Gooding, David: 4 - Two Worlds

And we begin to read this evening in the Gospel by Matthew and chapter sixteen. The Gospel by Matthew and chapter sixteen. And we begin to read there from the verse 13. Now, when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Who do men say that the Son of Man is? And they said, some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, but who say you that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Then charged he the disciples that they should tell no man that he was the Christ. From that time began Jesus to show unto his disciples how that he must go unto Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day raised up. And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall never be unto thee. But he turned and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art a stumbling block unto me, for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what shall a man be profited if he shall gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and then shall he render unto every man according to his deeds. Verily I say unto you, there be some of them that stand here, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. And after six days, Jesus taketh with him Peter and James and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart. And he was transfigured before them, and his face did shine as the sun, and his garments became white as the light. And behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elijah talking with him. And Peter answered and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here. If thou wilt, I will make here three tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah. While he was yet speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud saying, this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear you him. And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face and were sore afraid. And Jesus came and touched them and said, Arise and be not afraid. And lifting up their eyes, they saw no one, save Jesus only. Thus far the word of God, and may God add his blessing there too. In the series of Sunday studies, we have been studying the witness of the early church to Christ. And now this evening, we continue with that theme as the apostles tell us something altogether fundamental to the church. They are about to tell us just where and how and on what foundation the Church of Christ was founded and built. What it is that lies at the very foundation of the church in such a fashion that were this foundation removed, the whole church would collapse and crumble into ruins. And as they do so, telling us how and where the church was founded and on what it is built, they will, of course, explain to us very clearly what it means to be a member of the true church of Christ. The answer to the question is very simple. Where and on what was the church really founded? It was founded here, says Matthew, when God revealed to a certain Simon Peter, and subsequently to some of his friends and colleagues, exactly who Jesus Christ really was. And for the first time, it dawned clearly on Peter's mind, by the influence of God Almighty himself, that Jesus Christ was not merely a prophet like Elijah. He wasn't merely a preacher of the law like Moses. He was nothing short of being the Christ, the Son of the living God. There it was that the church was founded. And God revealed to Peter and his colleagues exactly who Jesus Christ was and is. And here we must be very exact. You will notice what it was they discovered and realized. It wasn't simply what Jesus Christ taught. Matthew has recorded in his gospel many things that Jesus Christ taught. He records in his early chapters the famous Sermon on the Mount, and in particular that marvelous statement of the golden rule. He reminds us how Christ got his disciples together, and he told them, love your enemies, and whatsoever you would that men do to you, do you likewise to them. But you will notice that Ma- Matthew doesn't say that it was when Peter heard that the church was found dead. It was not so, of course. It wasn't that Peter listened awestruck to the moral teaching of Christ and said to himself, ah, you know what, that teaching would be revolutionary. If we could teach all men to love one another, love even their enemies, why not start an association and call it Love the World and get all men to fulfill the golden rule? It wasn't then, I tell you, that the Church of Christ was founded. Important as the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is, the church is not built upon the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, nor upon any of the moral teaching of Christ. And if you doubt what I say, take an afternoon, one of these rainy days, to read the Acts of the Apostles and gather from the historian Luke what message it was that turned the world upside down. It wasn't the Sermon on the Mount. It was this message that we are about to listen to. First, the discovery of exactly not what Jesus taught, but who Jesus is. That he is none less than the Christ, the Son of the living God, which bears witness his glorious resurrection. A second thing these Christians tell us in this very context, with great honesty and humility, they tell us that Saint Peter himself, when he had discovered that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, then had to be taught something else. A something else over which at first he made a most egregious and unfortunate mistake. And that was, Jesus being the Christ, the Son of God, what was Jesus intending to do in our world? For of course, that has a corollary, hasn't it? If we could find out exactly what it was that Jesus was meant to be doing and intended to do, then we might have some idea of what the church is meant to be doing and what it means to belong to the Church of Christ. So Matthew tells us that soon after Peter confessed our Lord as the Messiah, he began to tell to Peter and the other apostles that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things and be rejected and crucified and be raised again. And Peter took him and began to rebuke him. We mustn't be too hard, I suspect, on Peter, because he did have, like we all have, his prejudice, as you know. He had it pretty well fixed into his head, exactly what it was that the Messiah would do when he came and what Christianity would be about. He had been brought up with the story books that all Jewish schoolboys had been brought up on in their religious classes and Darai lessons. And he'd been told many times about those great heroes of the Jewish faith, the Maccabees, who in centuries past, when the evil Gentile imperialists had come invading the land and banned the Jewish religion, how that the Maccabees had raised a guerrilla army, and in the name of God they had fought the Gentile imperialists and overlords, and against all odds, with the help of God, they had defeated those Gentiles and forced them to give up. Jews had cleansed their temple and maintained their religion, and in the end got themselves political freedom. Peter and some of his colleagues were hoping that Jesus Christ was going to give a repeat performance of that. Indeed, uh, we are told that one of the apostles to start off with was a fa- in fact a member of one of these guerrilla armies. Simon, the other Simon, was a Canaanite, a political revolutionary. Though that was that when Je- when Peter confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, Peter had it in his head what was going to happen. Jesus would eventually go to Jerusalem. He would convince the authorities of the rightness of his cause. He would raise an army. He would push out the hated Romans that were holding down the poor, and driving out the Romans and the tax collectors and all that crowd, he would get the nation political freedom. He would break the structures of society and in their place give the Jews their freedom and fairness, and every Jewish citizen would have a beautiful house and a big back garden and a chariot or two. And life would be supremely wonderful and free. When Peter heard Jesus Christ say that he was going to Jerusalem, and instead of doing that kind of thing, he was going to be rejected and crucified. Peter was so bitterly disappointed that he took Jesus Christ and began to rebuke him. Now, now, now, he said, you get that out of your mind, Lord. Excuse my talking plain, but you know, I've invested my life in you. I gave up my job to follow you. I've sunk all my money in the good of your cause. And if you're going to get it into your head that you're going to be rejected and defeated and die and be crucified and all that kind of thing, what's going to happen to my money and all the time and expense I've invested in you? No, no, Lord. You want to get, you know, haven't you read the book, the value of positive thinking. Say to yourself, not that you're going to Jerusalem and going to get rejected and people are going to kill you, anything like that. No, say it over to yourself a thousand times. I'm going to be a success. I'm going to be a success. I'm going to be a success, and all the crowds will come and support me. And you'll see leading the crowds against the Romans will tough the Romans out, and a few of those Jews at the top, like Caiaphas, and put the common people in their place, and we should get our rights politically and religiously and economically and socially. What a tremendous success it's going to be. When Peter thus thought and rebuked the Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus not only in turn rebuked Peter, but indicated that Peter's notion of what Messiah was meant to be doing came from no lesser source than his satanic majesty himself. That is not what the Messiah was going to do, and it certainly wasn't what the church was meant to be doing either. To correct Peter's mistakes, then, two further lessons had to be taught him at this very time. We may sum them up in this fashion. Peter had to be taught that there wasn't just one world, there was two. Listen to our Lord. On this rock I will build my church, and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, that whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Two worlds. Earth and heaven. And not just earth, but earth and heaven. And the church's business to be the link between the two. By following her God-given ministry, she might be in God's hand the means and the messengers that prepare men and women living in this world. Find that world at all. God's heaven. And in all God's program for the Messiah, this stands preeminent. Not the improvement of conditions here, but the preparing of men and women for that great heaven above. Oh, my dear friend, if your circumstances are difficult, you have all my sympathy. I wish they were ten times better than they are, but friend, though your life be a virtual paradise here, should you miss God's heaven? Should you miss God's heaven, I say, your life here will be nothing short of disaster. The church, I myself, would be paying with your soul. If I was content, if I put first even your physical and social and political well-being and didn't put first the preparing of your soul for the great eternity beyond, for God's heaven. That's what the Savior came to do. And not only had Peter to be reminded that there are two worlds, not one. The church stands between the both, but there are two ages of time. There is the present age, there is the coming age. Messiah came the first time in what the Bible calls this age, this present world, and men rejected him. But listen to what he says. The Son of Man, he says, shall come again with all the glory of the eternal angels. Christ is coming again. There's not just one age, there are two ages. First age, Christ came the first time. There will be an age to come when the blessed Lord returns. Oh, make what you will, what you can. God doesn't want to keep you down. Make what you can of this age. And know this, it's only temporary. Our world waits the promise coming again of Jesus Christ, God's Son. To get ourselves ready for that coming is life's chief business. Hear how the Apostle Paul understood it, exactly the same way as Peter understood it. Hear it from the way he was commonly wont to preach the gospel. Writing to some of his recent converts, he said, this is what happened when you got converted to Christ. This is what it means to become a member of a true Christian church. What is it? You turn to God from idols to serve the living and the true God, and... to wait for his son from heaven. And what are you waiting for? I'm waiting till I can get a mortgage, actually. I'm waiting till I get a house. I'm waiting till I get married. I'm waiting till I get my business established. I'm waiting till I get through my degree course. Yes, all good and proper hope. God bless you. If that's all you're waiting for, you'll miss life's purpose. What you should be waiting for primarily is that Christ is coming again. Oh, I know what you'll say. At least I know what a lot of people do say and what they tell me. Preaching about heaven, they say. Preaching about the second coming. That's, that's not really relevant to our modern world, my good man. That's all pie in the sky at the best. In fact, it's a form of escapism, and really the church would make a better impression if she left off talking about heaven. Who knows about heaven anyway? Let it come if ever it comes. The church's real business, they say, is to be in politics, to improve man's social condition. Now, and if only the church gave herself to that, she would make a great deal more impression. All this talk of heaven, after all, is escapism. Or is it really? I want to tell you it is those who are not ready for the second coming of Christ that are the escapists. Madam, you have to go away and leave your home one of these days, you and your husband. What is it? You're visiting your elderly parents in England and looking after them, and your house stands, uh, vacant for six weeks. But you come back one day and find, to your horror, that somebody appears to be in your house. And when you get near it, you find it is so. The door, the front door is locked. Your key won't work it anymore. Lo and behold, a young couple have come and broken into your house and installed themselves as squatters in your house. What to do now? You say I would get the law on them, but the law is rather weak in these things. So you come around to me because I'm a solicitor. You say, I tell you what, I'd like you to go. Do you know what's happened? There's squatters in my house. What, you're going to deal with them? So Ryan and I go to the house, and I open the door, and comes the wife to the door, young dear soul, and her hubby. I say, I'm a solicitor. They say, come in, you're just a person. We want a little advice, you see. Would you help us? You're a good Christian man, aren't you? Now, we've got a little problem with the dam on the wall here. We'd like to get it fixed. Could we get a grant for getting it fixed? And then, if you will, we're having a, to be honest, we're not getting on, our marriage isn't working too well. Could you give us a little marriage counsel advice, perhaps, so we'll be a little bit happier in our new home? And I say, well, my dears, I'd do any of these things for you in their proper term, but you know, there's a prior thing you need to get settled. Oh, what's that? Why, this isn't your house, is it? Has the owner said you could, uh, be in this house? Haven't you got to get that settled first? Are you in on proper terms with the owner? We don't care about the owner. We're not interested in the owner. Whether there's an owner or not. What we're interested in is you turn the damp on the wall, and it's spoiling the wallpaper. Now come on, you could, uh, help us a lot if you would get yourself down to those practical things. And what would you have me say? I know I should be tempted to say, I say, look here, you can't afford to live escapist like that. You know jolly well this isn't your house. And just try to forget about the owner and what the owner will do one day, while you busy yourself with the wallpaper. That's putting your head in the sand. If you can put what locks you like on the front door, one day the authorities will come. And you'll have to meet the owner. Oh friend, you may think my parable is not good. It isn't good compared to the one of all Jesus told. He said about his nation, uh, that they were like farmers, husbandmen, market garden owners. And a certain man had planted a vineyard, and he'd lent it out to husbandmen. And he himself had gone into a far country. And presently he sent servants to collect the rent and the rates of the people that he had left in charge. But they got it into their head. It was their place. So they kicked the servants out. Last of all, the master, the owner of the vineyard, sent his son, saying, surely they'll reverence my son. They got behind the glass houses as they saw him coming down the road, and they said, hi, this is the, this is the heir, isn't it? And they picked up a slate or two and a bit of glass and a stone. They said, get rid of him and we can own the place. They killed him and slung him out. What do you suppose the owner of the vineyard will do, said Christ? Whether it be the Jewish nation, whether it be the world at large, whether it be our own private life. Here is our basic trouble. Old friend, you know it's true, don't you? Stop being escapist. Let's face a fact or two. You make yourself. Did you? Did you make this world that you now inhabit? Did you? What is the use shutting your eyes to the fact that you're in somebody else's house? And let me ask you, how are you getting on with the owner. You see, this is our world's prime problem. It has ten thousand and one secondary problems. Its prime problem is this, is trying to live as if there were no owner. When Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, came, he came to tell us that there is. There is another world. He is the Father's Son, and he's come to claim his world. Men have thrown him out. They try to make out it's all escapism, thinking of heaven and the second coming. This is escapism, friend. This is the reality. For one day, Jesus Christ shall come again. Come to take over. What is it? Let me forget about the world for a moment. Let me ask myself, and you ask yourself. If Christ this night came to the door of my guy and put his key in the door, wanting to come, do you find it open? Will he find himself open? Or will he find my heart shut against him? What am I to do about it? How can I get ready for his coming? How can I become a true member of his church? Let Matthew tell us. First, by telling us exactly who Jesus Christ is. Then... what we have to do to get right with him. Who is he? Our Lord Jesus, to help his disciples understand what he was saying, that there are really two worlds and two ages, took them presently up a very high mountain. There was transfigured the form. What a tremendous experience it was. How enlightening. How it put everything into a different perspective. Why, down here in this world, Peter was becoming very uncomfortable. The scribes and the Pharisees and the leaders of the Jewish nation were beginning to whisper into Peter's ear, now, Peter, a little religion, my boy, is not too bad, you know, and it's fair, it's kept in proportion, but aren't you taking things a bit too far, my good man? You mean giving up your business and following this Jesus? You know, we'll have to tell you, Peter, we don't like your Jesus particularly, Peter. Indeed, if he comes to Jerusalem again and begins to spread his doctrines, we shall see that his campaign is stopped, for we shall crucify him. Peter? Gently advise you, old man. Don't listen to that Jesus. He'll ruin your life. You won't have fun. You won't be a success. Don't you follow that Jesus, for all the time and energy and love you invest in him, we're telling you now, will be lost. Isn't that what the world whispers in your ear? And sometimes it seems so convincing. Isn't all of time with the world? Oh, Christmas time, perhaps it's not bad seeing a camel or two, or even at Easter, maybe. An Easter egg can be eaten with some enjoyment, and uh... Well, Whitson, but really to take Christ seriously. Have you ever felt the... the power of the world's argument? It would be losing your life to invest it in Christ. Might send you out as a missionary or something instead of becoming the leader in your profession in this country. Might make you feel you had to come to the prayer meetings of the church when you could be out playing tennis. Might bring you into all sorts of restrictions, cutting down your fun, making it difficult in business. The world never whispered it through. It was whispering it to Peter when Christ took him up the Transfiguration mountain. Oh yeah, says Matthew. Oh, there's another world up here. A world of glory. And they watched until the face of the Savior was transfigured like the sun in its strength. There was Moses, the great lawgiver, and there was Elijah. For this was the great world of eternity and ultimate reality. And as they watched, awestruck, there came a cloud, and out of that cloud a voice that Peter to his dying day remembered vividly as when he heard it. The voice of Almighty God saying, Peter, you listen to my son, Peter. I don't know what the world is whispering to you this night, but I do know what God is trying to say to you. Oh, friend, if the world is telling you, don't take Christ seriously, don't you listen to him, he might ruin your life. God Almighty is saying to you. This is my beloved son. You hear him? I shall one day give him the whole of this earth for his possessions, the uttermost part of the earth for his inheritance. This is my son, in whom I made all the worlds and the vast worlds that were in space, to him I made them. Would you know, says God, why I made Alpha Centaurus? Would you know why I made the cloud dust in all the great, uh, constellations of the universe? Do you know why I made them? I made them for him. Made them as his toys, made them for his glory. Every blade of grass on this earth, says God, I made for Jesus Christ, my son. Hear him. Who gets this world is out of sorts with God. It's obvious, isn't it? If the world is saying, don't you listen to him, Peter, and God is saying, listen to him, Peter. It's obvious that the world is out of sorts with God. This world is out of sorts with that world. Quite obvious that you won't live for both worlds simultaneously. And you'll have to make a choice. You live for this world, or you live for Christ. Live for this world. Let it be that Christ is not the center of your life. And you'll gain your life in this world. But you'll lose it in that world. Live for that world. Let your whole life revolve around Christ and the service of Christ. You'll lose your life in this world as men count it, and you'll keep it for that world. What's the profit? If you gain this, your life in this world, you do gain the whole world itself and lose your soul in another world. Who is this Jesus Christ? Not only the one for whom all was made. Look, uh, there came a moment up the mountain when Peter was so impressed that he had a suggestion to make. I hope he's got over the habit, for otherwise he'd be suggesting operations in heaven itself. But said he to Christ, uh, let's, uh, make three tabernacles here, three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. One, one, one. So Jesus Christ and Moses and Elijah were all of the same rank and significance. In fact, God himself protested and sent a cloud and said, Peter, you listen to my son. And when the cloud went, Moses was gone and Elijah was gone. You see, Jesus Christ isn't just another Moses, and he's certainly not another, not a another Elijah merely. Moses was the great lawgiver, but his function down the centuries was to be our schoolmaster, that he might bring us to Christ. When he's done that, his job is done. Good old Moses. How he does put the placards around the place, doesn't he? Just when you're going to do a little bit of stealing of somebody's time that isn't yours, then Moses puts a placard, says this will be prosecuted or something, thou shalt not steal. That's when you're coveting somebody else's something, Moses comes and put a placard and says, thou shalt not covet. It's like this, uh, you're out for a day's outing, and you, uh, in the country, of course, you come across a lovely piece of grass, and there's a river, and you say, now this is what I've been looking for. Oh, what a lovely place to fish. Does it belong to anybody? Can't see any house around here. No, I think this belongs to everybody equally. So across the grass you go, and you go to the river and fish, and presently, an hour or two having gone by, you fill your sack of fish, you're being very pleased, and you're walking across the grass bed. You come to some notice, please keep off the grass. Oh, oh. Oh, perhaps this isn't common then. Perhaps this is private. You know, what's that on the tree there? Cacard fishing private. She said it must be somebody's place. Goodness, what if I should meet the owner? Is this somebody's estate? And here my bag is full of fish. There's the old prohibition, the labels, the law. Bring to your mind the fact there's an owner, and you have trespass. Before you get out of the gate, you may have to meet him. That was what Moses came to do. To put a blue flag placard around our world, to tell us that this world isn't ours, to warn us that we have treasures, thus to bring us to Christ. You say, well, Christ is the last one I want to meet. Yes, I have treasures. Do anything but meet him. I prefer to run away. Our Moses has made you feel your guilt. That's good. Let Elijah do something else for you. Elijah? Every Jew is expecting that before the Messiah came again, God would send Elijah to convert the people and prepare them for the coming of Messiah. They got that idea from what Elijah had done beforehand in history. You remember the story, won't you? How when the people had gone astray from God and got themselves mixed up with all sorts of horrible idolatries and departed from the living God and had fallen under danger of the judgment of God, then came Elijah to bring that people back to God. And how pray did he do it? While on Mount Carmel, he offered a sacrifice. And as he stood by that sacrifice, he called on the man of the living God, oh God, show this people that you're real. Not only that, but show them that in such a way as will bring their hearts back to you. Elijah. But you know he was only a forerunner and a prototype, wasn't he? Let that good man, that good prophet, point you to Christ. Why did Christ come? Into a world of guilty squatters. Living without God. Living to please themselves. Living as though this world were their world, their little self-contained flat. Why did the Son of God come? That we might have a chance to meet the owner. Whose law we have broken. Ah, but more than that. That he might show us what God is really like and turn our hearts back to God. That's why he came. Why must the Son of Man be crucified, old friend, to show you what God is like? Trying to live as though he didn't exist. Trying to keep him outside the door of your heart and the flat of your life. Because you think he's going to be a tyrant. Christ came to show you what God is like and bring your heart back again. How should he do it? Well, God doesn't know any better way than this, Raymond. His own son. Dying on Calvary. Go on, kick him. Make it clear to him that you are his enemy. That's what God is like. God is like this. They'd be die for you. That's what God is like. While we were enemies, God commended his love towards us, and Christ died for us. To bring us back to sense, to show us where our salvation is. What have I got to do, say, to get this, this Jesus Christ in, to get right with God, to get right with that other world, to get right with God? What have I got to do? Three things, friend. Simple they are, but we better take them slowly. Because people have become confused about them. Said our Lord Jesus, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself. Take up his own cause. And follow me. That's what we've now got to do. How, you say, I recognize that this is Lent, isn't it, after all? Mr. Preacher, you're preaching a Lenten sermon. We now perceive it after all this long while. You're coming around to preach a Lenten sermon and to tell us to deny ourselves, to go without some sugar in our tea, maybe, or something like this for the period of Lent. I'm telling you no such thing, friend. That's footing about. There are more serious things to be done. Take up your cross, you say. Well, you say I have a crotchety old grandmother, and she is such a trial. She's my cross. Oh, don't talk nonsense. No, you say I got the arthritis, but I try to bear it nicely and pleasantly. And that's my cross. That's foolish. Nothing to do with your cross. What does it mean to take up your cross? What does it mean for Christ when they put a cross upon him? They put a cross on him because they had condemned him to death. And they had denied the holy and the just. He was absolutely holy and absolutely just, but they denied him. He never denied himself, did he? Not Jesus Christ. He made many sacrifices, he never once denied himself. It's impossible for him to deny himself, says Scripture. He was holy, he never denied it. He was just, he never denied it. He never once admitted to any sin, nor confessed any sin. That holy Savior, men denied him. And they said he was a criminal, worthy of death, and they bar a great cross and they put it on him. You will notice he never picked it up. Never once did he take up his own cross. Never once did he admit he was guilty, but they put it on him and then crucified him on it. Would you get right with him? Then says Christ, what you'll have to do is take up your own cross. Don't wait for anybody to put it on you. Take it up yourself. You say, but am I bad enough for that? You are indeed. Oh, friend, now I counsel you. Your world, your parents maybe, your school teacher, your friends will say, don't be so silly. You're a nice girl. You're a pleasant. Oh yes, you've got one or two little faults, but you're not that bad. Do the best you can and you'll arrive in God's heaven, surely. Oh, friend, I must warn you, you carry on that way, you'll end in God's hell. The situation gray is grave. Pray, why did Christ die for us? Because we are sinners exposed to God law. Let the world tonight tell you that you're not so bad. Friends, you'll have to deny it. You'll have to deny yourself. You'll have to say, no, no, no, I do not deserve God's heaven. I am not righteous. I am not good. I deserve to be condemned by God's holy law. And what's more, if Jesus Christ hadn't have died for me, I must have died myself. You will have to take up your own cross and say before heaven, earth, and hell, that's me, a sinner, condemned, unclean, and worthy of God's condemnation. Friend, if you will deny yourself like that and take out your cross, the moment you take it out and admit yourself worthy of condemnation and death, Jesus Christ will be alongside you to bear the cross for you, so that you may go free. It's at Calvary's cross, as the chorus has it, there's a way back to God from the dark paths of sin, there's a door that is open, and all may go in at Calvary's cross. Is where you begin when you come as a sinner to Jesus. Then do it now. Jesus Christ has died on a cross. Come tell the world why it is. Oh, I think I would have to do it now. Hadn't I done it before? I want to tell you, men and women. I want to tell you, do you know why Jesus Christ, God's son, died spiked to a cross? I want to tell you now, he did not deserve it. It was I who deserved it. Say, but you weren't so bad, were you? I was indeed. I'm not exaggerating. It was I who deserved to be there, and I want you to understand it. I take up my cross, and Jesus bore it for me. Why did Jesus Christ die, friends? How is it between you and him? Did he die for his own sin? No, you say he died for mine. Then, friend, tell the world. Tell God. Deny your own merit. Take up your cross and come daily and follow the Savior.