Faith Baptist Church
4258 Botetourt Road
Fincastle, Virginia 24090
(540) 473-2325
John 10
There are so many people who think they are going to heaven when they die. They look at what good they have done on earth and think to themselves there is no way God could pass them by. They reason within themselves that a loving God could never send them to Hell. When they read John 3:16 they stop after reading “For God so loved the world...” They leave off the remainder of the verse where God’s justice had to be satisfied in “that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”
I say God’s justice had to be satisfied because God’s warning to Adam and Eve, while they lived in innocence in the Garden of Eden, was they were told to not eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden. The day they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of human good and human evil they were told they would die a double death, instant spiritual death and eventually physical death, Gen.2:16-17. This spiritual death was warned to Adam before Eve was created from Adam. Rom.5:12 tells us God put the blame on Adam and that the sin nature is passed down by man, not the woman. Every child born is born in a state of spiritual death and thus we must be born again.
God had no choice but to condemn Adam and Eve because God had given them his mandate of obedience. When disobedience to God’s one mandate was broken, God was obligated to his word. If God broke his word then the world would cease to exist because it is the word of God that upholds the universe and all that it contains including mankind, Heb.1:3 “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high,” If God did not uphold his word he would cease to be God. Since God is holy and immutable, that is, he is absolute integrity and he cannot change, then he cannot break his word. Ps.138:2 says God has magnified his word above his very name.
Spiritual death could only be overcome by spiritual rebirth and this rebirth would only be possible if their sins were taken away. From Gen.3:21 we find God’s method of satisfaction to cover our sins and that was by the shedding of an innocent life. In the Old Testament man’s sins were covered temporarily through acceptable animal sacrifices. These were only a foreshadow of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and they would be acceptable only until the Son of God would come and take away all of our sins as they were put on him on the cross.
So from Gen.3:15 onward in scripture we find the promise of a sin bearer, and that sin bearer would have to be sinless and spotless to appease a holy God. In the divine counsels in eternity past the Holy Trinity, knowing these things, elected the Son, the second person of the Godhead to be that sin bearer.
The choice men make to reject Jesus Christ as their Savior is theirs and theirs alone. Men choose Hell over Heaven because they love their sin and their independence from God more than they do their Savior, Jn.3:18. Men do not go to Hell because they sin, because Christ paid for their sins; men and women go to Hell because they reject the Son of God as their sin bearer. Jn.3:19-20.
They may have a nice personality and people like them, thus they erroneously conclude God likes them too.
Pride within the old sin nature distorts the soul into believing things about oneself that the Bible says otherwise. A smoke screen of church or temple attendance on a regular basis deceives them; the fact that they are decent moral people deceives them, but they are lost and they refuse to examine themselves to see if they are in the faith. The sad fact is that people who are religious and moral; who may also have sweet friendly personalities die and go to Hades everyday.
However, the true believer in Jesus Christ will have more than a desirable personality, good morals; good works and religious affiliations.
They will have a heart after God and this will be shown in their attitude toward the word of God. Jesus Christ said my sheep hear my voice and they follow me, Jn.10:1-11; 27-28.
Today there are many preachers in churches that do not teach the word of God, Paul, who didn’t mind political incorrectness, said they are Satan’s ministers of light, II Cor.11:4, 13-15. And most folks in those churches who have their ears tickled with human good stories and fables will not quit those churches to join a good Bible teaching church because they are not of Christ’s flock or they are believers who have turned against the faith as II Tim.4:2-4 declares. They will not endure sound Bible doctrine so they heap to themselves teachers who tell them what they want to hear. I seriously doubt those folks are saved. If they do have some members who are Christ’s sheep they should answer the Holy Spirit’s call to come out from among the unsaved and be in a church that speaks the voice of Christ, unless they are rebellious believers, running from the word of God, denying the Lordship of Jesus Christ. This group of believers may be following the shepherds of liberation theology which teach a social gospel. They may not anticipate Gods’ program for the world which includes them leaving this world at the rapture of the church. They may erroneously believe they are making this a better world for Christ to come back to and reign in, but this errant thinking is not biblical at all.
Now we know all folks will not come to repentance and God knows all will not come to repentance. God knows every soul that will receive Jesus Christ and be saved. As a matter of biblical revelation we witness to all the world of salvation in Jesus Christ, and according to II Cor.2:14-16 our witness is a success whether people accept it or not. Only God knows who will come to Christ in salvation, Jn.6:35-40. Not one soul that God knows who will come to salvation, will be lost. It is impossible for God, who is omniscient, to be wrong on this point. It is ridiculous for any of us to think that souls that God knows who will be saved, that any of those souls should somehow slip out of this world in death and go to hell. Do not let emotional preaching convince you otherwise.
God does not make the soul believe because he created mankind with free will to believe for himself; a free will that still works even after the fall of Adam, but God knows who will believe and he has always known who will believe, Eph.1:3-4. It is after we have believed that we must show our faithfulness to learning and applying the word of God.