The Kingdom of Heaven, as prophesied in the Old Testament, was inaugurated after John the Baptist’s death. This Kingdom is not a physical place, but God’s rulership on Earth through Christ. Salvation comes not through good works, but solely through faith in Jesus’ perfect life and sacrificial death. When we trust in Christ, we receive forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit, uniting us with Jesus. This union with Christ is the essence of the New Covenant, offering a closeness to God at a new level than that available in the Old Covenant.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] Down in Sydney, in the 1979 meetings that the Graham team were having there, Leighton Ford being one person and Billy Graham another of the preachers, going along I saw amongst the crowds a figure that I recognised. And it was someone originally known as Cassius Clay but then later known as resides in Muhammad Ali. He’s a sort of personality that seems to gather around him a group of people whom he’s holding these people in. He seems to be the person in charge. Another occasion I went along to the hotel where the Graham team were. There he was, same person, Muhammad Ali, sitting in the foyer and there’s a whole group of people he was holding court again. That seemed to be something that everybody recognized that he said of himself that he’s the greatest and certainly in terms of his social poise, he was living it up everywhere he seemed to go.

[00:01:07] Are you aware of the fact that Jesus made the most unusual statement about John the Baptist and what he said was that he was the greatest. Now that really gives me a lot to think about because John the Baptist was really the last of the Old Testament saints although he’s written up in the New Testament and nonetheless he was somebody that Jesus said, the person who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John. Now if he was the the greatest, and there’s Jesus saying so….is there no one in the kingdom of heaven then? If the least person is greater than John, what is that all about? Now if we look at Matthew 11 11 we’ve already had it read to us but we’ll put Matthew 11 11 up again and just to see that moment,

[00:02:07] Truly I say to you among those born of women, let’s check up, who are the people who were born of women? Put your hand up if you’re not. No, you didn’t put his hand up. All right. It’s everybody. Of humans, those born of women, there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. What was it about John the Baptist that even Muhammad similar on wouldn’t better? In fact Muhammad Ali held a lot of faults and I’m sure he had over close

[00:02:48] Yet the one who is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he. Now the only way you can really understand that is is that John the Baptist lived in the period of time before The Advent of the Kingdom of Heaven. We in Christianity have a bit of a tradition of talking about the end of life as going to heaven or going to hell. That’s a bit of a simplification, but nonetheless, we picture the end times not incorrectly to have Christian people going to heaven. And that usually has influence in the way people think,

[00:03:27] So what the kingdom of heaven about is heaven. And you’ll find there’s all of folks who have just a simple idea that if at last you get into heaven, you’ve made it to the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven. Some people split up and make two different entities, the kingdom of God and kingdom of heaven, but I think that doesn’t hold water because of the fact that if you compare the different references and the different gospels, you’ll see that they’re referring to the same entity whatever it is. So the Kingdom of Heaven is not necessarily more heavenly in location than is the Kingdom of God that has come down on earth. Don’t forget when you’re led to pray the Lord’s Prayer, you pray, may your Kingdom come. So the idea of the Kingdom always being heaven doesn’t hold true to how Jesus taught us to pray, may your kingdom come, may your will

[00:04:22] be done on earth as it is in heaven. So this kingdom is based in a heavenly happening. Why then would they call it the kingdom of heaven, for two reasons, one being of course, the Jewish people and their desire to protect the Holy name of God, often didn’t refer to him but would refer to something that they all knew meant him. They’d say heaven knows or heaven thinks. They mean God.

[00:04:52] And when they talked about the Kingdom of Heaven, they’re talking about the Kingdom here on earth that is sourced from Heaven. And that is God’s spirit moving, such that the rulership is the will of Heaven, but it’s down here on earth that’s being talked about. So the Kingdom of Heaven is not just what God decides up in Heaven and here on Earth is different, but the Kingdom of Heaven was a prophesied coming of God’s rulership in the human set of affairs.

[00:05:26] And that human set of affairs would do that rulership by the coming messiah, the Christ, the anointed one. And how John the Baptist got this statement of Jesus accredited to him of being the greatest is because of all the line of the prophets of the Old Testament era, the Old Covenant era, they are predicting the coming of this kingdom, but it’s in the future. And the last of the list of such prophets

[00:05:53] is actually John the Baptist. As I said earlier, he’s written up in the New Testament, but he belongs to those prophets who talked about the coming of the Messiah. And the reason why John the Baptist is accredited as being the greatest is not so much because he did more miracles. He actually didn’t do any. If you counted all the miracles, I Elijah and Elisha get more than anybody else, and certainly it’s not a case of who does the most

[00:06:21] miracles, but the reason why he’s the greatest is because he’s the last in the line and the one who stands next to the Messiah. He’s the one who comes in the final moment to predict him, and more than just predict him, the purpose of John the Baptist coming was to introduce him to the nation Israel, And to him was given the greatest honor to introduce to them the one who would be the Messiah, the one who will be king of Kings, the one who would be the leader of the kingdom of heaven on Earth. And that’s the reason why he was called the greatest. The fact that the person who Jesus says is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is the question of timing. John the Baptist had his head cut off, and ceased to exist before the kingdom of heaven

[00:07:12] got to start on earth. And the Bible records how that kingdom of heaven gets going. And so we’ll go to our next passage as we’re tracking down about this, which is Matthew 16, 13 to about 20. We’ll see how it goes. What verse did you get to you? That’ll do. Now this is a very famous passage. I’m sure many of you have been aware of it. Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi and he asked his disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is? The term Son of Man, by the way, is a tricky one because he does emphasise the humanity of this person, but on the other hand as an elevated term because there’s Old Testament prophecies that talk about this Son of Man as a heavenly figure who refers to Father God and is the one who has great power. So though sounds like it’s underlining his humanity,

[00:08:10] not only that this is a very elevated position for someone to be in. Who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said some say John the Baptist. Now, as Jesus asked the question, of course, the term Son of Man is the one that he took to himself. So he’s actually asking the disciples who do they say that I am? And parallel passages will have his Jesus question

[00:08:38] murdered just so. Who do the people say that I am? And they said some say John the Baptist, because John the Baptist had his head cut off, and so the rumor was that he’d come back to life again and it was Jesus. Others say Elijah, because there was a prophecy of Elijah coming in the Intimes. Jeremiah or one of the prophets and he said to them, but who do you say that I am? Couldn’t be a more devastating

[00:09:07] the important question for any person to be asked and Simon Peter replied you are the Christ the Son of the Living God And Jesus agrees with Peter’s answer and gives him a great commendation for so saying Jesus said him blessed are you Simon’s bar Jonah son of John? That means for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you You haven’t come about to knowing that by your human acumen or by your training in some seminary or by Some mysterious lesson that you learned It hasn’t been something that you’ve got to learn and know blessare you Simon Barjola for flesh and blood.” That means it’s not come from a human source that you know that. But my Father who isn’t heaven, he goes on

[00:10:00] to say. And so it is a revelationary thing that Peter had the understanding who Jesus actually was and is. And Jesus goes on to amplify, but my Father who is in heaven and I tell you that you are Peter and a little word for Peter means stone and then he goes on to say about a rock there’s many different words because it’s not Peter that the church is built on this the Roman Catholic thought it is on the rock of the great statement that he made and on this rock I will build my church. The next thing to notice here which is which is important for us in understanding about the identity of the Church and about the timing of all these things, is the future tense that Jesus uses when he says, I will build my Church.

[00:10:54] Now the word Church, Ecclesia, means called out ones. And there’s different ways you could understand the Church of called out. Some people emphasize that we’re all called by election and that therefore we are the out ones because in God’s election eternity past, we were decided. There could be elements of truth in that, but not necessarily the way a lot of people take it. The word called out ones was also something in common parlance in the way they use their language to talk about an assembly. In some senses here tonight, I called out ones because most of you knew you knew meant to turn up at 5 o’clock. And luckily for me, I had a very fast driver driving me. And I got here about 5 past 5, and people

[00:11:49] were still standing around. But we’ve been called out to an evening service. And so what you have constituted by coming along, because you knew that was the time to come, was that you’re called out to what we would otherwise call an assembly. So the name assembly is one that comes from this idea of call out-ness. That’s the reason why the brethren church, they call themselves assemblies. Because they quite correctly are saying that the people who come to worship Christ, are ones who have been called to come, and the Bible tells us don’t forsake the assembling

[00:12:28] of yourselves together, and then it is using it as a verb, not just a name. Don’t forsake the assembling of yourselves together means have it as a habit that you regularly go to the called-out meetings of your local church. And so, I’ll give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, says Jesus to Peter and so he says, I will build my church, which is called out once and it is. Listen to me, listen to me. It’s a New Testament entity. You say how do you know that? Because Jesus put the tense of the verb there I will build, he put it in something that he’s going to go and hadn’t yet started.

[00:13:13] If you collected a group of Jewish people which might even include John the Baptists before he got his head cut off, he would constitute people who were a part of the group of folk who belonged to the Lord. By the way, I don’t think that all the Jewish people were lost simply because they weren’t a New Covenant times. They were all from the Old Covenant. Because God arranged for there to be salvation happening by the Jews in the Old Covenant. Jesus stuck up for that to be the way to get saved to the woman at the well. When she argued that, they had their mountain, you meant to worship Him, but you Jewish people, you’ve got your temple.

[00:13:52] Jesus said, no, salvation is from the Jews. Jewish people got to be saved. Now what was meant by the word saved is not the same contents as what we mean when we ask each other, have you been saved? It doesn’t happen as often these days. I lament that, I think it’s a good, helpful term to ask someone, are you saved brother? It sounds old-fashioned.

[00:14:16] But it’s asking, in our understanding of the salvation word, it’s asking, have you come to the place of finding Christ as your personal savior and thereby you got in the door with God. And so, when the time comes for there to be a heaven and hell, your destiny’s already decided because you are saved. The people of the old covenant, in the Old Testament, they also got to be saved.

[00:14:42] And many of them, who lived according to the best revelation God had given them, the law of Moses, who did their best to walk with God, they will be in heaven to greet us. but yet they like John the Baptist, never even made it into the Kingdom. That’s what this language that I’m expounding to you proves. John the Baptist, I think just the fact he had a few of his doubts near the end about whether Jesus really was the one

[00:15:09] when he was in prison and likely to get killed which he was at the end, and he asked that, you know, send a message to Jesus and my, are you the one or should we wait for another? He had his doubts, but John the Baptist was a prophet who was above every other person of the Old Testament era, as far as Jesus says. Greater. He’ll be in glory. You can talk to him about

[00:15:33] what it’s like to get your head cut off, if you like, when you get there. He probably won’t mind telling you. But, nonetheless he wasn’t in the kingdom that he himself knew the Messiah was going to inaugurate it set up. He was announcing it, he was the person and chosen God to be the last of that Old Testament line, he was the one that stood next to Christ. When you put all the prophets in a row, the one that comes after John the Baptist is Jesus Christ. He’s actually prophesied as a prophet, he’s a one that

[00:16:06] will have the word that when you listen to him you better listen to him because he’s especially got the authority and John the Baptist is the one who stood next to Christ and introduced him to the nation Israel, that really was his task. So he was considered as greater of all the people born of women. Well, that means absolutely everybody – except someone who gets into the kingdom of heaven is greater than he, which is because it hasn’t yet been opened. We are on the business to track down about the opening of this kingdom of heaven, which is an institution on earth, though it is resourced from heaven, comes from heaven, empowered from heaven and led by the ones sent from heaven, as in the Messiah. Well, Jesus says to Peter, verse 18, and I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock,

[00:17:01] Petra, Petros is his name, Peter. It’s a masculine. If anybody here wants to be a feminist, here’s some information for you. Petra is a feminine word, and that’s the word for the Almighty rock, the big boulder. But Petra, the name for Peter … no, Petros for Peter is Masculine, and it means a little stone. I’m putting that out there as something to muse about. Anyway, on this rock says, Jesus, I’ll build my church, and he’s not referring to Peter as the rock, because Peter is just a little stone, but he’s referring to the

[00:17:40] statement of Peter. …when asked by Jesus Peter has a revelatory moment from heaven and says You are the Christ the Son of the living God and Jesus as I tell you Peter on this rock the statement as to who is the Christ. He says I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it and then he continues to say to Peter and I’ll give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you Bam on Earth, shall be bound in Heaven, whatever you loose on Earth shall be loose in Heaven. It’s because of that verse a lot of people in popular parlance, in popular understandings, picture Peter is standing by the gates of heaven and he’s deciding who gets into heaven and who doesn’t because of

[00:18:28] this very verse misunderstood. Oh by the way, you heard about the Catholic misunderstanding of the verse the Roman Catholic and this one is because they understand that Peters there checking up who should go in at the gates of heaven and along comes a person and Peter says to them why should we let you in the person says I did this and I did that, you know. And the man says who’s talking about common in an Irish accent? Which I can’t do. Who’s talking about coming in. You’ve all got ten seconds to get out! They used to say things like that. I’ve had a bomb, you know, it’s been left. Sorry, you don’t laugh very much. My accent wasn’t very good, was it? Well, the idea of Peter turning a key to a set of gates, the pearly gates is understood in popular culture as heaven, and Peter

[00:19:22] deciding whether you get in there or not. It’s a total misunderstanding. If you’re a person that seeks to buy your activities and the right to get into heaven, you’re in for an enormous shock because the New Testament clearly teaches that none of us by our activity in our works will ever get enough good things done to deserve heaven. What’s more we’ve done too many bad things that we’ve spoiled our record and that’s why the scriptures conclude that we’re all sinners. we are all hellbound — the whole population of the Earth. It doesn’t mean that God won’t distinguish between the people who’ve done a lot more better, things than others, and that there will be a judgment where God will judge everyone according to their works.

[00:20:10] There is that judgment at the end of the age — but people don’t get to be in Heaven by getting a good tick at the judgment. And there’s a lot of folk who are going to think that they’ve been as good as the other folk down the road, and certainly just as good as those hypocritical Christians going off there to church that they see every week. So they think. Because the standard is, perfection. And the Bible says, for all have sinned, and all have fallen short of the glory of God. And there is no living out of good things as good as they are. God wants us to be doing that but there’s no summation of your life that will get you into heaven, the only way you’ll get into heaven is by there being two things. One some representative of humanity who lived perfectly under the Old Testament law

[00:21:07] and didn’t break it and was a perfect person to be a human sacrifice to take our human punishment for the fact that we’re all sinners. That person being Jesus. And he, in his death on the cross, is the second thing, that having lived a perfect life he gave himself as a sacrifice for the sin of the whole world. And God has made a way for you to be forgiven as a way to get into heaven. And that happens when you answer the gospel, when you respond to the call, when you recognise your need of not being able to stand on your own record and you come to Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. A once-and-all happening where he accredits you with what he succeeded in dying on the cross. When he cried that cry, my god, my god, how you have forsaken me, or why have you

[00:22:11] forsaken me. It was Jesus, the God-Man, having taken on humanity to live a perfect life and qualify as a sinless sacrifice, who went to the cross and bore the punishment for our sins. We don’t need any other price to be paid for our sins, other than that which Jesus paid, And when we recognize this very deep spiritual truth that the way you get to heaven is not by what you bring to God, it’s what you accept he brought to you a saviour. And you put your trust in him. You do have to turn away from, as best you can, your sinfulness. You got to repent. You got to turn away from wrong. but you put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to be your acceptance. That is a once and for all need to be done. And in this group tonight probably most of you have done that because that’s why you are here.

[00:23:13] But it’s always possible in church life, because you never really know. There was someone who thought they had and had responded to some human thing of becoming a Christian, him. But without knowing the real way to get into Heaven, is to accept what Jesus did for you on the cross and take him as your savior. It’s an act of faith. This morning I had a sermon that was all about the fact that it’s an objective, treating you as then-forgiven or guiltless, because he bore your penalty. And it’s not something that necessarily involves a whole lot of emotions. It does for some people who come to that moment and other people. It’s just a clear understanding of what the scriptures teach and they rest their case in the sufficiency of Jesus’ death for them and they rest in Him as the Savior of their soul. There’s only one person you need to be the Savior of your soul, and it’s not you.

[00:24:15] And the reason why there’ll be many people disappointed in the day when Jesus returns, when they discover that they’re not included amongst the saved, won’t be necessarily people who lived those extraordinarily bad lives, you know, like the Nazis in World War II, or like the criminals who have been in jail, or like the real snappy nasty people you’ll find who don’t care for anyone but themselves. No, not just the people who are very obviously sinners, But all the people who had the opportunity, or even if they didn’t have the opportunity, the fact that they just haven’t come to Christ and trusted in Him, they will be eternally lost. Don’t let anybody deceive you.

[00:25:01] There’s not a matter of a person who’s good enough or get in by their good enough status. The standard is perfection, and Jesus provided it in his living under the law. Jesus provided the punishment for the fact that we don’t have that perfection. The Wages of Sin is death, but the gift of God is why it’s a gift because the wages we can’t afford to be having to bail happen to some people because they didn’t trust Christ. Not because not trusting Christ is a very… How do I put this, without saying the wrong thing, is such an enormously unwelcome unlikely thing that many people will do I think there will be many many people, who lived within the presence of Christianity revealed who had a church that was built next door to them or had relatives who were Christians and they

[00:25:59] just gave their Christian relatives a bit of curry and thought they were poor we minded persons that made them do that, or they hadn’t really thought through the scientific elements, or something like so. They had this idea that these people are weak to have these ideas, but you know, it wasn’t that they’re weak, it was that someone had communicated with them the gospel, and God’s Spirit had underlined it to them that if they would come to Christ they would be saved. They had come to have made that choice, and And it isn’t that they become instantly perfect. Although they did start the work of the Holy Spirit to sanctify them along the way. But I want to tell you that it’s because they put their trust in the perfect person, Jesus, and his completed sacrifice for all the sin of the world.

[00:26:54] When he cried and said it is finished, the actual wording paid in full could be a translation of the Greek Titalestai can be read to mean that it’s paid in full the debt for the sin of the world. Jesus cried out, it’s paid in full. And God answered that by causing some miracle thing to happen to the temple where there is enormous, thick curtain that hung down and hid the Holy of Holies, and it represented how difficult it was to go in to see where God was in their temple without you getting struck dead. And this curtain and kept people out from wandering in, and once a year only the high priest was allowed to go in, but this great curtain that represented everybody shut out from the holiness of God suddenly got ripped from top to bottom. There are a number of miracles that happened when Jesus died on the cross.

[00:27:46] I want to tell you, it’s a fascinating thing to track down some of the things that occurred which were just signs. It was like nature, couldn’t stay quiet any longer. There are a lot of people from the Old Testament era who are called saints because they lived as best they could under the old covenant. When that temple curtain got torn in two, they came alive in their graves, and they came up out and walked into the City of Jerusalem, got seen by lots of different people who didn’t know what to think of it, and eventually went back and laid down in their graves

[00:28:18] again to await a future moment of their resurrection. There were things that have happened at that moment because of the incredible enormity of the fact that Jesus dealt with our sins, so there’s no more anything as a problem if you’re prepared to believe him and simply rest your faith in the success of his death on the cross for your sins. You’ve come to the Saviour instead of trusting your own works, instead of trusting your own ideas, and you said, Jesus, I may not understand it all perfectly, but this much I’ve got that I need you as my personal Saviour, and I ask you to be that today. And in coming and making that faith commitment to Jesus as the Savior of your soul you get into the door and are saved. And that’s the New Covenant. The opportunity began with the call Peter give at the sermon that he gave at the Day of Pentecost, and he called them and said, save yourselves from this wicked generation.

[00:29:31] there’s something important for you to attend to save yourselves. It wasn’t that they saved themselves by their efforts. It was that he’s warning them to get out of the place of danger of trusting in who you are and what you’ve done. Run to Jesus, throw your arms around him. I absolutely love that book by John Bunyan and where Christian walks the road eventually, to get to glory. But before he can even start walking the road. And it’s a very accurate description that his May finds this, he finds a man whose name is Evangelis and points him down this special road that goes down and leads to the cross,

[00:30:16] and there is the cross. And he’s pointed to go there as a simple road and he goes down and he kneels, Christian does, in front of the cross and he’s got this enormous burden of weight on his back which which is all his sins unforgiven. And when he kneels before the cross, the burden somehow gets loosed and falls off his back down this pit behind him, and he stands up and he’s freed. He’s freed from the burden of sin. And that’s what happens

[00:30:49] when a person puts their trust in Jesus. And there is a fantastic sense that objectively you know you’re forgiven, which leads to use subjective effectively, to have the sense of elation and of able to walk the Christian life with joy. That’s why his name is Christian in the whole book, The Pilgrim’s Progress. And so I find that I’m always calling on people to test and see have you come to the cross? That’s a figurative sort of talk. It means have you recognized that the one way you can be forgiven was when Jesus died in your place and

[00:31:33] made himself available to be your personal saviour. We sometimes use language like take Jesus as your personal saviour other people wouldn’t believe in Jesus as your Saviour, other people worded as come to Him and trust Him for your eternity, all the wordings don’t matter. up what counts as that Jesus is the only way. It’s what He meant when He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man. No man, no person comes to the Father but by Me, the only way. That’s what we have to celebrate as a part of the New Covenant and it’s arranged by Jesus. Now, there’s one more thing that I haven’t fully mentioned mentioned about this whole deal and that is that if we recognise that we’re sinners, that we recognise where fruit for destruction and hell, where people who need to run to where the safety is in Jesus dying for us, there’s one more element that the gospel

[00:32:37] includes mention and that is not only do we get the forgiveness of sins, but the other Another half of the blessing is the gift, the free gift of eternal life. The free gift in the giving of the Holy Spirit. Now I’m not talking about a necessarily popularized charismatic experience of falling over backwards or subtly doing the most unusual things, I’m talking about the Holy Spirit coming to invade your person with his very presence. I’m talking about the gift of the Spirit of God and all that he represents. And you know, the Father, the Son and the Spirit, you don’t ever manage to do business just with one and not for the others. When the Holy Spirit comes to your heart, he brings to you the residential Jesus. I I mean, He brings to you Jesus to live in you by the Holy Spirit coming.

[00:33:41] He brings Christ… Now, if you want somewhere to check out later on, go and read in the first three or so chapters of the Book of Ephesians a bow out says that you catch the image of Christ by the Holy Spirit coming into you. The Holy Spirit brings to you Christ. not that you have to let Jesus in to your heart in order to be forgiven, it is that you need to be forgiven in order to receive the Holy Spirit whose first work is going to be to let the image of Christ be caught in you, to let the person of Jesus be in you. He that has the Son has life. He that doesn’t have the Son of God does not have life. And when that occurs, you know the joy of the personal presence of Jesus in your life

[00:34:35] and that’s the result of all that is being talked about here. Now I had an awful lot of versus to go through. I started with the question, how is John the Baptist, called the greatest of all men, born of women? But yet he’s least in the Kingdom of Heaven it’s because the Kingdom of Heaven, As it is made available in the New Covenant was later than John the Baptist’s time. He had his head cut off before it was opened. It was open on the day of Pentecost and is represented by when the Holy Spirit comes into the hearts and lives of people who take Jesus as their Savior. It’s not a second blessing. It’s a part of the first blessing.

[00:35:14] The blessing of coming to Christ is sealed by your being given the gift to the Holy Spirit And that is what happened on the Day of Pentecost and that’s why although there were thousands of Jews, three thousand of them got in the door in the New Covenant, though I would say a good number of those three thousand already would have been people who’d be saved and end up in heaven because they were good Jews. And under the old covenant they’d done what was asked and they heard the message of the New Covenant which was offering to them far more than what was offered by the Old Covenant was being offered, what was being offered was this closeness and association with Jesus and this being bound up with him. The fact that he died for our sins. And he rose from the dead, and in his resolute state he calls us to come.

[00:36:03] And when we come we are united to him. It’s called union with Christ. It’s one of the ways that we explain our justification. our justification is done because of the forensic righteousness of Jesus transferred to us. But another way you can explain your righteousness in both ways are right is that when you come to Christ, you get regarded by Father God

[00:36:28] just as He regards Christ because you’re united with Christ. And that acceptance the Father God had with Jesus at His baptism the Father said, this is my beloved son in whom I’m well pleased. And when you come to Christ and you receive him and you are taken to be a part of him. Someone that his righteousness is guaranteeing, someone in whose life he is living. The father looks at you and he says, the apple of my eye, he looks at you and says, the one that I love.

[00:36:57] Just as he does about Jesus his son, because we are wrapped up in Christ. Deol moody, some of you probably heard all these illustrations before but Deol moody who was having a meeting and he got sort of sold out and it was filled up with people and there’s a little boy who wanted to go. And here, Dior Moudy and he, so he waited outside because he couldn’t get, wasn’t allowed to get in because it was full. And Dior Moudy came at the last moment

[00:37:30] wearing this long big coat with some tails on the bottom of the coat at the back. He came on down to walk on in and get ready to give his message in due time. The little boy was outside and he had a sorrowful look about him. Adil Bhuddhi says, what’s your problem? Always said something to the effect. And the little boy says, I want to go into here, Adil Bhuddhi. So adil bhuddhi says, hang onto these. You want him to hang on to their tails when they

[00:37:57] have the big suits, there’s a tail at the back. And then Adil bhuddhi walked past the fellows at the door and was little boy hanging unto his coat towels at the back. And he walked right into the middle of the place and had him sit up there somewhere. That night that little boy heard the message about the sufficiency of Jesus as the Saviour, but if you’ll rest in him and trust Him, you’ll get in the door. And that day that lad did later on,

[00:38:28] her petty testament is to give and a ministry to go into because he hanged on the tail of Deal Moody, but he also got the point, do to use it in His sermon, the way we get into heaven is hanging on to the tale of Jesus. And it’s a rather unusual way to illustrate this, being illustrating about the union with Christ as one way to understand our justification and the other ways to illustrate our justice true. But nonetheless it’s how we get justified, because we’re justified in Christ. Starts with being justified by the fact that he died for our sins so there’s a forensic justification but it ends with the fact that we become United to

[00:39:15] Christ. And there’s a verse in Romans 5, I think it’s the end of the chapter, it talks about justified by his resurrection. In his resurrection to life to be available, to be a living Savior, that’s why he why he could have said earlier what he did, I am the way, the truth and the life. And that life went through his death paying for the sins and up out of the grave on the other side, never to die again. And that eternal life that is Jesus is the eternal life that we have when we come to him.

[00:39:47] It’s the reason why in John, little one John says, he that has the Son has life. He that doesn’t have the Son of God does not have life. But when you’re bound up in the life of Jesus, you’ve got the eternal life.” It’s a fantastic thing. I’ve said enough one night and we’ll go into the other things another day. Let’s have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father I thank you for the glorious gospel of Christ. I thank you that it began with Jesus dying on the Cross and Jesus making available acceptance Heaven because of his successful death for the sin of the world. I thank you

[00:40:33] father for the fact that we can come to Jesus and Lord, if there’s someone who needs to find a place of quietness and pray our simple prayer to the Jesus who died for them and said Jesus, I want you to be my Savior. If you haven’t become come on already.” Do it now and make me one of yours and trust in him and him alone, and get in the door of eternity by coming to the Saviour who died for you and rose again. Father, we thank you for these things and for the Scriptures and we pray that you’ll help us so to understand them and to digest them and the gospel becomes such a part of us that we won’t be able to stop talking talking about it, and please give us opportunities this week to talk to folks who need to hear that there is a Saviour, and that they can come simply and rest their case with Him, rest their faith in Him and find what is to have eternal life. We thank you for all of this in Jesus’ name. Amen.