To be trusted to teach the truth may be the highest honor a person can be given.
As a pastor who teaches, not preaches, not screams, I take very seriously the trust people give me each and every week as they listen to me teach the Scriptures.
This trust is never more important than when it comes to the issues of life and death; more importantly the issues and truths that surround death.
We live in a day where religious teachers, it seems en masse, feel the need to forge and form a more palatable message of the gospel. It is good news without bad news. It is heaven without hell, hope without loss, and a sacrifice that’s not really needed. Or is it?
Today as we closed this series, “Fear Less, Live More; How to Get Through Life in One Peace,” I dealt with facing your irrational fear of death; more importantly, what’s after death. Can we know absolutely without a doubt, that we’re going to heaven, that there is a heaven that there is such a place as hell or at least a concept of eternal separation from God? Who knows these things? Who can be sure about these truths?
Well, all of us can know them, and all of us can be sure because the truth about these future realities are contained in the sacred Scriptures; those Scriptures which have been preserved providentially over time, in spite of opposition, in spite of hatred, anger, and all the diabolical plans of hell that have been thrown toward trying to destroy the credibility of the Scriptures and the Scriptures themselves.
Maybe this is the most important talk I’ve delivered in years, maybe ever. Because it really gets to the nitty-gritty of how you can absolutely, positively know for sure where you stand with God, what to expect with death, and more importantly, what to expect after death.
Anyone who tells you that you can’t be sure, that you can’t know about the future, about heaven, hell, and all truths in between is lying to you. You can know. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son hath not life. At the end of the day, God wins. It’s His world. It will be His way. And when you really look into the depths of that way, it is an amazing way. That’s why we call it amazing grace.