside Jesus, who had mocked and insulted Him with the others (Matthew 27:44), was touched by how Jesus was acting, and no doubt by his prayer for God to forgive him. He prayed a simple prayer, “Lord remember me when you come in your kingdom.” (Luke 23:32-38)).
He believed he was going to die. He believed he needed forgiveness. He believed Jesus, looking like anything but a king, was heaven’s coming King. He believed Jesus would forgive him and he asked for it. And that day he went to heaven with Jesus. (Read Psalm 22-The Savior’s Cross cross; Psalm 23 – The Shepherd’s Crook and Psalm 24- The Savior’s Coronation Day)
I was saved when I prayed. One day I got out of my car and stood by a highway. I told God how sinful I had been and I said I believed that if Jesus forgave those who killed Him, he would forgive me. I said, Lord I give you my sins to forgive. I can’t live the right kind of life right but I am asking for you to help me, so I give you right now, my life to change and control.
I didn’t “feel” anything. I got back in my car and left. Too confirm it in my mind and before others I walked the aisle of my church. I still didn’t “feel” anything. But the next morning when I left for work at 6;00 AM I heard the birds singing beneath the beautiful blue sky and I said words I had heard all my life, “This is my Father’s World”.
I felt it again when we sang a hymn in church, one I had heard a hundred times without paying attention to what it meant.
“At the cross, at the cross
Where I first saw the light
And the burden of my heart rolled away
It was there by faith I received my sight
And now I am happy all the day”
When I was young Mickey Mantle was who every boy wanted to be. He was good looking and fun loving and always had a big smile on his face. He played center field for the New York Yankees and hit home runs that traveled further than anyone else’s.
Mickey loved to “party” and slowly became a functioning alcoholic. When he was dying of liver disease, in his muddle sixties, he apologized to his teammates for being drunk or hung over sometimes when he played. All through the years his teammate Bobby Richardson witnessed to him about Christ but it seemed to do little good.
When he was in the hospital, on his death bed, Bobby led him to faith in Christ. When Bobby got back to the Hotel he told his wife and she just couldn’t believe it, so she went to Mickey’s hospital room to be sure. She walked in and after a few words, she said, “Mickey, do you really know that you have accepted Christ and are going to heaven?” He flashed that big “Oklahoma” smile and said from John 3:16:
“For God so loved Mickey Mantle; that He gave His only begotten Son; so that if Mickey Mantle believes in Him; Mickey Mantle will not perish but will have eternal life.”
(One of Bobby Richardson’s relatives is in my church and she verified to me that this story is true.)
In that moment Mickey Mantle was instantly and eternally forgiven and changed and on his way to his home in Heaven (John 14). Jesus told the criminal who prayed that he would be in heaven with him that very day. (Luke 23:32-38).
That morning when the sun came up he was a child of the devil but when it went down that night he was a child of God. That morning when the sun came up he mocked Jesus but that night he was praising Him all over heaven. (Psalm 24)
Why don’t you, with all your questions, with all your doubts, with all the things you don’t know, reach out in prayer to Jesus like this man did, like Mickey Mantle did and like I did with a prayer something like this:
“Lord Jesus, I know that I have done a lot things that are wrong. I believe You love me and died for me. I now give you all of my sins to forgive and my life to change and control. I am trusting you to forgive me, change me and to take me to heaven when I die.”
Conclusion
Your salvation is what God wants. Nothing is more important to Him than for you to be saved and spend eternity with Him in heaven. It is His desire.
Peter says He “does not wish for any to perish, but for everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Pet. 3:9) He named his Son Jesus, “the Lord saves”.
Jesus came “to seek and save that which is lost” the lost (Lk. 19:10). He gave us the Bible to “give us wisdom for salvation”. (2 Tim. 3:15).
But God will not FORCE it on us. In Revelation 3:20 Jesus says, “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears me and lets me in, he and I will have fellowship (eat) with each other.” Holman Hunt’s famous picture of this shows Jesus knocking on the door of a little cottage. And there is no doorknob on it. The door must be opened from within.
We don’t miss heaven because we sin we do it because we reject God’s forgiveness. Judas missed heaven because he went to the “wrong tree”. Instead of hanging himself he should have gone to the foot of the cross and ask Jesus to forgive him.
What Should You Do?
You need to pray for salvation, giving Jesus your sins to forgive and your life to change and control. You need to accept it by faith.
Your need to look up and read from your Bible all the verses in this booklet.
It may be that you are not ready to unite with a church. If so find a good Christian friend; a Christian or a Pastor you respect; and talk to them about what you have done. In time people like this can introduce you to the value of belonging to a church.
Salvation is between you and Jesus and the church can help you understand what has happened to you and help you grow stronger in your faith.
Most of all, spend some money and buy the “Quest Study Bible” in the New International Version. It answers the questions most people ask about things in the Bible
Set aside fifteen minutes at some time during the day to read a short passage of Scripture. For me the best time was after lunch. Begin with the Scriptures found in this study and after that, a chapter a day from the NT. You can miss over a hundred days and still read the NT through in a year.
Take a few moments to pray about what you read or about something that is pressing on your mind and heart. Write this down in a notebook.
During the day at odd moments, meditate and talk with God silently about what you read or what you prayed for. (Psalm 1) This is what the Bible calls praying “without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5).
Don’t be legalistic and feel you have to do this every day. You are not performing a “duty” you are trying to get to know God and His will for your life.
As you do all this as an ongoing part of your life, your next Bible should be the “Life Application Study Bible” in the New International Version. You can dig as deep as you like, but never substitute study for living for God. My wife is the best Christian I know and I have never seen her studying her Bible. We all know more than we are doing now. One of the best ways to avoid God is to “study” about Him.
Don’t laugh at this one! Don’t spend much time on or get hung up on the Book of Revelation, a Book nobody understands. Just believe Jesus is coming back and our task is to be ready and help as many people as possible to be ready also.
My Story
When I was 22 I did not know ten Bible verses; I didn’t know the difference between a Baptist and a Methodist; and I didn’t really care. But from exposure to Christianity, I knew almost all of what I needed to know about being right with God; living the right kind of life; and going to heaven.
What I Did Know
I knew about my sin, from my own heart and from pictures of the murder of Jesus by people just like me. I knew I didn’t live up even to my standards of right and wrong. I knew I was not nearly as good a person as I should be.
I used language I was ashamed of; I put my interests above everyone else’s; I was rude and unkind to my mother; and from moments of anger I knew I was capable of doing terrible things.
From my common sense I knew God was real. Christmas told me God came to earth in Jesus. John 3:16 told me He sent Jesus because He loves me and does not want me to “perish” –end up in hell.
Easter told me people like me murdered Jesus. And when God raised Him it told me there is life after death. The Lord’s Supper told me Jesus suffered and died so I can be forgiven.
The parable of the Prodigal Son told me that if I came to God for forgiveness and help to live right He would run to meet me, throw his arms around me and throw a party. (Luke 15)
Common sense told me that to come to Him I would have to be willing to let Jesus change some of the things I had been doing. My failure when I tried to be a better person told me I could not change myself.
From the Parable of the Good Samaritan I knew I needed to love others and reach out to help them.(Luke 10) From the Golden Rule I knew I needed to treat people the way I wanted to be treated. (Matthew 7:12)
From the “Lord’s Prayer” I knew that as a Christian I would not be perfect, I would still do wrong thing and when I did, I was to pray, “Our Father, forgive me of my sins.”
From the depths of my conscience and my sense of right and wrong I knew about heaven and hell. Like 99.9 percent of the human race I knew that the part of me than made me “me” would survive death and if I was a Christian I would go to heaven and if not, I would go to hell.
What I Didn’t Know about Faith
I didn’t know believing this was not enough to make me right with God and get me to heaven. I thought I was. When I did “really bad” things I asked for forgiveness. I believed I was forgiven because Jesus died for everybody and that included me.
What I was 22 I wanted more than anything else to have a loving Christian family like those I saw in the church I was attending. And I had enough sense to know that for that to happen, I would need to change some things in my life.
I also knew I had tried this several times before and could not do it. I had never thought about the word “saved” or “born again”. What I felt I needed to do, was to “get right with God” so He could help me change.
This was the Holy Spirit getting my attention and He does it in different ways. Something else got hold of me. Televisions were kind of new and they stayed on all the time. Over and over a wild-eyed young preacher was on TV and he preached so loud you couldn’t help hearing him. And he said the same things over and over like:
Come to Christ. You must be born again, Turn from your sins. Everyone Jesus called He called publicly. If you deny Him before men He will deny you before the Father. Accept Christ as your Lord and Savior and you will go to heaven. Don’t accept him and you will go to hell.
What I Didn’t Know About Repentance
Being brought up in Baptist churches this meant, to me, that I needed to “walk the church aisle” and rededicate my life. The problem was, I didn’t want to be a hypocrite and tell a lie by walking down that aisle, promising to do things I knew I couldn’t do.
The thing that stuck in my mind was turning the other cheek (Matthew 5:38-42) My Pastor explained to me that what God wanted was for me to ask Him to help me be that kind of person. I tried and tried to be a better person but had failed. So now I just asked God to help me
Soon after that I got out of my car one day, thought of the verse where Jesus said, “Father forgive them” (Luke 23:34) to His murderers, and said, “Lord, if you forgave them I believe you will forgive me. I cannot live the Christian life, but I believe you will help me. So right now I give you my sins to forgive and my life to change.”
He did both. And I went down the aisle of that church and re-dedicated my life. (I still didn’t think anything about being “saved” or “becoming a Christian”.
After I re-dedicated I bought a new version of the Bible because I never could understand the King James Version. As I read it through the New Testament, I came to John three where Jesus told Nicodemas he had to be “born again” to make it to heaven. I called my Pastor and told him I believed I might have been “born again” when I rededicated.
About a year later I was called to preach and preached my first sermon. I didn’t know fifty Bible verses, but I told people this, “For 20 years I lived 12 inches from heaven-- the distance between my head and my heart.
What I Didn’t Know about the Two Roads
I never thought I was “against” Christ. I felt like I was in between. But Jesus says there are only two roads in life, one to heaven, with a few people on it and one to hell with many people on it. (Matthew 7:13-29). He also said, “If you are not with Me you are against me.” (Matthew 12:30).
Today, you and I both are on one of these roads. There is no “in-between”. Not to decide for Christ is to decide against Him. None of us knows what tomorrow may bring, so decide for Christ today. The saddest people at the Judgment will be those who wanted to receive Christ and always intended to do it, but never got around to it. A song, picturing people at the Judgment speaks of:
“The one who had put off salvation
Saying’ I will be saved by and by
No time now to think of religion’
But alas he found time to die.”
It is a great mistake to believe you can be saved anytime you “want to” because we don’t “want to” unless the Spirit of God is dealing with us. (John 16:1-15).
I was serious about getting right with God in only three periods of my life. During the last one, after my Pastor cleared the way for me by defining repentance, I was in church preparing to go forward an decided I would wait until another Sunday. I felt a cold chill and had the deep impression that if I did not go that day I might not get another chance.
I didn’t know God said in Genesis 6, “My Spirit will not always strive with a man.” It is not that God stops loving us. It means he has gone as far as He will to persuade us because He wants to leave us free.
If you want salvation, take it today because none of us knows if we will have tomorrow and none of us knows when we have “hardened” our hearts to the point of committing the “unpardonable” sin of rejecting Jesus until our hearts are too hard to really want Him again.”
For more information on salvation and the Christian life go to:
homeorchurchbiblestudy.com > bob marcaurelle
