Joe’s favorite Bible verse was Luke 11:9-10: “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will 6nd; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks 6nds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
The years passed oh so quickly it seemed, and Joe often spoke to his two friends about surrendering to Jesus, about hearing His voice, about opening their hearts to Jesus. Al and Fred would just laugh at Joe and tell him not to worry about their souls, after all they were good men.
Now about Al’s story. There were many times when he heard the voice, but he could not let go of the reins of his life and let Jesus in; that is not until one night, lying in his own bed, with his wife and grown children at his bed side, and the Pastor was there, Bible in hand. And old Joe was there with that radiant smile that he always had after that snowy night. Old Joe leaned over to Al and whispered softly in his ear, “He is with you always, so just knock on His door and He will welcome you home.” Al’s resistance broke down, and in the last few moments of his life he saw the door opened into Heaven. He knocked and Jesus let him in. In the last moments of his life he found Jesus waiting at the door.
Well, that leaves only Fred. Now, remember, Fred was a good man, who had done many great things for other people. But Fred had never come to really know Jesus. When it came Fred’s turn at the last few breaths on this life, he also was surrounded by friends, family, the Pastor, and of course old Joe. Again old Joe leaned over and whispered softly in the ear to his dying friend and said, “He is with you always, so just knock on His door and He will welcome you home.” But Fred’s heart had become hard toward that. He said, “I’ve lived a good life and I done many good things of other people. I have been a good church man, and I do not need to do anything about this gettin’ born again thing.” No one ever knew what passed between Joe and Fred, except Joe. In a few moments, Fred was gone. A few years later, a very old Joe fell on a sheet of ice outside his house and never rose again.
I have known many people who were truly “good people”. I believe it is true that it is possible for a person to be a “good person”, and yet be lost. Only God knows the heart.
So consider Luke 9:23-26: “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” And John 3:17-18: “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”
Often people say to me, "I do not need this Jesus. I believe in God, and I am a good person." But the truth from John 14:6 tells us: Jesus answered, “I am the Way and the Truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” And from John 6:38-40: Jesus said, “For I have come down from Heaven, not to do my will but to do the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that He has given me, but raise them up the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I will raise Him up that last day.”
[this all means] Sin separates the person from God, no matter how good the person is. For we all have sin, no matter the dimensions to those sins. Sin requires forgiveness. Only God can forgive sin.
Here is the thing, we are all sinners. There is none of us who have not sinned. We are all doomed by our sin. There is nothing we can do to atone to God for the sin we have committed. But there is redemption--payment. That redemption comes only through Jesus Christ. Jesus has paid our debt. He has done everything required for us to be saved. But we have to accept it. A person can accept nothing that they do not believe in. How can we be saved? We must believe. We can choose to believe, or, we can choose not to believe. By not choosing to believe, we automatically choose to not believe. A person must make a choice. I know many who had said, I really am going to do that, one of these days, but I am just not ready today. I have, I am sorry to say, let them off the hook. I have said, “Oh that’s alright.” But, it is not alright. If I love, as Jesus said I must, then I should love every person I meet so much that I do not let them go one more day without hearing of Jesus. We can put off a lot of things. We can procrastinate. We can put off believing in Jesus, and thus put off salvation. We can put off Baptism, we can put off confession, we can put off repentance, we can put off sharing the gospel with another and we can put off prayer.
One of these is deadly. How many times does a person have to hear the “good news”, the “Gospel of Jesus”, before they accept it? Maybe some only have to hear it once. Maybe others have to hear it many times. I think it is sort of like playing the guitar. Every time a person pays the guitar, the fingers are abused by the strings. The pressure on the strings kills skin cells. Those dead skin cells build up where every the pressure was. Every time a person plays, the dead skin gets thicker, and callouses build up on the ends of the fingers, so that with every session of playing, the pain in the fingers gets less and less, until finally, it is even hard to feel the strings when you play. There comes a point when there is very little feeling at all—good or bad.
Every time a person hears the gospel and turns away, the person’s heart gets harder. Every time a person hears the gospel, knowledge of a person’s need for the gospel increases the pressure. Our knowledge of our own sin is always present within us. We know we have sinned. We know we need salvation once we have heard the gospel. Every time a person hears it and turns away, a callous builds up on the heart. Over and over again the person hears the gospel and turns away, for many reasons. The callous builds up over a person’s heart until finally the heart is too hard to be broken. The person gets hard hearted. We all know we need salvation. The person’s heart has become hardened. We still know we need salvation. We still know we need Jesus. The hard heart tells a person, tomorrow, I can do that tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and the person hears the gospel again, and the hard heart tells the person, I can do that tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and then the next tomorrow comes and then the next tomorrow comes…. The callous get harder and harder, and it gets easier and easier to resist the pressure that the truth places on the heart. The person continues to say, I can do that tomorrow. As long as the next tomorrow comes, the person thinks he or she has another tomorrow.
Remember these - first, Proverbs 27:1: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.” Death is but a heartbeat away. We are all closer to death today than we were yesterday; we are all closer to death today than we have ever been. We all shall die, and we all shall be raised. To what shall we be raised? Shall we be raised to eternal life with Jesus, or to eternal life separated from God? Second, from John 11:25-26: Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”
Do you know my Jesus? He knows you. So then, what can you do? Proverbs 3:5-6 teaches us: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding: in all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight.”
Jesus is waiting to invite you in to His heart. Will you please let Him come in? Amen