The Kingdom of Heaven is not merely about going to Heaven when we die, but also about living under God’s rule now. There are three stages of salvation: justification (becoming a Christian), sanctification (growing in holiness), and glorification (being perfected in Heaven). Many believers focus solely on justification but neglect sanctification. This neglect can lead to unpreparedness for Christ’s return or our own death. We must actively pursue spiritual growth, eagerly awaiting His return. The delay in Christ’s coming is a grace period for us to deepen our relationship with Him. Our goal should be to know more intimately, not just to secure a place in Heaven.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] Thank you. I did want that passage which this morning we were talking on to be read again and because I only got part way through explaining it in the morning and I’m going to add to it tonight. We notice that the passage is a passage that’s talking about the kingdom of heaven and in popular understanding people often take that to be, going to heaven when you die, and that’s not wrong us, but for the people of Jesus say the Kingdom of heaven, another term was Kingdom of God, which if you read in the other gospel sometimes the same event that has got different terms plane used, the Kingdom of God on earth is also the Kingdom of Heaven because the Kingdom of God on earth is the Kingdom that’s

[00:00:50] resourced from heaven, and it’s led by the one that came from heaven, and that is that’s Jesus and it is the same kingdom that he was prophesied to bring into the world and this kingdom is the kingdom that we get into when we come and become Christians. Now, prior to the time of Jesus in fact, Jesus was a part of the original time of the Jews, there was another covenant that was in vogue and that covenant is called the old covenant, introduced by Moses. But Jesus, and led to us by Joey in the communion, introduced the new covenant. And the new covenant is that, which belongs in Egypt, which belongs in the New Testament. It is the new covenant whereby, when we become Christians, we get into the new covenant.

[00:01:48] All the people who were with God, following God, and the old covenant, were brought to the stage where they had the opportunity of entering into the new covenant, too. I don’t doubt that there will be many people in heaven who came to God and made peace with God under the old covenant and see them in glory. But the people of Jesus’ day who were leaders didn’t really exemplify what that Old Covenant was meant to make them into, and they opposed Jesus, and the way Jesus spoke to them was very clear that we won’t be seeing them in glory. Here we have the Kingdom of Heaven referred to by Jesus, and he refers to the fact that there’s going to be a delay in his return at the end of the age. This the first Advent, Christmas, and the second Advent’s when he comes back again,

[00:02:40] and that’s one of the fundamental beliefs of the Church. Right down through the ages where there was an Apostle’s Creed it wasn’t only that Jesus came born of the Virgin Mary and suffered under Pontius Pilate and that he went to the cross etc. and he died and was taken down to Hades, but is also about the fact that he was risen from the dead, and his resurrection was eventually to lead to his ascension to heaven, where he Jesus was crowned as King of kings and Lord of Lords and we’re talking hear about the second person of the trinity. There’s God the Father, that’s what the theologians call the first person of the trinity. There’s God the son, he’s the one who came. But when he came he took on humanity and having so done he had to leave aside a lot of the elements that belonged to his deity. Now, let me say that again. He had to put aside a lot of the

[00:03:42] the elements that were his rights and his powers, but he had to take on being a human and live under God the Father as a human does, yet he always was and always will be the eternal Son of God. But he took on forever humanity. That’s a fantastic thought—I’ve always find it amazing how much of the gospel I never understood when I became a Christian. I knew the basics, in fact I thought I was a Christian before I did become one, no, I didn’t, I thought I was one all the time because of my family and training in Sunday school. etc., but when I became a Christian, was when something happened and I was alerted to the need of coming to Jesus as a Savior and asking him to become my Lord and Savior. And that happened at a certain time in my life and that’s when I knew what a real Christian was. The Gospel includes this call to become a real Christian, not

[00:04:47] just someone who believes the actions of the Bible are well encouraged, not just a person who’s theistic. Some people think that when you come to believe in God that made you a Christian. No. Actually the Bible says if a person would come to God, he must first believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of those who would diligently seek him. And to diligently seek the Lord and to know him personally is God’s aim for all of us. And that happens when you get into the new covenant, which you do by accepting Jesus as as the One who died in your place, rose again to be your Savior and your acceptance of Him as the Savior of your Soul, your willingness to let Him be your Lord and Leader. At that point of your coming to Jesus, He also gives to you the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes into your life to make all of those things, then, a spiritual reality

[00:05:48] in your person. In common Christianity, especially when we teach it to children, we often talk about the fact is that you ask Jesus into your heart. That’s actually neither wrong nor fully right. I don’t know how to word this because it’s the way I always understood that you had to get people to come and become a Christian and tell them they must ask Jesus into their life. It’s probably a little bit better than getting Jesus to come into your heart. did hear about the little girl who was found by her mother carrying the scissors down the hall, and the mother said, what are you gonna use those for?

[00:06:26] And she said, I’m gonna let Jesus into my heart, especially an awful thought of being misunderstood. But the New sacramenters when we come to the Jesus who died on the cross for us, and the availability of so to do was given to all who would so come whether they were Jews, There were 3,000 of them that first day of Pentecost, as Peter preached this message, who did, or whether they were not Jews at all. As The Book of Galatians, there are about a whole bunch of Christians up there in Galatia who had come to Christ,

[00:06:59] but didn’t in that become Jews. And because the new covenant is a step forward in terms of how God will deal with people, and it calls on us to come and do business with God through what Jesus did on the cross for them. And when you do that, and you ask Christ to be your personal Savior, when you ask Him to be the one that is your Lord and master, you begin to walk with Him under heaven just as Jesus walked with the Father

[00:07:30] when he was here on earth and walked with the Father under heaven. And not that Jesus needed saving, but He was sitting the pattern for us to learn how to be obedient to the father and walk with him, is a spiritual thing to be such a person. It’s not just a matter of them coming and having some arrangement that came out of Judaism, the New Covenant did. As something was the New Covenant

[00:07:57] first offered to the Jews. But what it gave them was an ability to become a Christian, to know forgiveness in his blood. Every one of us who’s here tonight is either somebody who’s done that, although you may not have understood it completely if you came to Christ as a child, you might have not really known all that was going on. Or it’s something that you’ve never been alerted to. One of the things that happens to people who come under the sound of the Gospel is how wordings, as they come to hear this message that I am giving tonight, that I am expanding on tonight, is that when they come under that message, there comes a conviction that they

[00:08:43] indeed are people who need to come and do business with Christ as a saviour. Not just be theistic, not just be a person who is religious, not just be a person who seeks to obey the commands of God as best you find them in the scriptures, that is a good thing. But that on its own is not getting into the New Covenant. It’s not becoming a Christian that knows Christ. It’s something that is yet to happen. And it could well be because … although most of the people I know come to our service

[00:09:16] come because they already love Christ and they love to come and sit under the teaching of the Bible. But nonetheless there is always some who come in amongst us for whom it hasn’t yet happened. It was such an occasion, maybe 15 years ago, when a young man was from a Christian family. He had a father who wanted the best for him to include coming to know Christ. He was looking to get into business. They lived originally in Papua New Guinea and he came down to Australia.

[00:09:51] He came and listened. and I wouldn’t have known whether he was someone in the door with God yet, or not. Usually you have to take people as they present themselves. So he would come and sit in the service, he began to work over in Western Australia as one of his flyby ideas. And so we didn’t see him quite as many times. One time when he was here, there was a moment when the service finished and I needed to run to the loo. Thank goodness, we’ve got more loos to run to these days, but there was only — Well no, we had three then. Two downstairs, anyhow you don’t need to know that.

[00:10:26] But as I walk down there, towards where the loo was, a voice called out to me, Jim, and it was this young man. And he says, I need to be born again, which is what happens when you get in the new covenant. He must’ve been heard, that being taught. I need to come to Christ. And so he called me to come over to him. He was over by the cars, over there. And we had a talk and it ended by my leading him in a prayer. And the prayer was one to acknowledge Father God as the one we all ought to acknowledge, to recognize that he was a sinner

[00:11:08] and that God had done something better, to get his forgiveness, by sending Jesus to diamond and cross for him. And I led him in a prayer, which articulated that, and I concluded by him asking that he could be born again. And that young man did! And forever after, when he came, he came and talked and he was a Christian learning how he was quite a person that worked in mines and worked with people. He had to learn how to get on with that. Actually I think he already knew how to get on with the rougher side of life, but he had to learn how to be a Christian doing it. And there was that moment of change.

[00:11:51] Now, we have a passage this morning, we looked at, which is one of the stories that Jesus gave about the kingdom of heaven, and the story I think has two applications. One is to people who have been like that fellow, Ronny Petter, I don’t, he won’t mind my telling you his name, who came to Christ when he came from a Christian family, he had Christian teaching. But he still needed there being a moment when he came to do business with Jesus. And there are other people for whom this has an application, this passage and this is what this morning I was explaining. Not so much because they never got into the New Covenant or they have never got to receive Christ, but in different people’s words or ways they never actually got, had that moment

[00:12:43] of receiving the Holy Spirit into your life that changes you and makes you born again. There are some people for whom this occurred, but they live a little bit like Jesus is describing the people who have the lamps. And he’s describing them as people who are told to wait along the road for the bridegroom to come. And, the big event is going to be the arrival. The way they did the wedding syndrome was the bridegroom would come and get into the place and the people who were invited to the ceremony had already come in or else they had waited along the road so that the bridegroom would collect them of an ever greater bunch of people to arrive and come into the wedding place?

[00:13:28] These bridegrooms that were foolish, didn’t get any oil, and the oil often represents the Holy Spirit, they didn’t have a spirituality that had them prepared. And although that could be applied very well, I wouldn’t disagree with it to example of people who are not really properly Christians. whom I would have been one, who hadn’t been for meetings where God woke me up to the fact that I wasn’t in the door. I’d never done business with Jesus as a Savior. I’d actually been relying on all my good points, and they will never do. We need the Savior. So that’s certainly a good application. But another application is that what about us who have responded to Christ, and do work with him, and do seek to be Christians. But it’s very easy for us to be slack.

[00:14:27] It’s very easy for us to not attend to what the oil represents, which is the power of the Holy Spirit, and to be people who haven’t chased down, how to become spiritual… I think when you first become a Christian you are… you have the Holy Spirit, but you haven’t learned how to walk with him. And the Bible tells us about walking after the spirit is something we have to do if we want the works of God to be the love, the joy, the peace and all those things called the fruit of the spirit. Sometimes when that’s our case I think this parable applies to us as well. What I was saying to the people is that they were being exhorted by the scriptures, not only this passage but others that I quoted, that they should wake up to the fact that time is a set time that’s limited, the time between Jesus coming in and sitting up our

[00:15:30] salvation and the time when he’s going to come at the end of the age when we get the fulfillment of all of that. Most just coming to know him, made perfect and get into heaven. And that conclusion to our salvation is something that’s yet to happen when Jesus comes. And not only is it a case that the people who hold the lamps and were meant to be waiting there with their lamps all oiled and to welcome the bridegroom as he came. But also the five foolish ones. Is that five or six? Five? Anyway the foolish ones didn’t get any extra lamp, that they didn’t attend to the matter of the Spirit, in their case it was the oil — but that’s like us as Christians. And if we don’t attend to learning how to be spiritual we can find ourselves running

[00:16:25] around and doing a lot of things and somehow not managing to do the one thing they were meant to be on those, with the lamps marking out the tracks. What was it that they were meant to do? to be there to meet the groom as he came. Now take a note of this, this is about where I got up to, in the morning service, that the foolish ones realized they had been running out of oil, and they said like, they tried to borrow some from the others who had it, but these ones couldn’t share theirs, they had enough for themselves and so they told the others to go and buy some oil, and what do you do that in the night,

[00:17:01] I don’t know whether there’s a seven-eleven store nearby, what a person did back then in their culture if you needed to go out and get a sudden buying of oil, but while they were away, they had managed to get some, but while they were away the bride groom did not come! I’m sorry the bride groom came and they weren’t ready, and in that moment there was fulfilled something rather interesting. Two things to point out, one is that the storyline is the Lifeline tells that there was a delay in the room from coming and Jesus put it in his parable talking about the fact that there is a period of time where he is going to come back again and up in to Heaven. Now, what does that mean?

[00:17:57] Some people think that the second coming is something all set, so there couldn’t be a delay on Jesus’ side because it’s all been fixed. I’m not sure that I think what to think about that because Jesus didn’t let his disciples know what the exact date or time was that he’d come and He told them, you do not know what time your Lord can come. The delay could be not that Jesus has not got a fixed time to come that the Father has it’s said in his hand. But because the people down on Earth don’t know the time, and could be tempted to get slack, and not attend to being spiritual,

[00:18:38] so they’re running away, chasing down somehow how to make the Christian life work, and often that means that you do, you take yourself away from the places that might help you. It had been my friend, Ronnie, his storyline, that he had to learn how to get back to where you were helped to find how to be a spiritual person, he succeeded but there are a lot of people who don’t, and I want to tell you that when you move around in evangelism, in churches you discover there are many

[00:19:10] people who want to make a decision but it’s not because they didn’t become a Christian, but because they’ve not been living as one and because things have come in, slackness or sins, or they’ve taken choices of life that’s led them into places where they’re giving all of their attention and all their energies to everything but walking with Christ and certainly not taking the time to search out how to be filled with the Spirit and how to know the to walk after the Spirit and to have the fruits of the Spirit. And so I think it applies to people like that too that Jesus can come. Now you won’t be lost eternally, like those that don’t know the Savior if he comes and finds you in that condition, but he will be judged!

[00:19:59] And the scriptures teach that there is a judgement for Christians when Jesus comes, as prior to when there is a great judgement of the world. There’s a judgement that Jesus will give each of us not so much to all, whether we get into glory, whether we get to be saved, but a judgement as to what will be our reception so doing, what will be our rewards, what will be the things that will be given to do in the eternity that follows. And so there is a judgment to be aware of, but it’s not only to be aware unless you fail to get converted in the first place, but to be aware of that you be prepared and awake and doing what Jesus wants you to do. You know, we talk about there being a will of God.

[00:20:49] Do you know what one verse in Thessalonians says, is God’s will, and it’s God’s will for you. If you came here this evening saying, I don’t know your will, Lord, please tell me I’m about to. In Thessalonians, I think it’s chapter 4 verse 17, though I might not have that accurate, but it says, this is the will of God. Even your… And depending on what translation you read, even your sanctification.

[00:21:18] It’s actually that word hagiasmos we’ve talked about in previous Sundays. Even your sanctification, but other versions read just as good of translation, even your holiness. And if we’re so busy chasing down all of our aims, if we’re so given to achieving the goals of our life without surrendering them to Jesus, without letting him be the one that has the same, without becoming sensitive to his guiding, it’s not an easy thing to find the guidance from God. But that’s what we’re called to do, to let him lead us. And to follow step by step, to walk in his steps and to follow in his will. This is the will of God, even your sanctification. It’s that second step. Conversion is the first one. Your sanctification and the progress thereof is the second. The third step is what happens to you when you get to glory and you’ll be glorified.

[00:22:20] And it’s God’s will for that process to be going on in you. Now this morning, I was getting into that a little bit, but there’s … and I was getting into the positive side of it. But I want to get into what is the negative side of the warning that Jesus gives. The negative side has to do with the fact that when he comes it’s the closing of a door Is the closing of an opportunity for there to be used to do that cooperating with the Holy Spirit that makes for your holiness that makes for your Sanctification it’s not that which gets you saved is that your salvation is getting you you and it’s causing you to get more and more like Jesus. The purpose of your coming to him in the first place was not just to possess salvation, put it in your back pocket and know you’re going to heaven, but then still live your life under

[00:23:15] all the doldrums and all of the sinfulness that this world gets us into. We’re meant to be letting him help us to become, stage by stage and step by step, sanctified. It’s a part of our salvation. He comes by grace because it’s his work to do, but we are called on to participate, and that very famous verse says to us about our sanctification. But it says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to do of his good pleasure. it’s the work of God, your sanctification. But you are to get it to work out. You’ve got the seeds of it in getting into you when you came and receive Christ as your Savior, but you’ve got to let those seeds blossom and and

[00:24:06] cause a change to come. Now when Jesus comes, there’s going to be a judgment and that’s a part of the story as well. And as he comes I think it’s going to be for people, something that will occur and have terrible consequences even for their being in heaven. What about the people who live in this life on earth but this all happens after their lifestyle or their lifespan goes through? Well I want us to turn to the verse in Hebrews which is the one that I’ve got them prepared for us and this is a verse it’s talking about the fact of Jesus shedding his blood, I hope it’s the one that I’ve picked out rightly, and let me see, okay, it’s appointed unto me here. You need to go down to verse 27, which I think is the second part. So I’ll start reading verse 25, nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the priests in

[00:25:13] the Old Testament had to keep offering things to be the priest. As the High Priest enters the holy places every year with the blood of not his own, carrying in a bowl of blood. For then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world.” To really succeed that way. I don’t know whether he is the High Priest or whether it is the Old Testament Priest. But as it is, He has appeared once for all. At the end of the ages. It is interesting to notice that Jesus finishes the ages as they were accumulated up until then and brought in a new age, the age of the New Covenant. As it is, He has appeared once and for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

[00:26:05] And just as it is appointed unto a man, once to die, or to die once, and after that, the judgement, so also Christ having been offered once to bear the sin of many, will appear a second time, and not to deal with sin, but to save those who have eagerly been waiting for him. Now what this is saying is that there is a moment of your death, and even if the time The time that Christ comes, and the fact that He hasn’t given us understanding that He won’t necessarily be a delay for what we might have expected, I don’t know that He has to delay, but He just hasn’t let us know where He’s coming and so, you could be all tourred up about the second coming and you can get court up in whole groups that are very big on the Second Coming and I’m not criticising them for so being,

[00:26:58] We need to be careful that we don’t have any guarantee that there is not a delay between now and when He comes to the second-coming, that you haven’t taken account of. Even though you’ve got all the prophecies and have them all, you know, you can’t be a person who says, I can work it out, I’ll put a date on it… There are many Christian and semi-Christian groups who’ve put dates on Jesus’ second coming and it didn’t happen. I think the fact that Jesus’ story carries this business of a delay to tell us that He’s not given us to be able to know all the details of what happens around the Second Coming event. I believe it’s a part of the gospel. I believe it’s a part of the scriptures not to avoid. I believe we should include teaching of the fact that Jesus not only died,

[00:27:48] but that He rose again. Not only He rose again, but He went to heaven. Not only did he went to heaven, but he was crowned king of kings and lord of lords. Not only that he sent the Holy Spirit down to us that those who receive Him as Saviors who could receive the Holy Spirit, not only all of that, but that He’s coming again. It’s a fact of the very mention of the word delay in this little parable of His,

[00:28:15] tells me that He’s not given us to be able to nail it down when it is. Now, I like people having a lot teaching about and getting good ideas from all that they could find in the New Testament about the Second Coming. But I think there’s a trap in it. If you think you can nail down all the dates or nail down the exact way – even some of the order of things, it is very hard to be someone some certain that you have got it right. I discovered my dad, the principal of the college, as he was, had a different view about the

[00:28:49] Second Coming in one point that I had. I thought I followed him exactly. And when he came to do some meetings at my church in Adelaide – Um, uh – Joey’s parents come from there – when he came to do a – a series of talks, this – this – this people in my church – they really got some – An idea that they would then interview him and put me also on the panel and find out where we disagreed. But it turned out Dad was one, set out of the Second Coming and all those things that he was what you’d call a mid-trib.

[00:29:30] There’s a tribulation, there’s a rapture – but when does a rapture happen with respect to the tribulation in my father’s estimate of all the passages? It is in the middle of the tribulation. I’ve always been a pre-trib, because of where I went to study overseas – that was spot. But I took notice of the facts that you can’t be certain and the fellow who was the chief one who led that seminary, John Walwood. He had a course, it was the first course I did whilst I was there, the course was on eschatological problems. Eschatology is about the Second Coming, and those things, And problems, as he announced to the class, he says, there are some things we just can’t be certain of. And there are chokefree interpretations.

[00:30:22] And I’ve chosen to put my weight on the ones that have the most Biblical evidence, rather than the ones that only have a little bit of evidence. And this course is about some things that doesn’t include. Our eschatological problems he hasn’t been able to solve? Do you know that day that man won me to his position on eschatology because of his humility? I’d already formed the impression by you can’t really resolve all the difficult spots in the New Testament about the second coming? What about the Old Testament prophecies? What about what’s Ezekiel’s temple which to happen? When will that happen, and what will be all its design on it?

[00:31:06] one of the things it has is you’ve got sacrifices going on, and yet the book of Hebrews talks about the fact that Jesus’ sacrifice has made all other sacrifices necessary. He died once and for all, Jesus did. And so, one of the professors that I used to sit next to, in our seminary, in one of of doctoral seminars, and it was on eschatology, and I asked him after the seminar, he said in the book of Ezekiel, there’s a Temple and it talks about there being sacrifices. I said, how come? Because Jesus has died on the cross and by the time that Temple is put up, I believe it will get put up alright.

[00:31:52] I don’t know why they’re doing sacrifices, and he answered and said, or just like we will have communion and use the communion to look back, so in the millennium when they had sacrifices at the temple, I think it was the millennium that we was thinking about, they would use the sacrifices to help them to look back. That’s an explanation! Not the one … I was never thinking about it. But what Walward said, you simply take the ones on face value that have the most biblical evidence you leave it with God.

[00:32:30] I think God puts the little word delay here in this parable. To let us know that its not about us being able to tie down the dates. If we could tie the dates down I think we’d be rather slack. Maybe the date is going to happen in 2045. Although you live not too carefully till then behind to school and get your Christian life up to scratch just before, so he comes back and finds you doing all ready for him to come. No I think the delay is of God being mentioned by Jesus so that we cannot live our lives according to how gives us room to stay a little bit selfish and a little bit sensual and not not taking into account the means of grace that God has given us to be spiritual people. I think he wants us to be like the brayed brides holding the lamps, ready for when he

[00:33:38] comes. That’s why there’s another part in this parable I haven’t until this weekend been able to fully understand this parable by Jesus. Another point I’ve never been able to quite nail down, and know that I’ve got it right, is when they come and knock on the door and he won’t open it. I think that’s cruel. They were meaningful to be ready. Generally speaking, when people don’t do what they’re expected to do, but they meant to, I give them grace, not to pay for and I would have thought Jesus would, but he doesn’t

[00:34:24] open the door. I’d rather from inside his voice speaks and says, decrypt from me. I do not know you. Now that’s easy to apply to us as Christians that when we come to that moment of his return and there are going to be some people who will end up in hell who will be told to clear out or be taken to hell, wherever it’s worded by Jesus Himself, or be the judge. because He didn’t know us personally, we never came to receive him as a Saviour, we thought that our being a good theistic person, to be a person who obeyed the commands of the Bible, that was meaning we were a Christian but it wasn’t, we failed to get to know Him You’d be staggered at the amount of people in churches who will eventually admit

[00:35:13] that for many years they were a church person, even a missionary, or even someone who was a pastor but didn’t know the Lord. Knowing him certainly applies well in this parabola. But I think there’s another explanation that’s possible too, and I think they’re both applicable. In that is that Jesus, as he came along the track, what would happen is that people who were coming out the houses, or where they were, would see a girl with a lamp, lining the path, and they’d wait there. When the bridegroom came along to that spot, the girl there and the people would join the party. This ever-swilling party is part of an explanation of the culture, and is not always accurate information to know exactly how the culture was. But a part of the picture is

[00:36:06] as they go down the road marked out by the girls with the lamps, they pick up all the people. They come into a sense of camaraderie ship of being those who are going to the wedding. They’ve joined the bridegroom and coming along with his great eagerness. And they’re coming along and they’re so happy. And they They are people who he met them on the Road And I think that applies just as well to this parable of the idea of whether or not you’ve received Christ There’s very similar idea. It might be the same idea in some applications But I think there’s a thing about the fact that as becoming a Christian has got to feed into you’re getting to know Jesus if ever there’s a Name of your being a Christian it is that sanctification where you’re increasingly set up up to belong to him

[00:36:56] It is to have become a person who searches after him, that longs for him, becomes a person who wants to go closer to him, Someone who surrenders everything to him, someone for whom he is the greatest love of your life, and He’s shared with you how he loves you, you’re the apple of His eye and you and Jesus are the special unit together. And when he from inside he says I never knew you. Could it be that he’d be saying on that time, you didn’t take the time, you came to me as a Savior to get yourself a ticket into heaven. But you didn’t spend time to know me. I gave you my word and the word is how you get to know me, and when you read in there I’m the one who’s behind every page.

[00:37:43] I’m the one who’s the fragrance of every line. the one who speaks through this book and the more you come to it, the more you realize it’s not just a book of ideas, it’s not just a code of ethics, it’s not just a way to be religious. This book is a book that tells us of a person and he breathes, he exists, all the way through, and if you give yourself to study this book, there’s something that happens to you

[00:38:09] and there’s many an older Christian or an established Christian, Christian who says I have come to know the Lord deeply. Which is the aim of when we get to the last days of our lives, even if death is what’s going to happen first, the older I get! This is a bit of a thought. The older I get, the more I surmise I might get to the end of my years and die before he comes. But I want to by that moment, because that’s the moment when I’m taken into the eternal realm. And there’s a little verse in Hebrews that says about people coming to Christ, and it says about what happens to us. It says, it’s appointed unto a man once to die and after that the judgement. Now you knew about the dying bit, but it is the fact that the death is the highway into judgement.

[00:39:23] It’s not a highway to hell for us because we know Christ, but a highway into His presence. And how will we be in His presence? Will we be hiding or putting something over your face because you didn’t do what He gave you to do on earth? It is the case that there’s many a person that felt a call of God to do something for him and never got around to do it. But always intended to. But when Jesus comes, or when they die, and in the case, in my case, that’s probably a life war. I don’t know whether it’s a life war or not. Who knows? To happen before He comes again. It’s the end of the opportunity. The second phase is, this is the will of God, even your sanctification. The heart of sanctification is coming to know closely Jesus, and walking with Him, that His presence gets to be the fragrance of your life. and His love. The thing that matters most to you, and when the Bible tells us those who are eagerly waiting for him,

[00:40:55] eagerly waiting for him. It’s what happens when the bridegroom’s going to his wedding. There’s a girl inside, she’s eagerly waiting for him. there’s this experience of us becoming a Christian, and letting him sanctify us when we choose to let him work in our lives. We work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, and we get to be somebody who walks in his love, and we will be eagerly waiting for him. But our death will take us right in there. Now that actually paints death altogether different. I’ve always read this verse, even given it to other people, is a bit of a warning. Subponded unto someone who wants to die, and after that the judgement look out, is how I mean it. Quoting it

[00:41:51] But I think it applies, for those of us who are walking with Jesus, and gradually developing that eagerly waiting for him about the Second Coming. It’s one of the signs of a deep Christian that they do believe in His coming, and look for His coming, that’s a biblical way of talking look for His coming, because you love Him and you want Him to come, like the bride longs for the bridegroom to come so the unique Christian experience is one where He gradually changes us to love Him more and more and become ones that are waiting for him… The Bible has quite a bit to say about the fact that we’re gonna be like him. We’ll have discovered ourselves as having been changed, to be ready to meet him.

[00:42:47] But you wouldn’t want to be someone that he says, I didn’t really get to know you very well. I think you could still be saved and not saying you’d be lost if you really had become a Christian and didn’t see him very much and then he came… I don’t think you’re lost, but I think you might have one or two tears. The Bible tells us in glory that tears will be wiped away, but what put them there in the first place? Could it be our sorrow of what we didn’t do with Jesus on the way through? Let’s have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank You for this subject, this content, Lord, that You laid on my heart. And I pray if there’s anyone here that’s never done business with Jesus as the Savior, like was my case once, would You call them? Would You lead them? Help them to find some friend to help them?

[00:43:49] prayer to come to you, and get in the door. And know that they’re ready for when Jesus comes. And Lord I pray for those who have never really made much of an effort to get to know Jesus, to love His Word, to love His people. It always amazes me when I meet with those who criticize the Church, and don’t seem to love the Church. they’re a bit different from you Lord because you love the Church. And something hasn’t happened for them yet. Lord, would you, by your spirit, move them

[00:44:28] that they will see their task to get to know you more closely and when you come Lord Jesus, you won’t be talking about not knowing them for they will have come deep into knowing you. Let that be their story we ask in Jesus name, amen.