As David mentioned earlier, the elders here at First Presbyterian Church have been very gracious and generous to give me a sabbatical this summer, which begins on the twenty-second of this month. I am very grateful indeed for their kindness and consideration and while my wife and I will miss being with you all tremendously, I would ask that you pray for us that the Lord would bless this time to us and make it truly restorative. It does mean, of course, that this morning – excuse me – we come to the penultimate sermon in our series considering the teaching of the Bible on the subject of heaven. So far we’ve looked at the history of heaven – it’s creation and its present condition; the future of heaven – when Jesus returns there will be a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth; and we looked at the life of heaven – what will we do, what will be our great preoccupation? We will adore the Lamb who has redeemed us and brought us there.
Today I want to think with you about the way to heaven. The way to heaven. And to help direct our thinking, I’d like you to turn with me please to the gospel of John, chapter 5, beginning at the sixteenth verse, which you can find on page 890 if you’re using one of our church Bibles. Some context. This is part of the first of a series of extended discourses, of speeches given by Christ in John’s gospel. It’s important. And its importance is highlighted by the use of a familiar phrase on the lips of Jesus. “Truly, truly I say to you.” Do you see that? It’s repeated three times – verse 19, verse 24, and verse 25. Whenever Jesus says that, “Truly, truly I say to you,” He’s calling us to sit up and take special notice. This really matters. And He says it here three times over in quick succession. So this really matters.
In context, Jesus is responding to a controversy that has been provoked by His healing of a man on the Sabbath day. To the Jewish authorities, that was a breach of the Sabbath law, at least as they understood it. And they were outraged. Jesus of course had a very different perspective. He consistently taught that the Sabbath is rightly observed not only by rest and worship but by works of necessity and mercy. God is honored on the Sabbath day when we do what we must do and when His heart of love and mercy is reflected in our obedient acts of love and mercy toward others. And that’s what Jesus is doing when He healed this man. It was an act of necessity and mercy. He was keeping the Sabbath as God intended it to be kept and not as the Jewish authorities misunderstood it. Of course the Jews didn’t see it that way. They were spitting mad.
And so to demonstrate to them His right to heal on the Sabbath, Jesus said in verse 17, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” That statement did not mollify them. In fact, all it did was add fuel to the fire because now the Jewish authorities saw very clearly Jesus was making a claim. They understood, verse 18, He was declaring Himself to be equal with God. The same right, the same prerogative that belongs uniquely to God to continue to work, even on the Sabbath, also belongs to Jesus, the Father’s Son. And their minds just explode. They lose it. And notice Jesus doesn’t back down. Actually, He doubles down on His claims so that what follows in our passage provides us with some of the clearest, richest statements of the deity of Jesus Christ anywhere in the Bible. And crucially for our discussion, we are going to see that flowing from the fact of Jesus’ deity is the right and power to bestow upon sinners the gift of eternal life. The possession of heaven, the right to go there, the life that belongs there is in the gift of Jesus Christ alone. If we want eternal life, if we want heaven, we must have Him. We must hear Him and trust Him and receive and rest upon Him.
Now to unpack all of that, I want to do two things with you today. First of all, I want to sketch very simply – I wish we could do much more, but we’ll merely sketch here what we learn about Jesus and the God of heaven. Jesus and the God of heaven. And then we’ll consider Jesus and the way to heaven. So Jesus and the God of heaven, then, Jesus and the way to heaven. Before we do that, let’s bow our heads together and pray and then we’ll read God’s Word. Let us all pray.
Our God and Father, how we praise You that You have sent Your Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God the Son, second person of the blessed Trinity. And He has revealed You to us and now speaks to us still in this portion of Your holy Word. Send us now, we pray, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, third person of the blessed Trinity, to take these words, to give light to our understanding, to apply them to our hearts and lives, to change and remake us after the image of Your Son. For we ask it in His holy name, amen.
John chapter 5 at the sixteenth verse. This is the Word of God:
“And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’
This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.
I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.’”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy Word.
Well this is not a sermon about mothers or even a sermon about Mother’s Day. It’s a sermon about the way to heaven. And I thought about it for about thirty seconds and then I gave up on the attempt to shoehorn Mother’s Day into this passage. Having said that, I do think actually there is a certain appropriateness to this subject for the occasion. After all, for more than a few of us, the mothers for which we give thanks today have gone ahead of us already into heaven. And as we express our gratitude to God for them, don’t we find that we cannot think about them without thinking of the great day to come when we will be reunited with them in the presence of our common Savior in glory. But that means of course that there will be no reunion unless we get right the subject of our study. We need to know the way to heaven. And what’s more, I dare say that nothing would be more joyous, more important to the heart of a Christian mother today than the knowledge that her own children know and take the way to heaven for themselves. If you are not a true Christian today, let me assure you, you can give no greater gift to your believing mother this weekend than the assurance, the confidence that you will join her forever in the glory to come with all the redeemed of the Lord around the throne of God and of the Lamb, adoring Him for His love. Do you know the way to heaven? Do you know the way to heaven? Nothing really could be more important than this.
Jesus and the God of Heaven
Now before we outline the teaching of our text, “On the Way to Heaven,” do notice with me briefly what we learn first of all about Jesus and the God of heaven. In the gospels, Jesus is accused more than once, actually on a number of occasions, of breaking the Sabbath. And in reply, He offers various arguments. Once He pointed to King David who, driven by necessity, did what was otherwise forbidden by the law of Moses to show, Jesus was showing how works of necessity are permissible on the Sabbath. Another time, He reminded His opponents that even they will pull an ox out of a ditch on the Sabbath, which is both an act of necessity and mercy. And so works of mercy and necessity are acceptable to God on this day. On this occasion, however, He ascends far higher, to heights actually so lofty we can only begin to trace their reaches. He points to His perfect equality with the Father in the unity of the blessed Trinity.
Jesus is Equal to the Father in His Rights and Authority
Notice the different ways that He does that in the passage. We don’t have time really to do anything more than list them. First of all, He says He is equal to the Father in His rights and in His authority. Look at verse 17. In response to the accusation of Sabbath breaking, Jesus said, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” The rabbis all agreed that God is always at work, including on the Sabbath day. That was not controversial. What hit them like a physical blow was Jesus saying, “My Father is working and I am working.” He is “My Father.” That means we have the same prerogatives, the same rights to work on this day and on all days. And the Jewish leaders saw immediately the claim He was making, didn’t they? Verse 17. “This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because not only was He breaking the Sabbath” – actually verse 18 – “but He was also calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.” To be a son, in Jewish thought, was to share the nature of the father.
And just to drive the point home a little later on in verse 26, Jesus says, “As the Father has life in Himself” – that is, as the Father does not derive His life from others, as the Father is independent upon the creature, but has His life wholly from Himself – “As the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in Himself.” Insofar as we speak about the being of the Son, we have to say He has life in Himself. Not life from another. Not life derived. Not life contingent. Not created life. But He is life. Life lives naturally in Him, just as it does the Father because the Father and the Son are not two beings, but one being. Not two gods but one God, who together with the Holy Spirit are to be worshiped and adored. And so Jesus is making Himself equal with God in His very being, and therefore in His authority and in His right to work and to act and to do.
Jesus is Equal to the Father in His Works and Operations
You’ll notice He also says He is equal with God in His operations, in His works. Jesus says, “The Father’s work and My work are the same work.” Verse 19, “The Son can do nothing of His own accord, but only what He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all that He is doing.” The Father and the Son are not two independent actors, each fulfilling private agendas, perhaps only coordinating the business of each with the other at best. No, no. Jesus says, “The works of the Son are the Father’s works. All that the Father does, the Son does.” Theologians sometimes call this the doctrine of inseparable operations, that all the works of the Godhead – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – ascribed in Scripture to any one of the three persons, belongs to God as a whole and is the work of all three.
Jesus is Equal to the Father in His Judgments and Honor due to Him
Jesus is equal to the Father in His being and His authority, equal to the Father in His works and operations. He is equal too, notice, in His judgments and in the honor that is due to Him. Look at verses 22 and 23. “For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” The same adoration that is due to the Father is due to the Son because of the judgment the Father executes is entrusted to the Son. You do not worship the Father rightly if you do not worship the Son. You dishonor the Father if you do not properly honor the Son.
Alright, now those are stupendous claims, aren’t they? They’re stupendous. Jesus, remember, is a man, standing on the same dirt, breathing the same air, speaking the same language as the men He is arguing with on that particular Sabbath day, saying to them, “The Father and I are one in authority, in very being and essence, in operations and works, in judgments and even in the honor that we are due.” And they are enraged at these claims. And instead of backing down or softening His point or attempting in some way to appease His opponents, He lifts the curtain for them just a little bit on His true identity and dignity. The man that provokes their rage is the one before whom He says they should prostrate themselves in wonder, before whom they should marvel and honor Him with the same honor they give to the Father Himself.
Now you may be wondering at this point why this is all so important for us as we think about the way to heaven. Why are we camped out here on the person of Jesus Christ? Well you will remember, if you have been with us in the weeks prior to this one, we have been insisting, haven’t we, that the thing that makes heaven, heaven, the glory and the beauty of heaven and the joy of every resident there is the presence of the exalted Christ. “The Lamb,” remember Rutherford’s hymn, “The Lamb is all the glory of Immanuel’s land.” Jesus’ glorious face will fill our eyes and hold our adoring gaze. And so doesn’t it make sense that He should – if this is who He is – the divine Son, second person of the blessed Trinity, made flesh for us and for our salvation – doesn’t it make sense that He Himself should also be the way to heaven? The big point behind everything that Jesus is saying here is that this Son – glorious, almighty, divine – this Son has come. He has come down. In John 5, it’s not yet the exalted Christ who speaks, Christ ascended to heavenly glory, is it? It’s the same Jesus, of course, but it’s Jesus Christ in His humiliation who speaks. Christ in the modesty of His earthly ministry who speaks. Christ come among us as one of us to seek and to save the lost. And He is about to explain, as the ultimate expression and demonstration of His divine prerogatives, He is about to explain the way to heaven.
But before we get into the details of what He says, the big idea of the passage is really very simple and very clear. He Himself is the way to heaven. That’s why He came. He says as much, doesn’t He, in John 14:6. You remember it? “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except by Me.” And so listen, as you think about the way to heaven today, please don’t look for steps to take or tasks to perform or concepts, ideas to embrace or rituals to conduct or behavior to modify. It is not your religious activity or your moral change that will bring you to heaven. It is always Christ Himself. There is no way for you to ascend to heaven. Heaven must come down in pursuit of you, and it has in the Lord Jesus Christ. His glory and honor. His dignity and deity. His unity and equality with the Father and the Spirit in the blessed Trinity. His humanity and sufferings. His obedience and death. His love for sinners. That infinite God should be united to finite man, in Him, that the divine Lawmaker should become a human lawkeeper in Him, that the living God who has life in Himself should bleed and die in Him – all of that is the center and the ground of our hope, the only hope of heaven that is given to us. A Christianity that does not center on knowing and trusting this Jesus cannot inherit an eternity where Jesus is the sun and the moon and all the glory of heaven. And so first, do you see it? Jesus and the God of heaven. How very important to understand who He is and rest and trust in Him.
Jesus and the Way to Heaven
The Source of Eternal Life
Now we are in a position to see what Jesus teaches us about the way to heaven. Jesus and the way to heaven. We’ve already actually begun to describe the central and most important part of this. The source of eternal life – Jesus Himself. Verse 21 makes the point even more explicitly. Look at verse 21, “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom He will.” The sovereign Son gives life to whom He will. You want eternal life in heaven? You must get it from the hand of Jesus Christ. It is available nowhere else. There is one outlet in all the universe where you can get your hands on eternity, on heaven, on eternal life – the nail-pierced hands of Jesus Christ. The source.
The Instrument of Eternal Life
Notice also the instrument of eternal life. Verses 24 and 25, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” Now the tenses of verse 24 are important. Look at verse 24 again. Whoever hears and believes the Word already has eternal life. He already has passed from death into life. The point is, Jesus gives life as His sovereign gift and the evidence of life – not its cause but its evidence – is that we believe. We don’t come to life by believing, but everyone who has eternal life believes. Breathing does not cause – moms, you remember in the delivery room as you give birth to your firstborn child, their breath is not the cause of their life, but the evidence of their life is that first lung full of air and that first wail as they enter the world. There is no life without breath. Faith does not cause new life, but there can be no life without faith in the word of the Gospel. In the instant that new life erupts into a dead sinner’s heart by the sovereign gift of Jesus Christ and the mighty work of the Holy Spirit, in that very same instant, faith springs up and blossoms as the first motions of a born again sinner.
And so do you want to know if you have eternal life? Do you want some assurance that you have a new heart and that the life of Jesus, who has life in Himself, has been given to you? Believe in the Gospel and trust the Word of Christ. It’s the only way. Believe in the Gospel and trust the Word of Christ. The source of eternal life. The instrument of eternal life is the Word. The source is Christ.
The Stages of Eternal Life
Thirdly, the stages of eternal life. We’ve just seen, haven’t we, in verses 24 and 25, eternal life can break in right here in the middle of this dark and dying world. As Christ calls us to Himself and works faith in our hearts by His Word and Spirit. Verse 24, He has eternal life. He has passed from death to life. You can enter eternal life right here, right now. “The hour is now here,” verse 25, “when the dead will hear His voice and live.” If you are not a follower of Jesus, you have been living a half life. You’ve been the walking dead. You know nothing of life, nothing like the life that you can have when you come to know the Lord Jesus Christ. Don’t think that heaven is for over there, you know, something to think about later on when you get a little closer to the finish line and everything else is over and done with, then you’ll give some attention to thinking about heaven and eternity. No, no, remember Richard Sibbes. We quoted this last week. “Heaven was in him before he was in heaven.” The life of heaven is for here and now. Do you have heaven in you? The life of heaven in you? Or are you still dead in your sin? That’s stage one. Do you see it? The life of heaven erupting into our hearts right now as we rest on Jesus Christ. And one day, because the life of heaven already lives in us, when our bodies die, we go to that place that is our natural home. We go to be with Jesus, the Lord, in heaven.
Well there’s another stage to this, of course. Look at verse 28. Jesus says, “An hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice” – that is, the voice of the Son of Man, the voice of Christ – “and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” One day, Jesus is going to come back and He will call to us a second time. He calls us the first time by His Word and Spirit in the Gospel. And in response to that call, He gives us new life right here. We are born again to a living hope. But He is going to come a second time and call us, when He returns with the armies of heaven to judge the world in righteousness at the end of the age. On that day, our bodies will rise from their graves and the last enemy, even death itself, will be swallowed up in victory. The corruptible will put on incorruptibility and the mortal will be clothed with immortality. Our mortal bodies will become like Christ’s own immortal body, reunited with our perfected souls forever to dwell now in a new creation – the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. And there we will be with Jesus and with all the saints in joy and rest forever.
But listen, you must have stage one before you can have stage two. The life of heaven must be yours here, first, if ever you are to be sure of the hope of heaven hereafter. You must pass from death to life here if you are going to be sure of the resurrection to eternal life hereafter. That’s really not how most people in our society think about life and eternity and heaven these days, is it? Our society believes in what I once heard R.C. Sproul called, “justification by death.” The only criterion in most people’s minds in order to qualify for heaven is that they died. It really doesn’t matter what they believed, how they lived. That’s not at all the Biblical paradigm, is it? The only true criterion to get into heaven isn’t that you died; it’s actually that you have already come to life. You must be in heaven, or rather heaven must be in you before you can be in heaven. Or to put it in the familiar language of Jesus with Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” You must have new life. Do you have a new life?
The Contrast to Eternal Life
The source of eternal life is Christ. The instrument is the Word. The stages of eternal life – life here in order for there to be life there. And then finally as we close, the contrast to eternal life. In all the weeks that we have talked about heaven together, we have never yet mentioned the other side of the eternal reality. But we really can’t think clearly about the way to heaven if we do not understand how urgent this issue really is. Just as there is a way that leads to life, you know, there is a way that leads to eternal death. You notice in verse 27, “The Father has given judgment to the Son.” And when He comes again, verse 29, there will be a general resurrection – not just the resurrection of believers, but of everyone. For believers in Christ, it will be a resurrection of life, and for those who never knew Jesus Christ, who played at religion, who coated their lives with a thin veneer of morality or who despised and rejected His claims and thought they knew better, tragically it will be a resurrection of judgment.
C.S. Lewis describes the two paths and the two destinies upon which we are, every one of us, upon which we are all set. “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are in some degree helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another – all friendships, all love, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations, these are mortal and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals who we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit. Immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” Immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. You are and you will be one or the other.
There is a judgment coming. Jesus is saying in this passage, when you come to rest upon Him and only on Him for everlasting life, judgment has already been passed. We have come through the judgment and we have been acquitted because He came to bear the judgment for us, in our room and stead, at the cross. That’s what was happening at the cross. This mighty Son, bearing in His own body the wrath and curse of God to make immortal horrors into everlasting splendors. We pass from death to life when we trust in Him. But listen, if you are just going through the motions – this is Mother’s Day, right, and you’ve come to church with your family because that’s the nice thing to do. If that’s you, be warned. Be warned. We do not enter heaven automatically, simply by dying. We must already have come to life here through Jesus Christ alone. Otherwise, when He comes again, it will not be to a resurrection of life but to a terrible judgment.
So the question of heaven and whether or not you will get there actually is an issue of remarkable, extraordinary urgency. And you have to settle it. You have to settle it here and now. You can’t afford to delay it to some other day, some other time when the possibility of your own mortality forces itself unavoidably upon you. If you do not live with the life of heaven beating already in your heart, you will never live in heaven itself. And so will you settle the matter today? What a gift that would be to your believing mother – to settle the matter today; to be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ. Will you hear the voice of the Son of Man and live? May God make it so. Let’s pray.
Immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. Father, we pray, how we pray for everyone here that through Jesus Christ they may be redeemed from the former and transformed into the latter, bearing the likeness of Christ, receiving the life of heaven. O God, may it be that today, even here and now, some who are dead may hear the summons, the invitation and call of the Son of Man to them and may step alive like Lazarus from their tombs. How we bless You for our mothers, especially those mothers who showed us what it means to enjoy the life of heaven here in this dark and dying world. We pray for the grace that, like them, we may trust in our Savior. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.