…What is the Line that Divides Heaven from
Hell?…
John 3:8 (NKJV) gThe wind blows where it wishes, and
you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it
goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” [1]
Upon us today is a question that I dare
say many might not be able to answer. We
call ourselves believers. We come to a building, a church, a synagogue or a
temple – really doesn’t matter what you call it – and we sing, we praise, we
lift up our hands. We let tears run down
our cheeks and we pray and we cry out – and yet, for all we do – to what end or
to what avail is it? We watch as our
homes, our children, and our nation seem to sink deeper into a morass of
trouble and evil. A day is coming
beloved, a Day of Great Judgment where untold multitudes will be standing naked
before the Great White Throne of the Almighty God, Yahveh Elohim, and many will
see and hear the pronouncement of righteous judgment:
“…Be gone from Me you workers of Iniquity, for I know you not…”
There will be others present on that Day, though their numbers will be
few compared to the multitudes that hear judgment, that will hear the words
that they long waited to hear:
“Well done thou good and faithful servant, enter into thy rest…”
It is but a sad truth that many who
hear the first pronouncement might consist of some familiar faces, ones that we
have seen before… Some might be those
who’ve we heard teach, some might even be those who preach, some will be those
who have sat week after week at a house of worship. Along with these will surely be those who
rejected the mercies of the Son of Glory, of those who openly mocked the Holy
Will of God, and those who loved the things of this world more than the One who
made it all, and yet… It cannot escape our understanding that it will consist
of those who profess a love of this Awesome God and His Son. They will realize with horror on that day
that they missed the warning of 1 Cor. 2:14:
1 Corinthians 2:14 (KJV)
But the natural man receiveth not the things
of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know
them, because they are spiritually discerned. [2]
We have to remember that the things of God are only
discerned by the spiritual man, not the carnal.
In that great and
terrible day of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth they will come to
understand too late that their knowledge of the divine was limited to their
experiential knowledge, that of the head and not the heart. On that day will they finally see that they
set for too long on the dividing line, straddling the fence that separates a
true child of the Living God from one of the damned, that they never passed
over the line of being simply convinced that there is a God, to the place where
they became one committed for Him.
What is the line that divides Heaven from hell? What or when is the moment one passes from
death to life?
Let it
be known, these are the only two choices we have – life or death.
Let it
be known, in the physical world we are either dead or alive – room temperature
of 98.6 degrees F.
As in the natural, so it is in the
spiritual. We are either alive or dead;
dead in our trespasses and sins or alive in the shed blood of Yeshua, Jesus our
Messiah. We are either saints or
sinners, not a combination of the two… A saint who commits sin may not be a
saint at all – though a saint who stumbles and then repents? That is a whole other sermon.
We are either a child of God or a child of the devil; the difference is
black and white, and no shade of gray can be found there in it at all.
So
again I ask: What is the dividing line
that separates us from Heaven or hell?
Quite
simply, it is the new birth.
Allow
me please to ask the next question that we all must ask:
“Have
I been born again, that is to say, born from above?”
Let me
warn you: if you have not and you die in this present state, at the Throne of
Holy and Terrible Judgment you will wish you had never been born at all.
By word and by deed, by preaching and
teaching with tears and pleadings God’s servants go forth and proclaim to all
the Gospel of Salvation. Even this though
does one no good at all if the Holy Father who sent these servants out does not
bless the seed they so diligently try to plant with the water of His
Spirit. And what is this water that the
Spirit brings? It is the shed blood of
the Lamb of God who washes a sinner clean by the washing of the water of the
Word, the Way, the Truth and the Life.
No matter how sincere the servant is who gives out the word, if there is
no application by the Holy Spirit to the heart of the hearer, there will be no
impact. It is for this reason and this
reason only that we must humble ourselves and cry out for mercy, for there is
no thing that we do or say that can sway the God of Heaven if He chooses not to
move.
So why bother you might ask?
Because His word will not return to Him void! In Isa. 55:11 He declares that:
“….So shall my
word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but
it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing
whereto I sent it…” [3]
Notice here though – “…in the thing whereto I
sent it…” It only works if He sends it.
To whom does He send it? To those
whom He draws nigh, for Messiah says in John 6:44:
44 No man can come to me, except the
Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. [4]
It was for this reason Messiah Yeshua also said in
John 14:6:
“…Jesus said
to him, “I am fthe way, gthe
truth, and hthe
life. iNo
one comes to the Father jexcept
through Me…” [5]
To come unto Him requires the new birth
and this is more than the acknowledgement of Him as Savior, for to believe
isn’t quite all there is to the story…. James 2:19 says:
…”You
believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and
tremble!…” [6]
Ask yourself, the demons believe, are
they saved?
No beloved, what it takes is the new
birth, that supernatural operation of God upon a man’s spirit, a transcendent
wonder. [7] A.W. Pink says of it: “…It is a marvel of
Divine grace, Divine wisdom, Divine power and Divine beauty. It is a miracle performed upon and within
ourselves, of which we may be personally cognizant…”[8]
Know this now, that there are only two
types of people in God’s sight – those that are dead in their sins and those
that walk in the newness of life. What
we need to do is better understand the how and the why of this new birth.
There are two places that are prepared
right now for the eternal soul, and both require preparation for entrance. One is hell, and the preparation to enter
into it is the easiest: it only requires that we continue to walk according to
our flesh, our desires, our ways, our interpretations, our traditions, our
ambitions – anything that opposes the word of God. This is the easy way, the broad way, but it
comes with a heavy price tag; the penalty is death, separation from God. It just isn’t worth it. What good comes from, as stated in 2 Tim.
3:2:
“…For men will
be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers,
disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy…” [9]
What besets you so beloved that you might choose to
prepare yourself in this fashion?
Yeshua tells us in Luke 9:23-25:
(see also Matt.
16:24–27; Mark 9:34–38)
23 tThen He said
to them all, “If anyone desires to come after
Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross 2daily,
and follow Me. 24 uFor
whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for
My sake will save it. 25 vFor
what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself
destroyed or lost? [10]
In the next verse He says:
26 wFor
whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be xashamed
when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the
holy angels.[11]
The word used in the Greek for
“ashamed” is the word “epaischynomai”.
We have translated this word as ashamed, yet our English word does not
fully convey the meaning of this word.
Literally it means to come against, or to be disgusted with. Think about that – when we are ashamed, what
feelings do we have? We are generally
coming against the thing that shamed us – whether it was word or deed – and we
feel disgusted… This disgust is then either directed toward ourselves, the
situation or possibly another person.
Therefore, this is the implication that the Lord is saying:
“If you are disgusted or come against
me or my words, then when I come in glory so shall I be the same way to
you…” (paraphrase mine)
So why do we prepare ourselves for this
reaction from our King? We haven’t been
born again, that’s why.
Heaven, or a better way to describe it
would be the place of rest in the Lord, is a prepared place for a prepared
people. In John 14:2 the Messiah said
“…I go to prepare a place for you…” Whom
is He preparing a place for?
Peter gives us the answer in Matt
19:27:
“…Behold,
we have forsaken all, and followed thee…”
These
are the whom – those who have forsaken all.
This is the true test of all believers, one that each must take; it is
not graded on a curve, your “score” is not affected by how others fair. This is between you and your Savior. Will you forsake all to follow Him? Will you lay down your life? Ponder this, and next time we meet, we’ll
finish our study. Please though, examine
yourselves before you answer: this test truly exists, and it is crucial you
know the answer…
Now, we must as Dr. J. Vernon McGee used to say, we must go where “the
rubber meets the road.” Isaiah 64:4
reads:
4 For since the beginning of the world men have not
heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seenb, O
God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him. [12]
We have all heard this verse before,
but most of us stop at the end of verse four instead of seeing the context in
which it is written. Let me give you another rendering of this verse, this one
from the Complete Jewish Bible:
“…No
one has ever heard, no ear perceived, no eye seen, any God but you. You work
for him who waits for you.
You
favored those who were glad to do justice, those who remembered you in your
ways. When you were angry, we kept sinning; but if we keep your ancient ways,
we will be saved.
All of
us are like someone unclean, all our righteous deeds like menstrual rags; we
wither, all of us, like leaves; and our misdeeds blow us away like the wind.
No one
calls on your name or bestirs himself to take hold of you, for you have hidden
your face from us and caused our misdeeds to destroy us.
But
now, Adonai, you are our father; we are the clay, you are our potter; and we
are all the work of your hands.
Do not be so very angry, Adonai! Don't remember crime forever. Look, please,
we are all your people…” [13]
Rabi Sha’ul (Paul) said it this way in 1 Cor. 2:9:
9
But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered
into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love
him. [14]
I bring out the context for you to understand that the Father works for
those who forsake all. These readings
appear different, Sha’ul’s being taken from the Septuagint, which renders
“wait” as mercy, confirmed in Vincent’s Word Studies:
“…The Hebrew reads: “From of old men have not heard, not perceived with
the ear, eye has not seen a God beside Thee who does (gloriously) for him who
waits on Him.” Septuagint, “From of old we have not heard, nor have our eyes
seen a God beside Thee, and Thy works which Thou wilt do for those who wait for
mercy…” [15]
The words may be different, but the
concept remains true: if we as God’s people “keep…His…ancient ways” and love
Him, His mercy comes through and He works to prepare a place for us. If you love God, then you must love the
things of God. And what things are
these? Those that are true, honest,
just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtue and praise (see Phil. 4:8). Paul counts all the former things of his life
as dung so that he may receive those that we just mentioned (Phil. 3:8). To love God is to prepare yourself to die to
self, to deny all your ways for His. You
must love His ways, for if you truly do, and truly obey Him, then here is the
proof of regeneration, of the working of the Holy Spirit, the Ruach HaKodesh in
your life, the proof that you are born from above.
This is the
spiritual man within you then. On the
other hand is the natural man, the one we fight with every day. He knows not the things of God, thinks of
them being foolish at the worst (1 Cor. 2:14), or holds onto them
intellectually yet never brings or bows his heart near to God’s (Matt.
15:8-9). He is wretched indeed who
prepares himself this way (Rev. 3:14-17).
This is one prepared for Hell, for there is no change in his life; to be
prepared for Heaven, the man or woman must be changed.
Col. 1:12 tells us
that:
The natural man is unholy, therefore unfit for the inheritance of the
saint…
None are made meet while under the power of darkness for this
inheritance is of light…
Messiah Himself had to rise from the dead to gain the back the glory He
had with the Father; so must we be resurrected from the bondage of sin to
attain the glory prepared for us.
We have a mistaken notion that Messiah came to save us in our sin – nay,
I say, He came to save us from it. God
cannot walk with a sinner – it violates who He is and what His Holy Torah
instructs. There IS no communion between
Messiah and Be’lial (2 Cor. 6:15).
Darkness flees from the light (Gen. 1:2; Job 38:19-20; Ps. 82:5; Pro.
4:19; Isa. 5:20; Matt. 6:23; Luke 11:34-35; John 3:17-19) so how can the two
travel side by side? Without the
regeneration of the heart and of the spirit of a man by the Ruach Elohim (the
Spirit of God) none, and I say it again, none will see heaven and none will see
God.
So what is heaven? I answered this before, but let me make it
clear to you: Heaven is the place where
there is the FULL manifestation of Him who is “glorious in Holiness (Ex.
15:11)” – that holiness which the wicked, while presumptuously hoping to go to
heaven, despise and hate here on earth…”[17] This holiness of the Most High is obtainable
but only if our inner being as well as our outer life have undergone a radical,
revolutionizing supernatural change.
Be ye warned: be
not fooled. If Messiah is not first in
your life, if you have not forsaken all and placed your life on His altar of
sacrifice, then how do you expect to be received into a place prepared for
those who have given all to Him? Holiness
and the happiness of the saint walk side by side, just as sin and the wretchedness of the ungodly do: they
cannot be separated. We think that
nothing but the merits of Messiah are needed to qualify us for heaven – but in
this you are mistaken. Yes we need these
merits, for it is He who stands in the gap for us, but none may receive
remission of sin through the shed blood of Mashiach Yeshua who are not first
“turned from the power of satan unto God (Acts 26:18)”, and this is but by the
will of Him who sent us the Savior – no amount of well wishing or decision
making on our part will transform our lives – only the power of God in the work
of the Ruach HaKodesh and the atoning death of Messiah Yeshua are we allowed to
be born again.
So
what does this mean for us?
First: we have to believe (remember curious, convinced and committed?)
o
Heb. 11:6 says:
“…And without trusting (faith KJV), it is impossible to be well pleasing
to God, because whoever approaches him must trust that he does exist and that
he becomes a Rewarder to those who seek him out…”[18]
Faith and belief are equal to trust, yet we must need to go further –
and this is the hard part…
o
Repentance. Call it what you
will, brokenness, humbleness, crushed before the presence of All Mighty Yahveh. Coupled with trust or faith, it is here we
begin the journey of regeneration, of holiness.
It is in this broken state that the process begins of being born from
above, of being born again (see Eph. 4:1-7).
Repentance was the first and continuous call from our Savior – see Matt
4:16; Mark 1:14 and Luke 13:1-5.
Repentance isn’t taught much, for it makes people uncomfortable; it
requires them to yield to the Spirit of God and change. Without it though, without the conviction that
brings it about in godly sorrow (2 Cor. 7:10-11), there is no salvation for
there is no working of the Spirit upon your life and all you profess is in
vain.
All throughout the Scriptures we see
the importance of this work of regeneration, of being born again, for in
Scripture, the first born rarely received the promise:
Adam, the first perfect man, lost his birthright to disobedience (Gen
3:9-24); Yeshua, the second perfect man, gained all through His obedience unto
death…
Cain, first born of Adam (Gen 4:1), had his offering rejected for the
hardness of his heart, Abel’s was accepted (Gen. 4:4).
Ishmael, first born of Abraham, born of the bond woman was not heir to
the promise that God had given Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3, 7); the second born, Isaac,
born of the free inherited the promise (Gen. 17:15-20).
Esau, the first born of Isaac, sold his birthright for a bowl of stew
(Gen. 25:29-34); Jacob, the second born, would go on to receive the full
blessing of God, and have his name changed to Yisra’el, through repentance and
change.
The people of God were released from the bondage of Egypt but due to
their disbelief in the Word of God, died in the wilderness (Num. 13:26-14:35);
the second generation entered into the promised land (Joshua 1:1-9).
Over and over, the first became last, and the last became first. So it must be with us. Being born again has nothing to do with us,
but everything with the will and plan of God – we cannot make it happen. To achieve it, we must be born of water and
of the Spirit:
The water isn’t natural birth as some interpret but is the washing of
our souls by the power of God word and the living water, His Son, Yeshua
Ha’Machiach (John 4:7-14; Eph. 5:25-27; Heb. 10:22; 1 John 5:1-12).
The water is the Word, the Word shed His blood. This is the true baptism, the blood. This is the pure water that washes our bodies
and spirit. This is the new birth.
Only through this can we know. It
is a reality that we can feel. When it
happens, we don’t lay on our beds at night, hot tears running down our cheeks
because of the emptiness of our souls – no, if there are tears it is of joy
because we know that a change has come.
We know that our natural man has stooped low and prostrated himself
before a thrice Holy God, cried out for mercy and was heard. None in the natural will seek this mercy,
will seek this forgiveness – none in the natural will feel this change. Only those touched by the Spirit of God and
made alive will encounter this miracle of new birth – the soul cleansing of the
water and the blood.
Do you feel Him today? If not,
don’t despair for you are here so that He can make Himself known to you, but it
takes a willingness on your part to be broken – to be crushed under the weight
of a Holy conviction so that you can be led to repentance and salvation.
Repentance isn’t just a word we toss casually about. It is a piercing sword, it is a gut-wrenching
tearing apart of the wall of enmity that sin has built between us and God. Under the sway of the Holy Spirit those
undergoing true regeneration will feel the weight of their sin, will come to be
ashamed of this sin – remember what the definition of ashamed is – and will be
disgusted at what they were and will cry out for the newness of life found only
in the shed blood and the born again experience.
What happens next? That crushing
weight – becomes light. The darkness
rolls back from your soul as a scroll – and the light comes in. The heaviness of sin gives way to the yoke of
Messiah, light and freeing.
It can’t be done if you hold onto your life, the one anchored in this
world; it can only can only be done in a heart prepared for Heaven, a heart
Broken
Empty
Willing.
The
line between Heaven and Hell comes through regeneration…
-
Regeneration through the Shed Blood of Messiah –
-
Obedience to the Master through the revealed Word –
Today,
here His voice and harden not your heart as in the day of provocation…
Stand
today on the right side of the line.
…May
the Lord richly bless you my beloved…
[1] The New
King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
[2] The Holy
Bible : King James Version. electronic ed. of the 1769 edition of the 1611
Authorized Version. Bellingham WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1995.
[3] The Holy
Bible : King James Version. electronic ed. of the 1769 edition of the 1611
Authorized Version. Bellingham WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1995.
[4] The Holy
Bible : King James Version. electronic ed. of the 1769 edition of the 1611
Authorized Version. Bellingham WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1995.
[5] The New
King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
[6] The New
King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
[7] A.W.
Pink – “Regeneration” booklet re-published by Chapel Library, A Ministry of Mt.
Zion Bible Church pg 5.
[8] Ibid…
[9] The New
King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
[10] The New
King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
[11] The New
King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
[12] The Holy Bible : King James Version.
electronic ed. of the 1769 edition of the 1611 Authorized Version. Bellingham
WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1995.
[13] The Complete Jewish Bible, by David H.
Stern, ©1998 by David H. Stern, published by the Jewish New Testament
Publications Inc. (electronic edition e-sword® version 9.5.1 ©2000-2009 Rick
Myers)
[14] The Holy
Bible : King James Version. electronic ed. of the 1769 edition of the 1611
Authorized Version. Bellingham WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1995.
[15] Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament, by Marvin Vincent ©Henderickson’s Publishers, 1889
[16] The Holy
Bible : King James Version. electronic ed. of the 1769 edition of the 1611
Authorized Version. Bellingham WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1995.
[17] A.W.
Pink – “Regeneration” booklet re-published by Chapel Library, A Ministry of Mt.
Zion Bible Church pg 12.
[18] The Complete Jewish Bible, by David H.
Stern, ©1998 by David H. Stern, published by the Jewish New Testament
Publications Inc. (electronic edition e-sword® version 9.5.1 ©2000-2009 Rick
Myers)
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