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But the question I'd like us
to consider this evening, and really, I'd like us to really
come up with a question ourselves, really. So rather than me just
pose it to you, it's really that you need to think it through,
and that we actually do get to grips with what this question
is. So to start with, I'd be interested to know what your
response is to this book. I've got a chart from the We've got a chart here. So I'd like to know what your
response is to the Bible, what you think about it. So, we have
two alternatives, either the Bible is not true, or in this chart we have the
Bible is true. There are, you know, if the Bible is true, the
only alternative is the Bible is not true, so one of these
We can safely say it's true. Where we are right now is in
one of these two rows. There is no other alternative.
Either the Bible is true or the Bible is not true. You can't
do anything about either of those. One of those is definitely true.
You can't affect one of those two rows. However, you can choose to obey it And
obviously the opposite is, you can choose to ignore it. So where you are right now has
got to be in one of those boxes. You either, the Bible is not
true, but you are obeying it. The Bible is not true, and you
are ignoring it. The Bible is true, and you are
obeying it. The Bible is true, and you are
ignoring it. So right now, for each and every
one of us, we are in one of those boxes somewhere. So let's take
the first box. The Bible is not true, but you're
obeying it. So let's take the worst case
scenario for every single one of those. Because the idea is
here, just in a couple of minutes, I just want to engage you in
why you need to be listening to God's Word tonight. So the
Bible is not true, but you're obeying it. So what's the worst
that's going on here? You have lived your life by God's
word. It is not true. You've lost friends for no good
reason at all. You've also lost some family
members for no good reason at all. They're not talking to you
because you are obeying the Bible and they cannot stand the fact
that you're obeying the Bible. This is the worst case scenario. OK,
the Bible is not true. You're obeying it. You're laughing
at work for no good reason at all because it's not true. The
worst case is that you're probably being laughed at at work, and
for no good reason at all. Another one? You've wasted a lot of time going
to church on Sundays, you've wasted time meeting up at prayer
meetings, because at the end of the day, it wasn't true, and
you were obeying it at this time. That's the worst case. What's
the worst case here? The Bible is true, and you've
been obeying it. What's the worst it can be? you have a Heavenly Father. The
Bible is true, and you're obeying the Bible, you have a Heavenly
Father who cares for you. The Bible is true, and you're
obeying it. You have the gift of eternal
life. You're living your life by God's
words, and you're in this box here, then you have eternal life. And I just jotted a few down
from the list that have gone on and on. You have purpose in
life. The Bible is true, and you're
obeying it, and you're living your life by God's words, you have purpose
in life. The Bible is true, and you're
obeying it, you're very blessed because you have Christian friends
who come to church, you have Christian friends. You have peace
with God. So this could have gone on and
on. And obviously tied to eternal life is that you know that you
will spend eternity in heaven. So this is for somebody You cannot
change one of those rows. One of those rows is the truth. Right now, you cannot change
either of those. Either this is the case, the
Bible is true, or the Bible is not true. You can't affect that.
What you can choose is which column you're in. You can choose
whether you're obeying God's Word, or you can choose whether
you're ignoring God's Word. You cannot change one of these.
One of those is the case, whether you like it or not. The Bible
is either true or it's not true. You can't change that. But you
can change which column you're in. If you're in this one, and
the Bible is true, then you have a Heavenly Father, you have eternal
life, you have purpose in life, you have Christian friends, you
have peace with God. How about the Bible isn't true
and you've been ignoring it anyway? Well, you've pretty much been
living for now, OK? You've got to be right about
what the Bible says, you've just been living for now. You do what
you want. You ignore the Bible, you just
get on with life and you do what you want. But, look at the worst
case scenario, you will end up dying anyway. That's probably
about the best that you can get. What about this one though? The
Bible is true, but you have ignored it. If the Bible is true and you
have ignored what God says, He says that you are an enemy of
His. you will never truly be happy.
The Bible says if the Bible is true, and you're ignoring it,
and you're living your life by God's word, then God says you
will never ever be truly happy, never be truly satisfied. The
Bible says if the Bible is true, and you're ignoring it, the Bible
says that you will go to hell when you die. Now have a look at those two
columns. The worst that's going to happen to you, the trial is
not true. Lots of friends, lots of family laugh at that waste
of time, but this box here, you'll have a heavenly Father who cares
for you. Eternal life, purpose in life, you'll have your sins
forgiven. Peace with God, heavenly life. This column here, you choose
to be in this column here, you're basically making a conscious
decision that you're prepared to risk that, You're prepared
to be an enemy of God, so never truly happy, hell will you die.
So I hope that as we've just had that brief intro, you should
be thinking to yourself, right, the question we should be answering
is, how can I be here? Surely we should be thinking
to ourselves, how can I know a heavenly father? How can I
know, have eternal life? How can I have this purpose in
my life? OK, so the question for us tonight is, get my notes back here. So the question is, how can I have eternal life?
How can I know God is my heavenly Father? When I used to come to
church, when I was much younger, I used to think of all different
things that would occupy my mind while I was sitting in church.
I used to do things like count the numbers on like a countless
night. Really, really well-rounded things. Just counting like that
to see how many I could get. But I'm going to sit there and
think, I wish someone would tell me One, two, three, how can I
become a Christian? How can I have eternal life?
Please tell me. Number one, number two, number
three. Make it clear for me, OK? Sometimes you're sitting
there, and sometimes you just go over your head. I need to
think to myself when I'm younger, please just tell me, nice and
simply, how would I have eternal life? Well, the interesting thing
is, somebody does actually raise this question with Jesus. And
we did actually read it. So this evening, we're going
to look at the power of individuality. And in some ways, it's the maleficence
of the paladins. But in other ways, it does cause
a quite considerable explanation. So what is the primary message
of the Egyptian analysis? I'm trying to get a piece of
paper in front of you, so I'm going to let you write down what you think
the Egyptian analysis is really all about. I wonder what ideas
you have. maybe be love your neighbour,
or maybe be love everyone, or who is my neighbour, or do good
to everyone, or don't do good things to people who can only
do good things back to you. I mean, part of it is terrible,
it's definitely about loving your neighbour and who is my neighbour, but
that's really part of an explanation. And the explanation is, it's
showing us one main thing, and it's showing us how can I have
eternal life? That is what it's really answering.
So if you're sitting there thinking, yes, I must be a Christian, what
do I need to do to have eternal life? Then let's go through this
passage and see what God has to say to us. So what I'm going
to do is I'm going to go through the passage, pretty much verse
by verse, and draw out the teachings from it. So verse 25. And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and
tested him, saying, teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal
life? a self-justice lawyer, someone
who's an expert in the autism law, in the first five books
of the Bible. He's a very educated man, he's
a very sophisticated scholar. And he asks the question, what
shall I do to enhance my life? It's another question. Is there
anything wrong with the question? No, there isn't. What shall I
do to be saved? These are the kind of questions
that we should be asking. If we look at this box here, we think to ourselves,
sure, that's a really good question to ask. What can I do? What can I do to have eternal
life? You talk about, what can I do to have peace with God?
If everybody considered there was a hell to be avoided, there
was a heaven to be gained, such a good question to ask. What
can I do to inherit or have eternal life? However, with this man,
his motives, let's look at his motives very, very quickly. If
you find out he wasn't actually asking very sincerely. And it
tells us he had an underlying motive. And his motive says here,
a certain lawyer stood up and tested him. So he's actually
asking this question to test Jesus. So what does that really
mean? Well, trying to put Jesus to
the test kind of means tempting as well, but he's not trying
to make Jesus sin. So he's not trying to make Jesus
into sin. So what is this lawyer trying to do when he asks this
question? He's obviously a skilled expert
in the law of God. And he's really testing this
unofficial Galilean lay preacher to see if he can deal with this
really difficult theological question. But why is he doing
this? Well, it could be that he's just
interested in knowing how much he doesn't know about the law
of God. But probably he's really going to use his preaching. So
he's probably actually just trying to expose how naive he is. How
naive is this creature? What does he really know? It
could be that he's really jealous of the popularity of Jesus and
just cannot understand him. He's just trying to undermine
Jesus. We find that Jesus does face a lot of these challenges
where people are undermining him. People ask him questions,
trick him up on when he taxes the Caesar, on divorce, on the
resurrection, and when it came to stoning the woman who was
caught in adultery. So we find that throughout Jesus'
life, These people are always trying to undermine you. Anyway,
this man asked this question. It's a good question. Yes, it
was asked with one motive, but he doesn't ask it. So what did
Jesus respond in verse 26? And Jesus said to him, what is
written in the law? What is your meaning of it? So he turns this
question back on the lawyer. So he switches roles. So he asks
him, you know, well, you're a lawyer. You specialize in the law, of
course. You specialize in these things. It's your speciality,
it's work. What does the scripture say?
What's your reading of it? So we see that not only is he
turning the question back on this man, but also Jesus shows
a higher regard for the scripture because he's saying, in actual
fact, yes, in the scriptures you will find the answer to this. So does the lawyer, sir. Verse 27. So he said to him,
you shall have the Lord your God in all your heart, with all
your soul, with all your strength, and with all your might, and
your neighbour as yourself. Can you imagine this lion, he's
there with hundreds of his friends, Jesus is there, and they're having
this introduction, there's lots of other people around. Imagine
this lion with hundreds of his friends, feeling quite confident,
yes, this is, I'm quite happy with this, this is my speciality,
yeah, if it was Mark's, mine would be his speciality, you
know, the 12, the first five books of the Bible, yeah, complete
confidence. And yes, the answer he gives
is completely correct. Love the Lord your God with all
your heart, all your soul, all your strength, all your might,
and you're amazing yourself. He's quoting Deuteronomy 6, verse
5, and then it's just 19, verse 18. And in fact, the words he
used are exactly the same as Jesus' teaching. In this one,
in another passage of Mark, Jesus actually answers somebody else
with the same answer when somebody asks him about the first and
most important commandment. That's in Mark 12. And Jesus
actually answers the question with this. And you shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with
all your mind, with all your strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like this.
You shall love your neighbour as yourself. You see, this boy
does know the law of the cross. He does understand this. And
he can quote it. He can actually put it word for
word. What does Jesus say to that?
So Jesus says to him, you have answered my name. So I'm going
to just kind of shift between these two characters. To start
with, the lawyer there, he's testing Jesus. Now, if I'm going
to ask a question in my class, I'm pretty certain I already
know the answer. But when I ask a closed question
at them, it's a closed question, I'm going to have an idea of
the answer. So if I take them right, OK, it's maths, what, 80 times
0.6 something, there's a pretty good chance I know what the answer's
going to be. And if they can answer me, I
can say to them, well done, OK, good, you've got the answer correct.
I'm not going to ask them a question I don't know the answer to. So
at this point, Jesus says to them, well done, yes, you've
got it right. So suddenly, they flip this roller,
OK? To start with, the lawyer's asking
Jesus a question. But suddenly, Jesus has actually
turned it now in his head, and he's actually making a judgment on
the lawyer. He's actually turned it around, and he's asking him
a question. The lawyer's answering, saying, yeah, well done, you've
got it correct, yes. he suddenly flips it around. Startlingly,
the lawyer thought he was the expert. Suddenly Jesus is showing
the naturopaths, I'm making a decision about you. He's actually showing
the naturopaths, the lawyer isn't the expert. It's Jesus. Now the
lawyer has been tested and evaluated. But Jesus is so complimentary.
You have answered correctly. Well done, yeah, absolutely right.
You've hit the nail on the head. So how do you tell the lawyer,
this is what you need to do? Love God with all your heart,
soul, strength, and might, and you'll make the righteous God.
Spot on. You've got it right. That's what you need to do. And
it wasn't really usual for the scribes and Pharisees to get
it right. It's quite unusual. It's quite an unusual situation.
Jeremy Fee, the Pharisees, the scribes, they're completely into
the big picture, and they're so focused on the fine detail.
I've missed this verse completely. I've never noticed this verse
before. Matthew 23, verse 24. You strain out a gnat and swallow
a camel. I've never said that word before.
The idea that, you know, you have a gnat in your soup, or
your drink, whatever it is, but you would actually swallow a
camel. If you do the same thing, you know, you miss the big picture.
You're so focused on the little gnats floating around in your
soup, but you would actually swallow a camel. The idea is
they're so focused on the detail, and they miss the big picture.
If you do the same with this flyer, You can see how it is that you
can have peace with God. You can see what you need to
do. Love the Lord your God with all your being and your name,
grace yourself. But that's not what Jesus said. So he says to
him, you've answered rightly. He doesn't stop there. He goes
to something else. Jesus says, do this and live. Jesus asked the question, what
can I do to help return to life? What can I do to avoid hell and
gain heaven? Jesus said, do this and this. You must love God with
all your being, and love your neighbor as yourself with all
your being. And then Jesus really hits it home. Because at that
time, a lot of people thought that they could actually win
God's favor, and God would look down on them, by keeping God's law
in certain ways. OK, that's fairly similar to
some people today. And it was said in the Scribes and Pharisees
book, if you want to please God, you must follow God's law. So
Jesus said to this young man, OK, you are determined to have
eternal life, and you are determined to do it by obeying God's law,
right? This is how you have to do it.
If you want to have eternal life, you must obey God's law, absolutely,
100% perfectly, then you'll have an inherent eternal life. OK,
so you've got to love God with all your heart, all your strength,
all your might, you must never give up, and you've got to love
your neighbour perfectly, all the time, 100% of the time, with
all your being. This paradigm has been addressed
to us today, because people still have this attitude today towards
winning God's favour. People have this idea, you know,
I can win God's favour, I can do things to make God pleased
with me. And even though people might not say it, they do have
this idea that at the end of, when life finishes, there are
going to be some idea of scales. Do you know, I'm sure that I
do more good than I do bad things. Generally speaking, I'm pretty
certain. So they have this idea that there's going to be scales.
And they also think that they have done more good than bad
things. Well, the Bible doesn't say that.
The Bible says, in actual fact, you have done absolutely nothing
good. Even the best you've done, is
like filthy rags. There's nothing on this side,
OK? It's all on that side. OK? So none of us can claim we've
done anything good that's turned out to be anything bad. As a
matter of fact, God says all our righteousness is a filthy
rag. He said more than that. He said, if you want to play
that game, if you think it's the only time of your life, and
if you have one thing, one thing on this side, things wrong, and
then you think, well, anything that did manage to do any good,
it's all wiped out anyway. Because the Bible said, all who
sin and come short of the glory of God. But Jesus said to Elijah
over there, whether you answer correctly, do this and live. Evidently, when he said, do this
and live, he's actually saying, do this right now. Do this continually,
continuously. You must love God with all your
heart, mind, strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Not
once, not one-off. All the time, 100% of the time,
you must continue to love God with all your heart, strength,
soul, and mind, and maybe yourself. And if you stop at all, if you
stop for a minute, for a second, you've broken God's law. Because
it says in James 2, verse 10, whoever shall keep the law and
yet offend in one thing is guilty of breaking them all. So it marks
a great mistake. If you just stop loving me for one second
of your life, then you've as good as broken all the laws of
God. So what's Jimmy doing to try and make this young man realise?
He's trying to make him realise that he's making an educational
mistake. If he thinks that he can earn eternal life, Jimmy's
being too kind to him. He wants this young man to realise.
He's saying to him, you cannot do it. It is impossible. It is
impossible for you to keep God's law perfectly. I mean, the law
of God wasn't designed for us to actually learn our way to
heaven. It's leadership, but we can't do it. So what's the
young lawyer's response to this? Well, Jesus says to him, so do
this, and you will live. And the lawyer can kind of feel
the quiet in Jesus' laughter, because he knows the law is just
too much of him. He knows how to love God with
all his heart, soul, and strength, every second of the day. So,
you can just see things in white. The other bit, I love my neighbour.
Pretty certain I'll do that. Okay? So, okay, Jesus, define
neighbour for me. I'm pretty certain I'm there
because Jews, they go to interpret neighbours being somebody who
is near to them. That's what it meant for them. So, members
of their same family. Other Jewish people, that's how
they refer to their neighbours. I'm pretty certain people thought,
I love these people. OK, maybe I don't quite mention
love God all the time, but in this bit, I'm pretty certain
I've managed that bit. So he says to Jesus, and that's
typically a kind of lie. He wants to define these terms.
What does neighbor mean? He's pretty certain I've already
covered those things himself, especially in front of his friends. OK,
Jesus, who is my neighbor? OK, so Jesus responds. He doesn't give, like I said
to Michael last time, any of these definitions of this word. dictionary definition. I'll tell
you why in a couple of minutes. Jesus doesn't answer in that
way. He doesn't give a straight answer. He tells a story, a story that
we're very familiar with. So what does that mean? Well,
Jerusalem is located on a series of hills up here. Jericho is
down here in the plain. One is 3,000 feet above sea level.
The other one is 1,000 feet below sea level. So it's quite a big
difference in height. And there's a 17-mile road that
connects these two cities. It would have been quite a rocky
pathway down. And I think it was for robbers
and bandits to find out. So verse 13. Jesus answered him. A certain man went down from
Jerusalem to Jericho and fell on a thief. He stripped him of
his clothing, wounded him, and departed him in half dead. So
Jesus starts the story. And so he explains to this man
and opened his eyes to realise the natural fact that just the
Jewish people were not his closest neighbour. So, there's this man
coming from Jerusalem downhill to the place where Jericho is.
If he's walking in that area, he's bound to be a Jewish person.
Maybe he's been worshipped in the temple. And I imagine that
all of Jesus' hearers would be fairly familiar with the roads,
OK? And they may have heard of things that happened to people
along it. So this man's attacked. He's stripped of his clothing.
He's beaten up. He's been given the sticks. They
picked him up maybe to incapacitate him, stop him from following
them, or maybe to intimidate him. Apparently, they didn't
succeed to cure him. Jesus said they left him literally
half-dead. Jesus thought this detail in
the story, the idea of him being half-dead, and beating him up,
and having his clothes ripped off of him. So the idea that
Jesus is trying to build up this picture in these people's eyes
of this scene. He's actually adding lots of
detail in to get us an idea of what's happening to this man.
Jesus continues the story in verse 31 and 32. So this idea
of this man lying there, he's been beaten up and his face ripped
off him. He's half dead. He's not moving.
He's covered in blood. He could be a Jewish person.
So what happens next in the story, verse 31 and 32? Now a church officer, there's
a priest hanging down that road. And when he saw him, he passed
by on the other side, like by the Levites. And he arrived at
the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side.
So, unfortunately, the sheriff was saying that the person was
punching him, saying he'd come down the road a few minutes later
and the heart of the man was beating there. Now, these two
people that had come along, i.e. Chase's men, due doubt they followed
the same practice as the other man. And you can imagine the
Jews standing around, imagining them thinking to themselves,
oh, good, you've become the Levite priest. They'll sort you out. You can imagine them thinking,
well, we can eat these people up. They'll soon be able to support
a man if he needs it. But what they're responsible
for is a man. Each one in turn will cross over
and pass by the other side, leaving the man to die. And you don't
know the problem. You don't know the reasons we're
doing this. Imagine they thought they had valid reasons for actually
not dealing with him. And it could have been that one
to the other one was the priest, both involved in the proceedings
in the temple. Touching a dead body, if they thought it was
a person who was dead, and they were there should be firing themselves.
So maybe, and I've assumed by myself, it could be they might
come to themselves, well, we'll stop. I don't want to get my
life in danger. There's bandits around here.
No way am I going to get involved with that person. The Jewish
people don't be sitting there thinking, what? OK, what happens
next? Ah, no. There'll be a Jewish
lay person trying to come by, and they all will sort it out.
So they'll just creep in the other house, OK? But, you know,
they work in the temple, and you probably won't be able to
get involved, especially if you look like you're dead. A Jewish
person's not going to come along. A Jewish lay person, yes. He'll
come along and sort this person out. Because they were expecting
a third character. Whenever stories are told in
the New Testament, we find it often involves three characters.
If you think of the story of Talents, there's three people
there. The Parable of the Great Puppet, remember, there's three
different groups of people that are called in there. So they would be expecting
a third person to come along. But they were not expecting what
Jesus was going to say next. Because Jesus then says, in verse
33, by day's comparison, as you journey, came to where he was. So what's so special about Somality? Well, the Northern Kingdom of
Israel had been conquered by the Assyrians about 800 years
before. And the Assyrian policy was to get their young men, young
girls to go up into the Northern Kingdom and to intermarry with
the Jewish people that were there. So in actual fact, Jewish people
regarded the Samaritans as half-breed, as a mongrel race, completely
defiled. They were no longer Jews. And
the Jewish people absolutely despised these descendants, absolutely
despised them. And in actual fact, the feelings
were reciprocated. The Samaritans felt the same way. And there
was no love lost between these two people at all. So if you
were listening to this, a Samaritan was hanging on. This was as far
as I was in. And then, anyway, their first
order, and they have absolutely nothing to do with Samaritans whatsoever.
What Jesus is going on to say must have completely stopped
them in their tracks. So Samaritan comes along, and what do you
do? Remember, he's actually answering
this person, this man's question. Well, Samaritan, as he drove,
he came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion.
So he went to him and banished his wounds, calling on the wild
lion. And he set him on his own animal, brought it to him, and
took care of him. On the next day, when he departed,
he took it out to Nari, gave it to him, and said to him, take
care of him. I'll tell him all you spend when I come again,
I will repay you. Well, this is a mouse, and he's
coming along. He's obviously fairly wealthy. He's got a donkey. He's got goods. He's got money. And there he
is, walking down this pathway. He is at an extremely high risk
of attack. If you face him, he knows the
bandits are around, but you see a man injured lying there, obviously
being beaten up. And here is him, he's got a donkey, he's
got money, he's got wine, he's got oil on him. He's at an extremely
high risk of attack, but that doesn't stop him from stopping.
He's also in the region where there's a Jewish people. And
this man, he's very likely to be a Jew. Well, I mean, he's
on the path from Jerusalem down to Jericho. That doesn't stop
him thinking of the man. And he doesn't just offer, as
it were, kind of roadside assistance. He offers full recovery service
back to the village. And he doesn't just drop him
off at the village. He actually looks after him every night. But he
doesn't just look after him overnight, he then gives you the money to
actually pay him if you ask him. And he doesn't even just do that,
he actually then says to him, well, if it takes more than that, then
I'll come back and pay you. So what is Jesus really doing
here? Jesus is stretching this idea
of reality here as far as he can possibly go. He's chosen
two groups of people that are so polarised, so far apart, He's
actually stretching these people's minds, the idea of reality. This
mountain is actually doing this to this Jewish person. So Jesus is pretty much saying
here, at this point, unless you love your enemies, as this mountain
is loving this Jewish person, to the point where you risk your
life, it's pretty darn dangerous to stop him here, unless you
love your enemies so much that you risk your life for them,
to actually stop your enemies from dying, then you're not a
neighbour to them. So he's actually saying to Manasseh,
prepare to risk your life to save someone who's your enemy,
then you're not being a neighbour to them. So Jesus asks, in verse
36, which of these three do you think was a neighbour to him
who fell among thieves? And Manasseh says, well, he has
no choice. He has to say the one who had
mercy on him. And his response is very straightforward. to grant the necessity to be
put down or shown up. And this specifically states
the fact that from Jesus' parable, the one who showed mercy. What
does Jesus say in response? His final comments. And Jesus
said to him, go and do life for it. OK, it's not. Jesus isn't
putting it down now. He's actually making a recommendation. Saying, go and do life for it,
and you will inherit eternal life. That lawyer's asking the
question, what do I need to do to inherit eternal life? And
Jesus is saying, right, do that. I wonder how the lawyer got to
that point. Up to then, he thought, well, I'm pleasing God in everything
I do, and I love my neighbour. So in the space of about half
an hour, he was just showing him that in actual fact, to love
his neighbour, he, that Jewish man, that lawyer, would have
to love Samaritan, to the point where he would have to risk his
life to save a Samaritan from dying. And he had to love like
that 100% of the time, continuously and never stopping. And that
guy actually saying, well, I could do that? No way. Absolutely impossible. Jesus was saying, it is absolutely
impossible for you to finish God that way. So what did that
guy learn? He learned that he could not
love God with all his heart, with all his strength. He could
not love his neighbour as he thought he could. It was an impossibly
high standard. But Jesus is not just showing
the lawyer that it's impossible to keep the law of God, but he's
showing us too, that it's an impossibility to keep God's law.
So our question was, okay, here's our boxes here, so our question
was, how is it that we can have a Heavenly Father? How is it
that we can have eternal life? Just as that man asked that question,
how is it that I can earn eternal life, have eternal life? And
what Jesus is saying here and to us tonight is, there is absolutely
nothing you can do. You cannot achieve it on your
own. The standard is impossibly high. You cannot love God with all
your strength, with your soul, with your might, 100% of the
time, you know, with a burning white love. You cannot love a
labour as Jesus expects it to. Impossible. So how is it that
we can have a chance to give an end to the gift of eternal
life? Because God expects in each and every one of us perfect
righteousness. That is his law. He says, that's
what I expect from you, and you will have to give it to me. But
how can we offer it? None of us can. But the Bible shows us that God's
son, Jesus, came down from heaven, and he did live that perfect
life for us. He didn't sin once. He lived
a life of complete obedience. And he obeyed God's law in every
aspect. I wonder as God looks down on
us tonight, each and every one of us, wherever we're sitting.
I wonder if he sees us struggling to please God by doing things.
I wonder if he looks down on us and he sees our pathetic good
deeds, you know, tempting us, and they cover us, and they make
us acceptable to God. The amazing news is that God
doesn't even look down on us, because that's what he thinks
of us. Because Jesus, through his life and his death, he's
able to offer us something that's like a praise, as it were, because
he offers us the perfect life that he lives, his righteousness.
I wouldn't dare to even contemplate what it must be like to stand
before God without Christ's righteousness. I just can't imagine what that
must be like to try and make a girl fall. I've done this and
that. It doesn't even dare think about
it. You just shrivel under his gaze. However, if you have Christ's
righteousness over you, then you can stand before him. So
in answer to our question, what can I do to inherit eternal life?
Jesus shows us that we cannot do anything at all, nothing at
all. But Christ has lived a perfect life, and he offers you his righteousness. So I'd say, this evening, if
you are searching for eternal life, if you're searching for
a purpose in life, if you would love to know your sins forgiven,
then ask the forgiveness of your sins. Tell God that in actual
fact you have nothing to offer him, that your righteousness
is nothing. and asking, praying in Christ's
righteousness. And then we know what it is to enter into eternal
life.
What Can I Do To Inherit Eternal Life?
Series Studies in the Gospel of Luke
| Sermon ID | 1010101230276 |
| Duration | 35:48 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Luke 10:25-37 |
| Language | English |
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