Luke 10:25-28 "On one occasion an adept in the law stood up to examination Jesus. 'Instructor,' he asked, 'What must I practise to inherit eternal life?' 'What is written in the Law?' he replied. 'How do you read it?' He answered: 'Dear the Lord your God with all your eye and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbour as yourself.' 'You have answered correctly,' Jesus replied. 'Practise this and you lot volition alive.'"

A human who is called an skilful came to Jesus and asked him a question. He was an adept in the law of God – a top lawyer – and he had taken this initiative. He has come to talk to the Lord Jesus. He waits, finally he gets to his feet and he speaks. He is respectful; he addresses Christ as 'Teacher', but Luke explains to his readers that the human'southward purpose in coming to Jesus was not a search for wisdom and truth from our Saviour. He was not genuinely anxious to go an answer to a particular question that was troubling his own heart and life. He couldn't be described as a real seeker or an inquirer concerning the kingdom of God. Rather, he'd come to our Lord in order to put Jesus to the test. What he did was this, not to come with a trick question, only rather to verify what our Lord's response would be to what was the nearly primal of all questions, "What must any person do to inherit eternal life?" It was a common question often discussed; information technology was basic and tremendously important. If Jesus had any funny ideas then his respond to this question would give it abroad. What would exist Jesus' response? How would he answer? Would he be foolish and ignorant? Would he fudge? Would he be vague? Would he be legalistic? Would he turn the question into a joke? Would he be pompous – "who are yous to be request me a question?" Or would he give a fine respond, the right respond? The lawyer was testing Jesus to see if he could be treated seriously.

ane. SOME QUESTIONS ARE VERY Important.

This question is the nearly crucial that whatever person in the world could ask. "What must I exercise to inherit eternal life?" We are all mortal men and women. You accept threescore years and x to spend in this world and so some years later, few or many it matters fiddling in the perspective of eternity, you will breathe your last breath and you'll die. They'll pull a sheet over your caput. They'll telephone call for an ambulance and take your body to hospital and there may be an autopsy to define why you accept died. One or more of your loved ones may accept to get and identify your lifeless body. A death certificate will so be written. The undertaker volition be chosen and arrangements will be put in place for your funeral. At that service people volition come up and shed some tears, and and then your body will be taken to a cemetery; you will exist lying within the bury. You will be lowered into the ground at the close of a brief service. More sorrow will be expressed and then the people will wander abroad quietly and sadly to conduct on with the residual of their lives. In the cemetery the gravedigger will and then cover your coffin with soil and later a tombstone will be set with details of your nascence and decease and other matters that your loved ones will choose. On my parents' gravestone is written. "I know that my Redeemer liveth." That spot is where your body will lie and disuse. Then your loved ones will get a bill for several 1000 pounds for the funeral.

But what most our souls? Are we snuffed out and that is it? Is annihilation the ultimate reality? Practice you think that life has no overall purpose whatsoever? Is your faith that the universe all came about by sheer risk, that it came out of absolutely nothing? Is your faith that we exist today because of billions of lucky coincidences, all independent of one another, and that they are the reason for Aristotle, and Leonardo da Vinci, and Shakespeare, and Mozart, and Churchill, and Jesus? All living things, the whole eco-system, all human life and homo history, all human'southward peachy cultural and moral achievements – all this has come about by sheer luck – is that your faith? Nothing around the states has annihilation whatever to do with a living personal God. Chance made it all. Meaninglessness, O meaninglessness; all is meaninglessness! In fact you believe that the grave levels everything because we all rot. We were only dust and nosotros return to dust and, like the Okey Kokey, "That'southward what information technology's all about." Death.

The Christian faith rejects such a faith totally. Our conventionalities is not in luck, only that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God fabricated human in his own prototype and likeness and gave him freedom to serve and love him. But man fell into sin and brought estrangement between himself and God. This is the reason that human being's life ends in death. It was past homo that sin entered the earth – non at all past a holy and loving God – and expiry came upon united states through our sin, and and so decease passed upon all men for all have sinned. But God in his grace has determined to redeem man; he'south made up his mind to relieve us from black despair and hell. God made some other Adam, the last Adam, his blest Son Jesus Christ. He is born of a virgin and lives a blameless life; he has extraordinary potency over the forces of creation, the winds and the waves and the trees and the sea and the fish in its depths all must practise whatever he wills. He has power over Satan and disease and even death itself; none of those entities can resist his will. He can raise the expressionless and he does and then on several occasions. His life is pure and perfect and good. He is as righteous equally God himself, and he has come into the world for i great purpose, not to exist served but to serve us by amende and ransom for our sins. Here is ane who can forgive and pardon us for our guilt. We don't have to carry all our blame and shame for our entire lives – for the next fifty years before our bodies are lowered into the grave past the strong bands around the coffin. Jesus Christ says, "Come unto me all you who labour and are heavy-laden and I volition give you rest." We tin can go to him and confess our sins to him, and then he forgives them and cleanses us from everything.

His mighty resurrection is the confirmation of that this is true. Decease could not keep its prey; Jesus tore the bars abroad; Christ our Lord. Death is not annihilation; the grave is not the snuffing out place. It is the door to the eternal state. There is everlasting life. Enoch walked with God and then he was not because God took him. David spoke of his expressionless kid, that i twenty-four hour period he would get to him; his kid would not return to David. Elijah was taken upward to be with God. "I know that my Redeemer lives," said Chore. Lazarus rises; the widow of Nain'southward son rises; Jairus' girl rises; Jesus Christ rises; Eutychus rises; after his stoning Paul rises. Decease is non the place from which there is no return. There is the life of eternity, the life of God from heaven changing things on earth. That is the bulletin of Jesus Christ. For God and so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should non perish just have everlasting life. Expiry came by the first Adam; life comes by the final Adam. So the question Jesus was asked was this, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Can you think of a more important question? The grave is not annihilation. There is the life of eternity. Then what must I exercise to inherit it?

2. WHAT MUST WE Exercise TO INHERIT ETERNAL LIFE?

Practice you see that this is a different question from "How is anyone saved?" The respond to that question is plainly given in Scripture. It is, "Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved." Yous can do cypher to save yourself, nobody can do annihilation to save himself. That is why God sent his Son into the world to be the Saviour. He becomes the Saviour of all who are joined to him, and y'all join yourself to him past believing right into him. Yous entrust yourself to him for fourth dimension and eternity. He accomplished cosmic conservancy all past himself, and he applies it all by himself through the Holy Spirit to all who believe in him. He lone is the Saviour and and so all nosotros can do is to brand as information technology were a great pile of our sins and abscond from them all to the Lord Jesus, and we even brand a big pile of all our works of righteousness and we flee from them also. Nosotros hide ourselves in him. He is all our hope for mercy and forgiveness and deliverance. We put all our trust in him. Faith is spelled F.A.I.T.H., "Forsaking All I Have Him" to be my Lord and Saviour. That is the answer to the question, "How am I to be saved?" Information technology is only through us being joined to the perfect life and apologetic decease of Jesus Christ the Saviour.

But here is another question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" It is a parallel question. It is just equally important as the question, "How am I saved?" but information technology is a unlike question and there is a different answer. What are nosotros to exercise if we are to inherit eternal life? We say we are saved. That is the claim we make. All our hopes are in the Lord Jesus Christ, what he has done, in his grace, for us and in our place. That is the foundation of our hopes of God saving u.s.. If that is the case then how do we alive? How practice nosotros inherit eternal life? What must we practise? Practise we keep sinning that grace may grow? Do we go along in unbelief, ungodly living, ignoring the Bible, drinking, swearing, fighting, a bully at home and a tyrant at work? How do we live? Practise we keep to shun the company of the people of God? "God forbid," says Paul. The Saviour was made sin in our place, and then he suffered and died for us and our sins. And so how can we get on living in sin if nosotros have inherited eternal life?

Remember of a person who has inherited a vast fortune. At that place is jump to be a change in his life. We promise there volition be a new spirit of generosity. At least he volition have a new tax code because of the interest that accrues on his fortune. He will take to brand a new will and he volition call up of charities and his friends and family. How will he answer to this vast inheritance that has come up into his life? What is he going to do? He must practice something. At present we Christians claim that we take inherited forgiveness of our sins and eternal life. Surely there must be a genuine change in our lives. It'southward non that we've become perfect people, but we've become new people. It is not, you sympathize, that our new generosity can ever get the grounds of our salvation. No, but our change of heart and conduct is the evidence that nosotros've received from God this extraordinary inheritance. So as we've been saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that has come correct into our lives then it's jump to affect our daily living. There must be a modify. Permit me give you some examples of this change. This shows us what men do who take inherited eternal life.

There was a greedy, covetous, thieving revenue enhancement gatherer named Zacchaeus living in Jericho, a thoroughly reprehensible man who yet was saved by the mercy of Jesus Christ. Did he continue as he had been living? No. Could he – with the life of heaven in his centre – behave on living as cruelly as he had lived? He could not, if he had truly inherited eternal life. And so what did he say? "'Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I accept cheated anybody out of annihilation, I will pay back 4 times the amount.' Jesus said to him, 'Today salvation has come to this house, because this human being, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost'" (Lk. xix:8-10). How do we know that this homo truly believed upon the Lord Jesus Christ as all his hope of salvation? Past his new attitude; past what he promised and did.

Or think of the dying thief hanging from a cross next to the Lord Jesus. He entrusted himself to Jesus Christ and inherited eternal life and immediately he did things, though he was nailed to a cross. He rebuked his cursing, swearing companion hanging from a tertiary cross. He said to him, "Don't you lot fear God? . . . We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this human has done nothing incorrect" (Lk. 23:40&41). He prayed that Jesus would recall him when he came into his kingdom. He had a totally new mental attitude to his criminal by, and a high and holy view of Jesus Christ. He was showing he believed our Lord to be the Saviour of sinners and the but promise for his salvation. What he said and did showed the reality of the alter that had occurred in his center. He was a dying man but a real believer and he showed by his words and attitude that he had inherited eternal life.

Or once more consider the campaigner Peter, the human being who confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. He was a believer, but then you see him standing in a courtyard, and you sentinel him warm his hands past a fire. Mind to his response to a teenager asking him if he were a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. Hear him denying information technology vehemently. He didn't fifty-fifty know who Jesus was. Did his words damn him? Keep watching him . . . stick with him and see what happens next. He wanders off into the darkness and now yous can hear his sobs. He is weeping bitterly. That godly sorrow – what he did – is the barometer of the faith and repentance that are in his middle. Peter has indeed inherited eternal life, merely the 'Great Fisherman' has not become sinless; people who've inherited eternal are still imperfect people, but they know what to do when they sin. They repent and they confess their sins to the Lord and they inquire for his forgiveness.

Do you sympathize what I am saying? Nobody is ever allowed into heaven on the footing of the good things he himself has done, because our all-time works take been spoiled past sin. Pride and irritation is in them all. But, please empathise this, that nosotros are certainly non allowed into heaven if our lives lack whatever good works at all! We are not saved by them, merely nosotros've been saved to do them. We are saved past religion in Christ the Saviour lone, just that saving organized religion in Christ is never lonely; e'er it is accompanied by such graces as speaking as the dying thief spoke to his companion well-nigh Christ and saying to him that he should not talk the mode he does. Or we practice such things as the apostle Peter, we break our hearts over how we've permit the Saviour downwardly and nosotros ask him to forgive united states our cowardice. Or nosotros do what Zacchaeus did and we repay those from whom nosotros stole money. We do stuff, if nosotros say we accept trusted in Jesus Christ and accept been given eternal life. Nosotros do proficient works. In that location is and then much nosotros have to do. At that place is baptism; be baptized said Peter at Pentecost to his congregation. Continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship and breaking of bread and praying. Church attendance, hearing the Bible preached Sunday by Sunday, doing our daily work with all our might, any our easily discover to practice nosotros practise it honourably. Whether we swallow or drink nosotros do all to the celebrity of God; we become the best fathers and mothers we can be; we show hospitality, we are fix to give an answer to anyone who asks united states of america why we take hope; we overcome evil with good; we have a generous spirit and nosotros give to the spread of the kingdom of God, and so on and then on. There are hundreds of things we accept to do as people who accept inherited eternal life. If we are known for none of those things, merely all the time are thinking of 'Number One,' and please ourselves and do things our own way without a idea for anyone else then how shall we inherit eternal life? We are going to inherit eternal decease if we live for ourselves.

So I am proverb that the Bible asks 2 questions and gives two answers. Question 1, "How are y'all saved?" This is a question virtually the means of getting saved. Past joining yourself by organized religion to the Lord Jesus Christ equally the only Saviour past his life and decease; entrust yourself to him. Question two. "What must yous do to inherit eternal life?" That is a question about the character and quality of life of those who say that they are saved men and women, that they are true Christians. How and so shall they live if they're to inherit eternal life? Let us look at our Lord'due south reply.

3. THE Answer OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST.

You volition meet that the Son of God proceeds to take the initiative, and and then Jehovah Jesus speaks about the Bible. He could have given one of those brilliant sayings of his that one time heard can never be forgotten, but Jesus chose non to do that here. He is being asked the most of import question anyone can inquire and he answers it this style, by referring to the Scriptures. "What is written?" Jesus says. He is being the keen example to us all when we are asked big questions. We tell people what the Bible says. All we demand to know almost God and his conservancy, and what duties God requires from u.s.a. is found in Scripture. Who am I? Why am I in this world? Why is the globe in the mess it'due south in? What is my chief finish in life? How can I know God? What is he similar? What lies afterwards decease? How can I exist saved? What must I do to inherit eternal life? Left to myself I would have no idea how to answer a single one of those questions. The wisest man in the world, today or ever, cannot supply the answers – only in and of himself. He could enquire every other man he meets; he could ransack the books of the wisest of men, he could write out those questions on Google but no reply will come to him every bit to who God is and how he can be saved and what lies after expiry autonomously from what is written in the Bible. But he who came from heaven, God the Son, the virgin born Jesus of Nazareth who preached the Sermon on the Mountain, who lived a clean-living life, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate but who rose from the expressionless, he alone can provide the answers such questions.

How does Christ respond one such question? Notice that he doesn't answer the human being, rather he asks a question of the skilful who'd raised his hand. "What is written?" Jesus asks. In other words he says to the proficient, "The answer to your questions is inscripturated, it is written down in a holy book. All Scripture is given past inspiration of God and it is assisting for us to read it when we are thinking of the swell questions in life." So the answer to this question is available to everyone because God has made sure that information technology's establish in his word. So I must ask you now whether you've read the Bible. Do you know what the Lord has said in Scripture about how to have eternal life? It is at that place in the word of God. "How do y'all read information technology?" Jesus asked this adept. He was literate like you; he read many books. Had he bothered to read the Scripture? Can you exist an educated human, can you be an practiced, and not read the word of God? This man knew so much; did he know the answer to his ain question? Surely he did know, and that is why Jesus took the initiative from him and tested him with the aforementioned question. Jesus is maxim to him, "Why practice you ask me to say something when the answer is plainly written in the law of God, and you know information technology, and I know information technology, and I know that yous know it."

Let me ask you Jesus' questions; what is written in the word of God? How do you read information technology? Practice you read it? No point in having information technology in your house or conveying information technology nigh in your pocket like some good luck charm. That will bring you no luck at all. God will know that you carried almost a Bible and however you lot never poured over it, reading it, crying to God to help you understand it. How do you read it? That is Jesus' question. In that location is a pastor named Trevor Ramsey and when he was a boy he was given a Gideon Bible and though he ignored it for a while a number of things happened to brand him start to read a portion of the Bible each mean solar day. On Sun he would watch people going along to church – boys his own age – and he would envy them. Then he heard members of his family say that his own cousin had become religious. Trevor looked him upward to talk to him and the male child invited him to become to church building with him. After a few weeks he began to understand the gospel. He says this; "In my daily readings I came to John 14:6 and the words seemed to stand on the page and hit me betwixt the eyes, 'Jesus answered, "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me"' I knew I had been looking for those iii things – a Mode to live, Truth in a confused world and particularly Life – existent life. Hither in front of me were the claims of Jesus Christ that he was all three!" That is what Trevor Ramsey read. How do you read the Scripture?

I want to urge yous not to requite upwards if yous can't empathise much of it, especially if verses refuse to jump off the folio (equally they did in the case of Trevor Ramsey). There is another homo whose proper noun is Tony Moxon who, when he was 13 years of age, and attending Kingsheath Technical College he was present one solar day when the school was visited past the Gideons. He was quite thrilled to be given a Bible. He treasured it and started to read ten verses every day though he had no idea what he was reading almost. At the age of 19 he emigrated to Australia and was all the same reading ten verses a twenty-four hours while living in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. He was non a Christian. He said, "One Sunday morning after a party the night earlier at which I had drunkard too much, I woke up with a hangover just I soon I was reading my obligatory x verses." But this time was different. It was accompanied past the strongest desire to go to church building. He was led to a church building where the gospel was preached and after the service the government minister came upwardly to him. "I told him," said Tony, "that I'd been reading x verses a day of the Bible for the terminal vii years without whatever real agreement." Then the preacher very patiently explained the Gospel to him and that forenoon he trusted in Jesus Christ as his Saviour. He had been reading the Bible for seven years without understanding it, but he kept reading information technology until he knew its message.

What good were all those years of reading Scripture without enlightenment? Much skillful! Every time you read it y'all entered God's globe. I will tell you virtually a woman who complained that it was a waste of time to do this. She whinged, "It is like trying to fill a sieve with h2o. It all runs out." Yes, just consider how much cleaner the sieve is afterwards being doused with running h2o. So too reading the Bible can clean us up; the truths that we do empathise have a purifying influence in our lives. There is a desire for the Bible that we can't be rid of. After a hangover from a nighttime of drinking a depressed convicted human knows that he'll get assist from the Bible. We'll become it nowhere else in the world. And then thirty years ago Tony Moxon would daily read ten verses from the Bible and it was as he read that God constrained him, "Become out and find a church where the Bible is believed and taught." That is how God works.

I am urging you non to shrug and say to yourself later on you've picked upwards the Bible and read a few verses (or if you have come to church and heard me once or twice and didn't understand what I was talking about) not to react by thinking that organized religion is not for you, that yous have tried it and it does naught for yous. That's how the devil wants you to respond. Don't despair if at first you're unable to understand what you are reading. There was once a man from Ethiopia who was reading the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 53 and he couldn't understand who in the globe Isaiah was writing about in his prophecy. It was at that time that God brought into his life a Christian called Philip who could help him. I urge you to keep reading, but proceed coming to a gospel church where the Bible is explained calendar week by week. You will come across from the mode that pastor understands and explains the Bible what its message of good news is maxim. In the text before usa we meet a very intelligent homo, an proficient, who wanted to know if Jesus knew the answer to a swell question as to what should be our priorities in life. What should we definitely do higher up everything else? He went to the about famous man of his twenty-four hour period Jesus of Nazareth and he asked him, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" and Jesus told him that the answer to this question was in the Bible. Let's look at the answer.

four. YOU MUST Dear GOD.

Exercise you know that there is non one person in hell who truly loved God when he was on this earth? Not one; many might have said they loved, and faked that dearest but they didn't really love God, while everybody who is in heaven loved God when they were hither on earth. Non all loved him as strongly and powerfully. Some were fervent in their love and others had smoking flax dear, but all in heaven had some love for the living God. At that place is no i in heaven who failed to love the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ while he was alive on earth. They didn't simply talk about loving and adore such loving. They actually did love God; their lives and actions showed it. The difference betwixt salvation and condemnation lies in acts of dear or no acts of honey. Sometimes you hear people saying that it'south sinners who go to heaven and that good people go to hell. That is not a helpful remark at all. Information technology is confusing. It is repentant sinners who go to heaven, not just sinners, merely people who have acknowledged that they are sinners and they have turned from serving sin to trust in Jesus Christ. And information technology is self-righteously good people who go to hell, people who reject the righteousness of Jesus Christ and think their ain righteous lives tin can salve them. Yet our righteousnesses are as filthy rags in the sight of the holy God.

When they stood before God and God said to them, "Why should I let yous into my sky?" not one who is now in sky replied, "Considering I accept loved yous with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my strength and with all my mind, and I have loved my neighbour as myself. Open sky to me because I accept done this." Non 1 person in sky always gave that answer, because they all know that they were failures in loving God and failures in loving their neighours. What they all said was, "Open heaven to me because Jesus Christ is the but ane to take loved God with all his centre and the just one to have loved his neighbor equally himself, and I am joined to him by religion. He is mine and I am his for e'er. How can you allow him into heaven and not let me in also considering he and I are i for ever." All the people in sky knew that they needed to be saved from the guilt and condemnation of sin; even their love wasn't perfect and it needed to be saved from its sinfulness, and there is only ane Saviour and he is the Lord Jesus Christ. They had gone to that Saviour, just equally they were, considering he had invited them to come up to him. They did non wait until they made themselves better. They had fallen into his outstretched arms for his redemption and forgiveness.

So that welcoming merciful Saviour had told them that if their trust in him was genuine that from then on in that location must be a new lifestyle if they were to inherit eternal life. What characterizes this new life? Loving God! More. Loving God with all your heart. More. Loving God with all your soul. More than. Loving God with all your strength. More. Loving God with all your mind. More than. Loving your neighbor as yourself. Henceforth that has to be your goal in life. That is your chief end. That is your magnificent obsession. That is your purpose in life if you lot are indeed trusting in Jesus Christ . . . if yous have been born once more . . . if you are a mere Christian, and then this is what you do with your one precious life in this world. Yous love God. This is the mark that you are trusting in the Lord for conservancy.

One life we have, 'twill shortly be past;
Only what'southward washed for Jesus will concluding.

What volition last? Loving God with your whole middle lasts for ever and ever. Loving your neighbour as yourself endures longer than the lord's day. God created you because he loved you. You might non have existed, never seen the sunrise, the heavens filled with stars, the mountains and the rainbow. You lot might never had breathed fresh air on a hillside and heard the birds sing and tasted fresh fruit. You might never have known the love of your family. You might never have heard their words of affection for what y'all mean to them. God gave you all of that. He became your Saviour when he saw you guilty and lost and ruined, heading for hell. At what cost he saved you, sending his but Son to have away the sin of the globe, allowing him to exist humbled to death fifty-fifty decease on a cantankerous, all because this mighty Creator loved you and would redeem you. This God sent his Holy Spirit into your centre to captive y'all of your sin, and convince you lot that Jesus was the Son of God and Saviour. He gave you saving faith to trust in him. He gave y'all a birth from above; he made you a new cosmos. He changed you from unbelief to being a believer. He did it. Since then he has kept you lot and met all your needs, and worked all things together for your adept and never left you lot for a moment. He has become your Teacher and Shepherd and Guardian and High Priest and Friend. He has conquered death and hell for you and is taking y'all to heaven to be with him for ever.

Shouldn't you love such a God? Isn't it the meridian of damnable indifference not to beloved him? Should a creature not love his Creator? Should a sinner not dearest his Saviour? Should a pupil not love his wonderful teacher? Should a lost human being in deep darkness and danger non love the one who guides him to safety? Aye, dearest God, and love him above all others, and honey him more and more, and dear him with every part of your beingness, your heart and your soul and your mind and your strength. Love him, if y'all are redeemed! Love him if you know him as your God! Dearest permit us love God. Exercise this and y'all volition live! Thinking virtually it and planning to do information technology and resolving to practise it one day and you're still a dead homo. It is in the loving that life is to be found. Exercise this . . . and you will live. Love your God. My little children, proceed yourself from idols.

11th April 20010 GEOFF THOMAS