I was thinking about this this past week also. I was reading in Genesis, and there's a story
of Cain and Abel, where Cain gives an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel gives
of the first things of his flock. And this is a great symbolism for salvation. Probably
a lot of us understand that. Where the fruit of the ground is your works, and
the first things of the flock are required animal sacrifice, which picture Jesus Christ.
So Cain is basically symbolically working his way to heaven, and then Abel is trusting
in the future coming Messiah. I thought about it, and Abel gave the first things of his
flock. Cain just brought of the fruit of the ground, the Bible says. It doesn't say
he brought the best. What's interesting is people that believe in repentance of sins
for salvation, they usually aren't offering anything special to God. People that trust
in their works to be saved, it's like, you're drunk. You're trusting in your works to save
you. It's like you don't even have impressive works. I mean, literally, people that are
trusting in their works to save them, it's not impressive what they're offering
to God. They're not bringing the first of the fruits. They're just bringing their
works that are just not impressive at all. They don't read the Bible every day. They
don't go to church every week. They don't go sowing. They're not living a clean
life. And they're like, yeah, you know what, you've got to live a good life to go to heaven.
You know, if that was the case, and you are the standard for what good is, then
everybody in this room is already good to go. Because the average person
trusting in their works to get to heaven, they don't have impressive
works. But here's the thing. When you determine what's required to go to
heaven, you always set the bar low enough so you can hop over. I mean, if
you're not living a very clean life at all, you set it really low. If you're a
drunk, let's just set it a little bit lower because I got to make sure I get
over there. Right? This is why some people get mad when you take the
authority out of their hands and they realize, well, actually it's about
what Jesus Christ did because they no longer can set the bar of what they
have to do to get to heaven. But the reality is, and obviously there are
exceptions to this, in general though, people that think you have to live a
good life to get to heaven, they don't have impressive works to show. And
sometimes you talk to people. You go to some of these low-income
places where people have a lot of vices and they gamble and drink and smoke
all their money away. And they're usually not receptive. And it's
shocking. It's like you would think you'd be so happy to find out it's by
faith alone. It's like, nope, you got to live a good life. It's like, what? You think
you'd be happy by this message. And yet that's usually not what you find.
People that are trusting in their works to get to heaven, they usually don't
have impressive works to show. And that's just reality in most cases.