"Why will you die when you can live?" (question from MacArthur's sermon below), brings to my mind Jesus' teaching in Mark 8:34-38:
34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."
We can live our lives here on earth trying to enjoy every pleasurable thing known to mankind (money, power, "stuff" etc.) that we can get our hands on. But how long will that last? 50 or 75 years? Who knows when they are going to die? It could be tomorrow. If you are not sure where you are going when you die, I hope you will read on.
The following excerpts are from John MacArthur's sermon, 4 Ways to Miss Out on Heaven. The text is John 8:21-30.
4 Ways to Miss Out on Heaven
You shall die in your sin...verse 21. How is it that that happens? Let me give you four ways to guarantee you will die in your sin and I'm going to borrow them from the words of Jesus here, four ways to guarantee you will die in your sin, four ways to guarantee that the death of Jesus Christ on the cross is meaningless to you.
Number one, be self-righteous...be self-righteous. That will do it. The first guaranteed way to die in your sins is to be completely content with your own ability to please God. Believe that you can be good enough, or religious enough, or pray enough, or go to church enough, or be moral enough, or have good deeds that outweigh on some imaginary scale the weight of your bad deeds, just be self-righteous.
Then He says this (verse 23), "You are of this world, I am not of this world." And here's the second way to guarantee that you will die in your sins and that is be worldly, be earthbound, another guarantee, be preoccupied with the world, live for the world, live for the temporal system, live for the ideologies of this world system.
and thirdly, verse 24, "I said, therefore, to you that you shall die in your sins for unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins." Here's the third guarantee way to be certain you will die in your sin, be unbelieving, be self-righteous, be earthbound and be unbelieving. That's really all it takes. Be unbelieving.
fourthly, be willfully ignorant or obstinately ignorant. Verse 25, this is so amazing. So they were saying to Him, "Who are You?" This is absolutely unbelievable that they would say that, after all they had seen, after all He had done, after they had heard....Why are they willfully ignorant? John 3 makes it clear, "Men love darkness rather than...what?..." It was dark because they wanted it that way. It's always dark when you love your sin. It was a willful darkness....
You want to die in your sins? Just continue in your course, just believe you're good enough the way you are. Just carry on with your love affair with human ideologies. Just refuse to believe the great truths concerning Christ. Love your sin so much that you choose the darkness and are willfully ignorant. But to do this you're going to have to stumble over the cross. That's right, you're going to have heartlessly, irreverently trample Christ's blood because you know the gospel. So you're going to have to stumble across the cross. Even this morning as we come to the Lord's table the cross is going to be demonstrated again and you're going to have to reject it again to continue the course you're in. Inconceivable, really, why will you die when you can live? Why will you not be like those many who believed and didn't want to die in their sin? Why will you not accept an atonement for your sin? That's the all encompassing question. And the answer is your self-righteous, you're good enough the way you are, you love the world too much, you refuse to believe or you love your sin and you cherish the darkness and the ignorance that comes with it. In any case, the price is eternal.
Read the entire sermon
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