-
What is your life?
-
It is a vapor.
-
The Bible says your life
-
is like a puff of steam.
-
There for a moment, and then it's gone.
-
My name is Kevin.
-
I grew up in Manchester in England
-
in the seventies,
-
into a background in those days,
-
you were either considered
a Roman Catholic,
-
or like us, we were considered an Anglican
-
which is Church of England now.
-
We never went to church.
-
All that means is I was
christened as a child.
-
Infant baptism is a big ritual there.
-
It's a big superstition.
-
People believe that you
can't get into heaven
-
without some sort of infant ritual.
-
So the only times in my childhood
-
I set foot in a church
-
was at one of these christenings
-
or was at somebody's wedding.
-
And then, when I got to secondary school
-
or high school
-
I just professed to be an atheist
-
back in those days.
-
Really, even though I didn't know much
-
about the Bible back then,
-
and I didn't know much about Jesus Christ
-
I did really know one thing.
-
I knew deep down it was all true
-
even in the days when I professed
-
to be an atheist.
-
There was just something inside of me -
-
a nagging thought - my conscience
-
which told me it was all true.
-
And so as time went on,
-
I left school and I just became
-
a big sinner.
-
I drank up as much sin as I could
-
in various ways.
-
And I did things which are
real shameful to speak about
-
in that time.
-
And so time went on and I became
-
a worse and worse sinner.
-
And I got to my mid-twenties,
-
and I started asking those questions
-
that everybody asks at some point in life.
-
Why are we here
-
and what happens when this life is over?
-
And I would philosophize.
-
I remember each day
-
I would just philosophize more and more.
-
And I'd come up with the silliest
interpretations of things.
-
This would keep on going.
-
But I knew there was a God at this time.
-
I just looked at the whole creation,
-
the Bible says, declares His handiwork.
-
And my conscience again
just keeps telling me
-
this is true.
-
At first, I would look at other religions.
-
I wanted to become
anything but a Christian.
-
And I remember, I looked
at things like Buddhism.
-
But it was just all fairy tale stuff.
-
It was just nonsense really.
-
And then eventually,
-
I started to open the Bible and look at it
-
as like a history book.
-
It was an old Bible that was passed down
-
in the family from my granddad,
-
and I just started in Genesis 1:1,
-
"In the beginning, God created
-
the heavens and the earth."
-
And I just kept on reading
-
and it seemed to make sense.
-
Now, I didn't really
understand it at that time,
-
and I was trying to interpret it
-
through my atheistic
worldview I still had.
-
Even though I wasn't an atheist,
-
I still had a naturalistic worldview.
-
I remember reading about
-
the manna in the desert.
-
I was thinking, well, that must be snow.
-
These people must not really understand -
-
these primitive people.
-
But I still knew it was all true.
-
And about the same time,
-
I started to go to a high Anglican church,
-
which is basically like Catholicism
-
but without the Pope.
-
It's all prayer book rituals.
-
The sermons there were
only 10 to 15 minutes.
-
And there wasn't really
the Gospel preached there -
-
the message of how to get saved.
-
And what truth I did hear there
-
was all surrounded in hypocrisy.
-
It was all filtered through that.
-
Now, I was doing things in that time
-
that I just become
more and more religious.
-
I thought I was a Christian
for about six years.
-
I went to that church,
-
but I never knew Jesus Christ.
-
I never really knew Him.
-
But there was so much hypocrisy going on.
-
For instance, me myself,
-
you would have thought
-
that for an hour and a half on a Sunday
-
I was deeply religious.
-
But for the rest of the week,
-
I just lived like a complete hypocrite.
-
You know, I'd go to nightclubs and things
-
and do shameful things
-
and then I'd be in church on a Sunday.
-
Now, I knew that was wrong,
-
but I'd look at other people in the church
-
and they'd be getting blind drunk as well
-
on a Saturday night.
-
And I'd just think, well,
they've been Christians
-
longer than me.
-
So this time just went
on and on like this.
-
Eventually, I always knew
-
that there was something
more to Christianity
-
that I didn't have.
-
Now, of course, it was Jesus Christ,
-
because in this time,
-
God was just always a distant deity to me.
-
I didn't really know Him.
-
I had a cliche - I would say,
-
I've got a relationship with Jesus.
-
Christianity is a relationship with Jesus,
-
but I didn't really know Him.
-
And so I started to listen to sermons
-
and messages and look at teachings
-
outside of the church I was in.
-
And I was going through a series
-
on the Sermon on the Mount,
-
and then one day I sat in the garden
-
listening to a sermon
-
and I heard the words of Jesus
-
from Matthew 5:27-30
-
where Jesus said, "You have heard
-
that it was said of old,
-
'you shall not commit adultery,'
-
but I say unto you, if you look at a woman
-
to lust after her,
-
you've already committed adultery with her
-
in your heart."
-
And Jesus went on to say there,
-
"cast your eye out, because it is better
-
to enter heaven with one eye
-
than to enter hell with both."
-
Now, the context there
is of course adultery.
-
It's not saying it's a sin
-
for a man to have sexual
desire for his wife
-
and vice versa,
-
but Jesus does clearly say in those verses
-
that to lust over someone
you're not married to
-
is a sin that will surely take you to hell
-
if it's not repented of.
-
Now, I had heard those
verses many times before.
-
And in fact, I remember discussing it
-
only a few weeks earlier.
-
I explained them away every time
-
saying surely it doesn't mean
-
what He says there
-
because everybody does that.
-
Everybody just lusts all the time.
-
But that day, when I
heard those words of Jesus,
-
I knew He meant what He said.
-
I knew for the first time,
-
I realized that God was a holy God
-
Who I could no longer play games with.
-
And in all this, it just felt like
-
the love of Jesus Christ
-
because I realized that God could have
-
killed me.
-
I mean, my life is in His hands,
-
and He could have killed me
-
and put me in hell a week before,
-
or a year before or two years before,
-
knowing the shameful things I did.
-
And He would have been
perfectly just in doing so.
-
But the kindness and
the long-suffering of God
-
which is meant to lead
a person to repentance,
-
led me to repentance,
-
because I just saw the great love of God.
-
And I'd been mocking Him for so long
-
and playing games with God.
-
And He just loved me.
-
And He just died for me.
-
In 2 Corinthians 5:21, the Bible says,
-
"He Who knew no sin became sin for us
-
that we might become
-
the righteousness of God."
-
Jesus Christ on a cross 2,000 years ago,
-
He became a sin offering for us.
-
He became a sin offering for me.
-
He died in my place.
-
And on that cross,
-
all the guilt of my sin,
-
the shame of my sin,
-
just all my wrongdoings I ever did
-
were placed upon Jesus on that cross.
-
Not only did Jesus pay for that,
-
and take away all my sin,
-
so there is therefore now
-
no condemnation left for me
-
because Christ has already been condemned
-
in my place.
-
But He also lived a
righteous and perfect life.
-
You see, the greatest commandment
-
in Scripture we are told
-
is to love God the Father
with all our heart,
-
soul, mind, and strength
-
and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
-
Now, in the life of Jesus,
-
He always perfectly loved God the Father
-
with all His heart,
soul, mind, and strength
-
and He always perfectly loved His neighbor
-
as Himself for every
millisecond of His life.
-
But since becoming a Christian,
-
we never do that for even one second.
-
We never perfectly love God.
-
But from the moment
I believed on Jesus Christ;
-
from the moment I saw
His great love for me,
-
then not only was all my sin gone,
-
gone forever,
-
as far as the east is from the west
-
the Bible says,
-
He remembers our sin no more,
-
but God now looks at me
-
as if I have lived the perfect,
-
righteous life of Jesus Christ.
-
So, God now looks at me and says
-
this is My beloved son,
-
in whom I am well pleased.
-
The cross of Jesus Christ
-
is such a wonderful thing.
-
There's an old hymn that goes,
-
Oh my sin, oh the joy
of this glorious thought;
-
my sin, not in part,
not just part of my sin,
-
but the whole,
-
is nailed to the cross
-
and I bear it no more.
-
Praise the Lord!
-
Praise the Lord, O my soul!
-
And if you don't know Jesus,
-
if you were like me
-
with just not knowing your sin's forgiven,
-
not really knowing God,
-
then I plead with you,
-
Jesus really paid it all
for you on that cross.
-
He paid every drop of my wrath in hell.
-
All of my hell Jesus
paid for on the cross.
-
That is what He did for us.
-
If you will come to Him,
-
if you will surrender to Him,
-
I plead with you,
-
Jesus - He doesn't want part of your life.
-
He wants all of your life.
-
And He is so worthy.
-
He is so good. He is so kind.
-
All together lovely.
-
I had no life.
-
I just had a miserable, worthless,
-
and pathetic life
-
for so much of my life.
-
I wasted so much of my life.
-
But it was by coming to Jesus Christ
-
that I now have true joy,
-
true peace of the heart,
-
and true life.
-
He offers that to you
-
if you'll come to Him.
-
And He offers that to you this day.
-
You see, the love Jesus has
-
for the believer is just perfect.
-
The Bible says - as Jesus said,
-
"As the Father has loved Me,
-
even so, I have loved you."
-
You know, the Song of Solomon says
-
that Jesus - He comes to the believer
-
leaping across the mountains.
-
After all my sin and all
my shame before God,
-
when I go to Him,
-
Jesus comes running to me
-
with His arms open wide,
-
hands that were pierced for me,
-
with holes in them for my sin.
-
He just comes to us ready to embrace us
-
in His everlasting love for us.
-
Eternity!
-
The next life is forever.
-
there is nothing more important
-
than being right with God
-
for eternity.
-
The Bible says
-
it is appointed unto men
-
once to die, but after this,
-
the judgment.
-
After death, there are no second chances
-
to get right with God.
-
But you must make peace with God
-
before you meet Him.