TOO GOOD TO GO TO HEAVEN
LUKE 18:11-13, 18-23
INTRODUCTION: Many times when people are asked if they believe that they will go to heaven when they die they will say that they believe they will on the basis that are not bad, they keep the ten commandments, and they follow and observe the demands of their religion. Let me ask you, can a person be too good to go to heaven? – This morning I want you to see two men who were too good to go to heaven.
I. Two men who were too good to go to heaven.
A. The goodness of these two men
1. They were orthodox in their belief.
a. Both of these individuals believed the basic tenets of their faith.
b. They accepted the Old Testament Scriptures as God’s Word.
c. They believed that the Lord is only one true God.
d. They believed the Ten Commandments were God’s standard for conduct.
2. They were exact in their religious obligation.
a. "I fast twice on the Sabbath; I give tithes of all that I possess (get)."
b. The law only required one fast a year. He like other Pharisees voluntarily added to the public days of fasting required in the Law of Moses, going above and beyond what was required.
c. He also tithed on all his increase.
d. They did not just keep the letter of the law but were zealous in their religious fervor.
3. They were morally excellent in their behavior.
a. They were not as the Pharisee said in his prayer "bad men" – They did not steal money from anyone (extortionists), were not unfair in their dealings with others (unjust), or guilty of being immoral (adulterers).
b. They had as the young leader said endeavored to keep the Ten Commandments in their entirety.
c. They consistently lived exemplary lives.
4. They were too good for heaven.
a. In both cases Christ revealed that they were lost and would not make it to heaven.
b. Note the reaction of the disciples in Luke 18:26 MKJV "And the ones who heard said, and who can be saved?" In other words, if this kind of good, moral, religious person can’t make it to heaven then who can?
B. The shortcoming of these two men
1. They had two basic faults that sealed their eternal fate.
2. They did not see themselves as God saw them
a. "God, I thank You that I am not as other men are",
b. "I have kept all these things from my youth up" - unconscious of their unworthiness
3. They would not yield to and commit themselves to the Lordship of Christ.
a. The first Christ said was guilty of self-exaltation.
b. Luke 18:22-23 MKJV And when Jesus heard these things, He said to him, yet you lack one thing. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you shall have treasure in Heaven. And come, follow Me (go my way) And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful, for he was very rich.
C. The end of these two men.
1. It is abundantly clear from verses 14 and 24 that both of these men had sealed their eternal destiny in hell apart from Christ.
2. They were too good for heaven.
II. Are you too good to go to heaven?
A. Merely believing the right things alone does not get you to heaven.
1. James 2:19 KJV You believe that there is one God; you do well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
2. C. H. Spurgeon claimed that 98 percent of the people he met—including the criminals he visited in England’s prisons—told him that they believed the Bible to be true. But the vast majority had never made a personal, life-changing commitment to Jesus Christ. For them, "believe" was not an active verb.
3. Acts 16:31 MKJV And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, and your household. (Put your entire trust in the Jesus as Master of your life)
B. Religious observances and rituals will never save you.
1. Many believe that they can earn heaven by keeping what are called the sacraments. The word sacrament comes from the Latin word Sacramentum. Recruits for the Roman army became soldiers by taking an oath of office that had the legal force of making them soldiers. Because it included a pledge of loyalty to the Roman gods, it was called a sacramentum. The sacramentum was a physical religious act that transformed a person’s legal status. The Roman church adapted the word to mean a rite that related to a person’s spiritual transformation. Sacrament - a formal religious act conferring a specific or saving grace on those who receive it. Sacraments are not taught in the Bible.
2. The Bible teaches the church to observe two ordinances – Baptism and the Lord’s Supper or Communion.
3. Baptism declares publicly and symbolically an inward reality that a person is a follower of Jesus. It follows salvation. The individual who has the reality of salvation is commanded to be baptized as a sign of their relation to God (Romans 4:11, 6:3-11; Galatians 3:27). Baptism is an empty and vain religious ceremony when the truth that it represents is not a reality in our lives. Baptism declares three things
· identification of the believer with Christ in His death to sin, burial and resurrection to victorious life
· a picture of having had one’s sin washed away by the blood of Jesus Christ
· a public declaration of one’s submission to Christ’s authority and Lordship
4. Communion or the Lord’s Supper does not impart grace or forgiveness or any such thing through one’s participation. The Bread and Cup are merely signs of what Christ did for us -they point to the reality of the sacrifice of our Savior.
5. Rituals cannot save us from our sins; often they only act to hide them. You can put a priestly robe on pornography king Larry Flynt, have Charles Manson do the rosary, or have Bill Clinton recite the Lord’s Prayer in Latin and change nothing. If you fail to reach the heart of a man, any changes you make on his outside are meaningless. – copied
6. During his years at Oxford George Whitefield became associated with the "Holy Club," a group of serious churchmen committed to a methodically rigorous regimen of religious observance with the brothers John and Charles Wesley as the leading spirits. Their remarkable earnestness manifested itself in ascetic living, regular devotions, charitable works, and solemn discussion, but it was unenlightened by the Gospel. Whitefield wrote in later years, "I began to fast twice a week for thirty-six hours together, prayed many times a day and received the sacrament every Lord’s Day. I fasted myself almost to death all the forty days of Lent, during which I made it a point of duty never to go less than three times a day to public worship, besides seven times a day to my private prayers. Yet I knew no more that I was to be born a new creature in Christ Jesus than if I had never been born at all." Deeply dissatisfied at heart, the reading of a book with the title The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal made plain to him the necessity of personal commitment to and union with Christ as Savior and Lord. Desperately seeking this relationship, he increased his self-affliction to such an extent that his weakness brought him near to death. At last, however, the grace of God enabled him to trust solely in Christ instead of in his own religious exercises: "God was pleased to remove the heavy load," he testified, "to enable me to lay hold of His dear Son by a living faith, and by giving me the Spirit of adoption, to seal me even to the day of everlasting redemption."
C. Moral excellence will not get you to heaven.
1. 88% of Catholics and a majority of Protestants believe that "if people are generally good, or do enough good things for others during their lives, they will earn a place in heaven. Some 54% think that if people are good enough, they will earn a place in heaven regardless of their religious beliefs. What is sad is that one-third of all professed born again Christians (34%) accept this notion.
2. In another poll, 7000 Protestant youth from many denominations were asked whether they agreed with the following statements: "The way to be accepted by God is to try sincerely to live a good life." More than 60% agreed. "God is satisfied if a person lives the best life he can." Almost 70% agreed. "The main emphasis of the gospel is on God’s rules for right living." More than half agreed.
3. Martin Luther said, "The most damnable and pernicious heresy that has ever plagued the mind of man was the idea that somehow he could make himself good enough to deserve to live with an all-holy God."
4. Isaiah 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
5. Romans 3:10 MKJV …There is none righteous, no not one
6. Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
III. How can one be saved?
A. Luke 18:26 MKJV And the ones who heard said, And who can be saved?
B. Acknowledge your sinfulness
1. In 1992 a man from Arizona, USA, took some time off work because he was feeling unwell. He was unaware what was wrong with him until he found a note in his kitchen. It read, "Bill, you’ve been shot. Call 911." Apparently he’d been shot while asleep. X-rays found a bullet lodged in his jaw. In the same way as that man was unaware of his true physical conditions, so many are unaware of their true spiritual condition. They know there’s something wrong, but are not sure what it is. The Bible gives us an answer – sin. It has disrupted and disturbed the whole of human existence. - Source: Scott Higgins. Information on wounded man reported in The Sun Herald, July 26, 1992.
2. Romans 3:23 "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God"
3. Luke 18:13 And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
C. Believe Christ died for the full payment for your sin.
1. Acts 16:31 MKJV And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, and your household.
2. Saving faith may thus be defined as a voluntary turning from all hope and grounds based on self merit, and assuming an attitude of expectancy toward God, trusting Him to do a perfect saving work based only on the merit of Christ. L.S. Chafer, True Evangelism, p. 55-6.
3. 1 John 5:13 MKJV I have written these things to you who believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have everlasting life, and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God.
D. Call upon Christ
1. Romans 10:13 MKJV For everyone, "whoever shall call on the name of the Lord will be saved."
2. John 1:12 MKJV But as many as received Him, He gave to them authority to become the children of God, to those who believe on His name,
E. Confess Christ as Lord
1. Romans 10:9-10 That if you shall confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
2. Confession means to openly and publicly acknowledge Jesus Christ as one’s personal savior and as Lord of one’s life.
