Climbing a Stairway to Heaven

The title of my message today, friends, is Climbing a Stairway to Heaven On Your Own Merits Will Only Send You to Hell And that's because most folks think there are many ways to heaven and some preachers have even broadened the way to heaven in ways Jesus never did. But Jesus Christ makes it very clear on numerous occasions that he is the only way to heaven. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man cometh unto the Father but by me. And in John's Gospel in chapter 10, Jesus says if you try to climb up to heaven some other way other than him, you're just a thief trying to steal your way in and a robber who tries to rob God of his glory. We see this in chapter 10 and verse 1. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.

Then in verse 9, Jesus makes reference to himself as the only door to heaven. Jesus says, I am the door by me. If any man enter in, he shall be saved and he shall go in and out and find pasture.

If you want to be safe, friend, you better get through that door, that blood-marked door. Jesus is the good shepherd who gets his sheep into heaven. He gave his life for his sheep.

But men try to bypass Jesus on their way to heaven and try climbing up some other way. They try to smuggle their soul up to heaven by climbing over his back. Listen, friends, climbing a stairway to heaven will only send you to hell, Jesus says, if you try to climb up to heaven any other way but by him, you're nothing but a thief and a robber trying to steal your way into God's glorious kingdom.

I'm going to list today six false stairways to heaven that men climb in an effort to gain eternal life. Number one, men try climbing up to heaven by way of a good opinion of themselves. They are not as bad as others.

Church friend once asked me if I would go visit his dying aunt in the hospital and share the gospel with her. Sitting bedside beside her hospital bed, she informed me she had been a member of the Methodist church for many years and she was going to heaven because she never robbed a liquor store or killed anybody. That's what the old gal said.

And she believed she was good enough for heaven because she wasn't bad enough for hell. But that unconverted church member discovered soon enough when she died that good people don't make it to heaven, only forgiving people get to go there. Number two, men try climbing up to heaven by their good works.

They believe that God keeps a heavenly scale of weights which weighs one's good works against their bad. And if the good outweighs the bad, they can enter heaven. They are counting on their good works to get them into heaven.

Number three, men try climbing up to heaven by way of religion. The Buddhist, the Muslim, the Jew, the Mormon, and members of other world religions try to climb up to their idea heaven wrapped in the garments of their religion. They believe that religion is the way to heaven, that if you join any religion, then that's all you need.

Number four, men try climbing up to heaven by way of a decision. They will point to a time in their life back yonder when they responded to an emotional appeal by a preacher by either walking a church aisle or repeating a prayer or raising their hand. They made some kind of a decision to become a Christian by performing some kind of physical act and they climbed the stairway to heaven on the back of an empty religious profession.

Number five, men try climbing up to heaven by way of baptism. Men believe they gain entry into heaven by producing a certificate of baptism, that if they've been baptized, then they are saved by the very nature of baptismal regeneration. Number six, men try climbing up to heaven through church membership.

Many folks mistake church membership for salvation. You try to climb up to heaven, friend, in your own merits, and you will slip off that stairway and fall headlong on your way down to hell, and the only ones whom God will allow into his holy heaven are those persons who have the merits of the Lord's life laid down and applied to them, so that when a thrice holy God looks at pitiful E.A. Johnston, he says, oh, when I see the blood, when I see the blood, Jesus is the door to heaven, friend, and if you want to be saved, you better get to Christ and pass through that blood-marked door, because climbing a stairway to heaven in your own merits will only send you down to devil's hell. Let us pray.