We read from the New Testament from the Gospel according to Matthew chapter 19, beginning to read at verse 16 and reading down to the end of verse 26. Matthew chapter 19 and verse 16. This is God's Word. A man came up to him saying, Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? And he said to him, Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments. He said to him, Which ones? And Jesus said, You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The young man said to him, All these I have kept. What do I still lack? Jesus said to him, If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me.' When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. And Jesus said to his disciples, Truly I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, Who then can be saved? But Jesus looked at them and said, With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. Amen. May God bless the reading and the preaching of His Word to us all. Will all good people go to heaven? That's the question we're looking at this evening. That is probably what most people think. Good people will go to heaven and bad people will go to hell. So if I try hard enough to be good, then all will be well and I will go to heaven. That's probably the religion of many people. It certainly is the theme of many funeral sermons that I've heard. We'll be told about how good the person was and assured that all is well. Good people will go to heaven. It seems the fairest arrangement, doesn't it? Heaven is a happy place and hell is a horrible place. So it seems fair that people go where they deserve to go. It wouldn't be fair, we think, if the good people went to hell and the bad people went to heaven. That would be like an examination. in which those who got the lowest marks got the prizes. Or like an athletic event in which those who came last got the gold medal. It would strike us as very unfair. And lots of people think that the Christian message is, try your best to be good. And lots of people think that that is what the church is for. to make people good. And that's why I think many people ignore the church and Christianity. Either they think, I don't want to be good, or more likely they think, I'm good enough as I am. Will all good people go to heaven? I think it's a bad question. It's a bad way of putting things. It causes misunderstanding and mistaken ideas. I've got a number of problems with putting it that way. Will all good people go to heaven? Well, in the first place, it leaves us all uncertain, doesn't it? How good do you have to be? How good is good enough? Is God going to take the top 10% of people? Or the best 50% of people? Am I good enough to go to heaven? When are you good enough? All of us at times are anything but good. We're far from good. We all do things that we're ashamed of afterwards. Does that disqualify us? How bad do you need to be to be shut out of heaven? You could never be sure. And that's why people underneath are uneasy and unsure. And they really don't know what's going to happen to them when they die. I've tried to be good, but am I good enough? It's impossible to say. It also strikes me as unfair. Have you ever asked yourself, Why are some people good and others aren't? A lot of it, you know, is to do with our character, our temperament, the way we're born. Some children are just born with a nice temperament. They're obedient. They're biddable. They're kind. They're nice children. Other children are born with a difficult temperament. They find it easy to be naughty. They're stubborn. And we're like that as adults. Some of us are just born with rather unpleasant, difficult temperaments. I see you're all looking at me. And really, it's not much credit to us the way we're born. Some of us have to struggle against things. Others find life easier. Our background makes a lot of difference. If you're born into a secure, loving home, it's going to affect the sort of person you are. If you're born to parents who are kind to you, and caring, who discipline you, who teach you right and wrong and bring you up to good standards, the probability is you're going to be a pretty decent sort of person. That's the way you were brought up. It's not to your credit. You didn't choose your parents. That is just what happens. There are other youngsters and they're brought up in a very difficult damaging upbringing. What about these children who are abused and shouted at and cursed at and neglected? What about these children who never see a good example? We have a lazy father and an uncaring mother who are surrounded by all that's ugly and false. who are never encouraged at their schoolwork, who are never disciplined, who are never pointed in a good direction? What chance do they have of growing up as well-balanced, stable individuals? Would it be fair for God to condemn them just because of the bad surroundings they grew up in? A lot of our goodness is just the way we happen to be by our temperaments and by our backgrounds and by our upbringing. The question is also off-putting. Do you ever think that Christians can seem very arrogant and self-satisfied? Sometimes it sounds as if Christians are saying to non-Christians, we are the good people. And by implication, you are the bad people. God loves us because we are good, and you need to be saved because you're bad. Is that the impression we give sometimes? Very unattractive, isn't it? Makes us sound very self-satisfied, very full of ourselves. And friends, you know perfectly well that it's just not true. There are many people outside the church and they're far better than lots of people inside the church. There are many people who aren't Christian. And they're far kinder, they're far more generous, they're more forgiving than lots of people who call themselves Christians. That's just the truth. The Bible teaches us, you see, that everything good in the world comes from God. Everything good. And an American writer, Tim Keller, writes on A verse in James, where James says, every good gift is from above. And Keller says, God gives good gifts of wisdom and talent and beauty and skill to all humanity, regardless of their religious conviction, their gender or their race. And very often the people outside the church are far nicer than the people inside the church. So what are we saying? It's all the good people who go to heaven? It's based on a false assumption, you see, that there are people who are good, utterly and completely good. We were reading in Matthew of a young man who was sure that he was good. And he asked Jesus about heaven. And he called Jesus good. And Jesus gives a strange answer. There is only one who is good. That is God. Ultimately, nobody's good but God. And the young man protests. He says, I'm good. I'm good. I have kept all the commandments. Jesus says, well, let's test you out on the first commandment. We'll start with question one. The first commandment, you shall have no other gods before Me, I, God, am to be the most important thing in your life. Why don't you give away all your money to the poor and put God first? The young man wouldn't do it. Money was his God. Things were his God. Not only had he not kept all the commandments, he failed the first commandment. He couldn't even pass the first question. No one, ultimately, is good. You see, to call yourself good depends on who you compare yourself with. I once thought I was a good guitar player. We were living in Greece at the time, And I decided that I would learn to play classical guitar. So I bought a couple of books and started practicing. Not these people who just strum chords, but who you actually pick out with your fingers the different notes and play music. And after about six months of hard work, I could play two lines of music. And I thought I was the bee's knees. Play this guitar. And one day a fellow came into our home called Paul Vondiziano. He is now a professor of guitar and a classical guitar player. The embarrassment of what followed. I painfully played my two lines very slowly with lots of mistakes. Paul lifted the guitar after some persuasion And his hands just flew up and down. And cascades of Bach came flowing out from the guitar on and on. And I sank down into my chair. I thought I was good. Compared with someone who was good, I wasn't even a beginner. And we sometimes think that we're good. My friends, compared with God. And God is the standard of goodness. None of us, none of us is good. And the best man or best woman who ever lived on the earth, an ordinary human, when they see God, they never say, I'm good. They say, Lord, I'm wicked, I'm sinful, I'm bad. Paul says in Romans 3.23 that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So there's the answer to our question. Will all good people go to heaven? There aren't any people good enough. There aren't any good people. I'm not. And you're not. And if it was only good people who went to heaven, no one would go. And heaven would be empty. And if that was all there was to say, it would be a very depressing message. But of course, there's more to say. God's answer. The best news that there ever has been. And in the remaining 10 or 15 minutes, I want to bring you God's answer. And I just want you to remember three simple things, each beginning with the letter P. The first is a person. A person. And of course, I'm talking about Jesus of Nazareth, born as a baby in Bethlehem, but more than a human baby, the Son of God. God Himself has entered our world in human form. Jesus is God with us, and God with us lived in Palestine for 30 years and he went about, he was a carpenter, he was perfect and holy and pure and kind and loving and he was utter, absolute, perfect goodness. And one of the most amazing things about him is that he loved sinful people. He loved sinful people. He was called the friend of sinners. It was his enemies called him that. But what they said was true. He was a real friend to sinners. Their church leaders of the day grumbled at him because he wasn't religious enough. They said, this man receives sinners and eats with them. Jesus sat and talked to crooks and prostitutes and ex-terrorists and people who hadn't worshipped God for many years. and social outcasts. And he became their friend. And they loved him. They loved him. And he mixed also with the marginalized people of life. The beggars and the cripples and the lepers and the blind and the dumb. The down and outs. And they were drawn to him. And he welcomed them. And they found in him a friend. And in fact, he stated this as the reason for coming to earth. He says, I didn't come to call the righteous. I came for sinners. I came to call sinners and to save sinners. And my friends, this is the person you need to get to know. This is the person you need to deal with. He is what Christianity is about. The person, the Lord Jesus Christ, He is the one who can bring you to heaven. So if you want to think about heaven, you don't want to think about your own goodness or your own badness. First and foremost, you want to think about this person. Who is Jesus? What is He like? What was He like on earth? What is he like today? Because he's still alive and he's still the same. He's still a friend of sinners. He's still welcoming and kind to people who have never thought of him before in their lives, to people who never darken a church door. When they come to him in faith, he receives them. The person. The second P. The payment. The payment. The Lord Jesus did not come to earth simply to show how good he was. Nor did he come just to love sinful people. Far more than that. He came to do something. To do something staggering for sinners. Something they could never do for themselves. He came to earth specifically to pay for their sins. We have broken God's law. And when God's law has been broken, the penalty has to be paid. It's like human law. If you break the law, you've got to pay the penalty. And to sin even once against the great Infinite God is huge. It is immense. Think of the guilt of even one sin against that mighty, everlasting Spirit who has created the whole universe, who is utterly holy and infinitely powerful. And we rebel against this God. We disobey Him. We refuse to do what He wants. And even one sin is an awful catastrophe And all of us here have committed hundreds and thousands of sins. And we could never pay for our sins. We could never satisfy God for our sins. Saying prayers won't do it. Giving money won't do it. Religious rituals and ceremonies won't do it. We just can't pay. None of us can pay. There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin. But Jesus has paid. Because he is both God and man. And because he's a man, he can pay for human sin. And because he's God, he can make a payment sufficient to satisfy God. And that's what happened on the cross at Calvary. And on that center cross, the only perfect human being there has ever been was terribly punished. And he died in the darkness. Not for his own sin, for he had no sin, but in an awful, glorious, mysterious way, He was paying for the sins of others. He was taking their place. He was their substitute. The Bible calls it making atonement for the sins of all who would trust Him. As Isaiah puts it in familiar words, He was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. He was paying. He was paying. And just before he died, he shouted out, it is finished. It is finished. He had made the payment and he made it in full. And when God raised him from the dead the third day, that was God's receipt. When you pay a bill, You get a receipt. And they can never ask you to pay that bill again. You show them the receipt. It's been paid in full. And the resurrection is God saying of the Lord Jesus' payment, paid in full. Paid in full. The person. The payment. And my dear friends, that is the good news of the gospel. The gospel isn't for good people. The gospel is for those who know they're not good people and are willing to own up to the fact and say, I'm not good. I'm not good. My heart isn't good. I don't want to do good. I want to do wrong. And I'll never be able to pay for the wrong that I've done. And the good news is for people who come to that point and say, I'm not going to trust in myself anymore. I'm not ever going to think that I can get myself to heaven. I'm going to go to Jesus Christ. I'm going to trust in Him. I'm going to commit my life to Him. Trusting that He paid for my sins on the cross. The person and the payment. And there's one more thing I need to say before stopping, and that is the power, the person, the payment and the power. You may be sitting listening to me and saying, it sounds good, but it won't work. It's impossible. I've been outside the church too long. I've been an unbeliever too long. I'm set in my ways. I've chosen my path. I just don't think I could change. I don't think I could ever be a Christian. I don't think I could ever fit in. It would be just too big a step in my life at my stage. It's a lovely idea. I'd like to think it could happen. But for me, I don't think it's possible. On Thursday evening, About 3 a.m. British time, when most of you, I expect, were sleeping, I was sitting in a plane at Newark Airport in the United States. There were about 200 people on the plane, plus a mound of luggage. And we had to sit there for 50 minutes because we were the 30th plane waiting to take off. And as we sat, I thought again about the miracle of flight. And I imagine somebody who'd never flown before, who'd never seen a plane from another century or another place and you take them and you plop them down in the seat beside me in the plane and they look around this great big machine with 200 people and I say to them in a few minutes we're going to be flying up in the air. What would they say? Don't be ridiculous. It's absolutely impossible. How could a big heavy machine like this With all these people go up into the air. They don't understand the power. And then the jet engines are turned on. The power comes. And suddenly the impossible happens. And the big plane rolls down the airway. What am I trying to say? Runway. Still a bit jet lagged. Rolls down the runway and gathers speed. and lifts off as easy as you like, a bird up into the sky. In a few minutes, 30,000 feet, 600 miles an hour, the power lifts it. You see, there's power available in God to change you. God the Holy Spirit. And when we come to Christ, that power changes us. It changes us. It makes us different people. It helps us to do what we thought we could never do. It helps us, He helps us rather, for He's a person. He helps us to turn away from our self-centered, ungodly lives. He helps us to believe in Jesus, to trust Him, and to commit ourselves to Him. And then He changes you day by day. And you find you're becoming a different person. And you start getting interested in the Bible. You were never interested in it before. It was a boring book. You couldn't be bothered with it. But now suddenly you're interested in it. And you start praying in a way that you've never prayed before. And you find yourself loving the people of God. And you find yourself wanting to worship God. And he starts pointing out things in your life that are wrong. And you find you want to get away from them and you want to change them. And God is changing you day by day. And it's His power that changes you. And the thing is, you can't experience the power until you believe. You can't imagine what it's like to fly until you're actually flying. You can talk to your blue in the face to somebody sitting beside you, but they won't believe it until it happens. The person, Jesus, who made the payment for the sins of all who trust in Him. And God, by His power, enables us to believe in Jesus and changes us. Many of us here tonight know that we are going to heaven. We're absolutely sure about that. Are you sure? If you were to die tonight, do you think you would go to heaven? What's the difference? Let me repeat this again. It is not that we are any better than you are. That's not it. We don't believe that and we don't think that. There are lots of people who are Christians and they're damaged, flawed people. They have problems to deal with and temptations to overcome. But we have trusted the person who is the friend of sinners and who loves imperfect people and receives them when they come to him and changes them. Don't say it's impossible. He can change you. He's changed many of us here. You may sometimes think some of us aren't very nice You should have known us before we became Christians. We were a lot worse. And throughout history, God changes people. He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should have everlasting life. And I'm bringing this message because we long that any of you who have not yet received this assurance of heaven, this everlasting life, may have it. And I say to you that Jesus Christ Himself offers it to you this evening. He offers Himself to you. And all you need to do is ask Him to be your Savior and commit your life to Him. And I pray that you will do that very thing. Amen. Let's bow our heads for a moment of prayer. O God, none of us are good by nature. None of us have anything to be proud of. None of us have any reason to boast. Whatever we have that is good is all because of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our Savior. Everything that we are is by your grace. We are simply sinful people who have come to the friend of sinners. And, Father, we pray for any here tonight who are not yet trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ, that they will see the great simplicity of the gospel, that they will see with the eye of faith that kind, gracious, loving person who calls them to himself, that they will understand that on His cross He paid in full for all the sins of all His people, and that by Your power they will trust in Him as their Savior, and that You will change them from day to day. And Father, we thank You that though we are not good by nature, You make us good. And day by day and year by year, You make us more like Christ, so that when at last we are received into heaven, we are good, changed, utterly like Christ in every way. And we thank you for your kindness. In Jesus' name, Amen.