This sermon was preached on Sunday
evening, November 20th, 1983, at the Trinity Baptist Church
in Montville, New Jersey. Now let us all with one heart
again confess our need of the grace and presence of the Holy
Spirit as we attempt to understand the Word of God. Let us together
pray. Our Father, we have been vividly
reminded this night of the frightening brevity of our lives. We confess
it's difficult to believe that three years have passed since
our brother and his wife came amongst us, and those years have
come and gone, and they leave us. We think in that time of
those who once sat and worshipped with us, who have been called
off this earthly scene. O God, we confess that we pass
our days swifter than a weaver's shuttle. Our years end as a sigh,
and yet, O Lord, left to ourselves, we think and act as men and women
and boys and girls who are going to live on forever. O have mercy
upon our folly. and come to us tonight with the
felt awareness of the brevity of life and the certainty of
the world to come in the unexpressible bliss of your presence, or in
the indescribable horror of the damned in hell. O God, may we
taste and feel the powers of the world to come as the Word
of God is preached tonight. O Holy Spirit, author of the
book, be present as its only true interpreter. Speak to us
and meet us, we pray, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. In our study of the Word of God
this evening, we come to the final message in this recent
series of studies on the biblical doctrines of heaven and of hell. With our Bibles opened before
us, we sought first of all to answer two very simple but very
vital questions. Question number one, what is
hell? And question number two, who
is going there? And then, for several Lord's
Day evenings, we have been concentrating upon another question, what is
heaven? And with our Bibles before us,
we have seen that at least the major dimensions of what God
has revealed about heaven can be ranged under six basic categories
of reality. And having sought to answer that
question biblically, what is heaven, we come tonight to the
equally important question, who, according to the Bible, is going
there? And I want to underscore that
we are concerned to address the question, who, according to the
Bible, is going there? I believe it was an old Negro
spiritual that had the words, ain't everybody talking about
heaven going there. And it isn't everyone who talks
about heaven who's going there. Nor is it everyone who is convinced
he's going to heaven who will be in heaven. For Jesus said, many will say
to me in that day, Lord, Lord, And he will profess unto them,
Depart from me, I never knew you. And so our great and burning
concern tonight is to take up the question, Who, according
to the Bible, is going to heaven? And it is only the Bible which
has any right to answer that question. For it is the Bible
alone which answers the question, what is heaven? For God alone
knows what he has prepared for his own, and it is that same
God speaking in Holy Scripture who answers the question, who
is going there? And as I have sought to wrestle
with that question with my Bible open, looking particularly at
passages that explicitly describe the inhabitants of heaven, I
have come in my present understanding to believe that there are at
least four categories of description concerning those who will be
in heaven. Now that does not mean that there
are four different classes of people who will be in heaven.
They are the one redeemed people of God. But they are described
in some of these graphic descriptions of heaven from these four basic
perspectives. And we'll take them up, as time
permits, one by one. First of all, the scriptures
tell us that only those whose names are in the Book of Life
will enter heaven at last. Only those whose names are in
the Book of Life. Turn with me, please, to the
Book of the Revelation, and if you're familiar at all with that
book, you will know that the phrase, the Book of Life, or
the Lamb's Book of Life, occurs several times. There are four
indisputable references, and then a fifth reference which
has a problem of translation, and so we'll stick with the four
that are indisputable. In Revelation chapter 3 and verse
5 we read, Revelation 3 and verse 5, the exalted Lord Himself speaking
to the churches says, He that overcomes shall be thus
arrayed in white garments, and I will in no wise block his name
out of the book of life, and I will confess his name before
my Father and before his angels. Now, according to this passage,
it is only those whose names are found in the Book of Life
who will be confessed before the Father in the Day of Judgment. Here our Lord clearly asserts
that there is a people whose names will be confessed before
His Father, and He describes them as those whose names are
inscribed in the book of life. Now the circumstances of that
confession of our Lord are given to us in greater detail in the
20th chapter of the book of the Revelation. Revelation chapter
20 verse 11 and following is a description of the day of judgment. It includes a description of
the general resurrection which goes before and precedes and
ushers in the day of judgment. And as John is describing this
vision he received of the setting of the great white throne and
all of the dead standing in their resurrected bodies in the presence
of the judge, we read in Revelation 20 and verse twelve and I saw
the dead great and small standing before the throne and the books
were opened and another book was opened which is the book
of life and if you have the 1901 translation you will notice the
words the book are in italics they are not there in the original
another book was opened which is of life that is the book of
life and now in verse 15 we are not left to conjecture or to
the pressure of assumed wording but we read in verse 15 and if
any was not found written in the book of life he was cast
into the lake of fire the only ones who will escape the awful
The frightening reality of the Lake of Fire are those whose
names in that day are found written in the Book of Life. And then in chapter 21 and verse
27, we have another reference to the Book of Life. Here we
have a description of the new heavens and the new earth. We
have a description of the church, the glorified church, as the
city of God coming down from God out of heaven. And in this
beautiful description, just oozing with vivid imagery, we read in
Revelation 21, 27, And there shall in no wise enter into it
anything unclean, or he that makes abomination and a lie,
but only But only, here are the exclusive inhabitants of that
heaven that is described, only they that are written in the
Lamb's Book of Life. And words cannot be more simple
or clear, only those written in the Book of Life shall enter
Well, what precisely is that book? Well, the final clue comes
to us from Revelation 17 and verse 8. Here we have a description
of those who sell their souls to the powers of darkness, who
are prepared to barter their souls for the trinkets of this
life and the fleeting pleasures that are afforded by this life. And in Revelation 17 and verse
8 we read, The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about
to come up out of the abyss and to go into perdition. And they
that dwell on the earth shall wonder, they whose names have
not been written in the book of life from the foundation of
the world. Here is a picture of all of the
living humanity giving itself over to the beast, selling their
souls to the beast, except those whose names are written in the
Book of Life, and according to this passage they were written
there not at the time that they made a profession of faith, nor
even at the time that they were vitally, truly united to Jesus
Christ, but their names were written there from the foundation
of the world. And this is beautiful language
that finds its parallel in such a passage as Ephesians chapter
1. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who has blessed
us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ,
even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and without blemish before Him, in love having
predestinated us unto the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ to Himself,
to the praise of His grace. What then is the Book of Life?
It is nothing less than the full role of God's elect. It is the
full role of all of that multitude out of every kindred, tribe,
and tongue, and nation, from Adam's fallen race upon whom
God from eternity set His distinguishing particular love. And there will
be no soul in heaven who is not an elect sinner And we are not
at all embarrassed to use biblical language with respect to the
book of life. God himself has described it
as a book. The inscription of the names
found in it are there from the foundation of the world. And so in answer to the question,
who is going to heaven according to the Bible, the answer of the
Book of Life passages is, only sinners graciously, sovereignly
chosen by God in Jesus Christ before the foundation of the
world those upon whom God has set His distinguishing, electing
love, they and they alone will be found in heaven. Now, what
does that say to us in very practical terms? Well, it says this, it
matters not if your name is upon a church robe, even Trinity Baptist
church robe. If it is not inscribed in the
Lamb's Book of Life, if you are not an heir of grace, If God
has not been pleased to set his sovereign electing love upon
you, you will not be found in heaven. And if you are found
in heaven, you will bring forth the topstone of the great arch
of displaying God's mercy with shoutings of grace, grace, grace
unto You'll find no one in heaven reaching around and patting himself
on the back saying, you know, I'm so glad I made good use of
my free will to get here. I'm so glad I had sense enough
to use the prevenient grace given equally to all men. I am so glad
that I made myself to differ. How wonderful it is that I ultimately
made the right decision. No such language will be found
in heaven. Heaven will be permeated with
the language of grace. Why was I made to hear thy voice
and enter while there's room when thousands make a wretched
choice and rather starve than come? the same love that spread the
feast, that sweetly drew me in, else I had still refused to taste,
and perished in my sitting. But someone says, yes, the same
love that invited me drew me, but why did it draw me and not
others? And were pressed back to the
ultimacy of the glory of sovereign electing grace, chosen in Christ
before the foundation of the world. But then in the second
place, according to the Bible, those who are going to heaven
are only those who are washed in the blood of the Lamb. Only
those whose names are in the Book of Life, but secondly, only
those who are washed in the blood of the Lamb. Turn to Revelation
chapter 7. Revelation chapter 7, again this
tremendous vision of the vast multitude of the redeemed given
to John, verse 9, Revelation 7, 9, After these things I saw,
and behold a great multitude which no man could number, out
of every nation, and of all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing
before the throne and before the Lamb, arrayed in white robes
and palms in their hands, and they cry with a great voice,
saying, Salvation unto our God who sits on the throne and unto
the Lamb." Here's the vision John had of the vast multitude
of the redeemed. Standing there in their purified
state and notice, they are ascribing the totality of their salvation
unto God and the Lamb. They don't say salvation unto
Him who sits on the throne and unto the Lamb, and a little bit
reserved because we made good use of our free will. They acknowledge
that they stand as they stand because they've become the recipients
of salvation. And they acknowledge that that
salvation in its totality came from him who sits upon the throne
and from the land. And the question is asked further
on in the passage, beginning with verse 13. And one of the
elders answering said to me, these that are arrayed in white
robes, who are they? And whence came they? How did
they get here? What is their identity and how
did they get to this place where they are in their purified state
before the throne of God and of the Lamb ascribing salvation
to Him? And I say unto Him, My Lord,
You know. And He said unto me, Here is
their descriptive identity. These are they that come out
of the great tribulation. and they have washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, are they
before the throne of God." How did they get to that blessed
place where they look upon the face of God with joy in this
state of perfected sanctification symbolized in their white robes?
How did they get there? They have come out of great tribulation. They have washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. In other words,
they have come to heaven by the virtue of the blood of Jesus
Christ, the Lamb of God, having been applied to them in the saving
mercy of God. If words mean anything, then
surely the passage teaches us that only those who are thus
washed in the blood of the Lamb will be found before God and
the Lamb in that day. Look at Revelation 22, 14 for
another text which gives us a similar picture. Revelation 22, 14. Blessed, perfectly happy are
they that wash their robes in order that they may have the
right to come to the tree of life and may enter in by the
gates of the city. Without are the dogs and the
sorcerers and the fornicators and the murderers and the idolaters
and everyone who loves and makes a lie. Who is it that has a right
to come to the tree of life? Who is it that gains entrance
to the gates of the city? Only those who wash their robes. Oh, how can I state it so none
can miss the point? Heaven is not a place for self-made
people. Heaven is not the ultimate reward
for people who have strength enough in their spiritual arms
to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and make it. Heaven
is not God's reward for your good bloodlines. Heaven is not
God's reward for your determination to get your act together and
to live a decent, upright, moral, religious life. Those who go
to heaven were at one time vile, polluted, undone, laden with
guilt and hell-deservedness. And by the grace of God, they
were brought to see that they were indeed laden with guilt
and vile and polluted and full of hell-deservingness. They were
brought to see that God in mercy so loved the world that He gave
His only begotten Son. They were, through the preaching
of the gospel and the operation of the Holy Spirit, brought to
see that Jesus Christ, in the uniqueness of His person and
in the perfection of His work, all that He did in His life and
death and resurrection and the gift of the Spirit, was perfectly
suited to their need as sinners. And somewhere along the line,
though they may not be able to point to the day and the hour,
that's totally irrelevant, they were brought to a fundamental
spiritual posture so beautifully described by our Lord in Luke
19. Two men went up into the temple
to pray, the one a Pharisee, the one a publican. The publican
stood off in the distance, would not so much as lift up his eyes
unto heaven, Jesus said. But he beat upon his breast,
and he said, God, be merciful to me, thee, sinner. Jesus said, this man went down
to his house justified. Those who are in heaven are those
who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. They have
come before God. painfully aware of their native
defilement in Adam, their native guiltiness and hell-deservedness. And they have come, as God, through
the gospel applied to their hearts by the Spirit, has given them
to see Christ's perfect suitability for sinners, they have come to
throw the whole weight of their guilty, sin-sick, sin-sane, stained
souls upon Christ and Christ alone. And they have in the language
of our passage had their robes washed and made white in the
blood of the Lamb. And none will be in heaven, none
will have a right to the tree of life, none will have a right
to enter in by the gates of that city, but those who have washed
their robes And you see, though ultimately the salvation is all
of God, God doesn't believe for us. Faith is our activity. Repentance is our activity. And the divine method of being
washed is for you to come in all your vileness and uncleanness
and hell-deservedness and for you to lay hold of Christ and
for you to rest the weight of your soul upon Him. They have
washed their robes. It doesn't say God washed them
for them. The same group that says, salvation
to our God, Jesus paid it all, God has done it all. They are
nonetheless conscious that they have fled for refuge in Jesus
Christ. My friends sitting here tonight,
let me ask you, do you know anything of what it is to feel the shock
and the pain of felt uncleanness and guilt in the presence of
a holy God? Do you know anything of that?
What lies at the heart of your professed experience of Christianity? Is it that you were captured
by some of its noble ideals and its good examples, and fascinated
and intrigued by the magnificent life of Christ, and emotionally
touched and moved by His self-giving love for which he received nothing
but spittle in the crown of thorns, and somehow all of that has somehow
sort of hooked you and drawn you in, and you feel sort of
comfortable amongst people who are acquainted with those perspectives. Is that your Christianity? If
it is, my friend, it will never take you to heaven. Until you
have been brought to see that you are a vile, polluted, undone,
hell-deserving sinner, His only hope is in that fountain open
for sin and uncleanness until you have fled to Jesus Christ
and pleaded for the cleansing of his own precious blood. My friend Mark, not because this
preacher said it or even because he said it with what appears
to you to be a degree of personal conviction. Believe it because
God says it. The only ones who are before
the throne are those who have washed their robes and made them
white in the blood of the Lamb. And Jesus said he doesn't do
that for people who don't think they need it. He said, I didn't
come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And if you can say, by the grace
of God, the foundation But my professed Christianity, I confess
without reservation, is the acceptance of my position as lost, undone,
guilty, defiled, hell-deserving. And my only hope for acceptance
with God is the blood and righteousness of Christ, my friend. Don't ever
move from that posture. No matter how much you are unable
to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, no matter
how much God in mercy may take you on in conformity to Christ,
never, never forsake the posture of a guilty, vile, helpless,
undone sinner whose only hope is the blood and the righteousness
of Christ. I'm personally convinced in the
light of this language in the book of the Revelation that that's
one of the points God is seeking to underscore for us, that even
in heaven it will be the throne of God and of the Lamb, and we
will be conscious through all the unending ages of eternity
that everything we enjoy in the beatific vision, in the face-to-face
communion with God, we enjoy as redeemed sinners, redeemed
by the blood of the Lamb. He shall forever be the Lamb
in the midst of the flock. We sing about it, don't we? The
bride, eyes not her garment, but her dear bridegroom's face.
I will not gaze at glory, But on my King of Grace, not at the
crown he gifteth." It's the picture of someone holding forth a crown.
He says, I won't gaze at the crown, but on the hands that
hold it. But on his pierced hand, for
the Lamb is all the glory of Emmanuel's Lamb. My friend, would
you be at home with that group that John saw described in Revelation
7? They are before the throne of
God. They've washed their robes, made
them white in the blood of the Lamb, and they cry, salvation
to God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. Would you be
at home with that kind of song? God makes people compatible with
the song of heaven here on earth when he gives them to know and
feel and own their wretchedness. and to see the loveliness and
the suitability of Jesus as the only Savior of sinners. But I
must hasten, for there is a third category of description. Who
will be in heaven according to the Bible? Only those whose names
are in the Book of Life. Only those who are washed in
the blood of the Lamb. But thirdly, only those who have
been morally and ethically renovated and made the holy, obedient subjects
of Jesus Christ. Only those who have been morally
and ethically renovated and made the holy, obedient subjects of
Christ. Some of you will remember in
a previous exposition when we were wrestling with the question,
what is heaven? I had occasion to direct your
attention to Matthew 5.8 in Hebrews 12.14. We were considering that
heaven will be the face-to-face vision of God. Jesus said, Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, follow after the
holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. Now let's
bring the spotlight upon the first part of both of those verses.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they and they only shall
see God. If heaven is the face-to-face
sight of God, Jesus said, only the pure in heart shall see God. In other words, only those who
have undergone a moral, ethical renovation that touches the deepest
springs of the human personality. The heart is the seat of life. Guard your heart, for out of
it are the issues of life. What you are in your heart is
what you are. And Jesus said, only those who
have undergone this radical, moral, ethical purification will
ever see God. It is not enough that you have
felt some emotions in the presence of the biblical doctrines of
sin and of salvation. Nor is it enough that you have
gone through some volitional activity in the presence of the
pressures of your own sin and the gospel, nor is it enough
that you have taken up certain duties and certain patterns of
life that appear very, quote, Christian. Here's the issue. Has the fountain of your impurity
been radically touched by the power of God? Blessed are the
pure in heart! In heart! In other words, at
the seat of your being, where once you loved yourself and loved
your own ways and your own thoughts and your own ambitions, where
once you had an idle shelf on which sat lust and the world
and money and things and pride and everything else, In that
deep sanctuary of the soul, Almighty God has come and done in you
what Jesus did in the temple at Jerusalem. He has overturned
the tables. He has driven out the foul beasts
of your lust and your pride and your selfishness and your carnal
ambition. And there He has implanted hunger,
thirst, May I use the word of passion to be a holy man or a
holy woman. If that hasn't happened to you,
my friend, you're no more going to go to heaven than the devil.
You hear me? According to Jesus, you won't
go to heaven. And that ought to disturb some
of you. Because any transformation you've known in conjunction with
the gospel has been altogether too surface. You've simply redirected
the streams of your selfishness, redirected the streams of your
ambition, redirected the streams of your carnal preoccupation
with this life. But of a new heart, you know
nothing. You better take it from the lips
of Jesus. You're never going to make it to heaven. So you
get a new heart, not a perfect heart. Blessed are the pure in heart,
and one of the marks of a pure heart is that it mourns the impurities
that only God knows. That's one of the marks of a
pure heart. It's not content that everyone looks at me and
says, hey, you know, that guy's got his act together. He's a
mature Christian. I mean, he's really filled with
the Spirit. It doesn't matter to me, to you, if you have a
pure heart, what men know and think. Only one thing matters,
what God knows and sees. That's reality. And when I know
that God knows that there's coldness and dryness and the lurking activity
of the ghost of my past in terms of lust and pride and ambition,
and I'm no stranger to the mourning and secret over those sins. I'm not content. Oh, well, you
know, I haven't brought any big blotches on my reputation. Everyone
still accepts me as a good Christian, good standing and all the rest.
So what matters? Sure, I dabble a little bit with
fantasies that are impure, but I'm not laying with another man's
wife. So what? Oh, yes, I fantasize with the
nice-looking guy and the television soap thing, but God knows I'm
not unfaithful to my husband. So what? Oh, sure, I dream about
the things I'd like to have, but I'm not going out and cheating
people and running roughshod over others to get them. What's
a little covetousness in my spirit, a little lust in my mind? I'll
tell you what it is. Sin, it'll take you to hell.
That's what it is. And it's time some of you faced
it. And if you go to hell simply
a respectable, professing, Reformed Baptist, my hands are clean of
your blood. You've been told you need a pure
heart. You need to follow after the
holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. And if that
holiness is anything, it's a commitment to universal internal as well
as external conformity to the will and law of God. Every man
that hath this hope in him, every man, 1 John 3, 4, purifies himself
even as he is pure. He doesn't purify himself just
enough to get by so he doesn't come under church discipline.
That's what I fear with too many of you. You live just respectably
enough that you won't run the risk of church discipline. So
what? Your elders don't have the keys
to that city. God does. And nobody's getting
in who has not been morally and ethically transformed and committed
to a course of universal holiness and loving submission to Jesus
Christ. That's why there's that beautiful
description back in Revelation 7. Let's look at it again for
a moment. Beautiful picture of the redeemed. We put the spotlight,
as it were, upon the fact that they were washed in the blood
of the Lamb. Now let's look at the ethical
and moral transformation. Notice what it says about them. Verse 15 of Revelation 7. Therefore,
are they, notice where they are, before the throne of God, and
they serve him. They are very much at home in
the presence of a throne on which sits an unrivaled sovereign.
And when he makes known his will, they do it. You see it? They are before the throne, and
they serve him. I frankly, personally feel this
language taken from the description of angels. who wait before the
throne of God to do service to the heirs of salvation. It's
that posture of eagerness to know the slightest intimation
of the will of their Creator God that they might, as it were,
fly to the ends of the earth to do it. Now the very spirit
that unfallen angels have, by grace, becomes mine as a child
of God. They are before the throne and
they serve Him day and night. And that disposition is either
implanted here on earth by grace, or you'll never have it in the
world to come. Every time a sinner gets a Savior,
the Savior gets a servant. Mark it down. Every time a sinner
gets a Savior, the Savior gets a servant. Just that simple. And if the Savior doesn't have
a willing servant in you, you don't have a Savior in Him. Oh,
but I trust in His blood! You'll go to hell with that kind
of trust. That's the faith of demons. The faith that does not
purify the heart is not saving faith. It says in the Word of
God that they purified their hearts by faith. The faith that
lays hold of Christ as Savior is the faith in which the heart
is purified, purified from the predominant, prevailing disposition
of self-will, and it's made the loving bond-slave of Jesus Christ.
And that servitude, if it's not practical, is nothing. Now, it's
rare that I want to put a P.S. on any one sermon. But you don't
know the grace it took to sit in that chair where George is
sitting tonight, this morning. And Pastor Nichols was pouring
out his heart and opening up those passages in Proverbs. You
know what I wanted to get up and say? I wanted to get up and
say, either put your hand where your mouth is if you claim to
be Christ's servant, and you fathers and mothers go home with
a book of Proverbs and get down on your knees and say, Oh God,
we're committed to do what those passages say. Give us wisdom
to know how, but Lord, we're committed You don't need to rummage
the bookstore for more books on how to do it. You need to
get committed in will to do it. And God, the Holy Ghost, will
give you wisdom as you're committed to do what God says. God says, Husbands, love your
wives. That means what it says. And when I, as a pastor, have
to deal with husbands that won't even communicate, who carry on
this perpetual torture of non-communication, I frankly wonder, Lord, how can
they be Christians? After all the teaching they've
had, and the examples they've had, if they willfully say, I
don't care, I'm not going to communicate! My friend, if you
refuse to obey Ephesians 5.25, you'll go to hell! Just as much
as if you refuse to obey the seventh commandment. Oh, dear people, do we take serious
what the book says? Who's going to heaven? Only those
who've been morally, ethically renewed and made holy, obedient
subjects of Christ. That's why God says in Revelation,
nothing unclean shall enter. Nothing unclean shall enter. Well, I must hasten to a conclusion.
The fourth line of description in the book of the Revelation
in particular is that only those who overcome and persevere to
the end will enter heaven. We could look at all the overcomer
passages in Revelation 2 and 3. Let's look just at two of
them. Revelation chapter 2. Who should know better than the
Lord Jesus who is going to heaven? He died to open heaven. And here
we read in Revelation 2, 7, He that hath an ear, let him hear
what the Spirit says to the churches. To him that overcomes, to him
will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise
of God. You don't overcome, Jesus will
never hold to you the fruit of the tree of life in the paradise
of God. Mark it down. Overcome, or you'll
never make it. Chapter 3 and verse 5, he that
overcomes shall be arrayed in white garments. I will confess
his name before my Father. Hold fast that which you come,
verse 12, he that overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the
temple of my God, and he shall go out no more. And I will write
upon him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God,
the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God
and my own new name. And then the beautiful summary
statement in chapter 21, after giving a description of the new
heaven and the new earth, Who's going to enter it? Let the Word
of God speak, and oh, may it speak with power. He that overcomes
shall inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he will
be my son. But, oh, isn't there another
class? Believers who don't overcome. No. Look at verse 8. But for
the fearful, the unbelieving, the abominable, the murderers,
their part shall be in the lake of fire. You either overcome
or you burn. And again, I really wonder, and
it may be that it's simply something of the fruit of some of my own
pastoral dealings that have left my judgment imbalanced. I pray
it's not so, but I acknowledge it may be so. But I really wonder. I really wonder. We who confess
our faith in the doctrine of the preservation and the perseverance
of the saints, our confidence in the certainty of God's preserving
grace, but the necessity of our persevering activity, I really
wonder, dear people, if we believe, either we overcome or we miss
heaven. You let a man appear at my door
who says, You kill me or I'm going to kill you and your wife
and your son and your two daughters. If I believe him, I won't stand
there and take a little jab at him with my elbow. I won't just
stand there and spar with him. If I really believe it's either
him or me, it's a fight to the death. And I'll go down in a
pool of my own blood or he's gone down in a pool of his. But
I tell you, believe no fooling around. If I sense he's a madman
who's serious, He says, you kill me, or I'm going to kill you,
your wife and your kids. I tell you, friends, we're locked
in a death struggle. And if you were looking in, everything
about it would indicate those two guys are after one another's
blood. And my friend, it's just that way in this business of
overcoming. If you, like Bunyan's Christian, are determined to
cross the river and enter the celestial city, you don't play
games and strike treaties with Apollyon. You don't sit around
and have sparring sessions with the things that drag you into
the world and into spiritual dullness, whether it's your TV
programs, your music, your love of this, your love of that. You
go hacking and hewing and plucking and casting out. That's the language
of the Son of God. Pluck out right eyes. Cut off right hands. In the name
of truth, dear people, Do you believe that? If you do, then
in the name of God, why do you go on? Why do you go on, encumbered
with all of your trinkets, continually feeding the very lusts which
again and again land you in spiritual dryness and dullness, and then
you have a little stirring and a little activity and a few tears
and a few resolves? But in three months' time, you're
right back where you were. That's not overcoming. That's
just sparring. And it's just delaying the time
until that one who's committed to your damnation will land you
in a pool of your own blood. Who's going to heaven? Well,
as I have tried to open up these passages that describe them,
According to these passages, only those whose names are in
the Book of Life, only those who've been washed in the blood
of the Lamb, only those who've undergone a moral, ethical renovation
and been made the holy subjects of Christ, only those who persevere
and overcome. And remember, when they get there,
they have one song, salvation to our God and unto the Lamb. Some of you may go out of here
tonight, saying, I never heard such crazy stuff. That preacher
talked like you make it to heaven on your own. I said, no such
thing. That's heresy. The salvation
is all of God. But it's not a salvation. It
so operates as to carry you there, oblivious to the conflicts along
the way. The same God who's revealed They
have washed their robes and made them white, is the God who said
in Jesus Christ, he that overcomes, I will give the right to partake
of the tree of life. There's no contradiction. There's
a beautiful sentence. If I am unable to overcome, it's
because I've been morally and ethically renovated by the Spirit.
And if I've been morally and ethically renovated, it's because
I've come in the way of repentance and faith. I've taken my posture
as a guilty, helpless, undone sinner and gone out of myself
to Jesus Christ alone for salvation and grace. And if I've done that,
it's because God's set his love upon me in eternity. You see
the beautiful synthesis and the overcomers. traced their overcoming
all the way back to God's sovereign electing grace. Grace that marked
them out and gave them to the Lamb. Grace that in time brought
them to see their need of the Lamb and to go out of themselves
and to trust the Lamb and wash their robes and make them white.
And that same grace gave them a new heart and gave them a desire
to be holy men and women. Gave them that passion to be
like the One who was the object of their trust. And His face
and His fellowship and His ways and His people were so precious,
they were willing to fight and hack and hew and be overcomers
at any cost till at last. They would stand in His presence
with all the multitude that would be redeemed and sing that song
before the throne of God and of the Lamb, salvation unto our
God and unto the Lamb. Will you be amongst them? Oh,
my friend, I ask you, will you be amongst them? Will you be
amongst them? Would you say, I don't know if
I'm a left? My friend, there's only one way you can read your
election, and that's by taking your place as a guilty sinner
and run to Christ. Now, you dare say, I don't know
if I'm a sinner? Your own conscience condemns you into questioning.
You know you're a sinner. Well, I don't know if Christ
is available to me. He is. He says, come, all who
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Oh, my
sinner friend, come. My deceived, professing Christian
friend, come. And dear child of God, press
on, press on. A few more years shall roll,
and we shall be at home at last. every tear and every struggle,
all the hacking, all the hearing, it will be worth it all when
we see Jesus. One look at His dear face, all
sorrow will erase. So bravely run the race till
we see Christ. What else matters? Answer me,
what else matters? What else matters? but that we should look upon
his face. God grant that we shall come to spiritual sobriety and
see that nothing else really does. Let us pray. O God, our Heavenly Father, How
we thank you for those beautiful descriptions of the redeemed
in your presence, described in language that relates to our
world, sight, and sense, sets before us such great realities
in the images that impinge upon our own world and our own imaginations. We thank you that the realities
are there, and we would seize them with our eyes and by your
grace determine that we shall know them in our experience at
any cost. We pray for unconverted men and
women, boys and girls sitting here tonight. Oh, that you would
put in their hearts a jealousy to know what their eternal destiny
is. Give them no rest until they
flee for cleansing to that fountain open for sin and uncleanness. And Father, for your weary sins,
who in their struggle against the world and sin just about
decided there's no more use in fighting. Oh God, nerve them
for the battle. Give them such a holy pining
to see the face of Christ that they will be given strength to
hack and hew and fight on until they look upon his face with
joy. Lord, use your word. Oh, take
the great truths of your word concerning heaven, and etch them
upon the fleshly tables of our hearts. Hear our cry, and to
your name give praise and honor and glory, through Jesus Christ
our Lord. Amen.