But repentance is where God opens your eyes to His holiness, and He opens your eyes so
that the least sin in your life becomes a vulgar thing that you can see should condemn
you to hell.
I was preaching one time years ago in Ohio, of all places.
And right after I got through preaching, this little boy, nine years old, he gets up and
he starts walking down the aisle like this.
And I came down and I said, young man, what has happened?
He goes, can God save a wicked boy like me?
And I said, what have you done?
I have disobeyed my mother.
Now, don't laugh.
I want to tell you what God was doing.
God was doing something that needs to happen to every one of us.
God was showing that little boy that that one sin was vile enough to condemn him to
hell throughout all eternity without Jesus Christ.
God was making sin real to that boy.
It wasn't just, do you know your sinner?
Well, yeah.
Everybody is.
No, that wasn't it.
God was impressing upon that boy's heart, you are a sinner.
And the way you treat your mother makes you worthy of death, and you need Christ to escape
condemnation.
Let me give you a perfect example.
One of my favorite guys in history, Martin Luther.
What's happening to him?
He's a priest, but he's bothered by something.
What?
God was dealing with his heart.
What?
He is bothered.
I mean, he's almost out of his mind because he's realizing in Scripture God is holy, and
you can't approach him if you have one sin.
God is just, and he will condemn the wicked.
And Luther, seeming the only person just about on the planet, is going, but I'm a sinner.
Does anyone see a problem with this?
See, God was pressing upon his heart what?
The wickedness of sin.
You sin enough by the time you get up in the morning to getting down to breakfast to condemn
your soul to hell forever.
Do you realize that?
That's what Luther realized.
The problem is today, we've taken the gospel and reduced it down to a few little things
that if you say yes at the end of each question, we declare you saved.
But has God ever pressed upon you how vile your sin is?
The condition of your lostness, that you deserve hell.
That's what Luther was going through, and he just started looking at everything in
his life, and if he found one thing that was wrong, he'd go to the priest and he'd confess
it.
Finally, the priest tells him, look, Martin, go out and do something worthy of confessing,
because the priest didn't understand why.
He was lost and in darkness.
But God had opened up his eyes and shown him, you are a sinner.
One sin, Martin Luther, one, not a hundred, not a thousand, one sin will condemn you to
hell forever.
And you say, well, what's the biblical basis of that?
How many times did Adam and Eve sin before God condemned them in the entire human race?
Once.
You see, that's what God, the Spirit of God woke up, a German monk, to understand that
and pressed it upon his heart so much, he almost went crazy.
Until finally, realizing there's absolutely no hope, I cannot save myself, I'm lost, and
if God condemns me right now, he is just in doing so.
And then comes the great declaration, Martin, the just shall live by faith.
And the glory of what God did for him on the cross was opened up, and he looked at that
and found salvation.
Now, there's an eternities of difference between Martin Luther saying justification
by faith and what most people do today.
They have no knowledge of their sin.
They don't think there's anything really bad about them.
Jesus is just all right with me.
Sure I'll believe in him.
And they believe in him, supposedly, and that's it, and I'm saved.
There's been no true working of the Spirit of God in their heart.
God has never pressed upon them the weight of their sin.
They've never feared judgment.
They've never thought about how wicked they are.
They've never seen Christ as precious for this reason.
I call up Bill Gates and ask him out for dinner, invite him over to the house and give him
fruit loops or a piece of ham.
He's probably not going to kiss my hands for the generous offering I've granted him.
But I've worked in many places around this world where if I gave someone a piece of ham,
they would drop down on their hands and knees and kiss my feet.
Why?
Because they were starving and they were needy and they were dying.
You see, most young people and old people in this little evangelical thing we got going
in America, Christ is not precious to them.
I had a reporter come up to me one time and he said, Why are you always preaching about sin?
And I said, Because I want you to love God.
He was so mad at me.
He said, What do you mean?
I said, You don't love God much.
Because you don't realize how much God has forgiven you and you don't realize how much God
has forgiven you because you don't know how sinful you are and you don't know how sinful
you are because no one's told you the truth like me.
You see, salvation is not just you said yes to a few questions.
Salvation is a supernatural work of God whereby when the gospel is preached to you, you are
struck by the greatness and the majesty and the holiness and the justice of God.
And you are struck by your own sin and your wickedness and your wretchedness and your
vileness and you are put to silence because you realize there is not one thing you can
offer God in order to make peace between both of you.
And then your eyes are opened up to the cross of Jesus Christ where he shed his blood for
you and recognizing that everything else in your life is dung, you cling to one hope,
Jesus Christ died for me.
And you trust in that.
Then, if you truly trust, here is the big question, isn't it?
We could dismiss this group right now and go out into this county and we could go into
every tavern, every seedy place in this whole place and just about everybody is going to
be saved.
Isn't that wonderful?
And you know why?
Because of bad preaching, deceiving preaching, that is why.
They think they are saved because if they are Baptist, one time in their life they prayed
a prayer and asked Jesus to come into their heart.
Lutheran, Catholic, whatever, I got baptized, went through confirmation, I did this, I did
that.
But the Bible says, you believe?
You really believe?
Well, congratulations, the demons believe too and they have more piety than you, they
tremble.
You don't even tremble.
Your faith is no better than that of a demon.
You say, but I confess Jesus with my mouth.
You know what your confession of faith is worth?
Zero.
And I can prove it to you.
Jesus said, many will come before me on that day and say, Lord, Lord.
And I said, depart from me, I never knew you.
They confessed him.
And in the Hebrew, even though it was written in Greek, the Aramaic, the Hebrew thought
behind that is this idea.
The Hebrews repeat stuff to emphasize it.
So what he is saying is, even though you emphatically declared me to be Lord, not just hidden about
it, but you emphatically declared me to be Lord, I never knew you.
So here is the million dollar question.
If we believe in Jesus, we are saved, you are absolutely right.
But here is the question.
How do you know you believe?
Demons believe and they are not saved.
So how do you know that you believe?
Well, most people say, well, I know I believe because I know that I know that I know that
I know.
Really.
My heart tells me I am saved.
The Bible says, heart can be deceitfully wicked.
It is so wicked that no one can know it.
Well, I think I am saved.
The Bible says there is a way that seems right unto a man and it leads to death.
Well, I experienced all kinds of goosebumps.
I did too when I caught the bird flu one time.
All right.
So how do you know that you believe?
Yes, I agree with you.
Salvation by faith, by trusting in Christ.
But how do you know you trust in Him?
Where is your evidence?
Do you know what most people's evidence is?
It is this.
Well, I prayed and asked Him to come into my heart.
And He said, behold, I stand at the door and knock, if anyone hears my voice, I will open
the door and he can come in.
There is only one problem.
That is not what that verse means.
Jesus is knocking on the door of a church.
He is not knocking on the door of a sinner's heart.
That is not what that text means.
As a matter of fact, the Bible never says that someone gets saved because they open
up their heart.
The Bible says that God opened up Lydia's heart and she was saved because God did it.
How do you know yourself?
Well, I made my decision.
And?
What decision?
Well, I know I know Him, but does He know you?
I can walk up to the White House tonight and try to get in there and they are going to
arrest me.
And I can say, well, I know George Bush.
And they are going to say, we don't care.
But if George Bush walks out of the White House and points to me and says, I know Paul
Washer, I am going in.
So, see, it is not so important that I say I know George Bush.
The question is, does George Bush know me?
Same way with glory.
I know Jesus.
Whoopee!
Does Jesus know you?