Luke x:25-28 "On one occasion an expert in the law stood upwards to test Jesus. 'Teacher,' he asked, 'What must I do to inherit eternal life?' 'What is written in the Law?' he replied. 'How practice you read it?' He answered: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your force and with all your heed; and, Love your neighbour as yourself.' 'You lot have answered correctly,' Jesus replied. 'Practice this and you volition alive.'"

A man who is chosen an expert came to Jesus and asked him a question. He was an proficient 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 man's purpose in coming to Jesus was non a search for wisdom and truth from our Saviour. He was not genuinely anxious to get 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 up to our Lord in order to put Jesus to the test. What he did was this, not to come with a flim-flam question, but rather to verify what our Lord'due south response would exist to what was the almost fundamental of all questions, "What must whatsoever person practise to inherit eternal life?" It was a common question often discussed; it was bones and tremendously important. If Jesus had any funny ideas so his answer to this question would requite it away. What would be Jesus' response? How would he respond? Would he exist 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 you to be asking me a question?" Or would he requite a fine answer, the correct reply? The lawyer was testing Jesus to see if he could be treated seriously.

1. SOME QUESTIONS ARE VERY Important.

This question is the most crucial that any person in the world could enquire. "What must I practice to inherit eternal life?" We are all mortal men and women. You accept 60 years and ten to spend in this world and so some years subsequently, few or many it matters piffling in the perspective of eternity, you will breathe your last breath and you'll die. They'll pull a sheet over your head. They'll call for an ambulance and have your body to hospital and there may be an autopsy to define why you have died. Ane or more of your loved ones may have to go and identify your lifeless body. A death certificate will then exist written. The undertaker volition exist chosen and arrangements will be put in place for your funeral. At that service people will come up and shed some tears, and and then your body volition be taken to a cemetery; you will be lying within the coffin. Yous volition be lowered into the ground at the close of a cursory service. More sorrow will exist expressed and then the people will wander away quietly and sadly to carry on with the rest of their lives. In the cemetery the gravedigger will and then encompass your bury with soil and later a tombstone will be gear up with details of your nascence and death and other matters that your loved ones volition choose. On my parents' gravestone is written. "I know that my Redeemer liveth." That spot is where your body will lie and decay. Then your loved ones volition get a bill for several 1000 pounds for the funeral.

Simply what virtually our souls? Are we snuffed out and that is it? Is annihilation the ultimate reality? Do y'all think that life has no overall purpose any? Is your faith that the universe all came most past sheer chance, that information technology came out of absolutely nothing? Is your faith that nosotros exist today considering of billions of lucky coincidences, all independent of 1 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 human history, all man's great cultural and moral achievements – all this has come up about by sheer luck – is that your faith? Null effectually the states has anything whatsoever to do with a living personal God. Run a risk made it all. Meaninglessness, O meaninglessness; all is meaninglessness! In fact y'all believe that the grave levels everything because we all rot. We were just dust and nosotros render to grit and, like the Okey Kokey, "That's what it's all about." Death.

The Christian organized religion rejects such a faith totally. Our belief is not in luck, only that in the beginning God created the heavens and the globe. God made homo in his own prototype and likeness and gave him freedom to serve and dear him. But homo fell into sin and brought estrangement between himself and God. This is the reason that man'due south life ends in death. It was past man that sin entered the globe – not at all by a holy and loving God – and decease came upon u.s.a. through our sin, and then death passed upon all men for all have sinned. But God in his grace has adamant to redeem human being; he's made up his mind to save us from blackness despair and hell. God made another Adam, the last Adam, his blessed Son Jesus Christ. He is born of a virgin and lives a blameless life; he has extraordinary authority over the forces of creation, the winds and the waves and the trees and the sea and the fish in its depths all must do whatever he wills. He has power over Satan and disease and even expiry itself; none of those entities can resist his volition. He can raise the dead and he does so on several occasions. His life is pure and perfect and good. He is as righteous as God himself, and he has come into the world for i great purpose, not to be served but to serve us past atonement and ransom for our sins. Here is ane who can forgive and pardon the states for our guilt. We don't have to acquit all our blame and shame for our entire lives – for the next fifty years before our bodies are lowered into the grave by the potent bands effectually the bury. Jesus Christ says, "Come unto me all you who labour and are heavy-laden and I will give yous residuum." We can go to him and confess our sins to him, and and so he forgives them and cleanses usa from everything.

His mighty resurrection is the confirmation of that this is truthful. Expiry could not keep its casualty; Jesus tore the bars abroad; Christ our Lord. Death is not anything; the grave is not the snuffing out place. It is the door to the eternal state. At that place is everlasting life. Enoch walked with God and and so he was not because God took him. David spoke of his expressionless kid, that ane day he would get to him; his child would not return to David. Elijah was taken up to exist with God. "I know that my Redeemer lives," said Job. Lazarus rises; the widow of Nain's son rises; Jairus' daughter rises; Jesus Christ rises; Eutychus rises; after his stoning Paul rises. Death is non the identify 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 message of Jesus Christ. For God then loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish just take everlasting life. Decease came by the start Adam; life comes by the last Adam. And so the question Jesus was asked was this, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Can y'all think of a more important question? The grave is non annihilation. There is the life of eternity. Then what must I do to inherit it?

2. WHAT MUST WE Practice TO INHERIT ETERNAL LIFE?

Do you lot meet that this is a different question from "How is anyone saved?" The answer to that question is plainly given in Scripture. It is, "Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved." You can exercise nothing to salvage yourself, nobody tin can do annihilation to salvage 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 you join yourself to him by assertive right into him. You entrust yourself to him for fourth dimension and eternity. He accomplished cosmic conservancy all by himself, and he applies it all by himself through the Holy Spirit to all who believe in him. He alone is the Saviour so all we tin do is to make equally information technology were a smashing pile of our sins and flee from them all to the Lord Jesus, and nosotros even make a big pile of all our works of righteousness and we flee from them every bit well. We hide ourselves in him. He is all our promise for mercy and forgiveness and deliverance. We put all our trust in him. Faith is spelled F.A.I.T.H., "Forsaking All I Take Him" to be my Lord and Saviour. That is the answer to the question, "How am I to be saved?" It is but through us existence joined to the perfect life and atoning death of Jesus Christ the Saviour.

Merely here is another question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" It is a parallel question. Information technology is only equally important equally the question, "How am I saved?" simply it is a different question and in that location is a dissimilar answer. What are we to do if we are to inherit eternal life? We say nosotros are saved. That is the claim we make. All our hopes are in the Lord Jesus Christ, what he has washed, in his grace, for us and in our place. That is the foundation of our hopes of God saving us. If that is the case then how do we live? How exercise we inherit eternal life? What must we do? Practice nosotros go along sinning that grace may abound? Exercise we go on in unbelief, ungodly living, ignoring the Bible, drinking, swearing, fighting, a bully at home and a tyrant at piece of work? How do nosotros live? Practice we continue to shun the company of the people of God? "God foreclose," says Paul. The Saviour was made sin in our place, and so he suffered and died for u.s.a. and our sins. So how tin we keep living in sin if nosotros take inherited eternal life?

Think of a person who has inherited a vast fortune. There is spring to exist a change in his life. We promise there volition be a new spirit of generosity. At least he volition take a new tax code because of the interest that accrues on his fortune. He will have to make a new will and he volition think of charities and his friends and family. How will he respond to this vast inheritance that has come up into his life? What is he going to do? He must do something. Now we Christians claim that we have inherited forgiveness of our sins and eternal life. Surely there must be a 18-carat change in our lives. It's not that we've get perfect people, but we've go new people. It is not, you sympathize, that our new generosity can ever go the grounds of our salvation. No, simply our change of heart and conduct is the evidence that we've received from God this extraordinary inheritance. So as we've been saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that has come right into our lives then it's bound to affect our daily living. At that place must exist a change. Let me give y'all some examples of this alter. This shows u.s.a. what men practise who accept inherited eternal life.

There was a greedy, covetous, thieving tax gatherer named Zacchaeus living in Jericho, a thoroughly reprehensible man who notwithstanding was saved past the mercy of Jesus Christ. Did he continue equally he had been living? No. Could he – with the life of heaven in his eye – bear on living as cruelly as he had lived? He could non, if he had truly inherited eternal life. So what did he say? "'Look, Lord! Here and now I requite half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.' Jesus said to him, 'Today salvation has come to this firm, because this man, likewise, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost'" (Lk. 19:viii-10). How do nosotros know that this man truly believed upon the Lord Jesus Christ every bit all his hope of salvation? Past his new attitude; by what he promised and did.

Or think of the dying thief hanging from a cross adjacent 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 third cantankerous. He said to him, "Don't you fear God? . . . Nosotros are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this human being has done aught incorrect" (Lk. 23:40&41). He prayed that Jesus would remember 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 exist the Saviour of sinners and the only promise for his conservancy. What he said and did showed the reality of the change that had occurred in his heart. He was a dying human just a real believer and he showed by his words and mental attitude that he had inherited eternal life.

Or again consider the apostle Peter, the man who confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. He was a laic, but then you lot see him standing in a courtyard, and you lot spotter him warm his easily by a fire. Listen to his response to a teenager asking him if he were a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. Hear him denying it vehemently. He didn't even know who Jesus was. Did his words damn him? Go along watching him . . . stick with him and encounter what happens next. He wanders off into the darkness and now yous tin 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 centre. Peter has indeed inherited eternal life, but the 'Great Fisherman' has not become sinless; people who've inherited eternal are still imperfect people, but they know what to practise when they sin. They repent and they confess their sins to the Lord and they ask for his forgiveness.

Exercise y'all sympathise what I am saying? Nobody is ever allowed into sky on the basis of the practiced things he himself has done, because our best works have been spoiled by sin. Pride and irritation is in them all. But, please empathise this, that we are certainly not allowed into heaven if our lives lack whatsoever good works at all! We are not saved by them, but nosotros've been saved to do them. Nosotros are saved by faith in Christ the Saviour solitary, merely that saving faith in Christ is never lonely; always information technology is accompanied by such graces as speaking as the dying thief spoke to his companion about Christ and maxim to him that he should not talk the way he does. Or we practice such things every bit the apostle Peter, nosotros suspension our hearts over how nosotros've let the Saviour downwardly and nosotros enquire him to forgive us our cowardice. Or we practise what Zacchaeus did and we repay those from whom we stole money. We do stuff, if we say we have trusted in Jesus Christ and take been given eternal life. Nosotros practise good works. In that location is and so much we take to practise. In that location is baptism; be baptized said Peter at Pentecost to his congregation. Continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship and breaking of breadstuff and praying. Church building attendance, hearing the Bible preached Sunday by Sunday, doing our daily piece of work with all our might, whatever our hands find to do we do information technology honourably. Whether we swallow or drink we do all to the celebrity of God; nosotros become the best fathers and mothers we tin can be; nosotros show hospitality, we are gear up to give an answer to anyone who asks usa why we have hope; we overcome evil with good; we take a generous spirit and nosotros give to the spread of the kingdom of God, then on so on. There are hundreds of things we have to do as people who take inherited eternal life. If nosotros are known for none of those things, just all the time are thinking of 'Number 1,' and please ourselves and do things our own fashion without a thought for anyone else then how shall we inherit eternal life? We are going to inherit eternal death if we alive for ourselves.

So I am proverb that the Bible asks two questions and gives two answers. Question i, "How are you lot saved?" This is a question most the means of getting saved. Past joining yourself past religion to the Lord Jesus Christ every bit the merely Saviour past his life and death; entrust yourself to him. Question two. "What must you 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 then shall they live if they're to inherit eternal life? Let us look at our Lord's answer.

3. THE ANSWER OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST.

You lot will see that the Son of God proceeds to have the initiative, and and so Jehovah Jesus speaks about the Bible. He could have given one of those brilliant sayings of his that once heard can never be forgotten, but Jesus chose non to exercise that here. He is existence asked the virtually important question anyone can enquire and he answers information technology this way, by referring to the Scriptures. "What is written?" Jesus says. He is existence the great example to united states of america all when we are asked big questions. We tell people what the Bible says. All we need to know virtually God and his salvation, and what duties God requires from us is establish in Scripture. Who am I? Why am I in this globe? Why is the globe in the mess it's in? What is my chief end in life? How can I know God? What is he like? What lies after death? How can I be saved? What must I do to inherit eternal life? Left to myself I would have no idea how to answer a single i of those questions. The wisest man in the earth, today or ever, cannot supply the answers – merely 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 volition come up to him as to who God is and how he tin be saved and what lies afterward expiry autonomously from what is written in the Bible. Only he who came from heaven, God the Son, the virgin built-in Jesus of Nazareth who preached the Sermon on the Mount, who lived a blameless life, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and cognition, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate simply who rose from the expressionless, he alone tin can provide the answers such questions.

How does Christ answer 1 such question? Observe that he doesn't answer the man, rather he asks a question of the expert who'd raised his hand. "What is written?" Jesus asks. In other words he says to the expert, "The answer to your questions is inscripturated, it is written downwardly in a holy book. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and it is assisting for united states of america to read it when we are thinking of the great questions in life." So the respond to this question is available to anybody because God has made sure that it'due south found in his word. So I must ask you now whether you've read the Bible. Do y'all know what the Lord has said in Scripture most how to have eternal life? It is there in the word of God. "How do you read it?" Jesus asked this expert. He was literate similar you; he read many books. Had he bothered to read the Scripture? Tin you lot exist an educated man, tin you be an practiced, and not read the word of God? This man knew then much; did he know the answer to his own question? Surely he did know, and that is why Jesus took the initiative from him and tested him with the same question. Jesus is maxim to him, "Why do you ask me to say something when the answer is plainly written in the police force of God, and you know it, and I know it, and I know that you know information technology."

Let me enquire you lot Jesus' questions; what is written in the give-and-take of God? How exercise y'all read it? Practice y'all read it? No point in having it in your house or carrying it about in your pocket like some good luck charm. That will bring you no luck at all. God will know that you carried about a Bible and yet you lot never poured over it, reading it, crying to God to help you lot understand information technology. How practice yous 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 make him start to read a portion of the Bible each mean solar day. On Sunday he would picket people going along to church – boys his own age – and he would envy them. Then he heard members of his family unit say that his own cousin had become religious. Trevor looked him up to talk to him and the male child invited him to go to church with him. Later on 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 up on the page and hit me between the eyes, 'Jesus answered, "I am the fashion, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Begetter except through me"' I knew I had been looking for those three things – a Way to live, Truth in a confused world and especially Life – real life. Here in front of me were the claims of Jesus Christ that he was all three!" That is what Trevor Ramsey read. How practice you read the Scripture?

I desire to urge you non to surrender if you can't empathize much of it, especially if verses refuse to leap off the page (every bit they did in the case of Trevor Ramsey). There is another man whose name is Tony Moxon who, when he was xiii years of age, and attending Kingsheath Technical College he was present i day when the school was visited by the Gideons. He was quite thrilled to exist given a Bible. He treasured it and started to read ten verses every day though he had no idea what he was reading well-nigh. At the age of 19 he emigrated to Australia and was notwithstanding reading ten verses a 24-hour interval while living in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. He was not a Christian. He said, "One Sunday forenoon afterwards a party the night earlier at which I had drunk too much, I woke upwards with a hangover simply I shortly I was reading my obligatory 10 verses." Merely this fourth dimension was different. It was accompanied by the strongest desire to go to church. He was led to a church where the gospel was preached and later the service the minister came up to him. "I told him," said Tony, "that I'd been reading ten verses a day of the Bible for the last seven years without any real agreement." Then the preacher very patiently explained the Gospel to him and that morning time he trusted in Jesus Christ every bit his Saviour. He had been reading the Bible for seven years without agreement it, but he kept reading information technology until he knew its message.

What proficient were all those years of reading Scripture without enlightenment? Much good! Every time you read information technology you entered God'southward world. I will tell you about a woman who complained that it was a waste of time to do this. She whinged, "It is similar trying to make full a sieve with h2o. It all runs out." Aye, but consider how much cleaner the sieve is afterward existence doused with running water. So also reading the Bible can make clean the states up; the truths that nosotros exercise understand have a purifying influence in our lives. There is a want for the Bible that we can't be rid of. After a hangover from a dark of drinking a depressed convicted human being knows that he'll get assistance from the Bible. We'll get information technology nowhere else in the world. So thirty years ago Tony Moxon would daily read ten verses from the Bible and it was as he read that God constrained him, "Get out and find a church building where the Bible is believed and taught." That is how God works.

I am urging you not to shrug and say to yourself after you've picked upward the Bible and read a few verses (or if you take come to church building and heard me in one case or twice and didn't understand what I was talking about) non to react past thinking that religion is not for you, that yous have tried it and it does nil for yous. That's how the devil wants y'all to respond. Don't despair if at first you're unable to understand what you are reading. At that place was once a man from Ethiopia who was reading the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 53 and he couldn't understand who in the world Isaiah was writing about in his prophecy. Information technology was at that time that God brought into his life a Christian called Philip who could help him. I urge you lot to keep reading, just go along coming to a gospel church where the Bible is explained week by calendar week. Yous volition meet from the way that pastor understands and explains the Bible what its bulletin of practiced news is maxim. In the text before us we meet a very intelligent human being, an expert, who wanted to know if Jesus knew the reply to a not bad question every bit to what should exist our priorities in life. What should we definitely do above everything else? He went to the nigh famous man of his day 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. Permit's look at the answer.

4. You lot MUST LOVE GOD.

Do yous know that there is not one person in hell who truly loved God when he was on this earth? Not i; many might accept said they loved, and faked that love but they didn't actually dearest God, while everybody who is in heaven loved God when they were here on earth. Not all loved him as strongly and powerfully. Some were fervent in their beloved and others had smoking flax honey, only all in heaven had some dear for the living God. There is no ane in sky who failed to honey the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ while he was live on globe. They didn't simply talk about loving and admire such loving. They really did love God; their lives and actions showed it. The deviation between salvation and condemnation lies in acts of love or no acts of dearest. Sometimes you lot hear people saying that it's sinners who become to heaven and that good people go to hell. That is not a helpful remark at all. It is confusing. It is repentant sinners who go to heaven, non just sinners, simply people who have acknowledged that they are sinners and they have turned from serving sin to trust in Jesus Christ. And it is self-righteously expert people who go to hell, people who reject the righteousness of Jesus Christ and recollect their own righteous lives tin can save them. Yet our righteousnesses are as filthy rags in the sight of the holy God.

When they stood earlier God and God said to them, "Why should I let you lot into my heaven?" non one who is now in sky replied, "Considering I have loved you with all my eye and with all my soul and with all my forcefulness and with all my mind, and I take loved my neighbour as myself. Open heaven to me because I have washed this." Not one 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 sky to me because Jesus Christ is the only 1 to have loved God with all his heart and the only 1 to have loved his neighbour as himself, and I am joined to him by faith. He is mine and I am his for ever. How tin yous allow him into sky and not let me in also considering he and I are one for always." 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 just one Saviour and he is the Lord Jesus Christ. They had gone to that Saviour, simply as they were, because he had invited them to come to him. They did not wait until they made themselves better. They had fallen into his outstretched arms for his redemption and forgiveness.

Then that welcoming merciful Saviour had told them that if their trust in him was genuine that from then on there 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 center. More. Loving God with all your soul. More. Loving God with all your forcefulness. More. Loving God with all your mind. More. Loving your neighbour as yourself. Henceforth that has to be your goal in life. That is your chief finish. That is your magnificent obsession. That is your purpose in life if y'all are indeed trusting in Jesus Christ . . . if you accept been born again . . . if you are a mere Christian, then this is what you lot do with your one precious life in this earth. Yous love God. This is the mark that you are trusting in the Lord for salvation.

One life nosotros have, 'twill soon be by;
Only what's done for Jesus volition last.

What will last? Loving God with your whole heart lasts for ever and ever. Loving your neighbour as yourself endures longer than the sun. God created you considering he loved you. You might non have existed, never seen the sunrise, the heavens filled with stars, the mountains and the rainbow. You might never had breathed fresh air on a hillside and heard the birds sing and tasted fresh fruit. Y'all might never have known the love of your family. You lot might never have heard their words of affection for what you lot mean to them. God gave you lot 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 lot, sending his just Son to take away the sin of the earth, assuasive him to be humbled to death fifty-fifty death on a cross, all considering this mighty Creator loved yous and would redeem yous. This God sent his Holy Spirit into your heart to captive you of your sin, and convince you that Jesus was the Son of God and Saviour. He gave you saving faith to trust in him. He gave you a birth from above; he made yous a new creation. He changed you from unbelief to beingness a believer. He did it. Since then he has kept you and met all your needs, and worked all things together for your proficient and never left you 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 honey such a God? Isn't it the tiptop of damnable indifference not to love him? Should a animal non dear his Creator? Should a sinner non beloved his Saviour? Should a pupil non dear his wonderful teacher? Should a lost human being in deep darkness and danger not love the one who guides him to safety? Aye, love God, and love him above all others, and love him more and more, and love him with every part of your beingness, your heart and your soul and your mind and your strength. Dear him, if you lot are redeemed! Love him if you know him equally your God! Honey let us beloved God. Do this and yous will live! Thinking almost it and planning to exercise it and resolving to practise it one day and you're still a dead man. It is in the loving that life is to be found. Exercise this . . . and yous will alive. Love your God. My piffling children, continue yourself from idols.

11th Apr 20010 GEOFF THOMAS