How to Get to Heaven From Here
John 14:1-6
1 "Don’t be troubled. You trust God, now trust in me. 2 There are many rooms in my Father’s home, and I am going to prepare a place for you. If this were not so, I would tell you plainly. 3 When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.
4 And you know where I am going and how to get there." 5 "No, we don’t know, Lord," Thomas said. "We haven’t any idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?" 6 Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.
(NLT)
Intro: Heaven is a place of wonderful pleasure somewhere after death. Most people want to go to this place where they can finally see their creator and be reunited with friends and loved ones who have already died. It is a place the Bible tells us that will have no crying, dying, sickness, or pain. In fact everything that makes life miserable down here will be absent up there. It will be a place filled with peace, joy, pleasure, and more fun than you could imagine. One scripture says eye has never seen, ear has never heard, it has never even entered the mind of mankind what God has prepared for us. So how do we get there from here.
I Jesus says there is only one way , and He is it v6
ONE WAY to the MOON - Rocket - not a plane, not jumping high, not by a train, not by a helicopter, a car, a bus, or a subway,
1. All roads don’t lead to God- God said that not me
2. All religions aren’t equal - except they are all equally useless
3. Being sincere isn’t going to cut it.
4. Good people don’t go to heaven.
-Nice people don’t
-God says none is good only God.
-He is the measuring stick and He is measuring
5. ALL HAVE SINNED - All are sinners -NO SINNERS GO TO HEAVEN
-this is where Jesus comes in
II Jesus is the Only Savior of mankind
1. If we’ve all sinned -all sinners -none can go
2. We need a Savior -We can’t save ourselves - Can’t get rid of past wrongs -by rights -only one savior Karma -
In NBC new show "My Names Earl" the main character has a list of all the things he has done wrong, and in order to get Karma to smile on him he has to undo all the bad he has done. There are those who really buy into this kind of thinking. But we can’t undo all the wrong we’ve done. Some bells can’t be unrung as Earl discovers.
3. That is what Christmas is all about.
4. God wanted us to live forever in heaven with Him, but we couldn’t because of our sin darkened hearts. (If sinners went to heaven we would have another earth)
5. So God sent his son to earth to live among us - to show us how to live right- and then to die as our substitute on a cross, so God could forgive our sins and take us to heaven.
6. This way God could continue to be a just moral governor of the universe, and yet offer mercy to the guilty sinners. Of which we all are.
7. All the guilty sinners would have to do is repent and believe to go to heaven.
8. Repent means a change of mind. We all naturally think our way of thinking, acting, believing is right. We have to come to the point in our lives when we realize God’s way is right and mine is wrong. I’m going to turn and follow Jesus.
9. Believe - is more than just accepting something as fact. But it has to start there. We have to believe God exists. That just as the Bible says God sent his son into the world born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died on a cross for my sins, and rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and is coming again to take us all to heaven. If I really believe this I will pray and repent and seek to follow Jesus the rest of my natural life. By reading the Bible, praying, meeting with other Christians. A Popular acrostic for this lifestyle is WWJD.. You can see it on wristbands like on Jim Tressel the OSU football coach. Look at his wrist in the bowl game.
There are many who do this and start following Jesus, but they stray off track. Like a marriage. It begins with love and devotion and promises of faithfulness until death. But too many times things happen and the happy couple grows apart and the love turns to hate and they divorce. It can happen in our walk with God too, if we don’t continue on the right track. But there is always a way back with God. We can start over -unlike divorcees.
Dale Jarrett
I grew up in a Christian home, my parents made sure that we were in church, but as I grew up I got side tracked and didn’t live my life as I should. But things changed when I started driving for Joe Gibbs, here was and is a man that is very strong in the Lord and his influence on me helped get my life back to where it should be. My wife and I dedicated our lives to the Lord and we know that our children are growing up in a Christian home and that they have Christian friends. There’s a lot of different ways to live your life but there’s only one right way and that’s to live for the Lord.
When you die and God asks you, “Why should I let you into my heaven?” What will you say? If you have Repented and believed in Jesus and began following him God will recognize you and say come on in. If you haven’t He will sadly turn you away to spend eternity with the devil and the rest who refused Jesus.
