Ready to go?

The Sunday School teacher asked her class, “How many of you want to go to heaven?” They all raised their hands, except one little girl. After class the teacher asked her, “Why didn’t you raise your hand?” She replied, “I want to go to heaven, but my mother said I have to go straight home after Sunday School.” 

Funny. I mean, who doesn’t want to go to heaven, right? Especially when you consider the alternative, and I’m not talking annihilation or re-incarnation. Heaven ought to be the longing of every soul. We’d be foolish to not want to go.

One of the wisest men of all-time was Solomon, who wrote that God “has put eternity into man’s heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11), meaning that somewhere deep within each and every soul lies the sense that there is life beyond the present state of existence here on earth. And the Bible does not stutter in saying that the two options are heaven or hell.

So it’s good and right that we should desire to go to heaven, but not everyone does. Heaven is not an automatic destination. 

I’d like to take a vacation to Hawaii. I hear it’s a beautiful place. I’ve seen pictures and talked to people who have been there, and it sounds like a wonderful place to go. If my Sunday School teacher asked who’d like to go to Hawaii, I would definitely raise my hand. But just because I want to go doesn’t mean that I will.

Jesus said it this way, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). This is a sobering truth. Not everyone who wants to go to heaven will be there. Those who will enter the kingdom of heaven will be those who do the will of the Father.

What is that will? It’s to believe in His Son, Jesus. That means to confess that we can’t be good enough to get to heaven. That means to repent of our sinfulness and self-sufficiency and self-rule and self-righteousness, and depend completely upon what God has done for us in Christ, yielding our lives in faith and obedience to Him.

The Bible says this, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Jesus again, in John 14:6, says, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Friend, there is no other way to heaven. You don’t make it in on the faith of your parents or grandparents. You don’t get there by trying to follow a list of religious rules, by going to church, by being a good husband or neighbor or citizen of the U.S.A.

This week we remember that Jesus laid down His life on the cross of Calvary. When Jesus took the stripes on His back and when He took the nails in His hands, He did it so that we could be saved from death and hell and made righteous before a Holy God. All by the grace of God. All for His glory. And all for our good.

Death is a frightening proposition for most people, but it doesn’t have to be. The grave does not have the final word. On the third day, which we celebrate as Easter, Jesus rose from the dead in a triumphal display of His power and victory over death and over sin forevermore. And He still lives today as the Savior and King, the Everlasting One, who was and is and is to come. And it is by His resurrection victory that we who belong to Him also have the assurance of eternal life with Him in heaven. 

Friend, have you come to Jesus for forgiveness and cleansing from your sin? Are you trusting in Christ alone as your salvation? I don’t know about you, but heaven’s looking pretty sweet to me. What about you? I’m ready to go, even if I don’t make it straight home after Sunday School.