How Do I Get To Heaven?

Real life presents the Jack Kibs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. For the Christian that is alive and well and possessed by the Holy Spirit, there is no downtime in our world. You and I, we have been deployed into a godless, Christless age to tell everyone we can about the love of God and the forgiveness that's in Jesus Christ. The question is, do you believe in Him? You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to Jack Kibs.com slash podcast. Today, if this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, that's like saying amen or yes. And that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Kibs. When asked the question, heaven will you be going there? The answer should be number one in your note taken is yes. You need to be able to say yes to this and this is the reason why, yes because you believe in Him. Church, will you mark that down? I want to hit this and I want to hit it hard for this reason. It is absolutely, overwhelmingly assured that the man or woman boy or girl who believes on and in the Lord Jesus Christ, they're going to go to heaven. But we need to understand what believe or believing really means. The Bible tells us in Acts chapter 16, verse 31, the Bible says, so they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household, then they spoke the word of the Lord to Him. That's the jailer in that famous moment where Paul and Silas and the ministry team were gathered together. You know the story. There were singing songs of praise while they're shackled in stocks at midnight, an earthquake hit. I think it was an angel quake by the way. It was an earthquake. I think an angel did all that because of what happens later. But the fact of the matter is that one of the jailkeepers were terrified as to what was going on and his basic expression was, I need to be saved. And the Bible responses believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. But today you and I live in a world that just thinks that belief is just something where we assign a level of attention to something that we all believe in. We believe in this. We believe in that. I know I believe in Jesus. But it's more than that. It's not difficult. It's not rocket science. Listen, the belief that God expects from you who are going to heaven is a belief that is so precious that a child can believe in God. In fact, the Bible makes it clear that God is, I think, most encouraged by the belief or faith of a child. Jesus said in Matthew's Gospel, we need to become like little children before we can enter the kingdom of God. Belief, believing. The word means this and you might care to make note of it. It means to entrust, it means to commit. It means to believe in such a way that your belief is to depend upon. So when we say I believe in Jesus Christ, listen, are you going to go to heaven? Yes, why is that true? Because you depend upon Jesus. That's the believer. That's the one that's going to be going to heaven. If you've called upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and you understand that he has Lord save your God, he's Messiah, he died in the cross, he rose again from the dead. If Christ has become, I have to underline the word become. If Christ has become your passion, because that's how it really is. The more you fall in love with somebody, the more they become your focal point of your passion, of your attention. That's good. That's the way it's supposed to be all the best when it comes to God. All the best when it comes to Jesus to love Him. We'll talk more about this in a moment, but what does it mean to believe in Him? The reason why you're going to go to heaven is because you trust Him. When you hear the things that are going on around the world and when you hear how you're not hearing things that are going on around the world because it's being kept from you, it raises a level of anxiety that raises a level of threat to your peace and for your safety and all of a sudden what we as a culture, in the first amendment type of culture, we are threatened by that. Americans have more to lose than any other nation on earth right now. That that that make, encroach upon you and bring fear, wait a minute. You're going to heaven and because you're going to heaven, you've trusted in Jesus Christ, you believe Him and what He has done in your life. You can entrust your future today to Him. He will take care of you. Listen, you may or may not doubt that. We may or may not doubt that from time to time. We all have our moments and our seasons of faith and the challenge of faith, every single one of them. We all go through this, all of us go through this. People don't think that you having doubt this morning is because you're not a Christian. That is not true. Every human, the greatest saints of God, I love reading them, have gone through horrific battles of doubt. George Whitfield, the Wesley's, Charles Spurgeon, Charles Finney, John the Baptist, great seasons of doubt. Listen, you've got to have belief in Christ before you can suffer seasons of doubt. In that order, cheer up. Don't lose heart. Heaven, will you be going there? The answer is absolutely yes if you're believing in Jesus Christ, but we want to make sure that we are truly believing Him. There's a firm warning in the Bible about belief only is what I would say, belief only. You suggest, didn't you just say a moment ago from the book of Acts, believe in the Lord Jesus? You shall be saved. Oh yeah, yeah. That is true. But there's a belief only danger. What do you mean to believe is where you begin? And when you really begin by believing in Jesus Christ, that belief takes you somewhere. Never think for a moment that just because I accepted Christ on Monday night, just before 9 p.m. June 20th, 1977, Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, Greg Laurie preaching the gospel, Revelation chapter 20, Keith Green doing the worship that night, just because I came to believe in Christ that night. If I would have walked away after going forward and never picked up the Bible again and never had a passion or desire to know the one I claim to have fallen in love with that moment, then my belief would have been void and with no effect. Are you with me? It would have been nothing. To believe is the first step of a journey called sanctification where God brings you all the way through until you breathe your last breath or you hear a trumpet blast. For the Christian that is alive and well and possessed by the Holy Spirit, there is no downtime in our world. You and I, we have been deployed into a godless, Christless age to tell everyone we can about the love of God and the forgiveness that is in Jesus Christ. The question is, do you believe in Him? James tells us this strong warning, James chapter 2 verse 19. He says, you believe that there is one God? You do well. Even the demons believe and tremble. Satan believes in Jesus Christ, but Satan doesn't believe in Jesus Christ to save him. It knows of Jesus' authority, but he doesn't bow the knee. That will happen later. I think according to the Bible, you and I are going to watch Satan bow his knee. That's going to be a great day. That's going to be a great day. So number one church, yes, yes, you're going to go to heaven if the fact that you believe in Him as you are. So yes, you believe because He's come to you. I want you to write that down. He has come to you. Pastor Jack, I do believe in Jesus. Yes, that is true because He has come to you. The Bible tells us in 2 Peter chapter 3 verse 9, but the Lord is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. This is awesome, people. The fact that you're going to go to heaven is based upon the foundational truth that Christ has come to you. He's the one that reached out to you. Number one for this reason. He is not willing that you should perish, but that you should come to the knowledge of everlasting life. By the way, that's His desire for all people. We talked about that last week in a small degree. The fact is this church that believing in Him is based upon this act of repentance. You see, people will say, I believe in Jesus, but there's been no change in their life. Why? They never repented. They're like the devils. The devils believe in Jesus. In fact, they're not, no, I take that back. They're not like the devils who believe. That's not even fair to the devils, demons, to say that, okay, the reason why. The word, I read a moment ago in James, this is that the devil or demons or Satan believes and trembles. Do you know what the word tremble is? The word tremble in the Greek is where we get our word goose flesh. Goose skin. You say goose skin. Yeah, I know. We don't really think like that. But have you ever seen a naked turkey? Exactly. When you pluck that turkey, wait, we don't pluck turkey. Somebody else plucks them. When we go down to the store and bring them home and unwrap them from the plastic and you run your hand over the breast or the skin of the turkey. Have you noticed that? Is it all lumpy? That's what the Bible says in the book of James when Satan thinks about God. His skin goes, he gets goose skin, people don't do that. People are brazen. They don't believe in God. They mock God. We read a moment ago how there's a generation of people as we approach the end. They'll be mockers of God. They don't get goose flesh and yet hell has a respect for Christ like the godless of this world do not. Oh, but you who believe in Him, you're going to heaven. You who believe in Him, He's going to see to it. Listen, you don't hear this very often because most often you need to commit your life to Christ, you need to commit your life, I get it. The reason why that's true is because He has first committed Himself to you. Think of that. And that's true because He has come to you. Now what's some of you to think, stop and think right now, how that happened in your life, how did He come to you, refresh your memory, go back, slow down, rethink, go back to the ancient paths, retrace them in the early days of how Christ spoke to you. Where were you? What did He say? What were you thinking? When you began to awaken to His stimulating overtures to you, as He began to draw you, Jesus said, nobody comes to the Father. It's interesting, by the way, it's referenced really in two ways of Scripture. Jesus said, nobody comes to me and must the Father draws them to me. And Jesus also mentions that nobody can come to me and must the Spirit of God is at work in their lives. I kind of like to look at it this way. God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, working in the world, working in your life to bring you to the one who saves you. The Bible says there's one mediator, go between. There's one negotiator between man, that's us and God. And that is the mediator, Christ Jesus. He's pulling. I like to think of it this way. He's got a lost humanity, right? And represented by the work of the Holy Spirit on this hand, it's the Holy Spirit convicting people, which is almost illegal today. Think of it. You say, I thought we were going to be talking about future things, this is exactly what we're doing. That's why we're taking this as a whole series. Because salvation is the greatest prophetic doctrine of the Bible. Isaiah chapter 9, in fact, you're going to recognize this. Isaiah chapter 9 verse 2, this is awesome. Isaiah chapter 9 verse 2, the Bible says, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwell in the land of the shadow of death upon them, a light has shined. Have you ever heard that before? You probably didn't recognize Isaiah 9 too. Next verse you guys, this is the reason why you recognized the hearing of it. You didn't recognize the scripture reference. This is what you recognized, Matthew 4.12. Now when Jesus heard that John, that's John the Baptist, had been put in prison, Jesus departed to Galilee. And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea, see a Galilee. In the region of Zebulin, in Napoli, you don't care about that unless you're Jewish friends. Those two locations just got your Jewish attention. By the way, Matthew, anybody remember Matthew's last name? Matthew Levi, he's a Jew. I encouraged a friend of mine the other day. I said, you need to read the New Testament. He said, I'm not going to read a Gentile book. I said, did you know what you're written by a bunch of Jews? I did. Verse 14, that it might be fulfilled which is spoken of by Isaiah the prophet. Say in the land of Zebulin, in the land of Napoli, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and upon those who sat in the region of the shadow of death light is done. From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, what did he say? Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That's believing. Listen, when the Holy Spirit has spoken to you, Christian, and you've sensed, so did you. The next time you do something wrong, unplanned or planned, you do something wrong. You will hear him speak. I don't know if God ever talks to me. If you do something wrong, think something wrong, do you not hear him speak? Yes, he does. Every Christian should say, I hear him speak. What you really want to do is be able to say, I read the Bible a lot, God speaks to me from the Word. I don't get in trouble much, but when I do, boy, do I hear him speak. What you don't want to do is walk around as a Christian and say, God spoke to me today. He spoke to me twice today. He spoke to me five times today. What are you doing? Oh, he's faithful to convict. He's faithful to speak. All of God's kids. The Bible says, God will never discipline a child that's not his own. He only disciplines his own kids. You don't spank your neighbor's kids. You go to jail. I mean, you want to. The little creep is messing things up. That's what you can do is say, go home. Depart from me, you worker of iniquity. You can't spank it. You can't spank kids that are not yours. I see a pastor. I don't know if you should say spank. Discipline then. The Bible says, nothing, it's what's another story. That's a whole another day. God disciplines his kids because he loves them. If you don't love your kid, it's it's lived out because you don't correct them. You just leave the little rats to do whatever they want. Nobody wants them around because you've raised up a little maniac, right, because they've been lived to himself. The Bible says, you leave. There's nothing to do with this message. This is just side note. That if you don't discipline your child in love for crying out loud. If you love them, you're going to tell them, don't do that again. You're going to wind up in jail someday. You teach them. Listen. If you don't do that, the Bible says that kid will grow up and be a reproach to his mother. You know, dads have a hard time. It's like, you know what? That rotten kid turned out to be a piece of junk. Men are just, the moms, no matter what, the moms, they just weep from the inside out. It's a heartbreak and I don't know how I went down that, but it's, but it repentance is required if we're really going to believe. And that's why many of you, many of us, we get the sting of the Holy Spirit because listen, he calls us to repentance because we are his kids. There are those who are becoming God's children because they are going to repent of their sins, God knows who they are. And there are us who are in the family that when we sin, the Bible tells us if we confess our sin, he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all and righteousness. What's that all about? God will convict you and I to maintain fellowship with us. If we don't repent as a believer to our Heavenly Father, then we're still in the family. God doesn't believe in abortion. You're not losing your salvation. He just won't talk to you. Can you imagine if your little kid came up and said after slapping the dog and burning his bicycle or something and then he comes up, he's quarantined to his room. You go to your room. They're all day. You're in trouble. And then the kid comes out, coming down the hallway and the kid walks up. Remember, he's under the sentence of you're in trouble. But he comes and says, Mom, Dad, I know it's supposed to be in my room, but can I talk to you about what I want for Christmas? You know what Mom and Dad are going to do? They're going to say, no, I'm not talking to you. Get back to your room. This is the key that keeps or restores or brings them out fellowship with God. It's got to happen. This Jack Hibbs podcast, as well as all the broadcast out reach opportunities, are listener supporting. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibbs.com to learn more and stay connected.