The title of my message today, friends, is
Climbing a Stairway to Heaven On Your Own
Merits Will Only Send You to Hell And
that's because most folks think there are many
ways to heaven and some preachers have even
broadened the way to heaven in ways Jesus
never did.
But Jesus Christ makes it very clear on
numerous occasions that he is the only way
to heaven.
Jesus says, I am the way, the truth,
and the life.
No man cometh unto the Father but by
me.
And in John's Gospel in chapter 10, Jesus
says if you try to climb up to
heaven some other way other than him, you're
just a thief trying to steal your way
in and a robber who tries to rob
God of his glory.
We see this in chapter 10 and verse
1.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that
entereth not by the door into the sheepfold
but climbeth up some other way, the same
is a thief and a robber.
Then in verse 9, Jesus makes reference to
himself as the only door to heaven.
Jesus says, I am the door by me.
If any man enter in, he shall be
saved and he shall go in and out
and find pasture.
If you want to be safe, friend, you
better get through that door, that blood-marked
door.
Jesus is the good shepherd who gets his
sheep into heaven.
He gave his life for his sheep.
But men try to bypass Jesus on their
way to heaven and try climbing up some
other way.
They try to smuggle their soul up to
heaven by climbing over his back.
Listen, friends, climbing a stairway to heaven will
only send you to hell, Jesus says, if
you try to climb up to heaven any
other way but by him, you're nothing but
a thief and a robber trying to steal
your way into God's glorious kingdom.
I'm going to list today six false stairways
to heaven that men climb in an effort
to gain eternal life.
Number one, men try climbing up to heaven
by way of a good opinion of themselves.
They are not as bad as others.
Church friend once asked me if I would
go visit his dying aunt in the hospital
and share the gospel with her.
Sitting bedside beside her hospital bed, she informed
me she had been a member of the
Methodist church for many years and she was
going to heaven because she never robbed a
liquor store or killed anybody.
That's what the old gal said.
And she believed she was good enough for
heaven because she wasn't bad enough for hell.
But that unconverted church member discovered soon enough
when she died that good people don't make
it to heaven, only forgiving people get to
go there.
Number two, men try climbing up to heaven
by their good works.
They believe that God keeps a heavenly scale
of weights which weighs one's good works against
their bad.
And if the good outweighs the bad, they
can enter heaven.
They are counting on their good works to
get them into heaven.
Number three, men try climbing up to heaven
by way of religion.
The Buddhist, the Muslim, the Jew, the Mormon,
and members of other world religions try to
climb up to their idea heaven wrapped in
the garments of their religion.
They believe that religion is the way to
heaven, that if you join any religion, then
that's all you need.
Number four, men try climbing up to heaven
by way of a decision.
They will point to a time in their
life back yonder when they responded to an
emotional appeal by a preacher by either walking
a church aisle or repeating a prayer or
raising their hand.
They made some kind of a decision to
become a Christian by performing some kind of
physical act and they climbed the stairway to
heaven on the back of an empty religious
profession.
Number five, men try climbing up to heaven
by way of baptism.
Men believe they gain entry into heaven by
producing a certificate of baptism, that if they've
been baptized, then they are saved by the
very nature of baptismal regeneration.
Number six, men try climbing up to heaven
through church membership.
Many folks mistake church membership for salvation.
You try to climb up to heaven, friend,
in your own merits, and you will slip
off that stairway and fall headlong on your
way down to hell, and the only ones
whom God will allow into his holy heaven
are those persons who have the merits of
the Lord's life laid down and applied to
them, so that when a thrice holy God
looks at pitiful E.A. Johnston, he says,
oh, when I see the blood, when I
see the blood, Jesus is the door to
heaven, friend, and if you want to be
saved, you better get to Christ and pass
through that blood-marked door, because climbing a
stairway to heaven in your own merits will
only send you down to devil's hell.
Let us pray.