True Intimacy with Jesus - Robin Cox

God bless you, Ritzley. Thank you for clicking on this teaching today. I hope you'll be blessed. And I always tell everybody that if you've heard this before, just listen in with your heart and your spirit where you can learn as much as you can learn and share it with somebody else. Because there's other people there in the prison or wherever you're at that sure need to hear what I'm going to teach today. So here's my prayer before we start. Lord Jesus, open our hearts, speak to us by the power of your Holy Spirit. I pray that you will bring conviction and truth. Your word is true and that you will anoint this message and use it for your glory. Always for your glory, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. I was watching a legal program here the other day and they were talking about businesses that incorporate and come up with vision statements and articles of incorporation and a charter. And I was thinking about the Bible. The Bible is our charter. The Bible is the word of God. The Bible is absolute truth. And you can trust the word of God and know that when you listen and receive the word of God, that it's gonna be quickened to your heart

and quickened to your spirit, that the word of God is true. And so one of the greatest subjects in the Bible is the blood covenant. I just love the teaching on the blood covenant. And if I could, my favorite thing in the Bible is the blood covenant. And I wanna talk about the blood covenant today. The blood covenant that Abraham cut with God and then the blood covenant that Jesus Christ on the cross cut with us. And so I wanna start by reading out of Genesis chapter 15. So if you have your Bible handy or go get it, and we're gonna read Genesis chapter 15 and we're gonna read quite a lot of the word of God today. But here's what the word of God says in Genesis 15 one. Sometime later, the Lord spoke to Abram. And at that time, his name was Abram, not Abraham. In a vision and said to him, do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you and your reward will be great. But Abram replied, oh, sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don't even have a son, since you've given me no children. Eliezer of Damascus, a servant of my household, will inherit all my wealth. And you have given me no descendants of my own so one of my servants will be my heir. Then the Lord said to him, no, your servant will not be your heir

for you will have a son of your own who will be your heir. Then the Lord took Abram outside and said to him, look up into the sky and count the stars. And if you can, that's how many descendants you will have. And that's a promise from God to Abram. Later on, his name would be changed to Abraham, that God was gonna bless Abram with a son and that his descendants would be as many as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. And Abram believed the Lord and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith. And so Abram took what God said and he believed it and he sealed the deal. I'm going to have a son and my descendants are gonna be as many as the stars of the sky and the sand of the seashore. Then the Lord told him, I am the Lord who brought you out of the Ur of the Chaldees to give you this land as a possession. Now that verse right there is a key verse because God called Abram from Ur of the Chaldees up where he wanted him to go and in the presence of God. And that's a perfect picture of the old covenant or the old Testament. It's a perfect picture of repentance. and repentance is simply agreeing with God, having a change of heart and a change of mind and a change of your speech, which produces an outward change. And it's absolutely important for us to experience

and personalize and know that we've repented of our sins. But Abraham replied, oh, sovereign God, how can I be sure that I will actually possess your promises? And the Lord told me, this is really critical here. The Lord told me, bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle dove and a young pigeon. So Abraham presented all of these things to him and he killed them. Then he cut each animal down the middle and laid the halves side by side. He did not have her cut the birds in half. Some vultures swooped down to eat the carcasses, but Abraham chased them away. And this is Genesis 15, 12, a lot of scripture here, but it's very important. As the sun was going down, Abraham fell into a deep sleep and a terrifying darkness came down over him. He was terrified. Then the Lord said to Abraham, you can be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land where they will be oppressed as slaves for 400 years, but I will punish the nation that enslaves them. And in the end, they will come away with great wealth. As for you, you will die in peace and be buried at a ripe old age. And after four generations, your descendants will return here to this land

for the sins of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction. And after the sun had gone down and darkness fell, Abraham saw a smoking fire part, a fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the halves of the carcasses. So the Lord made a covenant. Here's the blood covenant that God made with Abraham that day and said, I have given this land to you and your descendants all the way from the border of Egypt to the great Euphrates River. And so God cut a covenant with Abraham and it's called the blood covenant of the Old Testament. Old Testament concealed, New Testament revealed. And you need to realize that this covenant was cut with the shedding of blood. Now, God had Abram, God did this, had Abram cut the carcasses in two, set them apart from each other. And the Bible said that God came down into the presence of Abram who was in a deep, deep sleep and he was terrified. And it said that God walked through the pieces and there was a flaming torch and the flaming torch was there. And the flaming torch walked through the pieces as well. And as he was walking through the pieces, I believe he walked in a figure eight. And a figure eight that's laid on its side

is a symbol of infinity. And God cut this covenant of promises to Abram who was a flawed man, we're all flawed by sin. And he entered into the covenant with Abram and it was an everlasting covenant, a covenant that would last forever and ever. And the Bible says that here in just a minute, we're going to read about that. And Abram was terrified because he knew that he was cutting a covenant with God and that anybody that broke covenant with God would experience death, just like the cutting of those pieces, they would experience death because you cannot be a covenant breaker. And it terrified Abram. And I believe God came into his presence in the power of the Holy Spirit. And the torch, what's a torch for? If you're going through a dark cave and you have this burning torch, what does the torch do? It lights away. And I believe the smoking furnace was God, the torch was our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit was there as well. They cut the covenant with Abram and said, and I believe that God spoke into Abram's heart and said, you're not going to be able to fulfill your part of the covenant, but my power.

power is going to be with you, and I'm going to help you because you cannot do it without me. And that's the way it is with all of us. If it wasn't for the grace and mercy and loving kindness of God, we just wouldn't be able to walk by faith and do what God wanted us to do. And so God walked through the pieces, I believe in a figure eight, and he entered into this everlasting covenant, and it's a covenant of blessings and relationship and intimacy and grace and mercy and protection and forgiveness and being cleansed from all of our sins. And Abraham was saying, God, you're going to be my God, and I'm going to be your faithful man, and I will do the best that I can for the rest of my life, even though he was flawed and he still sinned, I'm going to do the best I can for the rest of my life to live and walk in covenant with you and to love you with all of my heart, mind, body, soul, strength, and understanding. And so I want to ask you a question. Do you want the truth today that may hurt, but it will bring healing? Or do you want a lie that will bring comfort and then death?

And I'm hoping that you're a truth seeker, and you want to follow after hard after truth, because the blood covenant is the most important thing that you can understand and come to realize in your life, for your family, for your wives, for your children, for your friends. And I don't believe in today's church, there's enough teaching about the blood covenant. And a lot of people are not really that familiar with the blood covenant. And so I want to familiarize you today with the blood covenant. Here's what it says in Genesis 17. And God is speaking to Abram, and he's saying, this is my covenant with you. I will make you the father of a multitude of nations. What's more, I am changing your name. It will no longer be Abram. Instead, you will be called Abraham. And I believe that name change picked up the pronunciation of Yahweh, Abraham, and which means that he had entered into covenant with God. And you'll be the father of many nations. I will make you extremely fruitful. Your descendants will become many nations, and kings will be among them. I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you from generation to generation. And this is the everlasting covenant that I will always be your God

and the God of your descendants after you. And so Abram entered into the blood covenant with God, and God called him Abraham, and he went through the name change. By the way, we all have to go through a name change. I went from being Robin, a wicked, evil, sinful heathen, to Robin the righteous because of Jesus Christ and me trusting Jesus Christ in my heart and in my life. And so here's the mark of the covenant in the old covenant, and we're gonna get to the new covenant in just a minute. Then God said to Abraham, your responsibility is to obey the terms of this covenant. Now God's speaking to him. You and all your descendants have this continual responsibility. This is a covenant that your descendants must keep. Each male among you must be circumcised. He didn't say it's okay if you feel like circumcising them, or if you want to, or if you think it's a good idea, circumcise them. He said, this covenant you must keep. You must cut off the flesh of your foreskin as a sign of the covenant between me and you. From generation to generation, every male child must be circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. This applies not only to the members of your family, but to the servants born in your household. I'm reading out of Genesis 17, verse 12 and following. And foreign born servants that you have purchased

all must be circumcised. Your bodies will bear the mark of the everlasting covenant. There it has everlasting covenant. Any male who fails to be circumcised will be cut off from the covenant family for breaking the covenant. And so we have Abram, all of the males in his family, every male associated with him being circumcised. And God said, you must bear the mark of this covenant. And if you don't, then you're a covenant breaker and you're cut off from God and all the blessings of God. And so the word covenant in the Old Testament is bara. It means to cut. And that's just what it means, to cut. And so in the Old Testament, we call it the Old Testament. You could also call it the Old Covenant. They basically mean the same thing. The New Testament could also be called the New Covenant. They mean the same thing. And so the mark of the Old Covenant is the cutting off of the filth of the flesh of the foreskin by the shedding of blood, okay? Now, let's start looking toward the New Covenant, okay? And so I wanna turn to Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse six, and something starts happening in the Old Testament as we're heading through the Old Testament to the New Testament, to the birth of Christ. And it says this, the Lord your God will change or circumcise your heart and the hearts of all your descendants

so that they will love him with all their heart, soul, and that you may live. And the Lord your God will inflict all these curses on your enemies and those who hate you and persecute you. Then you will again, obey the Lord and keep all of his commandments that I am giving you. And so in Deuteronomy chapter 30, God is telling his people, circumcise your hearts. And I want to enter into this covenant. It's not only a covenant of physical circumcision, but it's a covenant of spiritual circumcision. And we don't think about this much and I haven't heard much teaching on this. I just love this, but that's what the Lord said. Circumcise your hearts and live for me and keep my commandments and do this with all of your heart and with all of your life, okay? Now, let's go to Jeremiah chapter four. Very good verse here. This is what the Lord says to the people of Judah and Jerusalem. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts. Do not waste your good seed among thorns. Oh, people of Judah and Jerusalem, surrender your pride and power. Circumcise your hearts or change your hearts before the Lord or my anger will burn like an unquenchable fire because of all of your sins. And so the Lord is sending out this message that I want your heart.

You can practice what the Old Testament says about circumcision of the filth of the flesh, but there's something else that we need to do. It's inward, it's gotta be an inward change and it's a cutting off of the filth of the flesh of sin and this world so that we can be holy and pure before God and that we can know that we've been forgiven of our sin and that we can become righteous in God and through God and be his sons and daughters. And so he wants you to circumcise your hearts. I was counseling with a woman one time and I had just gotten her some coffee and she sat down in front of my desk. She was homeless and our church had a big old breezeway where I was on staff as pastor of evangelism. And she was sleeping under the bushes out by the breezeway. Nobody knew it at night. She would walk there late at night. And so she came in to get warm and to get a good warm cup of coffee. And I started talking to her about Jesus and I was talking to her about repentance and faith and living for Christ and receiving Christ and making Jesus Christ Lord. And I was talking to her about the circumcision of the heart. And when I said that, She stood up, threw her coffee in my face, grabbed the computer off my desk and threw it at me

and hit me in the chest. And she immediately turned over to where there was a window and it was a double pane window. And she started hitting the window as fast and as hard as she could trying to break the window and slit her wrists and kill herself in my office. And it was all triggered. Those demons in her were triggered when I was talking about repentance and by the power of the Holy Spirit, circumcising the heart, the filth of the flesh of the world and the heart. I tell you what, today we need to get the L out of the world, W-O-R-L-D. When you cross the L out of the world, what do you have the word? We need to get out of the world into the word. We need to be doers of the word. We need to live according to the word of God. And what she did, and that lady later on did kill herself. But what triggered her was me saying, you need to repent and get saved. And those demons in her just reared up and flared up. And really she became quite violent. Security came and had to put her in cuffs. And I guess they took her to a mental ward somewhere. Later on, she got out and I heard that she had killed herself. And isn't it amazing that people would rather die than repent?

And I hope that's not you. You must have a circumcised heart. And so since that incident, I tell everybody this, I'm not talking about doing anything with a knife. You don't need to do anything with a knife. You need to ask the Holy Spirit to give you the power to come to the cross of Jesus Christ, surrender your will to him and circumcise your heart and make Jesus Christ the Lord of your life. And know that he lives in the sacred chamber of your heart and that you've done everything you can to be reconciled to him. It's not with a knife. It's with the power of the Holy Spirit operating in your life. And so we all need a circumcised heart. Okay, let's go forward to Romans. Well, let me, on the way to Romans, let's stop in Jeremiah. Hold on. Israel, back in the day, when they were in rebellion against God in Jeremiah chapter six, the word of God says this. This is what the Lord says. Stop at the crossroads and look around. Ask for the old godly way and walk in it. Travel its paths and you will find rest for your souls. But you reply, no, that's not the road we want. Now, I go in and preach at prisons.

I have done so much personal ministry, so much soul winning. And I'm still doing a lot of that. But the Lord is calling everybody in the world to repentance. He's calling you and everybody in your dorm to repentance. True biblical repentance in your heart where you turn away from the world and you turn to Jesus Christ and get in the word and you enter into the blood covenant by the circumcision of the heart. We'll talk more about that in just a minute. And you live for Jesus and fall in love with Jesus and you have intimacy with God through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. And he's calling everybody back to the Bible. And he was telling Judah and Israel, repent. You've got to repent. You're serving idols and you're living for yourself and you're living selfishly and you're in rebellion and you're in danger. And he was calling the nation of Israel to repent. And you know what their reply was? No, that's not the road we want. Now that particular verse is in Jeremiah 6, 16. I'm gonna read a little further. I posted a watchman over you who said, listen for the sound of the alarm, but you replied, no, we won't pay attention. So God sent other servants and to preach to them and to teach them the truth of the word of God time and time again.

And they said, no, we won't pay attention. Let me ask you a question. Are you paying attention today? the greatest thing that could ever happen to you. Discover this truth from the word of God and you will be blessed and set free and have a fresh mind and a fresh heart and a fresh walk and a fresh relationship with God, with intimacy in Jesus Christ. You'll have everything will become new. Let me read a little further. Therefore, listen to this all you nations, take note of my people situation, listen all the earth. I will bring disaster on my people. It is the fruit of their own schemes because they refuse to listen to me. They have rejected my word. And so I want to give you the best advice and I know you may have heard this before, but get into the word and be a doer of the word of God. Say yes to the word of God. Say yes to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And don't be selfish and stubborn and hardhearted about it, but yield to him and do not reject his word. And Israel and Judah rejected his word. And if you read a little further down there, there was an invasion from the North and enemies of theirs swooped down from the North and took them captive, defeated them, killed them, enslaved them.

And it was all because they rejected the word of the Lord. Don't reject the word of the Lord today. Okay? He wants to bless you, not curse you. He wants to bless you. Now we'll go to Romans. Romans chapter two. This is in the New Testament. Old Testament concealed, New Testament revealed. And here's what the word of God says. And this is not replacement theology. I don't believe in replacement theology. For you are not a true Jew just because you were born of Jewish parents or because you have gone through the ceremony of circumcision. Now, a lot of people in the New Testament, they were still thinking they could come to God by being circumcised, but Jesus went to the cross to be crucified and shed his blood so that by faith we could come to him and enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And our heart would be circumcised and we could love the Lord with all of our heart, mind, body, strength, and understanding. No, a true Jew is one who is right with God and true circumcision is not merely obeying the letter of the law, rather it is a change of heart produced by the Holy Spirit and a person with a changed heart

seeks praise from God and not from man. So we're going all the way from Abraham, who entered into a blood covenant with God into the New Testament where Jesus went to the cross, shed his blood for the remission of all sin, every sin that you have ever committed and that you could ever commit so that you could have intimacy with God through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and you would learn how to praise the Lord, walk in forgiveness, forgive others, receive his grace and mercy, and know that you have a home in heaven and receive biblical salvation because you've come to the cross of Jesus Christ. Okay, one last scripture here is in Colossians, and here's what it says. I love Colossians, I think that may be my favorite book of the Bible, but it says, when you came to Christ, you were circumcised, not by a physical procedure, Christ performed a spiritual circumcision, the cutting away of your sinful nature, for you were buried with Christ when you were baptized and with him you were raised to walk in new life because you trusted the mighty power of God who raised Christ from the dead. And you were dead because of your sins and because of your sinful nature was not yet cut away,

then God made you alive with Christ for he forgave you of all of your sin. Now, I believe one of the deepest, darkest, sinful strongholds worldwide is dead religion and it produces selfishness, hard heartedness, enslaves people where they can't hear Jesus or hear the word of God and know the word of God. And it's a terrible, terrible trap to get trapped into dead religion. And so, how do we get out of this? to keep this from happening. It's when we come to Christ with childlike faith, and we say, Lord, I want you to save me, and I don't want anything in the world to come between you and me. I want my heart to be circumcised. I want to be pure. And I want to please you with all of my heart. And more than anything in the world, I want intimacy with Jesus Christ in my life. I was a pastor of a church in Orlando. I want to share this with you. And I was a staff member. The pastor gave an invitation one day. And this guy came up to me, and he almost grabbed me like this by the lapel. And he says, Pastor Robin, I need to get saved right now. And I said, you do? Why do you need to get saved? Because right now, my girlfriend

is in the congregation looking at me and watching you too. And she said that if I didn't get saved today, she was going to kick me out of the house. And I said, wait a minute, man. You can't come to Jesus Christ like a bargaining chip and expect him to save you and keep you from being kicked out of the house. And you going through all the motions and doing everything that you need to please your girlfriend, thinking that you're receiving biblical salvation and eternal life in heaven and intimacy with Jesus Christ, if you don't do this right, then it's not going to do you any good. And so he said, I just know one thing. I need to get saved right now. Pastor Robin, help me get saved right now. I need to make sure your heart is right. I'm telling you, Pastor Robin, right now, my heart is right and I need to get saved right now. And I said, if you're wanting to get saved just to please your girlfriend, you're not going to get saved. You're trying to manipulate Jesus and manipulate the Holy Spirit and manipulate the Word of God and manipulate God so that you get what you want. You want your girlfriend and you want to be able to stay into her house. And there's no substitute in any realm for Jesus Christ. And then he got into my face a little bit and he said, Pastor Robin, are you going to let me die and go to hell? And I said, no, I'm not going to let you die and go to hell.

But if you don't do this right, it's not going to help you one bit. And you can jump through all the religious hoops. Now, I'm talking to a lot of people out there. You've been baptized. Your parents prayed with you. You read the Bible. You go to church. Your name is on a church roll. You go to chapel. You've gone up 20 times when preachers have come in and preached the gospel. And you've come up 20 times to be saved. And there's no substitution with you getting right with Jesus Christ in your heart and knowing that your heart has been circumcised. And as God told Abram, his name later changed to Abraham, you have to have the mark of circumcision in your outward body by the shedding of blood. And in the New Testament, you have to have the mark of circumcision in your heart by the shedding of the blood, shed blood of Jesus Christ. And you must be born again. And you can't be born again any other way except through Jesus Christ. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And no man comes to the Father except through Jesus. And all the religious exercises in the world does not lead to salvation and does not lead to eternal life

and does not lead you to the Father. Only the Lordship of Jesus Christ. I had a little kid come up to me one time and said, Pastor Robin, I've been saved in every church that I've ever been to in my life. I've been baptized 32 times. And now I know I'm going to heaven. And I said, well, why do you know that? Because I've been baptized 32 times. And I said, young man, baptism does not save you. You can only be baptized through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. And by the way, I saw his obituary in the paper the other day, and I hope he was really saved. He had a very challenging, troubled life. Only what can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. So this guy said, Pastor Robin, I want to be saved right now. I said, you've got to do it the right way. I am. doing it the right way. I said, okay. So we got down on our knees and I led him through the Salvation Prayer and I told him, I said, if you're not doing this right, this is going to hurt you more than it's going to help you.

He said, it's right, it's right, let's just get this done. And so I helped him pray the Salvation Prayer and after the invitation was over, he went back to his seat, I guess, with his girlfriend and I never saw him again until two years later. And I was in the prison in the Orange County Jail in Orlando ministering in a men's dorm and when this guy came forward, man, he looked like a Wall Street banker. He had on the prettiest suit and the sharpest glasses I'd ever seen. His hair was combed perfectly and I could tell he was making big money, big money. So I was ministering at the Orange County Jail and this guy with no glasses and orange jumpsuit, unshaven, hair messed up and hair long and stringy and greasy down back, he came up to me and he said, Pastor Robin, Pastor Robin, do you remember me? And I said, my friend, I don't think I do. And he said, Pastor Robin, I'm the guy at the altar

that you said, if I tried to get saved by any other means except through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, that it would do more harm than good but Pastor Robin, I wanna tell you this, you are exactly right. I came to jail, I started reading the Bible, I've gotten saved, I'm leading a Bible study, I'm so excited about Jesus, I'm living for Jesus, I love the other inmates here, they love me, my heart is filled with the love of Jesus and that's how you can tell if you're truly born again, your heart is exploding with the love of Jesus today because he loves you and he wants you to love him. Well, what's the mark of the new covenant? What's the mark of the new covenant? It's not a scar but it's a circumcision of the heart that leads to intimacy with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ where you love him with all your heart, mind, body, soul, strength and understanding

and you're not ashamed of him or the gospel or the Bible and you've committed your entire being to him. Periodically, I go to the prison and preach. A large percent of my attendees the chapel attendees, they don't bring their Bibles to chapel and I've been watching them for 40 years and they don't seem like they've got the love of Jesus in their lives. They talk while I'm preaching, they sit on the back row and sleep and I don't even know why they come except they come and I'm so very grateful that they come, I'm excited because they come, I want them there and I talk to them about this when I go into the chapel to preach but let me tell you something, you can go to chapel every Sunday for 10 years and be as lost as a golf ball in high weeds. I've got one more scripture and then I've got to close and I wanna ask you today, if you were to die today and stand before God in judgment, just you and God and we're talking about the everlasting, now, why is it the everlasting gospel?

Why is it the everlasting covenant? It's because we have eternal life when we're truly born again and we're gonna go to heaven and we're gonna live forever and ever and ever. That's the everlasting gospel, everlasting life. So the question is, if you were to die, do you know you'd go to heaven? If you were to die today and stand before God in judgment, just you and God and Jesus sitting at the right hand of God and you're there on judgment day and they're looking into your heart, are they going to see the mark of the everlasting covenant in the New Testament? Are they gonna, is your heart marked? Well, what is the mark? The mark is this, I just love Jesus Christ so much with all my heart, mind, body, soul, strength and understanding and I wanna follow Him and love Him and I wanna take as many people to heaven with me as I can. That's the mark of the everlasting New Testament covenant living inside of you by the power of the Holy Spirit through repentance and faith and grace and mercy.

One more scripture and then I'm through. It's going to be in Matthew chapter seven. I'm asking you to examine your heart. Are you really the real deal? Do you know Jesus personally and intimately? Well, some disciples came up to Jesus and they said this to Jesus, not everyone who calls out to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my father in heaven. On judgment day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, we prophesied in your name, we cast out demons in your name and perform many miracles in your name. But I will reply, I never knew you get away from me, you workers of iniquity and you law breakers. And so, why did Jesus tell that to these people, these disciples? Because they did not have the mark of the everlasting New Testament covenant in their heart, which is, if any man's in Christ, he's a new creation, old things are passed away, behold, all things become new. And they were trying to get to Jesus by prophesying, casting out demons and performing miracles instead of loving the Lord Jesus Christ with all their heart, mind, body, soul, strength and understanding. And Jesus looked into their heart, there was no mark in there of repentance and faith

toward God through the blood of the cross, there was no mark. And he said, depart from me, you workers of iniquity. You can do all the good works in the world, have all the performance in your life in the world, you can do all the, jump through all the religious hoops in the world, but if there's no mark of repentance and faith of the everlasting New Testament covenant in your heart, you're not going to heaven. Actually, you're going to hell. In John chapter five, I've got five minutes. The word of God says this, you search the scriptures because in them, you think you have eternal life, but the scriptures point to me and yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life. Your approval means nothing to me because I don't know that you have God's love within you for I have come to you in my father's name and you have rejected me. And so a group of followers of disciples, so-called disciples came to Jesus and say, we've been searching these scriptures and we live by these scriptures and it's in the scriptures that we have eternal life. And Jesus said to them, you cannot have eternal life, you can't experience a new covenant, you can't be positive if you were to die,

you'd go to heaven because searching the scriptures and living according to the scriptures alone does not produce eternal life in heaven, but I'm the one that produces eternal life in heaven and I want an intimate relationship with you and yet he said this, you have rejected me. Boy, that's a sober, sober passage of scripture in John 5, 39 through 43. You have to have intimacy with Jesus Christ plus nothing, minus nothing, no performance, no good works, no casting out demons, which I believe in all of those things. I'm here today preaching the gospel to you because I love doing good works, but you have got to have your heart circumcised through repentance and faith and knowing Jesus Christ personally and intimately and when you receive Christ that way, you receive eternal life in heaven, you receive biblical salvation, you receive the everlasting gospel into your heart and you can be assured with God's peace that if you were to die, you'd go to heaven. The last time I went into prison to preach and I preach like this when I go to prison, a young man came up to me and said, Brother Robin, I don't know for sure if I were to die, I'd go to heaven and the CO called the unit to leave real early, didn't get a chance really to finish

what I wanted to finish and I said, let me ask you a question. If If you are Pastor Robin, and I am you, and I came up to you and I said, I don't know if I were to die, I'd go to heaven. I don't know whether I'm lost as a golf ball in high weeds or I'm saved. And what do I do, Pastor Robin? What would you do for me? And he thought about it. He said, I'd get you saved. And I said, we only have time to get you saved. Are you really serious about that? Yes, I am. And I led him in the salvation prayer to ask Jesus Christ to live forever in the sacred chamber of his heart, his innermost being on the throne. And then when we prayed, I said, did you mean that? Yes, I did. You need to go tell somebody what you just did, a leader with the congregation in the chapel. And then you need to follow Jesus Christ every day for the rest of your life. And the fruit of being saved is you have love in your heart for everyone. Well, God bless y'all. Now, this is a pretty challenging sermon. I know it is, but you need to make sure you're saved

and you can pray the salvation prayer. My wife prayed the salvation prayer 50 times before she was really born again. My mother did the same thing. And so I'm gonna lead you in that prayer as long as you're sincere. And if you're not sincere, don't pray with me, okay? But here's the prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, I open my heart wide. I ask you to come in 100% and be my savior, master, and Lord, and live in the sacred chamber on the throne of my heart and on the throne of my life. I received biblical salvation. I received eternal life in heaven. I received a new covenant changing me and I'll never be the same after today. And Lord, I ask you to fill me with your Holy Spirit. Give me a brand new life. With all my heart, I repent and turn away from the world and sin and the darkness and death of religion. And I totally turn to you. And I trust you as my master, savior, and Lord. To God be the glory. I'll live for you forever in Jesus' name, amen. ♪♪♪