Salvation Is Found in Christ Alone

This morning I wanted to choose, hopefully under the Lord’s guidance, one of those basic, foundational texts of the Bible. Sometimes it is good to focus on Jesus, simply on Jesus. We can talk a great deal about things surrounding Jesus, but how good it is from time to time to fix our eyes directly on His person, to hear Him speaking in the pages of the Gospel, to hear Him speaking in this way to our hearts and our lives, and to meditate on Him—specifically on Jesus Christ, on what He is to us, His saving nature, His unique character as the foundation of our life.

So I invite you to turn to the Gospel according to Saint John, John chapter 10, a foundational passage of the Word of God. And in this year of definition, one of the things we must remember is that salvation is found only in Christ. We are among those who believe—I was thinking of that chorus by my friend Jessie González—we are among those who believe that salvation is found only in Christ. And a church must emphasize that at a time when many people are abandoning that idea in subtle ways. We do not insist strongly enough that only Christ gives access to the Father, that salvation is found only in Christ.

I have great respect for other religions. I respect Muslims, who are so clear about their faith. If we had half the devotion these people have to their religion, let me tell you, I think Christianity would be different. These people are willing to die and to kill for their faith, and they are serious, honest, hardworking people who very often practice what they preach. I believe that there are other religions in the world: Hindus, Buddhists, Confucianists, so many other groups, those who follow Sun Myung Moon, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons; right now we have a Mormon presidential candidate. There are many good people who are sincere in their faith within these different religions.

And sometimes we find it difficult to say that only in Christ—only in Christ—is there salvation. And many people would accuse us of being fanatics and ignorant: how is it possible, in a world with so many religions—millions of Muslims in the world right now, for example, and hundreds of millions of followers of Confucius, or Buddha, or Hinduism with all its different gods—how is it possible for only one religion to be true? And in a world where one sees so many different schools of thought and so many different spiritualities on television, there you are, clinging to that central doctrine that salvation is found only in Christ. Sometimes you waver a little, don’t you? And the more immersed one becomes in the world of telecommunications and the Internet, the more it takes nowadays to remain firmly planted in that central doctrine of Christianity: that Christ is the only means of access to the Father and to eternal life—at least to eternal life wherever heaven may be, eternity with God, salvation, as we call it.

It is therefore important to strengthen the conviction of God’s children—yours and mine—by proclaiming that central element of the Christian faith: that salvation and eternal life are found only in Christ. It is important to strengthen the faith of the saints in this time when it is being contradicted and attacked in so many ways. That is what I want to do this morning. This church will always declare that salvation is found only in Christ, that eternal life and access to the Father are found only in Him, and we will cling to that doctrine with love, with faith, with humility, but also with firmness, clarity, and conviction. And ultimately, that will be the starting point for everything we do.

In this passage we hear the voice of Christ as on few other occasions in the Gospel: the very founder of our faith, the Son of God, telling us something about this—about who He is, about the uniqueness, the singularity, of His reconciling role. Either Christ was mistaken, or He was insane and thought He was more than He really was, or He was right and is the only one who gives access to the Father. So in verse 10, the Lord begins with a very solemn declaration. When you hear Jesus say, “Truly,” pay attention; let your little ears perk up, because it is important to listen to what He is saying: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold through the door, but climbs in some other way”—what does “some other way” mean? A way4 other than Jesus Christ; whoever wants to climb in some other way is a thief and a robber. Jesus Christ’s Caribbean side came out there! So sometimes people complain that we Christians are too forceful: “Who are you to say this?” Look, the Bible speaks plainly. As for the person who wants to be subtle, keep everyone happy, please everybody, sort of straddle the fence, and be like a chameleon wherever he happens to be—well, no, no, this is what it says here.

Look, whoever wants to enter through another door is a robber, a thief. He says that; I do not. It is not that I did not eat my Corn Flakes this morning and I am hungry and upset. No, he is a thief, a robber; “but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.” There He is also speaking about Himself, isn’t He? He is speaking there about the shepherd. Now it says, “he who enters by the door.” That is interesting, because I am going to tell you a little about that. There are two doors: one door is the Father and the other door is the Son. The Son enters through the door that the Father provides for Him, and then He Himself becomes the door for the sheep. Do not get too troubled; in a moment I am going to show you what that means.

“And He calls His sheep by name and leads them out, and when He has brought out all His own”—those that belong to Him—“He goes before them, and the sheep follow Him because they know His voice; but they will not follow a stranger, but will flee from him, because they do not know the strangers.” Jesus gave this allegory, like a comparison, a metaphor, a comparison; but they did not understand what He meant. Today we are very familiar with these images, but at that time what He was saying was strange to people who did not even understand who Jesus was. But here the Lord goes into it more fully. Since they did not understand Him well, He wanted to be clearer: “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.” Underline that in your Bible when you can.

I am the door—not one possible door. I am the door. Grammatically speaking, that is the definite article: “I am the door of the sheep. All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.” And He repeated it in case they had not heard Him: “I am the door. Whoever enters through Me will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.” Verse 11: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” Verse 14: “I am the good shepherd, and I know My sheep, and My own know Me.” Glory to God! What a beautiful passage, isn’t it? It renews us in that essential conviction that Jesus Christ is the good shepherd.

I know that some of you felt uneasy when, some time ago, I used the image of chickens. I spoke about how, for a moment, I encouraged you to set aside the allegory of the sheep and the shepherd—the metaphor, the allegory of the shepherd and the sheep—and my sermon was “The Church: Sheepfold or Chicken Coop?” I know some of you went home upset with me, didn’t you? But I told you that sometimes it is good to look at things differently to see what illustration, what illumination, can be drawn from them; and a great deal can be drawn from a comparison. I told you that was only for a moment; afterward, let us return to the image of the shepherd, because frankly, there is no image more beautiful than that of the shepherd and the sheep.

Yes, I love the image of the shepherd. The Bible is full of images: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” So there is nothing comparable to the image of the shepherd and the good shepherd, the sheep. I can therefore return to that, because that is the beauty of the Bible: one can move around and make use of it; everything is ours, the world is ours in Christ Jesus. So I definitely believe that this is beautiful. From passages like this we derive the image of the church as a sheepfold and Christ as our Shepherd, while male and female pastors are shepherds with a lowercase “s.”

Then in verse 2—I will say this simply as a prelude—forgive me, in verse 1 it says: “He who does not enter the sheepfold through the door, but enters some other way, is a thief and a robber; but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.” Notice here that the Lord is not necessarily talking about us climbing in and entering, but is saying that the shepherd who enters through the right door is the true shepherd of the sheep. He says, “I enter through that door.” Now, through what door did Jesus enter the world? And through what door did He become the Shepherd? Have you thought about that theologically? Do you know what door Christ entered through? The Father. The Father Himself assigned Jesus His legitimacy as the Shepherd of humanity and of the church.

For we know that a voice came from heaven, the Holy Spirit came in the form of a dove and rested upon Him, and a voice was heard saying, “This is My beloved Son.” Do you remember? And if you look in Luke chapter 9, in the passage where the Lord is transformed on the Mount of Transfiguration, on the day of the Transfiguration, it says that a voice was also heard: “Listen to Him.” That voice was heard: “This is My beloved Son; listen to Him.” And on the day of His baptism there was also a voice that said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

The Lord Jesus Christ always declared that He was on Earth because His Father had sent and authorized Him. And the Lord said, “I never say anything on My own; rather, what I hear from the Father is what I proclaim to you.” In His incarnate form, the Lord Jesus Christ declared His total submission to the heavenly Father. There was a direct relationship between the Father and the Son, and in fact, the Son was also empowered and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, who guided Him in everything. That is why it says that Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, went into the wilderness, for example. And when He stands at His first public appearance, He says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to do this and to do that.”

So the Lord did not claim authority on His own; He was not a lone ranger. He was subject to the Father and was also filled with the Holy Spirit. In Him the Trinity dwelt in perfect harmony. That close relationship with the Father—the Father gives Jesus Christ authority. Therefore, all the founders of different religions, whether it is Sun Myung Moon or anyone else, cannot make that claim. They may say that they heard an angel or whatever, but we believe because the Lord Jesus Christ came down and submitted Himself to the Father, as another passage, Philippians 2:5–11, says: “Do not have in you the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, who, being equal with God, did not regard equality with God as something to cling to, but humbled Himself, submitted Himself to the Father, and for that reason God gave Him a name above every name, so that at His name every knee should bow, of those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.”

So what Christ is saying is, “Hey, I have the letter of authority the Father gives Me. I enter through the right door. I have all the authority of God within Me, and that is why I can say: I have submitted Myself to the Father, and therefore you can submit yourselves to Me.” Because ultimately, this call to receive Christ, to accept Him as the door, the truth, and the life, requires us to surrender our will and our pride and submit ourselves to Him as He submits Himself to the Father. And ultimately, that is what gives us life: using Him as the door, going in and out through Him, living our life in Him and through Him.

That is what a door is: it is what gives you access to something. If I want to enter that room, I cannot squeeze in through here or go through the wall; I have to pass through the door. And if I want to leave that room, I have to go out through the door. So I believe that when we see Christ as the door, it means that we will live our entire life in terms of Him; that everything we do, everything to which we desire access—whether it is a profession that gives us life and joy, a marriage that works as it should, or fatherhood or motherhood with our children that enables us to be good fathers, good husbands, and good mothers—we will have to live it all through the wisdom Christ gives. We will not dare to enter anywhere without first passing through Him, or to go out except through Him.

How wonderful it is when we see Christ this way: He is the door to any realm we may wish to enter or leave, because He did it too; He did the same thing. He submitted Himself to the Father; He lived it and did it through the Father; His authority came from the Father. Thus He was saying, “The Father says that you must regard Me as the door. Just as the Father was the door through which I came into the world, so I am the door.” It is important that we understand that. Many people do not want to go through that process of entering and leaving through a single door. They want to create doors of their own invention, and in the long run that leads to disaster; it leads to a life lived counterproductively. People do not want to submit to that, and the Bible tells us that, as Christians, we have to understand this: if you want to have true happiness, if you want to be able to do great things in life and live a full life, pass through the door; enter through the door, which is Christ Jesus.

Now, one of the things that strikes me about this passage is that Christ is speaking in absolute terms, as I have said: yes, no, black, white, everything, nothing. There is no uncertainty here, or room for subtle distinctions or asterisks. The One who was to save humanity could do so only if He received authority from the Father, so He is also the only One who can serve as the door. By Christ entering through the door, which is the Father, He becomes the only door through which man can pass in order to have fellowship with God.

What does Acts chapter 4, verse 12 say? It is another one of those clear passages that you must have very clear in your life, in your spirituality. It says: “This Jesus is the stone rejected by you builders.” Peter is speaking to the Jews in one of his first sermons on the day of Pentecost, and so he tells them: “That stone which you rejected is He, which has become the chief cornerstone.” What does Peter mean when he says that Jesus is the chief cornerstone? There are many interpretations, but the one I like best is that when a temple or a building was going to be constructed, a stone was always laid—it is also called the cornerstone—which served as the starting point. It was like a cornerstone set at one corner, and everything proceeded from that stone. If that stone was properly positioned and properly laid, the building took its shape from it. It was at that very corner, the first corner.

I learned that, for example, if you do not begin a building like this one correctly, if there is even a slight improper angle, the whole building will be out of alignment; it will be difficult. That is why very precise instruments are used nowadays to measure the exact beginning of the structure. That is fundamental in a building, because later, when you want to put up the walls and everything else, it becomes a nightmare. So you had better begin correctly. That cornerstone was therefore crucial in those days. What Peter is saying here, then, is that Christ, who was rejected by the Jews and by the first people who heard Him, has been made the chief cornerstone by God. He is the stone that begins and defines everything.

Look at what verse 12 says: “And in no one else”—say with me, in no one else—“in no one else is there salvation, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we can be saved.” I am not the one saying that; the Word of God says it. Either the Word of God is wrong or it is true, and I must submit to it. There is no other place. That is why the Church clearly says that Jesus Christ is—it is absolute language. There are many devout, God-fearing people who want to know Him and humble themselves before Him, but God has established a clear and simple way for us to draw near to Him, and that way is by accepting Christ as the door, recognizing Him as the only One who can save and provide peace with God.

Christ says that all who came before Him are thieves and robbers. It is strong language, but it points to a truth: anyone who says that there is another name, another means of obtaining salvation, is stealing His Son’s authority, and in that sense he is a thief and a robber. Jesus Christ says, “The authority is Mine; the uniqueness is Mine.” And if someone else comes along and says, “No, Muhammad too; Confucius too,” he is stealing the Son’s authority. But you know there is something else as well: when someone offers salvation through a means other than the one God has established, he is also robbing the person to whom he says this, because that person then places his faith in something fictitious, and he is being robbed of the possibility of being saved and having eternal life.

Many people are placing their hope, their confidence for life, in other means, and those who have led them there bear a double judgment, a double charge upon their lives, because they are sending many souls to hell under a fictitious hope of salvation. They are robbing others too; they are presumptuous people. So Jesus is very clear when He says that anyone who offers salvation through any other means is a thief and a robber. And I believe that when the Church refuses to preach in these clear terms, it is robbing the people too. When a pastor stops preaching Christ as salvation, the name above every name, the only One who provides eternal life, he is also robbing his people of a source of vitality and clarity.

Because I believe that as Christ becomes the center of our lives, the name we use to come to the heavenly Father, our spirituality will become stronger and more secure. For example, I love the Catholic Church. You have heard me speak about our Catholic brothers and sisters, and I know that sometimes I bring a little trouble upon myself because there are people who say, “No, the Catholic Church, who knows what...” No. I believe that the Catholic Church is a Christian church, with serious errors and things with which I agree, but there are many sincere people; it is a solid Church, and I respect it. But I also want to tell you something: when the Catholic Church tells people, “Pray to Mary, place your faith in Mary, Mary the Mother of God,” they have made Mary more important than Christ, because they say that Mary is the access to Christ, and Christ to the Father.

So there are many very sincere Catholics who pray to Mary, and everything is Mary, and then we are robbing those people of the possibility of placing their faith in Christ alone. Christ does not say, “Pray to Mary”; He says, “Pray to the Father through Me.” So I believe that when many people direct their energy toward Mary and pray to Mary, they could direct all that energy toward Jesus, and their faith would be much more powerful. Therefore, I believe that the Church must always keep its eyes on Jesus. Look at Christ, it says, just as the Jews looked at the bronze serpent when they were being bitten by snakes in the wilderness, and God told Moses, “Make a bronze serpent and have them look at the serpent so that when they look at it, they may be saved”—a bronze serpent, a statue.

Just imagine how desperately the people must have looked! If a snake is biting you and they say, “We are going to put something over there and you are going to be saved,” let me tell you, your eyes will practically pop out of their sockets to make sure you looked at it properly. So the Bible says that just as the Jews looked at the serpent in the wilderness, so we must look at Him. The Bible says, “Consider Him who endured such contradiction from sinners, lest you grow weary in your souls.” Who is that One? Jesus Christ. Scholars of Greek say that the word “consider” means to look at Him so intently that you cannot see anything else but Him alone. So the Church must fix its eyes on Jesus. Use Jesus in your prayers; focus on Him; dust Him off every two or three weeks, because sometimes Jesus becomes so central that we no longer even see Him. You know how sometimes families have photographs in their homes of Dad when he was young, and as the years go by they no longer even see Dad? Over the years, he has become just another decoration; he is so ever-present that they do not even see him.

That happens with Jesus. He becomes, as it were, the center, and we hardly even mention Him anymore. But you must come back and say, “Lord, I focus on You again. You are the Son of God, my Christ and my Lord, my Savior.” That is what I want to do this morning. I want to invite you to fix your eyes on Him alone. As for all the other things that may offer salvation, there is no other door. Christ is the Savior of humanity.

Brothers and sisters, some might say, “But what about someone who harms no one and is sincere in his faith? That Mormon who believes, for example, what he has been taught; that Muslim over there in Pakistan or wherever, believing in Muhammad—how is it possible that he will go to hell?” The Bible says that no matter how many works you do, no matter how devout and sincere you may be, that is not enough to grant you access to the Kingdom of God, which is perfect, completely pure, and beautiful. There will always be sin in us, no matter how good we may be, and what the Bible says is that the only One who can forgive our sins and credit that perfection to us is Christ Jesus.

Isaiah 64:6 says: “All of us are like something unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.” In other words, if a person does not have the wholeness and perfection that only Christ can give him, he should not even get dressed, because he is not going anywhere. There is nothing that man can do by himself to gain access to the presence of God. Everyone must pass through Christ. He says, “I am the door. If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved.” Whoever believes that there is another means of salvation besides Jesus Christ makes Him a liar, because Christ has said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Me.” John 14:6 is another key verse. Those three verses—John 10, Acts chapter 4 verse 12, and John 14:6—are three verses through which you can already be certain why you believe in Jesus. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you want peace with God, you need Christ. You must accept Him into your heart as the only door, the only means of entrance into a life of relationship with God.

I know that this also raises many complications, brothers and sisters, for those of us who are thoughtful, theological, and biblical people, because one of the questions is, well, what happens to a Tibetan, let us say, in Tibet, since that is about as inaccessible as it gets, who does not have even a transistor radio, the Internet, or television? Do you know that there are still people in the world who have not heard of Jesus Christ, who do not know, who have never had Christ clearly presented to them as Lord and Savior? They have never been given the opportunity to accept or reject Him, and one wonders what will happen to a person out there in the jungle. Will that person be lost or saved? It is a legitimate question. If that person never had the opportunity, how can guilt be imputed to him?

And frankly, I do not have a completely convincing answer concerning that. Now, the Bible says that on the day of judgment—this is one of the possible solutions—there will be people who will have to defend themselves with their own reasoning. That means they will come before the Judgment Throne and God will judge them according to the point of reference they knew. Now notice that this means they will have to prove that they lived a life perfectly consistent with the system they knew. Frankly, I do not want to be in that situation. It would be like my going before a judge here without knowing all the laws and trying to get a ticket dismissed, or having to defend myself against something without a lawyer at my side. I do not want to be in that position. But it is possible that such a person—amen, glory to God, I hope that is the case—I am not sure.

What I want to tell you is this, my brothers and sisters: I cannot allow myself to be guided by complications for which I myself do not have a good answer. I must be guided by what I know and by what the Bible says. The Bible says that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. Of that I am certain. So I cannot change my theological position because there is a complication for which there is no good theological answer. I leave that to the Lord. Look, if the day comes when I get to heaven and millions of people are saved by some way other than Jesus Christ, I will be happy, because I have no desire for anyone to go to hell. If there is something I did not know and God had another plan, amen, glory to God. But I know that the plan I know is in this Bible, and it tells me that Jesus Christ is the only One.

And I leave the complications to God. I must live according to what I know, not what I do not know. And I am going to take just another second, at the risk of going overtime, because there are so many things one could discuss, but this is important, because I believe that for young people and more educated people it takes away a little of—look, everyone proceeds that way. In science today there are many things that cannot be answered. Within the system they have, they do not have all the answers. An article has just appeared in Time Magazine saying that physicists have just discovered a particle they had been searching for for forty years. It is a particle that answers many of the questions they could not answer about the nature of matter. I will not go into much detail about that: the Higgs boson. It is a particle like the neutron or the electron; it is a particle that explains how something that is energy can be as solid as a chair.

They did not know where that particle was or even whether it existed, but they said, “You know what? We cannot worry because we do not understand this. Let us keep looking, and perhaps one day we will discover it.” They have just discovered it now, and now they can answer that great question they had. So there are things in our faith that we cannot answer completely, but that does not mean we can abandon what the Bible says: that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. You must preach Him to your friends, your neighbors, and your brothers and sisters, because if they do not have Christ, they do not have the Father; they do not have salvation, and therefore they need Jesus in order to be saved. If men could be saved through other ways, then why come into the world to die on the cross? Why go through so much suffering? He is the way, the truth, and the life.

Now, I want to be more specific: what does it mean to accept Christ as the door to the Father in practical terms for daily life? Look at verse 9 of John chapter 10. It says, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me”—there are three beautiful things here that I do not want to neglect to share with you—“if anyone enters by Me, he will be saved.” You can underline that and study it later. “He will go in and out”—that is like a single unit—and number three, “he will find pasture.”

I believe that in each one of those things the Lord was encoding something. Look at the first one: he will be saved. Christ is the guarantee of our eternal destiny. He is our insurance for eternity. Christ says, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may be dead, shall live. And everyone who believes in Me shall never die.” Listen, Sister Bertalia Valverde knows what that means, do you understand? And those who died denying Christ know what that means, because although Sister Bertalia is biologically dead, she is alive for eternity. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved. There is no more important subject to discuss: where are we going to spend eternity? And there are only two possibilities: either alone, far from God, separated forever from His grace and His presence, or in perfect peace with God for all eternity, in a place of perfect joy that Christ Himself has prepared for us.

The Lord Jesus Christ has said, “I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself, so that where I am, you may be also.” The theologians debate, and people ask, “Well, where is heaven? Do we have to take a rocket, pass Mars, Jupiter, and Venus, and then, once we have reached the edge of the universe, heaven begins there?” I have heard Dávila preach about heaven being, like—I respect and love him; he is a mighty man of God. I believe heaven cannot be reached by physical means. Heaven is a dimension, something... I know one thing, and that is that heaven is where Christ is, and that is where I want to be. Whether it is here, whether it is inside matter, whether it is outside matter, whether it is on the point of a needle—I want to be there. I will find out where heaven is when I get there. I can ask all those questions, can’t I?

And the theologians debate: where is hell? Some people say that hell is at the very center of the world, right there where the lava and magma are, and all that sort of thing; that if you take a machine and start drilling and making your way down there, you will find hell, which is very hot at the very center of the earth. Others believe it is a dimension outside space. I know only one thing: it is where Christ is not, where His grace does not reach, and you know what? I do not want to be there. I do not know whether it is so cold that it feels hot, or whether it is so hot that you burn, or whatever it may be. I do not care; I do not want to be there. Whether it is in space, I know that there is no peace there, there is no love there, there is no stillness, there is no joy, there is no rest, because neither God nor Christ is there. Do everything possible to keep yourself, your loved ones, your neighbors, and people you know from going there.

I ask the Lord to help us. I ask Him, “Fill me with such a sense of urgency that I will do everything possible to make sure that no one over whom I have any influence goes to hell.” And I encourage you, brothers and sisters, to make this church a church that loves souls and has that sense that—heaven, hell—we must keep people from going there. So, if anyone enters by Me, he will be saved. Second, he will go in and out. This is an image of everyday life. He will go in and out; that is everyday life. When you have Christ, you know that you can go in and out in the world, in life. Christ not only prepares us for eternal life; He prepares us for this life. He provides support for our struggles, our trials, our jobs, our family life, financial matters, and health. As I said before, through Him we go in and out. That is why He says, “He who lives and believes in Me.”

How beautiful it is to know that when I have Christ, I go in and out. The world is my backyard. I am free to buy and sell, to move freely through life; I go in and out. That also means, look, all the things that happen in life—there are many things you enter into and come out of in life: illnesses, family problems, marital problems, financial setbacks, difficult times, graduations, good times, the children leave home, or they stay—I am talking about something personal to us—one grows old, gets sick, gets well. Life is a matter of entering and coming out of many things, isn’t that right? You enter and come out of them in Christ Jesus.

When you are sick, you go to your Father to heal you. When you have financial problems, you trust that He is your provider. When you have a dilemma in life and do not know what the solution is, the Bible says, “Ask for wisdom, and it will be given to you.” When you are in a situation in which you are under attack in some way, the Bible says, “Put on the whole armor of God so that you may stand firm in the day of trial, and having done everything, continue to stand firm.” So, for me, one of the most beautiful things, you know, is this: I know that my passport has already been purchased and stamped for the day when I go to be with Jesus Christ, but while I am alive, I know that in all these things I am more than victorious through Christ Jesus. Not only am I saved, but I go in and out as I please in the world because I have Jesus. Then the last thing it says is: he will find pasture.

Do you think Jesus says that merely because it sounds nice? No. What does it mean that he will find pasture? What do you understand by finding pasture? It means that you will find rest; you will find food, nourishment, strength, food for the journey, joy, fuel when you feel as though the gauge is already on E and the little yellow or red light is on. He fills you again with new strength, amen? Boys become weary and tired, young men falter and fall, but those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not faint. New strength, encouragement, food for the journey, nourishment for the struggle, a place to rest when you are already drained and life has dealt you blows—where do you go? To Christ. And in His Word, in prayer, in a chorus of praise that you sing to Him with tears streaming down your cheeks, you find pasture.

The Bible says, “He makes me lie down in green pastures; He shepherds me beside still waters; He restores my soul; He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” You will find pasture. You do not have to seek out your own pasture; the Lord provides it for you. He died on the cross so that you would have pasture. As you go out and come in along the roads of life, go to Christ so that He may place you in green pastures and let you eat the best food in the house. He will set His table, and you will be able to feed yourself. No matter what happens in your life, my brother, if you are going through a trial or a difficulty, look, eternal life is guaranteed to you: if anyone enters by Me, he will be saved. If you are going through a difficulty, you say, “Hey, that is one of those entrances the Lord says I can enter and come out of.”

I will go out and come in, and I will stand firm. What is one of those doors through which you have entered right now? Do not worry, because you are going to come out of it too. He died on the cross so that you and I would always have victory in all the things we go through. And finally, remember: if you feel weak, tired, and burdened, the Lord says, “I have pasture for you. Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Hallelujah. Why go somewhere else to find all that when in Christ Jesus you have the complete package? Eternity, time and space, your inner life—everything is provided by that wonderful insurance Christ provides: full coverage, full coverage, amen?