Jack Jurgens's Ministry Library

Ministry on Acts 11.

https://media.jjministry.org/Conf2022_02ENase20220917.m4a

So we saw an example of a young man who was looking after God and he was looking after Godliness.

I’d like to see now an example of a group of people who are looking after Christ and being Christ-like.

So come to the New Testament please in Acts chapter 11.

Acts chapter 11, Acts chapter 11, verse 19.

Are going to see the birth, the growing in numbers.

[1:11] And growing in quality of the church in Antioch.

[1:18] Chapter 11 of book of Acts, verse 19. Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen traveled as far as Venice and Cyprus and Antioch, preaching the word to none but only the Jews, unto the Jews only.

And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which when they were come to Antioch, speak unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus.

And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned unto the Lord. Then tidings of these things came onto the ears of the church which was in Jerusalem and they sent forth Barnabas that he should go as far as Antioch who, when he came had seen the grace of God was glad and exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord for he was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith and much people were added unto the Lord then, departed Barnabas to Tarsus for to seek Saul. And when he has found him he brought him unto Antioch and it came to pass that the whole year they assembled themselves with that church and taught much people and disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.

[2:43] In these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch, and there stood up one of them, named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be a great dearth throughout the world, which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar. Then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt in Judea, which also they did and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul. And to chapter 13 please, just the first few verses. They go to Jerusalem, they leave the relief there, the aid, and they, came back. Chapter 14 last verse 25. When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark. In the church of Antioch, now they were in in the church that was in Antioch certain prophets and teachers.

[3:42] As Barnabas and Simon was called Niger and Lusus of Cyrene, and Manhane which has been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch and Saul.

As they ministered to the Lord and fastened, the Holy Ghost said, separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.

And when they had fastened and prayed, they laid their hands on them and then sent them away.

And as I said, we have seen a godly man. And I like to present a Christ-like church.

[4:19] And actually as we see through the New Testament gathering of Lord’s people, we see them with troubles and challenges.

But the church of Antioch I think is a perfect, almost perfect example of how the church of God should be.

A local church, a local assembly.

Antioch was a very important city, was founded and was called after the name of one of the generals that came after Alexander the Great.

There was many Antioch in that time. Actually, we find more than Antioch in the New Testament.

Was a third city in the Roman Empire.

Was a very metropolitan city. Was almost half a million of population.

When we consider that, comparing to the number of worldwide population, it’s quite a huge number.

As a large population of Jewish origin as well. And then, as I said, it was a center of commerce, was a religious center as well.

And actually, Rome wanted to make Antioch like an eastern Rome.

[5:36] What happened in this city? When we consider the verse 19, it goes parallel with with Acts 8.

Those who are scattered because of the persecution that came with Stephen. And then chapter 8 says, Philip went to. So we have a parallel passage, two parallel passages. We’ll see later the similarities but just as a start they were scattered, because of persecution those who live godliness will be persecuted but the persecution that happened in Jerusalem, didn’t extend them actually made them a spawn they went everywhere, Preaching the good news and as they went, these people went here to Antioch, they were preaching to the Jews, to their fellow people.

But it says some of them were preaching to the Greeks, they spoke to the Grecians.

[6:44] First of all, we see that there is no name in this group of people and that speaks of humility.

They’re all together and there is no one of them who was the first or who was the leader.

They were all preaching, not only humility, but we see the involvement of everyone.

They all felt responsible to share the good news.

But what have happened in Jerusalem, how Christ died for their sins, how he rose again and how he was the Messiah, the Lord.

And they were all united, obviously, as one body. As they were sharing responsibilities, they all felt the burden.

[7:37] There were three brothers and they were partying together. They came all together.

They said, we’re going to have a big party and we’re going to bring the wine together.

So all the food came and as they brought the wines, they put them all in a big jar.

And one of them thought, listen, the wine is going to be put in the big jar. I’ll bring water.

Or they’ll mix with the others and nobody will recognize anyway.

Nobody will realize that.

And then all the tables are spread and here comes a big jar of wine.

And as they’re pouring the wine into the cups, there’s only water.

All of them thought the same.

[8:26] I’ll not bring my contribution. That will not be noticed.

But wasn’t with them in Antioch. There is no name because everyone put his weight on.

And not only that, not only no name, there is no discrimination.

They were Jews of diaspora. They were going back, maybe not into their homes, but anyway, they were going because of their persecution.

We have to realize that Judaism is not an outreaching or it’s not an outgoing religion.

You are born a Jew. You cannot become a Jew. But this one are different.

This one, they’re actually, they’re more loving than Peter. Remember Peter?

God had to, the Lord has to intervene. And Peter had to say, Lord, I’m not getting defiled by them, by going the house in Cornelius.

[9:27] They preached the gospel with no discrimination. They were talking to the Greeks that actually they considered Lord by themselves.

They didn’t consider themselves higher than others.

But they went down and shared what they had in their hearts.

Not only no name, not only no discrimination.

But we have one message, two audiences.

It says that they preached to the Greeks.

[10:03] They spake unto the Grecians preaching the Lord Jesus. Structurally is the same structure as I said in Acts 8.

In Acts 8 it says, verse 4, it says we’re scattered and preaching the word.

We’re scattered and preaching Christ unto them. And we have preaching the word, preaching, the Lord, preaching the Lord Jesus. As I said, one message, two audiences. The message, if you see in the book of Acts, the message that the Jews or the apostles were preaching to the Jews, to their fellow citizens, was Jesus of Nazareth.

[10:49] He is the Christ. He is Messiah. He is the suffering one and he is the glorious one.

He came, yes, we killed him, but God has given us another chance to accept him.

And that was the message to the Jews. But to the Gentiles was something in a way different.

The Greeks wouldn’t, the Gentiles, people like us, not interested in Judaism, they would say, Messiah, who is he? Here’s the promised one that God is going to send, that he has sent it actually, to us. He said, to you, but not to us. So the message to the Gentiles was, as Peter would say to the Cornelius, the word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all and that was the message to the Greeks, to the Romans, to the Gentiles. Jesus Christ as the Lord of all and he is the Lord, he is the Curious.

[12:06] And the hand of the Lord was with them and a great number believed and turned unto the Lord.

And we can see the divine approval on what they’re doing.

The hand of the Lord. Nehemiah will write the hand of the Lord.

Ezra will write the hand of my God.

And it’s time of returning. It’s time of rebuilding. It’s time of revival.

And what happened in Antioch was not planned, was not programmed.

But it was an organic growth of people who shared the gospel in their simplicity.

And the result was a great number, a great number. They believed and they turned.

They believed and they turned.

I think that today we need to see people turned and not only believing.

See, the other day I met David for the very first time. Actually, we were late.

And as we were meeting him, you know, we greeted. Imagine if I could have said, David, listen, while we were coming, the tire went flat.

And while we were trying to change the tire, a truck came and threw us into the side of the road.

And this is why we were late. And David would say, what? A truck against you?

[13:35] Where are the signs? Where is the evidence?

[13:41] And we have been stuck by a power that is way greater than a truck.

Where is the signs? Where is the evidence of life-changing power of God?

They believed and they turned.

They turned.

[14:06] And this is how the church has started, how the local assembly here in Antioch have started.

Let’s see now how it expanded. It says that the news of this arrived in Jerusalem, and Jerusalem sent forth Barnabas. The time of these things came under the ears of the church, which was in Jerusalem and they sent forth Barnabas. Again the same structure we find in Acts where the gospel arrived in Samaria and the news of it arrived in Jerusalem and Jerusalem sent somebody, actually sent Peter to see how the things were there, Peter and John. And again in Acts 11 we have the apostle of the brethren that were in Judea heard that Gentiles received the word of God and then they were questioning. So there was something new here, historical. The Gentiles in the beginning of the Samaritans and then the Gentiles trying to accept the gospel, trying to receive, the good news. So Jerusalem sent Barnabas. Why they sent them? Oh to check who are these people, that claim that they believe in the same Messiah, in the same Lord as we do. And there they sent Barnabas. Why they sent him? They sent him to check actually. Why Barnabas?

[15:32] There are reasons, I think, why they sent Barnabas. First of all, he was a Cypriot.

He was a Cypriot, the same as these people here. But more than that, I think that there are qualities in Barnabas, and that’s because they sent him.

[15:51] Barnabas is a pivotal character in the life of the early church.

We see him here and there.

It’s not a main character, but I would say it’s a key character.

Find him first time Acts 4, where he had a piece of land.

He was a Levi, he sells it and brings the money into the feet of the apostles.

But actually he was called Joseph. And they changed his name in Barnabas, the son of consolation.

Or actually, the one who walks near to you.

Barnabas was the son of consolation.

[16:34] I think today we need Barnabas and that’s why the reason they sent him there, the missionaries that they were translating the the bible into an african tropical country, they were they were translating first corinthians chapter 3 and they were showing to the locals you see where paul says that he writes that paul uh planted and apollo watered and they said, perfect pole a wise man he plants a pole water we don’t know what watering is because if it rains every day there is no need for irrigation there is no need for water so they couldn’t understand this concept and as they put it into the local language they said pole planted and a poles put the stick where this This plant could live.

And I think today we need people who are like sticks. And as we see the young plants growing, people who walk near to us.

And this is why they sent Barnabas.

[17:45] The quality of him. And we saw him not only in Acts 4. We don’t have time to develop it.

Saw him in Acts 9. Again we have a young fellow, young guy, young fellow, Saul of Tarsus. We, know him, he was a persecutor of the church and then he miraculously gets saved. And he, tried to speak to the brethren, he tried to join them. They were afraid, rightly so. And, And it says that Barnabas took him and brought him to the Apostles and declared unto them how Paul or Saul have sinned the Lord and the way.

Barnabas took Paul, Saul, and brought him to the Apostles.

[18:35] Because he was a son of consolation, he was doing what he did his best.

Supporting people, encouraging people and he saw this young guy with potential and actually he was risking his reputation saying this I know him, he’s genuine and he brought him, draw near to him, encourage them.

I wonder if we today would have had the epistles that the apostle Paul wrote if we would not have Barnabas and then he went there and he was full of spirit and he was full of faith because he was full of spirit he saw the grace of God they sent Barnabas, and he saw the grace of God.

[19:37] The Spirit of God recognized the work of God.

Actually, Barnabas didn’t see the differences but they were in Antioch. We have to realize, that the assembly there in Antioch was different from the assembly from the church in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem they’ll speak Hebrew.

Their singing was different. With their way that they have built up But they would know the Old Testament in that perfect inside out.

The church in Antioch, they were brand new Christians. But Barnabas saw salvation in them.

He saw the grace of God.

And he was glad what God and what the Lord was doing in their lives.

Because when Barnabas left Jerusalem to go from Jerusalem to Antioch, He led Jerusalem to Jerusalem and he saw there and what he did, he exhorted them.

He exhorted them because he was the son of consolation.

[20:48] He encouraged them. He encouraged them to what? To remain true to the Lord.

And as another another version puts it, encourage them to remain true to the Lord with devoted hearts, true to the Lord biblically, with devoted hearts.

And that is actually the temperature of your truth.

You can be biblically as we heard, but cold. said you have to be true to the Lord with a devoted heart with open heart, and we see the effect much people much people was added unto the Lord the result of good separate care the result of good encouragement much people were added unto the Lord the growth the start of the church the, growth numerically. Let’s see how they grew in quality.

[21:52] Barnabas, he departed for Tarsus and he found to seek Saul. We have found him.

He brought him to Antioch and it came to pass that the whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and they taught much people and the disciples were called Christian first in Antioch.

Humility of the servants. Barnabas realized that physically he was insufficient.

It couldn’t deal with the hour. The day is only 24 hours. I can’t. The thing is growing here.

A ministry is growing. I can’t cope anymore. So I need somebody else.

Where do we do that?

I’m not sufficient. Not only physically But only even spiritually. I’m not a great teacher. I need a teacher.

I am yes, someone who looks after the souls, I’ll take care of them as a good shepherd, but I’m not a teacher, Barnabas says.

So he gets, he gets soul and brings him.

And he brought him into Antioch. Let’s speak about this guy, not the apostle, but this guy here, Saul of Tarsus. Every time that we see him until this point, but even a bit after.

[23:17] It seems that he put himself into the hands of the others. Acts 9 says, as then disciples took him by night, let him down by the wall in a basket.”, Again, verse 27, Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles.

You see, they take him and bring him down.

He took him and brought it to the apostles.

And then Acts 30, 9 30, which when the brethren knew, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him forth to Tarsus.

See, it’s a young man.

But the others seem that they have an influence in his life.

And not only an influence, but tell him what to do.

And Paul will say, hold on. Where is my saying in all this? They tell him, Saul, go there.

Saul, come here.

Do this. He said, what? Hold on.

Do I have a saying in all this?

[24:14] It seems that he didn’t have a saying in all this.

Because he trusted himself into the hand of others. We are the young man like Saul today.

That will hear what more mature believers will ask them to do and they’ll do it.

Saul was like that. He left himself to be carried around in a way.

He was faithful in small things.

And for that reason God used him mightily and he became faithful in big things Much people were added. Much people were taught. It says.

[24:57] Most people were taught in Antioch. All those who were added, all those who were added were taught.

They were taught into the scripture, they were taught in the Bible.

It’s nice to see all this process of growing, not only numerically but even in quality.

And obviously, those who were taught, they were different levels.

You see, I still remember bringing my second and third child into home.

When they came home, we didn’t put them on the table with Luke, who’s our firstborn.

I don’t know. We kept them in their cradle. We didn’t give the same food, it was different.

And the same was happening here. Those who believed were taught, but there were people who were more advanced.

And obviously the food was different. Those who were added were taught all of them according to their needs.

And what happened?

It says, for the very first time in Antioch, this is historical, they were called Christians first in Antioch.

The character of Christ, that godliness that we heard in the life of everyone, every single believer.

[26:24] Alexander the Great was a great general and his custom was to walk in his army by night.

And one night actually they got him there as he was walking in the fields in the camp, and they brought a guy that he was caught in sleep.

[26:50] Suddenly, Alexander the Great asked him, he said, son, what is your name?

And the guy caught him sleeping said, my name is Alexander.

[27:04] He said, listen, son, you change your name, or you change your behavior. You cannot carry my name and be caught in sleep.

They are called Christians. They were called like Christ. They saw their life. They saw their godliness.

They saw their how behaving.

It’s like Christ. We have to bring honor to the name that we carry. And there were prophets who came from Jerusalem and Agabus was one of them and he was saying that a great famine was going to happen in Judea. And what they did, we see the fellowship here among the assemblies. There are at least two reasons why they gathered money. There are many but at least two. First of all, as a Gentile church they were giving to the church in Judea, a Jew church, to show that they’re one now in Christ, that there is no Jew, that there is no Gentile, there is one body. But there is another reason I believe.

[28:27] Because they’re showing their gratefulness. The gospel came from the Jews and they are showing their gratefulness to those people, to those believers who are bought with the same price by the same blood the blood of the Lord Jesus and we see the results actually in Acts 13. Barnabas and Saul they come back from Jerusalem, and as they were together in the church in Antioch there are certain prophets and teachers there, was a was a multicultural church there were different people Simon was a was a black person maybe a Ethiopian Jew and there was Lucius Cyrene of Cyrene he is Latin North Africa maybe more today, Libya. So it was a multi-ethnic church where different people, there were Jews, there were Gentiles, there were blacks and whites and different others. And actually.

[29:34] All of us come from different backgrounds. Our stories are different, but that was not their weak point. That was their strong point. Unity in Christ, is not based on ethnicity, on social group, on cultural background, but is based on the Lord alone and that is why the Lord put the blessing on this gathering. They’re one in Christ. Dependency from the Holy Spirit as you are ministered to the Lord and fastened, the Holy Ghost said, separate Barnabas and Saul.

Willingness to obey.

They send the best.

They send the best.

[30:26] The best teacher and the best shepherd. They send them out there.

And as the church in Antioch was praying to understand the voice of God, they all agree.

And as Mr. Darby says, they let them go.

Let them go to a new thing for the very first time. A church is sending missionaries, not because they are forced as in Jerusalem, not because of… but just a structured team effort to bring the Gospel somewhere else.

[31:08] A church who grew not only numerically, but even in quality.

We all love strawberries, at least some of us. You see, I’ve started to grow strawberries.

And as you have them the first year, after sometimes it seems like a shoot comes out of it comes out of it and goes into the ground again and the new plant starts and again after the second year another shoot comes out and a new plant starts. This is.

[31:49] How the strawberries grow. You don’t scatter the seeds and this is how the churches grew in the New Testament. Barnabas and Saul went and a new church start and so on. And because these people hear, they are godly people and these people here heard the voice of God in their lives. They were motivated to bring the gospel everywhere in effort that was lead it under the Holy Spirit and a, power of God. If we want to be, to have assemblies with a nice taste as strawberries, maybe we should think now to start Auschwitz and starting somewhere, in you. Amen.

Ministry on Friday night of the 2022 conference.

[0:02] I want to read some brief readings, please, firstly from the book of Joshua and in the 14th chapter. The 14th chapter of the book of Joshua.

Can I say what a privilege it is to be here this weekend? Very grateful for the invitation to be with you, and we really do trust that the Lord will mightily bless us as we’re gathered together.

Look at Joshua, please, and chapter 14.

And I want to read, please, verse number 12. Joshua 14, 12.

[0:44] And this is Caleb speaking. And he says, you’ll see at the beginning of the verse, give me this mountain.

Now over to chapter 15, please. And we’re going to read some of the words of Aksa, the daughter of Caleb, and verse number 19, she says this, give me a blessing.

And halfway through the verse, give me also springs of water.

And a further reading please in 1 Chronicles and chapter 4.

The first book of Chronicles and chapter 4.

And reading of verse number 10.

[1:50] And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, O that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me.

And God granted him that which he requested. Now, the Lord always blesses to us the reading of his word.

I often wonder why people come to meetings.

[2:31] Why do people come to conference? Why are you here this weekend?

And honest answers only will do in the presence of God. And I suppose that there will be a variety of reasons why we are all here.

There will be primary reasons. reasons and I’m trusting that the primary reason is that which we have been praying about.

And I was heartened to hear the prayers and the direction of the prayers of the brothers, that it might be that the Lord himself would be amongst us and empower that we might hear his word. There’ll be other reasons why you might be here. You might be here to see friends and to make new friends and who knows but maybe long-term friends. I’m sure that people come to the meetings like this for all kinds of reasons.

But I have been praying that will all of us go away different and that we will all of us go away with a prayer burdening our hearts.

The prayer that I would love to burden my heart with, and I trust we all shall, is really the prayer, one of the prayers or requests that we read in Joshua 15, where Axter says, give me also springs of water.

[3:51] Give me also springs of water. Of course, I’m really hoping we’ll pray a kind of a New Testament equivalent of that.

It’s doubtful we’ll go away praying, actually give me also springs of water.

But as we’re going to see in the next little while.

[4:14] There is a New Testament equivalent to this. Give me also springs of water.

Don’t you like the desire that’s expressed in these requests?

Give me this mountain, says Caleb, which he saw as a spy when he entered into the land.

And having seen that mountain, he’s now in the land. the land. To Joshua he says, give me this mountain.

He’s acts as she has a field, she’s asking for a blessing, she says give me also springs of water.

Can you understand in this that there is an appreciation of where they are, but at the same time there is a proper discontent with being just settled and happy, with not having the best that they could have in the land that God had given them.

[5:09] So what they’re saying is, I really want the best. Give me this mountain, says Caleb.

Give me a blessing. Give me also springs of water.

Or in the prayer of Jabez later in 1 Chronicles 4, enlarge my coast.

Lord, let me not be constricted. Let me not be limited.

Let me not be constrained and small and mean in these things.

He’s saying, Lord, enlarge my coast, enlarge my border. Lord, let me be and have more than I have now. And he’s bringing his prayer to God, the God of Israel, that he might be enlarged. It seems to me that would be a good thing, if in the course of this weekend this touched us and that we went away discontented with how we have been. It may be as I speak to you that you have known better days spiritually. I’m kind of long enough in the tooth to know this, that the last sign of, that not the first sign, but the last sign of a backslidden condition is not to be at the meetings.

Plenty of meetings I’ve preached in with backsliders in the meeting.

[6:30] Maybe tonight you look back to better days. Or maybe it is that you come to the conference and you’re in the good of things.

May God grant to us all, whether we’re in the one condition or the other or somewhere in between, that we might go away with holy desires and that those desires might be, to know springs of water in our land, that we be not dry, that we be not arid, that we be not unfruitful in that of which the land speaks, and that it may be that our souls and our spirits will be enlarged, and that it will be that the Lord himself will enlarge us.

[7:15] I love these people.

Of course, they’ve arrived in the land. Joshua begins, you may remember, with the fact that Moses, God’s servant, was dead.

And here is Joshua now, he’s leading them into the land. It’s sometimes said that, Moses is mirrored in Peter in the New Testament, he brought them through the wilderness, but actually Joshua is mirrored in Paul where he brings them into the good of the territory that we have as being in Christ. So let’s just about that for a moment because I wouldn’t want us to miss it. How many times have you sat in the shoes of the firstborn, in the land of Egypt, on the Passover night.

[8:05] And on that night, there’s a dead lamb on the kitchen top, or wherever it was.

I’m not sure they had kitchen tops, but you’ll understand what I’m saying.

And on the doorpost, there’s the sprinkled blood of that lamb.

And a word from heaven for God said, when I see the blood, I will pass over you.

How many times have you sat, maybe in gospel meetings or in your own sanctuary at home, in the presence of God, And you have been glad, as it were, for blood sprinkled on your doorposts and on your lintel.

And to hear the word of God again, when I see the blood, I will pass over you.

What a happy place to be in.

That when the destroyer was coming through the land at the midnight hour, the Lord himself would hover over to prevent the destroyer destroying in the homes of the people of God, with blood there on the doorposts.

And aren’t we glad that Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us, and that by that precious blood, we have known redemption greater far than Israel ever knew.

[9:19] I love to see the people of God as they’re leaving in the strength of the food that they ate, the lamb roast.

That was the strangest meal you were ever at. Well, you were never at it, but it would be the strangest meal that we would ever have been at.

Where on the table is a whole lamb, whole lamb.

The head, the legs, the inwards, all there on the table. I’ve had some strange meals in my lifetime, but I have never seen a whole roast lamb on the table, nor people sitting at the table with a staff in their hand, their shoes on their feet and garments all girded for the journey that they were going to take in haste, and strengthened by that land.

They’re gonna make the journey to the Red Sea.

And as they’re at the Red Sea, God is gonna open it, you know the story well, and he’s gonna open it to let them out of the land of Egypt.

And he goes through the sea and they’re in the wilderness and the sea is closed.

[10:26] I heard a brother many years ago say a simple thing, which was this, that God opened the sea to let them out, and he closed it again to keep them out, because God never wants us to go back to the world from which we have been delivered, from which we have been redeemed. He’s brought us out into the wilderness.

And here we are tonight, truly in a wilderness. This world is a wilderness wide. Mr Darby wrote that lovely hymn. This world is a wilderness wide. I did it. There’s nothing to sustain us, except that which comes from heaven. They’re in the wilderness and singing. Don’t tell the brethren, but there’s a women’s meeting in Exodus 15. By the way, the only one in the Bible. You don’t get any more. And there they are. And Moses is singing and the people of God are singing and and Miriam is singing and the women with her at the end of Exodus 15.

[11:23] In Exodus 12, the first blood of sacrifice in your Bible. In Exodus 15, the first song in the Bible.

The Lord had done great things for them, whereof they’re glad.

He’s brought them out now through the sea and into the wilderness.

And ultimately, he’s going to get them through the Jordan, as big a miracle as the Red Sea.

And he’s going to bring them in on dry land, even as he brought them out on dry land, because the great purpose of God was this, that they’d come into the land that God had promised them all of those years before in the Abrahamic covenant, the Palestinic covenant.

He’s gonna bring them in to the land that he had.

I want you to watch this carefully because I haven’t got long to say it in, and I need to say it quickly, so you need to grasp it. so you’ll need to be awake.

I’m the one with the excuse for sleeping in this meeting.

With that jet lag from yesterday, still not out of my system. I hope he’s out by tomorrow.

So follow this very carefully, be alert for this.

When I see the people go through the Red Sea, I remember this, that Christ died for me.

[12:37] In the language of Galatians 1 and 5, he gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world. I see the Red Sea that Christ died for me. He delivered them by blood and by power, by blood in Exodus 12, by power in Exodus 14, and he’s now, I see this, he died for me. But when I get to the Jordan there’s another thing I see, and it isn’t now that he died for me. So much as at the Jordan what I learn is this, that I died with him, and that it’s only in the power of my death with him and my resurrection with him that I will ever be in the good of the land into which God has brought me, now I do want you to follow this carefully you see you see when you were saved, whatever that was, and you became a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

[13:45] Wonderful things happened. I expect that when you came to Christ it was for one thing in particular. When I was saved, it was because I knew that I was going to hell, and the Spirit of God really, really wrote this deeply in my heart, that I I knew I was lost and I didn’t want to be there.

I did want to be in heaven.

And my wife, she got saved at Sunday school like I did and she realized that she had an unclean heart and she wanted a clean heart.

Other people I’ve met come because they know the Lord’s coming and they don’t want to miss out.

All sorts of different reasons why people come to the Lord, usually for one main thing.

And then you say, well, praise God, I’m saved.

I’ve got the thing I came for. And then you start reading your Bible. I hope you do.

Then you start reading your Bible and you do discover this, that actually the moment that you were saved, You are blessed with every spiritual blessing.

[14:53] I saw once on some online thing where people were trying to list and enumerate all the blessings that they had in Christ. I think that was a long list and difficult to have it complete, but I’ll just tell you this, that the moment that you got saved, you were blessed with every single spiritual blessing that God had to give you, and the sphere in which he blessed us was in Christ.

That is in the man at God’s right hand who has entered into death and risen and is ascended and is at God’s right hand. That’s where our blessings are. They’re in Christ. You see, and the idea is this, that our blessings now are not like the blessings of the Israelites long ago where there were blessings connected with the land and connected with Zion and the anticipation of Messiah reigning.

Our blessings now are present, they’re heavenly, they’re connected with that sphere, they’re in that sphere of Christ at God’s right hand.

And so the idea now is this, that the Bible is not teaching a health and wealth gospel.

That’s a terrible thing when people preach a health and wealth gospel.

It’s a funny thing this, but they all die and they all take nothing with them.

[16:16] Very, really odd, just a moment’s thought and you see that how crazy that is to preach a health and wealth gospel.

But what we have is every blessing in Christ in the heavenly places, spiritual blessings, not material, but spiritual blessings.

You see, and Canaan represents that.

Canaan is heavenly territory in picture.

Where it is that we are in Canaan, that’s in New Testament, in Ephesians language, that’s where we are now.

So they come over the Jordan, or through the Jordan, and they get to Gilgal, and in the good of Gilgal, they enter into the land. So these people that we’ve been reading about, they’ve entered into the land.

They’ve got their feet on the territory.

But by the way, I hope you have got your feet on the territory.

Like it’s one thing to sit at home or in a meeting and to study or to read your Bible or to listen to preaching and the brother’s taking you through Ephesians or you’re studying Ephesians for yourself and you come away with your head stuffed full of knowledge, of Ephesians territory and church truth in the large thing.

And it’s possible to be stuffed full of information and to be as cold as Christmas and as hard as nails and to be distant from the enjoyment of what we actually have in Christ.

[17:45] Because these people only enjoyed the land in the measure in which they put their feet on the territory. Wasn’t that what the Lord said to them?

Every part of that land that the sole of their foot would tread on would be theirs.

And if you didn’t get to the gold mine, you’d never dig out the gold.

[18:06] And if you never got to the hills, you’d never get the benefit and you’d never get the milk and the honey.

Unless you got your feet on the territory. These people have done that.

They’re in the possession that God gave them, but they have now a proper, holy discontent, in the sense that they didn’t just want to be there, but they wanted to be in the enjoyment of what they had and God had given them in the land.

Do you get the point?

So Caleb says, give me this mountain.

Give me a blessing, says Axel.

Give me springs of water also. Let not my field be dry.

Let it not be unfruitful. Let it be irrigated.

Let my land here, this field that I have, let it be productive.

Don’t let me just live dry here, unfruitful, barren, arid.

She’s really saying, no, give me also springs of water.

[19:15] Do you know what Midland Park needs?

Or wherever you may come from, where I come from on the south coast of England, do you know what it is that we need?

In our assemblies, we need people in the good of and in the enjoyment of the heavenly position that we have in Christ.

To be living above the level of the street, no more than that.

To be living in the good of heavenly things, of Christ in glory, ourselves feeding on Him there, taken up with Him, forget social media, be done with all the drivel that people are taken up with, the transient, passing things.

Brothers and sisters, we are connected to the eternal.

Let us live as if it’s true.

Let us be in the good of it. Give me also springs of water. Maybe that would be a cry tonight from a dried up soul, from a worldly mind.

The cry that comes for the dismissal of a carnal attitude.

Lord, let me live in the good of all that I have, In thee, at God’s right hand.

[20:38] Let me live as belonging to heaven. Let me live out, Lord, the life of heaven on earth, like at Philippi.” Brother was quoting from Philippians 3.

There’s Philippi, the colony of Rome. The life of Rome was lived out in Philippi.

Paul writes to them, he says this, live out the life of heaven in Philippi.

The general population of the city would live out the life of Rome. It had the registers of Rome, the fashions of Rome, the clothes of Rome, the language of Rome, the manners of Rome. In Philippi, if you’ve been to Rome and then you went to Philippi, you’d think this is déjà vu. I’ve been here before, even if you haven’t.

[21:21] To spalls of the Philippians, live out the life of heaven. Let this one thing be before you, that I might know him, the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death.

Let Christ be my life.

Let Christ be all.

All that this might be the outcome of our meetings this weekend.

Give me also springs of water.

The water, of course, in the Bible will speak of the Holy Spirit.

Well, water speaks of different things, but certainly this kind of thing would speak of the Holy Spirit.

The Lord Jesus said in John 7, he that believeth in me out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living waters.

This speak he of the Spirit.

Oh, may it be that filled with the Spirit and with the Spirit of God, ungrieved in our life, that we might all desire to live in the good and enjoyment of what we’ve been brought into in Christ.

And may our conference meetings help us to that end.

Gospel tent meeting with Peter Ramsay and Joseph Baker.

[0:00] The 130th Psalm, if you have a Bible, Psalm 130. Psalm 130, and we’ll break in at verse number three.

If thou art, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?

But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.

Let’s read it in a, maybe in a way that would help you understand what’s being said here.

Psalmist is crying out to God and says, if you, O God, should keep record of sin, O Lord, who could stand?

But there is forgiveness with you, maybe reverence towards you.

[0:44] I’d like to close tonight by looking at a wonder about God that I’ve just been enjoying for a little bit.

The God we speak about tonight, the God of the Bible, the God who made the world, the God of many wonders as we’ve sung it.

Great God of wonders.

And one of the wonders I’ve enjoyed is that God is a God who knows everything.

There is nothing that God learns.

God knows, he’s all-knowing. It’s a word that maybe you’ve heard, omniscient.

[1:14] And yet there’s a verse in the Bible, we didn’t read it tonight, in the book of Hebrews chapter 10, and he says to people who trust Jesus Christ, that their sins and their iniquities, God will remember no more.

And so an all-knowing God has his memory clear. He chooses not to remember sin.

And that is an amazing wonder, how an omniscient, all-knowing God can choose to not remember sin.

I’ve just been thinking about his all-knowing character throughout the day.

You know, series of meetings like this are very uncertain to us.

Those of us who speak and those who sponsor these meetings, What’s gonna happen?

Hope the tent stays up. Hope people come.

So we’re sitting here on this Sunday evening and do you know, everything that’s happened and hasn’t happened, it’s all been known to God.

There’s nothing he learned. There’s nothing that took him by surprise, not the heat wave or the storm.

Nothing that startled the mind of God. It was all known as if it was one closed book.

[2:17] Don’t lose everything.

[2:20] Our sins, my sins, and your sins, tonight, you are to depend on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior.

He would choose not to remember them.

And I want to speak tonight on the blessing that you can leave this meeting with, the blessing of sins forgiven.

I hope to look at it very simply. First of all, I want to tell you that sins forgiven can only be yours from God.

In order for your sins to be forgiven, you require God. You require God.

There is no man, there is no church, there is no priest, there is no process that can, give you peace that, oh, my sins are forgiven.

If your sins are going to be forgiven, if you’re going to know that, you require God.

When Jesus was here on earth, he said to a man, your sins are forgiven.

They said, they knew. Who can forgive sin? But God.

Only God can forgive sins, they misunderstood who Jesus was in that story, but it is only God who can forgive sins.

And so I would ask you tonight, those of you who have been so kind to come, do you know tonight, that your sins, this all knowing God, who knows everything about what you have done.

[3:35] He knows everything about what you haven’t done. Your sins stand in His sight very clear.

Do you know that He has forgiven your sins?

There’s some people and they long to feel forgiven. There’s people who like coming to services like this because they say when they leave, I feel good.

We hope you would leave feeling good. We certainly don’t want you to leave feeling bad.

At the same time, it’s not about a feeling.

It’s not about somebody leaving saying, I feel forgiven. That won’t do. Do you know?

Tonight, do you know that as far as God is concerned, as He looks at your life and your past, my sins, which are many, are God’s.

They’re forgiven, they’re cleared. You need to know that.

You need to know that, and you need to know that from God.

That’s what I read from the Bible.

You need to get that from God. No preacher can give you that.

Nobody can walk you through and say, okay, what was your experience?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, you must be forgiven, you must be saved.

No one can tell you that.

It is only, you must get that from God, from His Word. So that’s the first point, that if you’re going to know the forgiveness of sins, as it says here, if God will keep record of sin permanently, no one, none of us would sin, but there is forgiveness with Him, with God.

Secondly, forgiveness assumes that the people who are seeking it are guilty.

[4:57] You don’t need to seek forgiveness if you haven’t done anything wrong.

Forgiveness assumes people are guilty.

It says in that same story, when that man was brought down and brought down to the roof, and the Lord Jesus told that paralyzed man, “‘Rise up and walk, thy sins are forgiven.'”, It says something very interesting.

It says that before that whole story takes place, it says, the power of the Lord was present to heal.

It wasn’t as if, and it says present to heal them, all the people who had come to listen to Jesus.

But you see, they didn’t get any blessing from Christ being there and Christ speaking.

They didn’t leave with their sins forgiven because they didn’t realize that they had sins that needed to be forgiven.

I wonder tonight, do you realize that?

Do you realize that in the sight of God, you have sins that he knows all about?

He’s never gotten used to that. He’s never gotten desensitized.

He’s never forgotten them.

There are sins so clear and open in his eyes.

There are sins that he will have to judge because of who he is as a holy and just God.

[6:10] Are you willing tonight to acknowledge your guilt? The story in the Bible about a prodigal son, spent all of his dad’s money, wasted it on riotous living. And it says that when he came to himself, that was a far journey to come to, but finally, at last, he came to himself. I have sinned. I have sinned against heaven, against the that night when I have sinned against heaven.

I wonder tonight, do you realize that your sins, whatever they might be, whether it was cheating on a test and the teacher said, you know, that’s not allowed and you copied somebody else’s answers or swearing when mom and dad weren’t listening.

Do you understand like David understood that my sins ultimately are against you and you only.

My sins are against a living, holy God.

[7:02] You understand that tonight? You see forgiveness is only available for guilty people.

If there are people who are attending this meeting tonight and you are not guilty, I’m, sorry. There’s no message for you. This is good news for the guilty.

This is good news for the hungry. This is good news for the thirsty.

This is good news for the needy. People who have no need, no guilt, no hunger, no thirst, like the power of the Lord is present.

They just leave. No use of the gospel.

So there is guilt that makes forgiveness needful.

And this guilt, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever had somebody wrong you, but you have. And if they seek your forgiveness, you understand that.

The reason they’re asking for your forgiveness is because what they’ve done has hurt you.

[7:47] It’s offended you. Right? And maybe they’ve never even asked for your forgiveness.

Usually, just as human nature, we don’t really think about too many of the people that we haven’t asked forgiveness from.

[8:01] Let me quickly remember all the people who haven’t asked for our forgiveness. That’s human nature.

And maybe just now you’re thinking of people and they just carry on with their life, and, they’ve never had the decency you might say.

They’ve never come to themselves to just come to you and say, I’m sorry, will you forgive, me? Because what they did, and whatever you might be thinking about just now, hurt.

I have to tell you that sin has hurt God.

It is a deep hurt. It’s not a small thing, not with God. So, forgiveness is necessary.

Forgiveness also assumes that the party that’s going to offer the forgiveness is God, right?

Only God can forgive sins, and it’s only the guilty who need it.

[8:44] The party that offers the forgiveness must be gracious. No one deserves forgiveness.

In order to receive forgiveness, it’s out of the grace, the kindness, the love, or the care of the other party.

That person, like if all of us here tonight could at least unite with this, that we are, guilty and we need forgiveness from God, there would be no good news if God wasn’t offering it.

I hope you understand that. God wasn’t coming out to the sinful, if God wasn’t coming out to the guilty, there’s no forgiveness. He must make the first move. And thankfully my friend, He has. God has come out in grace. I love that. The bright glories of His grace above His other wonders. He has come out with pardon and grace. It says of the Lord Jesus, I try to mention one of these nights that He stayed silent just before before going to the cross, didn’t speak a word in his own defense.

And yet right when he’s put on that cross, nails are driven through his hands and feet, right when saying even a single word would have been unbelievable pain, push his hands and his feet against the nails and to lift up a scraped plowed back against the twisted wood.

It’s then that he starts speaking. And you know the first thing he says, Father.

[10:11] Forgive us. I don’t know what they’re doing, but the Savior we represent tonight, I couldn’t represent myself as a very forgiving person, but the Savior I represent is a forgiving Savior.

He comes out to sinners, the very people that put Him on the cross, the very people that hammered nails through His hands and through His feet and spit on His face. Father, forgive us.

And after He had risen back from the dead, after He died on that cross and rose back from the dead. He told his disciples, I want the good news of this message. This message of repentance and forgiveness. I want it to be sent to all the world. But I want you to start at that very city. See that city? That city that sent away with me. See the city that said, spit on him. See the city that said, crucify him. I want you to tell them.

Tell them first. I want the whole world to know that I went to that very city that said I was worthy of a crown of thorns. I want them to hear the message first. Oh, my friends, God is coming out to sinners, God is coming out with forgiveness, and we represent a gracious God.

And so for forgiveness to be possible, we require God, a person must acknowledge guilt.

[11:22] Then there must be grace.

The fourth point I would give you is very important. I would ask you just to think about it, because likely somewhere, maybe not even in this tent tonight, but sometime in your life you have some quiet space where you think about sins that bother your conscience and you wish you could have them cleared.

[11:48] God is holy, God is just, God will not forgive sins illegally. What does that mean?

That God is legal.

Yes. Yes, God made the law. And God has a law by which He runs the universe.

And nobody can be forgiven illegally. God can’t just look at a sinner and say, okay, I’ll let you in there, your sins, no problem.

I know what you’ve done. I know you’re sorry.

No, sins have a legal consequence.

Sins are a crime, really. You could think of, rather than doing it a sin, you could think of it as a crime, a crime against God’s law.

It’s God’s law that says we shouldn’t lie. And when a person lies, they have sinned against God’s law.

And so we need a ground, a ground where forgiveness can be possible.

And it must be a legal ground.

How can a God who is just and holy, righteous, Ever look at people like me and you, who have committed all these sins, all on our record, they’re all known by him.

How could he just forgive us?

How could he just clear it? After all, isn’t it his own law?

It’s his own law, not the devil’s law.

Not some law on planet Earth. Isn’t it God’s law that says the soul that sins should die?

[13:10] Isn’t it God’s law that says the wages of sin is death? Isn’t it God’s law that says whoever keeps the whole law, and yet the peasant wants a

Am I not just quoting God’s law? So how can God look at His own law and then look at a sinner and say, you’re sorry, no problem.

No, it must be forgiven legally.

I would tell you this, please don’t gamble with your soul. 45,000 years from now, if there’s a legal loophole in my forgiveness, I will be in hell.

If the devil can find some legal loophole, that man has sinned and they weren’t forgiven legally.

He’s mine. I would be in hell, and so would every one of you.

No, it must be forgiven legally. But that’s why Jesus came.

He came to provide this legal ground. And I have to tell you, that’s what Calvary, that’s what the cross is all about.

[14:08] He went to the cross. He didn’t just go there by accident.

He didn’t just go there because it’s a sad story.

He didn’t just go there because God wanted to show just how much he loved us.

And so he put his son on the cross and said, this is how much I love you.

No, there was legal requirements for sin, legal requirements.

And God could not just pass sinners by. Their sins demand that they must die.

But in the cross of Christ we see how God can save the righteous.

That’s what the song says, and that’s very true. And the song goes on to say this.

The judgment fell on Jesus.

By His shed blood, sin’s debt was paid.

Now mercy can dispense its sword. You see, what happened on the cross was the Lord Jesus went there willingly.

And He went there to take the penalty, the legal consequences for sin that you and I have endured.

[15:07] The law says the soul that sins shall die. Lord Jesus went to the cross to experience death.

This is what it says in the Bible. I’m just telling you what the Bible says now.

He tasted death for everyone. That’s what he did on the cross.

He tasted death for everyone. What a scope for forgiveness.

Everyone, wow. And so there is a legal ground that has been laid.

He went to the cross, he was made accountable for sin, suffered for his bullying, God raised him back from the dead, God announcing to the world that now there is a ground.

There’s a solid ground where I can legally Forget any sinner, and trust Jesus Christ.

[15:51] What does that happen? Well, this is what happens when a sinner trusts Christ, according to the Bible, and we can get make it theologically complex We can just tell you in very simple terms. I’ll tell you what happens.

You know the day you trust Jesus Christ, the day I trusted him, with all my record of sins, do you know what God did?

[16:10] He took what his perfect son did and he credited that. My account before God, I had sinned, I don’t glory in them, but my account was Joseph Baker has sinned and I should die.

[16:28] But I depended on the 22nd of March, 2003. I depended on him according to the Bible, it says this about him, he was wounded for my sins.

I depended on him. You know what happened? When he got on that cross, God, in a mighty transaction, credited that, freely, to my account.

It was credited to me, as a gift.

And that’s what happens when somebody trusts Christ. And so it’s not that they’re forgiven because they’ve become religious.

It’s not that they’re forgiven because they’ve said the right prayers.

It’s not that they’re forgiven because they’ve joined the right church.

They’re forgiven because they came humbly enough as a sinner to say, I trust him, I trust the one who took the death penalty for me.

And so, thank God, really, that there is a ground, a legal ground to forgive sins.

That brings me to my final point.

Forgiveness must come from God. Tonight, if you want to know whether you’re forgiven, you must get that from God.

It is only through the guilty.

It is only available by grace. There must be a legal ground.

But point number five is this, forgiveness must be received as a gift.

[17:40] You cannot earn God’s forgiveness. You cannot change your life enough to merit God’s forgiveness.

You must receive God’s forgiveness as a free gift.

[17:55] How amazing that that’s how God is offering it. He turns to sinners, just like those people in Jerusalem who said that his son was worthy, of spit on his face, and says, I’m offering you forgiveness for what you did with my son.

I’m offering that to you tonight.

And a person receives that as a gift. They turn to God by faith and just receive it as a gift.

They don’t do anything.

They never, I’ve never met a person who figured out how to believe.

Never.

[18:30] I’ve never met a person who figured out how to trust or suddenly read the Bible enough that a verse just popped into their mind in gold letters.

I’ve met a whole bunch of people in my two weeks here that understood that they were guilty of religious sins and had nothing in their hands and understood that God was coming out to set them free. And they took it as a gift. And my friend, tonight, if you were to take it as a gift, you would go home rejoicing with this man, David, and this Psalm. Oh God, if you were to to keep track of sins, I could never stand, but there is forgiveness.

It’s the fact that there is forgiveness that tells us to share this great news with you.

There is no message like it, as we said before, there may be better messengers, but there, There is no message to think that you can go out into the parking lot tonight with every shit legally forgiven by the God of this great universe.

Nothing between you and God, only the Lord Jesus Christ.

I can’t imagine why anyone would want to leave this tent tonight.

[19:53] I really insist on going back to your vehicle, Mr. Simms, because I’d love, I’d love to have what Joseph is talking about.

I would love to know that my sin record is completely cleared.

[20:09] And I have peace with God. To the Lord Jesus Christ, amen. We’re glad you’re here.

And just before, in case I forget at the end, I just want to thank everybody for being patient with us, over the last few weeks, and for attending, for all the refreshments we’ve enjoyed, a lot of work involved in that every night.

And I have to say it’s been very much a pleasure working with Joseph as well.

So pray for him and his future and his family, and just appreciate the opportunity to share Christ at this time.

So we’re going to read one verse in the Old Testament. And the meaning of it can be somewhat obscure to us tonight in the imagery here.

[20:58] We’re not going to get distracted by that. It’s not going to be too difficult.

But if you look into it, it’s looking forward to a future day when Christ himself will defeat, every foe and every enemy, and he will be the mighty conqueror.

He will reign universally, he’ll reign globally, but I just want you to remember three words, from this one verse that we are going to read.

I want you to spot the three words. Isaiah 63. Isaiah 63 and verse 1.

I think that’s 63 and verse 1.

[21:43] I said these words may be somewhat obscure and may not mean a lot to you and.

[21:51] Verse one says, Who is this that cometh from Eden with dyed garments from Balthazar, this that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength, I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.

Now, I didn’t want to give away which three words I was picking up, but maybe just by the way I emphasize it, you clued in.

[22:22] Mighty to save. There is not a scanner on planet Earth that Christ cannot save.

He is mighty, mighty to save.

So I took my little sign here.

Whether it blows in the wind or not, I don’t know. If it does, keep much, you’ll see it for a flash and then it might fly away.

Mighty to save.

You ever think about if you need to be saved for that?

Would you like to be saved? Is there anyone here who is saying, I heard about salvation, but I’m not saved?

Well, you’ve been hearing about one who is mighty to save.

Now I want to read the antonym of mighty to save. in the new testament.

[23:24] Antonym, for those of you who are younger, just means the opposite, the opposite.

If I say the antonym of dark is light.

So that’s what an antonym is. If it’s cold, the antonym is hot.

Well, let’s read the antonym of mighty to save. Romans 5 verse 6.

Romans 5, verse 6 says, “‘For when we were yet without strength,’ in due time, Christ, died for the ungodly.

The antonym of mighty to save is without strength.

[24:16] Stops at a mighty to save, and maybe there’s a heart that’s resonating with these two words tonight in the tent.

That describes me. I have no strength to save myself.

I’m without strength. Well, we point you again to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Without strength, there is one who is mighty to save.

[24:47] Some people, you’ve already been here, people wanting to believe and trying to figure out how can I be saved?

Well, you can save yourself.

And the more a person tries, the weaker they are. They realize, I can’t do this.

I want to have my sins forgiven, but I am lost. You try, they say, to get saved.

Get saved.

But to know you aren’t saved, you know, this little text service is, you’re either lost, or you have been saved.

Someone asked us over refreshments last week, were you always saved?

You were always a Christian. Absolutely not.

No one has always been saved and no one has always been a Christian.

Every Christian has found themselves without strength to save themselves.

You say, well, I say I’m a Christian, but I don’t remember a time in my life when I, understood I was without strength to save myself.

Well, from the Word of God, I would tell you, timely, you’re not saved.

[26:04] Call yourself a Christian, but you’re not a Christian if you haven’t found out that that I have no ability, no strength to save myself.

As you’ve heard in my past, save implies a rescue.

So specifically when were you spiritually rescued? When did Christ save you?

I know when he saved me, June the 2nd, 1969. Oh, I know a lot of things happened in 1969.

Landed in the moon for the first time. 69.

Teddy Kennedy drove off the bridge in 69. Someone drowned in his car.

Woodstock, Rockvessel, 69. He experimented with the first debit machine, 69.

All these wonderful things in 69. But the greatest of all things that happened in 69, I was slain.

I found I had no strength, but there was one who was mighty to save me.” Have you found out that the Lord Jesus is mighty to save?

[27:17] Let me tell you a little short Bible story. Some of you probably know, but just a few days after Jesus was crucified, two people were walking away from Jerusalem and they were lamenting and sorrowing about the death of Jesus.

Probably tears running down their faces as they headed home and all their hopes had been centered and pinned on Jesus.

And then, as the story goes, a third person joined them.

And so they were talking along the way, and he asked them, so what things are you talking about?

And they said, you don’t know what happened in Jerusalem just the other day?

He said, what things?

So they said, the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet.

And here’s what they said, mighty indeed at the works and mighty in word before God and before all the people.

And so that’s what they told the third person who was walking with them.

Mighty indeed and word before God and all the people.

And then they ended up at the house. The three of them walked in over the patio and through the door and they sat down at the table And just the three of them.

[28:45] He said, oh, that’s it’s Jesus. It’s Jesus risen from the dead.

If that’s not power, if that’s not might, here he is alive. This is might, this is power, this is strength that eclipses all other displays of his power.

Someone who was dead, died on the cross. His corpse was removed from the cross, wrapped, put in a tomb, stone rolled in front of the tomb.

And the third day, there was no power and hell or an earth in all the universe that could hold him back.

Power, he is mighty to save. He has the power to raise himself from the dead.

Jesus said, no one takes my life away from me.

I let it down of myself, and I have the authority to take it back, take it up again.

That’s what Jesus said in John chapter 10.

Then he said on another occasion, he said, destroy this temple of my body.

[29:59] I will raise it up in three days. You’re wondering if the Lord Jesus can save you?

You say, I have no strength. I’ve been listening to Joseph. I have no strength to save myself.

That’s why we point you to the Lord Jesus. He is mighty to save.

I’ve only spoken on this one other time. I just discovered mighty to save in Isaiah and I underlined it.

I got out my notepad and I was like, this is thrilling, mighty to save.

Who are lost and desperate in their sins, and we can point them to the Lord Jesus, He is mighty.

I’m pointing you to the Midland Park Gospel Hall.

Well, I would be home so fast if it was just about the gospel hall or a church.

It’s about a man called Jesus. He is mighty to save. I’m not here to present the irrefutable truths and the facts of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but he was mighty to bring himself back from death. Do you need any more proof that he is mighty to save? You have no strength to to say I’m aware now that I am a sinner.

[31:22] I pray, I shut it in my room and I tried to cry. I thought maybe if I could cry, that he’d see my tears and have mercy on me.

No, that’s not how a person trusts Christ.

Tears have no part of it. God never said if you cry, enough tears, And if you say enough prayers, and if you try really hard and you up it a couple more notches, when I see you’re there, then I will change and go.

It’s not like that. That would be human effort, wouldn’t it?

There’s no human effort involved at all. You don’t want to come out, you’re without strength.

Nothing you can do. Give up tonight.

If you want to have your sins forgiven, Give up and face the facts in the Bible.

The Bible says you’re without strength.

You have no ability. Um…

Bankrupt. You are not. No more sins.

That’s why we need upstrength.

I’d like to see who can save you tonight. What do you think you can do? What sort of thing?

Thank you for watching.

[32:52] Giving God is everything to do with Jesus Christ, the mighty one, who is able to save you.

You know, from the beginning of time, mighty to save.

God promised that there was one coming who would be mighty to save.

Genesis 3, you know, the awful, the catastrophic fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden, and the dense darkness and the brokenness of the world, as a result of his awful sin. Way back in Genesis chapter three, God promised that there would come a mighty one.

You read it in Genesis three verse 15. He said, oh, Satan, the devil may bruise his heel, will bruise his heel, But the one that’s coming into the world with a cross, Satan’s head is ours.

But promised way back in the Garden of Eden that this mighty one was going to come.

Satan will not triumph forever.

Jesus will come. Evil enters the human family, poison spread by Satan, misery.

Well, I’m so thankful that way back in Genesis, promise was made, that one who is blessed and saved could be better appreciated by the Lord Jesus Christ in that way?

[34:20] Like, is there any response in your heart? Like, did you thank the Lord Jesus Christ today for taking your plunge and dying for your sins and bearing the penalty of your sins?

I think I’m safe, really?

And there’s no appreciation in your heart?

Big question mark there, something wrong? If someone went to the cross and shed his precious innocent blood, and you couldn’t find it in your heart any hour of this day, to say, thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, for dying for my sins.

Question, are you saying?

[35:05] God promised back that there would be that strong, that mighty one who would come.

So you read all through the Old Testament. I know there’s some difficult passages in the Old Testament and the Psalms and Isaiah. God promises that the mighty one is going to come.

And one place it is, the wind will be his chariot. Oh, isn’t that figurative?

Mighty to say, oh, there’s no weakness, no lack of strength in Christ. He is going to come.

That was the message of the Old Testament.

The Lord himself will come and with conquering power, the feet, the forces of evil.

What a hope throughout the Old Testament. Someone, Isaiah wrote, whose arm is not too short, that it cannot reach down and save.

We talk to people and they say, well, I’m too far down. I’m too far gone.

I’ve lost the sin. I love the Bible.

It says, my arm is too short.

I could reach anyone, wherever they are. We can reach you, reach you in a tent tonight, and he could save you.

[36:13] Stronger than the strong. You get to Mark chapter three in the New Testament.

And there’s the whole story of people saying, this is Satan and Beelzebub.

They’re attributing the powers of Christ to Satan and to Beelzebub.

And Jesus said, he’s strong, Satan’s strong, but there’s a stronger one than Satan.

The strong man arm keepeth his palaces with their peace, but a stronger than that strong man.

Who is a stronger than the strong man?

Christ, Christ. You see, friends, this message is all about the Lord, Jesus Christ.

[36:55] Strong, mighty to save. Would you like to be delivered? Would you like to be saved?

Would you like to be set free from your sin? Would you like someone with might, with power, to reach into your life, just where you are tonight,

[37:16] Well, who will you find in the universe? Joseph is a good preacher, and I’ve had quite a few coffee with him, and he’s a nice person.

We can’t save him. Who can save you tonight?

[37:36] Absolutely, only Christ. He is mighty to save. When you think of how he came every Christmas, because I enjoy it throughout the year, but at Christmas time, when you’re seeing the nativity scene, he came in a parent weakness.

In the stable as he slept in the manger, he looked like a fragile, weak little baby boy.

That’s what he looked like, parent weakness.

Wrath and swaddling clothes, omnipotence. You can hear me about his omniscience, all knowing, But this is almighty power wrapped in baby blankets.

Isn’t that amazing? Apparent weakness.

He was mighty, you know, at that stage in life. Mighty, he was Christ in human flesh.

He was mighty when he was in the carpenter’s shop. Oh, he just looked like he was an ordinary tradesperson.

Mighty.

When he slept on the cushion in the boat, tired and weary, sound asleep, mighty, mighty when in the cars of Gethsemane, they wrapped his arms, they bound his hands, he had a sufficient power that he could have broken those bands of thunder and he could have swept the ball out into eternity.

[39:01] But in apparent weakness, they bowed the hands of Jesus, and they paraded him through the streets, and they nailed him to the cross. I’ve often wondered what those soldiers thought.

Those are skilled soldiers. The Romans, that’s what they did. That was the way they, yelled with criminals. They were skilled at crucifixion. I wonder those soldiers when it came to selecting the nails to nail Jesus to the cross. And when he just willingly, I wonder the soldier looked at the other soldier. There’s no resistance.

Look at the other ones. We have to put our knee on the arm and hold it down and the other person dives the nail in.

But this lovely man, who is he?

He provides no resistance. His eyes aren’t flashing with anger.

His cheeks aren’t white with rage.

Absolutely is a friend. He has nothing to say to you. He went to the cross in apparent weakness.

[40:14] He didn’t look like a mighty one. He didn’t have all the outward trappings of wealth and strength the greatness of power and might, his ordinary clothes.

No big security details following him everywhere he went. No minstrels going down the road ahead of him, playing a little tune, here he comes, here he comes.

Nothing like that.

Just looked like a poor 30 year old man.

[40:44] They underestimated him. Maybe you’re underestimating Jesus tonight.

Maybe you’re undervaluing him as well, give no place for him.

Oh, think of who he is. He is mighty deceived.

Some accused him of getting his power from the devil, even his own family.

Did you know that? His own family said he’s mentally ill.

They came to physically take him to a family intervention because they thought he had lost his capacity to make sound choices and read good reasoning.

Apparent weakness.

[41:23] Display inherent strength. This lovely one who’s mighty to see. Remember those two in the road to Emmaus? They said, mighty in deed and in word before God and all people his deeds. I don’t, need to enumerate the deeds. They just, it blows their mind when I read the gospels, how he healed impossible cases, just spoken word or by a touch. What no doctor or specialist could do, Mighty, mighty, oh, he has power, mighty to save you tonight.

Anybody interested? Any takers? Anyone wanting just to put up a little hand inside your heart saying, I need strength, I need to be rescued, I’m without strength, I’m ungodly in my sins, I need to be saved.

[42:16] But I can rescue you from your sins.

Weakness, mighty power.

When he went to the cross, he was strong enough, strong enough to overcome evil, Satan, and the intractable problem of sin, that has plagued this human family for millennia.

He had the power to deal with that problem of sin at the cross, mighty to save.

Religious people, prophets, they tried to deal with sin, but there was only one strong prophet, who could deal with the sin problem.

He was strong enough, I already said, to raise himself from the dead.

[43:01] From of the same sinners that are true in the ages. And he’s strong enough to save you.

[43:10] Would you like him to save you tonight? You know, the Bible says he knows.

Chapter 9, once at the end of the ages, appeared to put, put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

That’s the best point. That’s power. That’s strength. All by himself.

He did it. What no one else could do.

Worsened than for mine. Tonight, he has the ability and the strength and the desire to, save. A lot of people have a desire to save. I was reading a story, it happened a little while ago, I have it on my website, but it’s the Nutty, it took place in the Nutty Puppy Cave, way out in Utah. And it used to be a very popular destination for people who like caves and, John Jones, he was 26 years old in medical school and, trained to be a pediatric Cardiologist and he was a he and his wife were expecting a little baby and, All for your Thanksgiving and they thought there would go some age problem, And John Jones went into the cave and he got stuck inside the cave.

[44:23] He got stuck upside down, he thought he would just go a little further, he got stuck upside down.

It was Tuesday at 9 o’clock in the evening, and he was 400 feet inside, and he was unable to move. He was stuck.

Stuck at a 70 degree angle, and most of his middle body pinched in a probably 10 inch wide space.

[44:50] They worked the rescuers. They briefly pulled him out of the crevice. They used a pulley system, ropes that tied to his feet. They gave him food and water. They sent things down to him, trying to rescue him. And they thought they had him out of the narrow space for about 30 minutes. They thought they had him free. And then the rope broke and he went back in.

This time they couldn’t get him out. He slipped back in. He was so close to safety.

And after 27 hours of trying to rescue them, trying to save them, they had to give up.

137 people tried to rescue Jones, but they said, we’re physically, mentally exhausted.

Is it our make-up to leave anything undone?

All of our Herculean efforts make us insane.

[45:49] But it’s very important, David said, if you want to make a spiritual analogy, and he’s, not going to tell you, the rope’s not going to break.

If you want to be saved this evening as we close this gospel service these two weeks, If you would like to have your sins forgiven, we point you to the one who won’t let you down, won’t let you go.

Herculean effort, the power is all in himself, mighty to save you.

But maybe you’re still floundering around saying, I have a little bit of ability to save myself.

You’ll never be saved when you’re taking that life. When you get to that point, oh God, I’m without strength.

My sins, I need to be respected by those who might be saved.

Joseph and I have accepted visiting someone who has experienced God’s salvation.

Thank you.

[46:48] Thank you.

And I wrote about a few years ago, David Berkowitz, who’s still in Sam.

He murdered six people over a period of years, wounded seven others, awful, heinous crimes.

And I asked him, what does Jesus Christ mean to you today? He wrote me back, the Lord Jesus is my savior, my hope, my friend.

Experiencing his forgiveness is wonderful. Being able to know Christ as my shepherd is also wonderful.

One of my favorite scripture passages can be found in Hebrews 2.

My Savior says that concerning all his blood-redeemed children, he is not ashamed to call them brethren.

And this means that the Lord is not ashamed to have such a miserable sinner as I once was, now a part of his family.

And then he’s got amazing! Exclamation mark!

And then he wrote, no one is too far away that the Savior’s mighty arms cannot hold.

He experienced God’s salvation.

[47:53] We’re sitting here, blank. As we close this meeting tonight, let me tell you, he is mighty.

He said, I give to them eternal life.

You will never perish. He never dropped you.

Come to Him, you’re saved forever. Secure in Christ.

He’s able to save to the uttermost those who come to God for Him.

He not only saves you from your sins and lifts you up, but He saves you throughout your whole Christian journey and pathway.

He’s mighty to save.

Pastor, have you ever called Heaven’s 911?

[48:34] Oh Lord, I’m down here on planet Earth! I have no strength, I’m going to hell!

My sins! My sins! My sins!

If he heard that cry from a human heart that no other human can hear, just the faintest cry from the inner recesses of a human heart, his ears are tuned to that cry, and he’s mighty to save.

And if you said, oh God, I have no strength to save myself in my sins and just dying for how you’d reach it safely.

Gospel tent meeting with Peter Ramsay and Joseph Baker.

[0:01] I’d like to read in the Gospel of Luke, if you have a Bible, that is the third book of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Luke and chapter 2. I can say from this side of the platform, these two weeks have come and gone very quickly.

Not sure about those of you who endured some pretty rough nights, but we have a beautiful night tonight, and it’s gone by rather fast, and the Lord will, Sunday night will be the concluding night, at least as planned, at 730 for the special series of gospel meetings. Luke chapter 2 and we’ll read from verse number 8.

And they were in the same country, shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and, the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the The angel said unto them, fear not.

For behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. Just drop down to verse 18.

[1:21] Shepherds go and tell us what has happened. and verse 18, it says this, “‘And all they that heard it wondered, marveled.

“‘They were amazed. “‘All they that heard this announcement “‘that the angels had given, “‘they wondered at those things “‘which were told them by the shepherds.'”.

[1:40] I just wanna look at this story, and I understand that for many of you, this might be a story you read at a far different time of this year, maybe around December.

But really, this is, in essence, the gospel message. If you would like to know what the gospel message is, it is presented actually here by angels.

Now, Peter and I are not angels, and you’ll find that out very quickly, but actually there was a day where angels announced the gospel.

That’s what it says. It says, angels brought good tidings.

That’s just what the word gospel means.

Good news. And this was the good news. Unto you was born this day, over 2000 years ago now, this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

I want you to go home and just think about those words, a Savior, Christ the Lord.

This is the message of the gospel. This is good news from heaven, that a Savior has come, who is Christ the Lord.

You see, in that title given to Jesus Christ, What we find out is really, in those few words, the core of what the gospel is.

We could ask a number of questions. First of all, why is he called the Savior?

[3:01] He’s not called a counselor, he’s not called an advisor, he’s not called a guru, he’s not called a priest, he’s called a Savior.

And then the Savior is Christ the Lord. The Lord, this is a title that was only given to God.

It says in Isaiah, I am the Lord, that is thy name, and my glory I will not share with anyone else.

And yet, there’s a baby, a baby that’s born, wrapped in swaddling clothes in Bethlehem.

And the angels say that baby is the Savior, Christ, the Lord.

[3:45] So God has come into our world and is found wrapped in swaddling clothes as a baby.

That is very important.

But why? I want to tell you that the reason he is the savior, Christ the Lord, is because we all, all of us as humanity, have a problem that’s just that bad.

A problem that’s just that bad to need a Savior.

[4:12] The reason Christ the Lord came into this world is because of a love that’s just that great.

A love that’s just that great. The Lord came into our world. God, who made the world, came here.

[4:26] The reason he’s called a Savior is because of a provision that’s just that complete.

Nothing else is needed. He’s not a helper. He doesn’t get you most of the way.

He doesn’t do 90% of the work. No, He’s a Savior.

A provision that’s just that complete. But if this is a Savior, Christ the Lord, then that makes rejection.

Just that sad. Because you see, when people leave and turn their back on the Gospel, they’re not rejecting a preacher, they’re not rejecting a church, they’re not rejecting Christianity.

They’re rejecting the Savior. The Savior, Christ the Lord.

Lord. Tonight, if it hasn’t been clear in previous nights, we preach Christ. We present Jesus Christ. He is the message, and he is what’s on the table, if you will. He is what is being offered to people, this living person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So let’s just go through it briefly in the opening part of this meeting. First of all, a problem that’s just that bad.

[5:26] When you think of the word saved, what do you think about? I’m rather concerned that some of these words have been almost hyper-spiritualized.

They’ve been made so religious, like people think of, well, saved is what happens when you go to a summer camp and you say a prayer, or you raise your hand, or you sing a song, and I got myself saved at a summer camp.

Or I go to a religious service, and I get myself saved.

Now come on, when you think of the word saved, I think this is not a religious word.

We’re not talking about like baptism or church or anything like that.

Saved, it’s a word we use all the time.

Right, rescued.

I’ll tell you a little story about what I think about when I think of the word safe.

[6:07] I was sent to a little YMCA thing during the summer and I didn’t know how to swim and it was a beautiful, very hot day like it was earlier today. And we were in the pool, all the kids were in the pool, and I loved the shallow end because you could touch the bottom, you could, play with the balls. But of course, when you love the shallow end and you can’t swim in the deep end, this is the place to be. Diving board and all the things that everyone can’t do. And my brother, my older brother, he wanted to go to the deep end. And so the lifeguard said, okay, well, you have to take a swim test. They took him over to the deep end and put him in the pool, and he did a swim test down and back. As long as you can do that, then you can go swim to the deep end, right? Now, I didn’t know how to swim. I knew I didn’t know how to swim, but it just bothered me so much that he was over there and I was over here where the kids play. I thought to myself, I’m going to go over there too. So I told her, I want to go over there. She said, well, you have to take a swim test. So I got into the pool on the beach and I had no clue how to swim.

I didn’t know how to do it. But I thought to myself like this, I’ll push my feet up against this wall. You know that wall is a pool. And I’ll push myself where all I’m worth.

[7:32] And then I’ll hopefully just float to the other side, grab the wall of the pool, and do the same thing going back.

[7:40] I just push myself right up against the wall of that pool, far as I could, push myself across. Guess what happens?

And I didn’t make it very far, as far as the little boy’s legs could push him a few feet across that pool.

And I looked up and there was this lady, this young lady, she was sitting on this funny looking thing that for some reason they make super high above the pool.

And I looked up at her, and I just said, help!

[8:19] And I went down. The next thing I know, she leaves her high place and jumps right down, right to where I was because I was going down. I was sinking in that pool, and she grabbed me. You know what she did? She saved me. That’s what I said. I didn’t tell her, thanks for helping me. I was going to the bottom of that pool. I said thanks for saving me. I was, was saved by a young lady in a YMCA camp who left her high place to come right down to where I was.

Now, that’s what it means to be saved.

That’s what it means to be saved. It means to be rescued from something that is dangerous, from something that’s taking you down.

There was a man in the Bible named Peter, and he cried out one day when he was thinking, Lord, save me.

And the Lord didn’t tell him, well, Peter, now say a prayer, Peter.

Peter, live as good a life as you can from now on. No, Peter’s going down.

In the bottom of the sea. And the Lord Jesus reached out his hand right to where Peter was, picked him right up.

So to be saved means to be rescued.

[9:26] And the reason a person needs to be saved is because that’s a problem that’s just that bad, my friend.

I don’t know what you think about yourself.

I know there’s people and they have different ideas and they say, well, it’s so hard because really shouldn’t we all accept more of a pluralistic view of our world?

Shouldn’t we all accept that really, religion is quite complicated, but really there’s different rivers and they all flow through the same stream, the same source, God.

It doesn’t really matter which river you take to get there, as long as it gets there to that one same source, isn’t that all that matters? After all, do you have any idea how sincere people are?

Like you think you Christians are sincere, meeting for two weeks, do you realize that people in this world who are on their face for six hours of a day to find favor with God.

[10:17] There are people who cut themselves to find favor with God. There are people who sell everything they own to find favor with God.

Surely that stream must somehow connect.

Now the only right way to understand it is a problem, right?

There’s many religions in our world. The only way to understand it is to identify what is the problem. Is the problem insincerity and it’s solved by sincerity?

[10:46] Is the problem not trying my hardest, and it’s solved by trying my hardest?

What’s the problem with humanity?

You know what the Bible says? Problem is sin.

The problem is sin in the human heart. The problem is guilt in our hearts, and that sin is like a weight that is sinking us down away from God.

And so whatever solution a person presents, mind us now, it has to solve the problem of sin. That’s the problem.

And so there may be people who are very sincere, but is what they’re doing solving the problem of sin?

Is it removing their sin? Are their sins forgiven?

Is their conscience clear? Are they at peace with God, whatever concept of God they might have?

Sin is the problem in the human heart. Sin must be solved. And the Bible says this, the wages of sin, death.

Sin is like myself there in the pool. Sin is sinking us down to death, and not, just death physically, but what the Bible describes as the second death, eternal death, the lake of fire, according to the Bible. And really, respectfully now, because I was a very religious boy myself, but if there’s anyone here tonight, and you’re quite religious, respectfully, do you know what religion is? Religion is that little boy trying to get across the pool by just pushing with all his work.

[12:15] That’s religion. He doesn’t know how to swim, that silly little boy, and yet he’s pushing for all he’s worth, hoping to get to the other side. Never take people there, and I have a real burden in my heart because there’s people who think they’re going there. There’s people who think they’re going to reach the other side, but they’re not going. The problem is sin, and sin has made us even helpless in the sight of God. That’s what the Bible says. We are without strength, helpless, just like me in that pool, going down, all I could do is cry help. And I didn’t say it respectfully, I didn’t say it worried about who else was in the pool, like I’m going down, I’m going down, I’m drinking water, help, drink, help, nothing respectful about it.

[13:04] It has made a person so helpless that all a sinner can do really is cry out. Now I’m not I’m not talking about crying out from your mouth or using your muscles here.

I’m talking about the cry of the heart.

Says, I’m just going down. I’m going down to hell in my sin.

I’m going down to be away from God’s presence in my sin.

And all the person in that condition can do is just look to God, save me, help me.

And so that’s why the savior was provided because humanity had a condition that’s just that bad.

And you’ll notice that it’s not limited to a certain kind of people.

Maybe if, as I described that, as I described those people who are sinful and going down, maybe you have an image in your mind, like people in prison or people who are, who didn’t grow up with privilege or something like that.

But did you notice what it says?

This is good news of great joy, which shall be to all people.

[14:00] This is for everyone, all people. It says it right there in the verse, that this news is supposed to be spread to all people because all people on our planet were born sinners who are going down, without exception.

I’m no exception to it.

I was going down myself. And that’s why the Savior was provided, because of a problem that’s just that bad. But there’s a love that’s just that great.

You see, it was Christ the Lord.

God himself was provided to save us. And we’ll find out in just a few minutes why it had to only be God who could do it.

Maybe you wonder that. Why couldn’t, okay, say we need saving.

Why couldn’t we need somebody to save us?

Why can’t we come up with a Savior, like the best of us and bring him forward, or the most pious, holy act, and offer that to God. Why did it have to be Christ the Lord?

Why did he have to come down?

But before we get there, isn’t it amazing that the Lord came here?

Let’s just for a moment, I don’t know what you think about the Bible, but for a moment, just assume that the Bible is true.

That means that the God who created the sun, the God who counts the stars, The God who measures all the waters in this planet in the hollow of his hand came down here.

[15:16] For sinners, for me, for you, not a lifeguard who left us a pretty high place, but God himself, from the throne of heaven to come down here. I tell you what, it’s a love that’s just that great.

And I can’t explain it any more than that, but except to say, my dear friends, I don’t know what you’ll take from the gospel tonight, but I want you to know God loves you. God loves you. God, God loved you so much that he sent heaven’s best.

He sent heaven’s king into this world to save sinners.

And to save them, he has to come right down to where we are.

And that’s what he did. He became a man.

God became a man. Christ the Lord was found as a baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

I see.

Because of a love that was just that great, God loved us, a solution that’s just that complete, called Savior.

I just want to answer a couple of questions that I would have if I was listening to a message like this.

I would wonder, okay, if the problem is sin in my heart, the very root cause that causes me to lie, lust, have evil thoughts, hatred, jealousy, if there’s something wrong in my heart, If that’s not how I was made to be.

[16:44] Why is he the only answer? Why is it just Christ the Lord? Why is it just the Lord Jesus?

Why did Peter say neither is there salvation in any other?

Why did Jesus say, I am the way?

No one’s coming to God except through me.

Make no mistake, it’s not Christians who say Jesus is the only way.

He said it, he said it, and the Bible says it.

Why? That seems very exclusive.

That seems to blow apart this idea that there’s many streams to get to the source.

That seems to say there’s only one way, right?

But why?

Well, remember, whatever solution it is, it has to deal with the problem. That’s pretty basic.

So we need a solution that we know has dealt with the problem of sin.

[17:37] Secondly, we need a solution, and this has helped me anyway, we need a solution that does not come from sinful human thoughts, sinful human beings.

You know that with all the religions in the world, I googled it one time, I think there was 3,200, 3,200.

Google, that’s my favorite research tool, like some others.

But 3,000 religions in our world.

[18:05] Know that really, according to the Bible, there’s only two. There’s the religion of humans working their way back to God, somehow, by good works, by good karma, by, good outweighing bad, by being the best person they can be, by Reformation, by changes. All that’s humans changing to please God. And there’s only one other religion, and that’s God coming down for men. All religions of planet Earth can be, just put into either of those categories. Human beings working back to God. Now mind you, even parts of Christianity are over there.

Even parts of so-called Christianity would be just human beings working back to God. But Biblical Christianity, what the Bible teaches, that’s what it says here. God coming out to human beings. God providing a Savior, Christ the Lord.

God coming into our world. That’s what it says there, doesn’t it? It says, you will call his name His name, Immanuel, which means, God with us.

[19:09] And so this Savior that’s being preached here in this tent tonight has not been provided by any church, it’s not provided by a committee. This is the Savior provided by the God of heaven.

That’s what’s being provided tonight. And so he meets the qualifications. What was the next qualification? He must deal with sin. Now this is why I really struggle with people who tell me, well, I don’t know, I’m saved, I hope that I will be in heaven, or I hope that I have favor with God, and I ask them the basis for their hope, and they, and they tell me a whole bunch of things they’re doing, but my question is when, where do you have that understanding that any of the things you’re doing ever dealt with sin?

Like, take some things that Christians do. Getting baptized.

Where in the Bible does getting baptized deal with sin?

[20:09] Where does that concept come from? How do you know that if I get baptized, I’ll wash away my sin?

Or join the right church? Or say the right prayer?

Or have a certain experience?

Where is any of that? Where is the basis for any of that?

What we need is some certain, sure way.

Like I need something that I know 100% has dealt with sin, and not just dealt with sin to it. I think that’ll do for me.

But dealt with sin in the sight of God, that God says, that has dealt with sin, my sins against him!

[20:42] We are the Savior Christ the Lord. He came into our world. He lived a perfect life. He had no sin himself.

But he went to a cross.

And the Bible says this. This is what happened on the cross, according to the Bible.

He was wounded. Listen to these words. For our sin.

He was bruised. For our sin.

[21:10] It says in another place, his soul was made an offering for sin.

It’s almost like the Bible in all its simplicity, from a God who loves every single person and wants everyone to be saved, is saying, if you identify the problem of sin, I am shouting out from heaven the answer. Christ!

Christ! He’s the one who dealt with sin! He did it! Christ dealt with sin!

Any verse you turn to, you look at the Bible and you try to find things about, I wonder how painful crucifixion was. I mean, I listen to different doctors and they talk about the, different wounds he experienced. You won’t find much of that in the Bible. Hardly anything is said about how painful crucifixion was. But all over the Bible it says that whatever happened on the cross, it was for sin. Christ suffered for sin. Christ died for sin. Constantly it’s like an arrow that’s pointing. Anyone have a problem with sin? Christ, he’s the lifeguard. He’s the one I sent into the world to save sinners. And there was only a person And he said, yeah, that’s the problem.

It’s sin. Oh, and that’s the answer. It’s the Lord Jesus. That’s why God sent him.

That’s why he sent him for sin. And it is in fact that complete because after he went to the cross, after he suffered for sin, he said, it is complete. He said it is finished.

[22:28] And then he died.

And it’s not a, it was hidden secret. Like it’s, uh, like this is open to investigation for any sincere person.

Make no mistake. The Christian faith rests on this rock that on that third day, this man rose from the, dead. Paul said, if he’s not raised, we are yet in our sins.

Paul says if he’s not raised, preaching’s for nothing.

Falsehoods that he’s not raised were false representatives of Christ.

Make no mistake, we stand tonight that there was an empty tomb outside the city of Jerusalem where God brought back the body and life of this man, and he is risen.

Jesus Christ is alive. God raised him from the dead, and that’s the great testimony that shook the Roman world and the Jewish world.

This makes a lot of sense.

[23:35] And so the solution is that complete. God has said, I am satisfied with Christ.

I’ll close tonight just briefly, not to dwell on it, but that makes rejection very sad.

Person who rejects the gospel, the gospel here that was preached by angels, this gospel that a savior has come. God saw sinking sinners like me in that pool, sinking. No matter how strong your leg muscles were, you could never go to the other side. God sent the lifeguard in. He had to, come right to where we were. And he saved us. But imagine somebody drowning in the water, and the lifeguard comes in and they just push the lifeguard. Wouldn’t that be such a sad rejection?

Just say, no. You know, that’s what broke the heart of Christ. When he looked over a city that and had so much privilege.

Many preachers were sent to that city. He said, oh, Jerusalem, I would have, but you would not.

[24:37] I wanted to save you, but you wouldn’t have me. And it broke the heart of Christ, that he had come for people and they said, no.

[24:49] Apparently there are people who still do it today. Make no mistake, when it comes to the gospel, It is not accepting a religious creed.

It is not accepting a testimony of faith from a church. It is not signing, I agree with all these doctrines, no.

It is accepting or rejecting the Savior, Christ the Lord. That’s what’s before you tonight, my friend.

In all our weakness and frailty, we present a glorious, mighty, strong Savior.

He could save you tonight.

You must receive him. You must accept him by faith, depend upon him.

Worthy of your songs.

I was reading today, I wrote it down here. I’ll just read it to you before Mr. Ramsey comes up here to speak.

It was by a historian. I found it quite fascinating. Let me just tell you what he said.

Maybe you think speaking of Jesus Christ is really, that’s only for religious people.

Listen to this quote.

He said, I am a historian. I am by no means a believer, but I must confess, as a historian, that the penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history.

[26:10] That’s a skeptical historian, not a believer, not a Christian.

A penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably center of history and the center of eternity.

And I want to tell you, he’s no longer a penniless preacher from Nazareth to me.

My savior. and he could be your savior.

[26:35] You have probably gathered that, just from listening to Joseph, that this isn’t about, raising money for a cause or for a church, and it’s not a church membership drive. In fact, if you check the table back there, there are not even cards to fill out to join a church.

It’s nothing to do with that. It is all about Christ, the penniless creature from Nazareth, born in Bethlehem, but the Lord of glory, who came down to be the Savior.”, That’s our message tonight, and it has been for the last two weeks.

And if it wasn’t for that message, I sure wouldn’t be here. I would love to be back home in St.

Bernard Island. But it’s because Christ came down from heaven to be the Savior.

And without the Savior, people will perish forever. There is no other way to be right with God.

There is no other way to enjoy eternal life. There is no other way.

People say, well, where am I going to be after I die? Everybody wants to be in heaven.

If there’s a good place after death, they want to be there. There is no way.

There is not the slightest chance Anyone would be in heaven without Christ the Savior.

[28:03] And that’s what causes us to travel, to be here. There’s no collection, you can just relax.

There’s not a collection here tonight.

This is about promoting the Lord Jesus Christ and appealing to you with everything else that’s going on in the summer of 2022, appealing to you, the deepest part of your heart, consider this lovely man, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He could be your savior. I’ve known him.

So you can’t take that away. You can’t say, no, you didn’t. It’s my own personal experience.

I have known him for over 50 years through the ups and the downs of life.

I’ve been on my way to heaven. I’m not, I don’t have my fingers crossed hoping that I’m going to get there.

You know, biting my teeth, my fingernails with my teeth. No, no, it’s all settled.

I remember specifically the night when it was settled, when I realized Christ died for my sins and he rescued me, he saved me.

And so you can, it must be wonderful, right? Do you have what I have?

Do you have an anchor in life like that through all the storms?

Life can be dreadfully tough at times.

[29:23] And I don’t think there’s a person here this evening who hasn’t experienced dark times, ears and pillows, dark thoughts.

Wonderful to have Christ in this life, be anchored through the storms of life.

You know anything about it?

You could, he could be your savior tonight. We’re gonna read again in Romans chapter five.

Romans chapter 5, we’re going to read eight verses.

The first eight verses of Romans chapter 5.

[29:58] Verse 1, this is Paul, the Apostle Paul. He wasn’t always a Christian.

No one has always been a Christian. People say, well, I was always a Christian.

No one has always been a Christian. Paul was once an enemy of Jesus, and his raison d’etre was to stamp out Christianity because he hated Jesus.

He thought Jesus was an imposter until he found out that the Jesus who died on the cross, died for his sins and he trusted him on the road one day and took him as his savior.

[30:41] So every Christian has a starting point, conscious starting point. And he’s writing to other Christians here, therefore being justified, we heard about that word last night, by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace, this amazing grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, patience, experience, and experience hope. And hope makes not a shame. This is a verse I really want to underline. Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us. The love of God is shed abroad or poured out is the the thought is poured out into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit, which is given unto us.

But there are three other beautiful verses here. Look at verse six.

I know people who found Christ.

And verse six, for when we were yet without strength, and people say, that was me, my sin.

[32:05] My sin, I had no ability to save myself.

In due time, Christ died for the ungodly.

And they just close the battle with, there it is.

I’m the ungodly sinner.

I can’t do anything about my sin, but there is one who did something for my sin.

He died, he took the penalty for my sin, and they received Christ by faith, reading that verse.

For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good man, some would be there to die.

But God commends or demonstrated his love toward us.

Now, how do you demonstrate your love to people in your life?

[32:47] Well, I mentioned one other night. I know on Valentine’s Day, you probably get some roses.

God demonstrated His love toward us while we were yet sinners.

Before we were all cleaned up of our sins, when we were still in our sins, God demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Praise God.

So, the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts. I can relate to this verse.

The love of God shed abroad, or the love of God poured into my heart.

You know what the word pour is. It’s poured this week. We use that word down here, poured. We use it back in Canada.

It’s not when it’s pitter-pat on a vinyl tent roof.

Pitter-pat. Pour is when it’s a downpour, and that’s the thought here.

God poured into our hearts the love of God.

He did it by the work, the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So it’s the thought of dispensing without holding anything back, letting loose the love of God.

He poured it into our hearts.

[34:13] The thought is it’s a continuous stream. The night I trusted Christ as my Savior, the night that I opened up to Christ and said, I am just the sinner.

He started pouring into my heart his love and it never stopped.

Do you have anything equivalent to that?

Oh, this is what real life is. This is the life that God intends for everyone in this family.

He wants to pour his love into your heart. Not sprinkle it in, but flow in large quantities.

[34:51] On impetus, his love. That’s the heart of God.

Maybe you’ve harbored some hard thoughts against God.

You think he’s mean, cruel. Why does he let this happen? A lot of bad things happen.

The world is broken. There are other parts of the Bible that we’ve spoken on this other night.

The world is broken. The world is a sad place.

There are tears. There are broken homes. There are broken lives.

There are scams. There are cheats around.

[35:20] Don’t blame that on God. The Bible says it’s sin. Sin is the source of sorrow.

But God says, I’ve got good news for you. I want to pour my love into your heart.

So Paul is writing to Christians about trials and difficulties and how they make us deeper people, greater confidence in God.

He says we have peace with God through faith in the Lord Jesus.

Let me ask you, do you have anything in your life that relates to this verse?

Do you have a moment in your life when you consciously receive the love of God in your heart? The love of God is poured into our hearts.

You’ve been hearing about that love, a love that is marked by complete selflessness.

It’s extravagant love, where sometimes we make meager expressions of love.

God held nothing back.

He gave his Son. He said, this is the way I love you. This is the character of my love.

[36:26] The character of my love is that I gave my only Son that whosoever believeth in him should, not perish but have everlasting life.

A love that is marked by complete selflessness. God’s love at the highest level coming down to man through Jesus Christ.

Sorry, but the angels announced that night so long ago.

[36:52] Shed abroad or gush out the love of God poured into our hearts without any reserve.

You know, God wants to bless you tonight.

He really wants to change your life. He wants to flood your soul with His divine love and give you peace and deal with the problem of your sins.

That is God’s heart for you.

If we say heart, and that’s, we know our physical heart is our primary body organ.

Spiritually, the heart speaks of the center of our affection, affections, our desires.

So the moment that you open up to God, He will pour in His love, and it remains a permanent positive.

It’s actually, if you look up the original language here, it’s the perfect tense.

It continually pours in his love. So there’s nothing miserly, nothing mean, nothing skimpy about God’s love.

It’s abundant, it’s profuse, it’s generous, it’s extravagant.

God’s love infinitely beyond what we ever deserve.

So what is your mental image, your concept of God?

[38:15] You think of love, you think of his generosity, rich grace, just like standing over you.

I know sometimes I visualize things. I just, when I read these verses, I just picture a God in heaven standing over you tonight with a wanting to pour in his love, to a willing heart, to a responsive heart.

He wants to bless you this Friday night. It’s a love without limits.

It’s a love without boundaries. It’s without restrictions and it’s without exception.

This wonderful love of God.

So human love, we sort of tend to love the lovable.

[39:00] People that we sort of connect with. similar personalities, and there’s just some, they say, a chemical reaction, and we, you, know, we love that.

We love the lovable, but you know, God, God loves the unlovable.

[39:20] I don’t know if any of you have been involved in dating in your past, but it’s a lot of it’s done online these days, I guess.

But did you ever play the cat and mouse game?

Like you didn’t want to come out to somebody you think might be your partner for life and you didn’t want to come right out and say the first time over a salmon dinner, I love I love you, I love you.

No, it’s just you’re putting out little feelers and you’re seeing if there’s any reciprocation.

And then just inch by inch, you just don’t flush it all out.

Because what would they say if they looked at you and said, well, hey, let me out of here.

I’m not finishing my salmon dinner.

Oh, what I love about college, well, whether you ever reciprocate or not.

[40:17] Loves you, you can turn your back on him and he still loves you.

He displayed his love when he gave his beloved son for you.

Whether you ever respond to his love, he’s told you over and over again in his word, he told you by way of the cross, I love you.

I love you.

The degree of love is measured by the costliness of the gift to the giver and the worthiness of the recipients to receive the gift.

[40:55] The costliness of the gift and the worthiness of the recipient.

The more costly the gift and the more unworthy the recipient, the greater the love is seen to be.

And what could be more costly than God sending his son, knowing that he was sending him to the cross?

The lostliness of the gift and the worthiness of the recipient.

I look, I live with myself for, it’ll soon be 66 years. Every year I see more of myself and I say, what did he ever see in me?

There’s nothing lovable about me and looking the more I wonder why he ever loved himself.

Think anything about that today? Oh, it would be wonderful if there was a cloud burst of God’s love on your chart tonight.

How refreshing a start to life would that be, if not try to chart the hardness of life, flooded with divine love.

Refreshing.

Well, I’m going to ask you, have you been open to receive his love?

[42:20] I hope this doesn’t offend you, but sometimes they use object lessons because there’s young people in the audience.

And I was staying at Dave and Joy’s Hamilton place, and I went into their fridge today, and there was only a little bit of marmalade left in their fridge in the bottle.

So I said, I need a bottle for tonight. So I scooped it out, made the remaining remnants of the marmalade, and I washed it out. Did you ever think of yourself like this?

[42:52] And God wanting to pour out, pour out His love into your heart.

That’s what I was enjoying today.

How He wants to just pour out His love.

You’re the repository. You’re the bottle. You’re the container.

But there was something wrong with that, wasn’t there? to say there’s something that would have to happen for that water to get in, this is the problem, isn’t it?

[43:31] Who’s responsible for this? You are, you are. His love will never change your life if you leave that lid on.

He’s standing over you wanting, it’s the desire of his heart to pour in his love.

You’ve got the lid on tight, close to him.

I wonder, I believe God is working in your life, trying to soften the cover and trying to get, wanting you to take that cover off.

So open up for many, many things in life. Oh, for your advancement, right there.

A raise, a promotion, here to receive it.

Good friends? Oh, right there, I know how to receive good friends.

Receive God’s beloved Son as your Savior.

[44:28] I was not being overly dramatic, but let me just ask you, have you ever been open to God and honest with God?

Oh God, I’ve received so many things in life, But I’ve never received the one who died on the cross for my own sins.

Tonight, I’m open!

Hello. Kelly Clark, I don’t know whether you follow snowboarding. My son did a lot of snowboarding in his day and so I knew a little bit about Sean White and Kelly Clark and both great Americans, but Kelly Clark, she’s a retired professional snowboarder now. She was the most medaled snowboarder in all history of all the world. And then Shawn White now and her share that honor.

[45:22] And she competed in five Olympic winter games by 18, age of 18. She was at the very top of her game, gold medal from the Olympics hanging around her neck. But she said, but I was empty. I was disillusioned with success and I had dark thoughts inside about the purpose of my life at 18 with a gold medal around my neck. She was at a snowboarding competition and she spent the morning in her hotel room writing about how empty her life is. She said, people think I’ve got it made, but on the inside I am dying. She said, I’m standing at the bottom of a half pipe, to use snowboarders language and at the very bottom of the half pipe, a couple of years later she was heading into a world cup event and we had to go through the qualifying process. At the bottom of that half pipe there was another snowboarder and she had fallen. She didn’t qualify, she had fallen twice and she was down at the bottom of the pipe and she was crying and her friend was trying to make her laugh and say, hey it’s all right, God loves you anyway!

Kelly Clark is standing up the top, thinking, God loves her anyway?

I wonder would God love me?

[46:49] She’d never been to a church inside a church in her entire life.

That stuff with her, God loves you anyway, and she went back to her hotel room.

And she said, I know hotels have Bibles, and she found a Bible.

And she said, I couldn’t shake the thought, God loves you anyway.

And she said, I found out where that snowboarder was in her room, and I went and I knocked on her door and brought the Bible from my bedside desk, And she said, she said, are you a Christian?

Could you tell me about God’s love?

I’m Kelly. I think you need to tell me about God. And the girls in that room started to share the story of Christ and God’s love.

And Kelly’s heart was touched.

She started her search.

The lid was coming off. Are you searching tonight?

Starting to think about Christ? The lid was starting to get soft, and Kelly was thinking about God’s love.

[47:55] Well, she found out that Christ died for her sins. Some of you are old enough to remember, he was a legend in his time.

His name was Larry King, and he interviewed her. You can watch this on YouTube.

And he was nearing the end of his days, his little stint on, I think it was CNN, And he looks at her and leans over towards Kelly Clark.

She was telling how she became a Christian.

And he said, how did you find him?

She said, how did you find him? How did you find him? And Kelly Clark says, basically when I came to an end of myself, God met me.

And then she writes, the very best day of my life was when I responded to God’s love and trusted the Savior.

She said it was the best day of my life.

No trophy, no medal, no amount of money can equal what Christ did in me that day.

[48:59] What’s your story? I just told you I spent a lot of time telling you Kelly Clark’s story.

Do you have any story about finding out that God loved you and that Christ died for you?

I wonder, as you look at this little bottle here, uh, so yeah, the problem is the lid, isn’t it? How do I get that lid off?

Like, there’s no question about it.

God wants to pour in his love, yes, but it’s not going in, is it?

What’s the problem, you’re saying? Peter, it’s the cover, it’s the lid. It’s the lid.

[49:39] Coming to a gospel meeting like this, it’s like God pouring out his love, but you’re closed to it.

It’d be a tragedy to die.

God’s love poured over you, hearing the gospel message, but never into you because you were closed.

What a haunting memory of life to think that I heard about the love of God, But I never got the lid off.

What is your lid?

Sometimes it’s the fear of the unknown. I don’t know what it’d be like to be a Christian.

So I’m not ready yet to take that lid off.

Afraid you’ll lose control of your life? I’m gonna keep this tight under my control.

Some people have too many years that they say, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

I’ve been going this way to all the change.

My mother used to have a cold room and she bottled pickles and jam and sometimes it was the humidity control left something to be desired in the cold room in the basement.

Then you get this bottle and oh, you couldn’t get it. Oh, oh, it was rusted.

I wonder if anyone has a rusted cover. Been on there so long.

Other times we get a bottle and all the guys try to show their might and their power and pop their eyelids.

They’re going like this. My wife, Joyce, give it to me.

She runs some hot, warm water over us.

[51:08] There you go.

Is God running warm water over your life right now? Trying to melt you?

Trying to say I love you? Please take that cover off.

That’s what gospel meetings are about. They say it’s too humbling to admit, oh, that’s sin.

There’s things in my life I can’t spin.

God may soften the cover, but he’s not going to take that cover off.

He’ll never save you against your will.

He gave you the ability to make an informed choice. He may work in your life like you’re here tonight, not by coincidence, But ultimately, it will be you that says, My sin as a cause is separating between me and God.

[52:07] It would be a wonderful Friday evening, if you would say tonight, I’m just a sinner. I don’t care. I’m desperately lost. I need the Savior.

I’m open to God’s love if he will save me. I’ll tell you the moment, the moment that lid comes off, I don’t know what your lid is, but I know one thing, sin is a lid.

But the moment that lid comes off, God is thrilled and delighted, oh heaven is, to be, able to pour in his love.

Are you open to that tonight? Or are you going to go home with a lid on, tighter than ever?

Just cranked up, just, I’m not going to yield, I won’t surrender, I’ll get on with my life. What a tragedy.

Friend, this is for eternity Everyone in this tent will be somewhere 100 years from now those who remove the lid.

[53:16] Open up to Christ You see God love, You’ll be with us in heaven. I don’t mean us the people at both our church There are millions of people in the world and I can they’ll be in heaven. They never heard of our little church We don’t believe we’re the only ones going to heaven, but we know that, So that anyone good to heaven, anywhere in the world, any culture in the world, they, all have a moment in their life when the lid came off and God poured in his love and they were gloriously, wonderfully saved.

That’s our prayer for you as we close the meeting.

Do you have any room tonight for Jesus?

Gospel tent meeting with Peter Ramsay and Joseph Baker.

[0:01] That’s what a gospel meeting is all about. The Lord Jesus is passing this way.

You don’t see him physically, but when the Word of God is open and we’re speaking of the Lord Jesus, it’s like he was passing by.

It’s an opportunity for someone, or one, plural, to have their life changed, to be saved.

So consider this another opportunity for you to become acquainted with the Lord Jesus Christ.

You could take Christ home with you tonight.

[0:39] That’d be something going into your house up the steps, through your door, hopefully your AC is working, and just say, I’m taking Christ home with me, into the house for the the first time, she is mine, she’s my savior.

We’re gonna read in the gospel of Luke, Luke chapter 18, Luke 18.

[1:03] And while you’re looking up Luke 18, there’s a verse in Psalm 34 that I was appreciating this morning.

Here’s what it says, Psalm 34, verse 18.

The Lord is near to them that are of a broken heart broken heart, and he saves those of a contrite, a contrite spirit. Or that just means someone who is crushed in spirit. I’m going to read about a man, the knight who was crushed in his spirit. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed, So if you have your Bible, Luke 18, and just let me say that we are glad you’re here with us.

It’s a hot evening and in a little over an hour, you’ll be happy to have some refreshments and some water.

You’ll be heading out into the parking lot and Lord willing, you’ll be heading home.

And there are two ways you can go home.

[2:12] I’m not talking about streetwise. There are two ways to go home.

Let me see, I printed it off. It looks like this. You can go home right with God.

[2:31] Or you can go home wrong with God, just to make it really simple.

We’re gonna read about two people. One went home right with God and one went home wrong with God.

And they both prayed.

So, I wonder which way you would like to go home. Would you like to continue to go home wrong with God?

I think there’s probably someone saying, no, never.

I want to go home right with God. I want to step into my house right with God.

Well, that’s the great possibility, the potential of a gospel meeting like this.

You wouldn’t be the first one who came to a gospel meeting like this, and they went home.

They came wrong with God and they were all right with God.

You say, really, just like that? You mean you don’t have to sign anything and you don’t have to memorize a whole list of things?

Absolutely not.

[3:37] Everything that you need to go home right with God was done 2000 years ago by the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you would receive him tonight as your savior, You could go home right with God.

So that’s what I want you to think about it. Will I go home right with God or wrong with God?

So the Lord Jesus is talking about two men who pray, they went to church, temple in their days, and they both prayed, pray.

A lot of people think that if they say their prayers, I feel that. It’s sort of a conscience soothing exercise. I used to have a friend back in Nova Scotia and he struggled a lot with alcohol and drugs and he’s a nice guy and he would, do it hard and then he would every night pray. He would pray. I think he sort of was soothing his conscience. That’s not the kind of prayer that gets through to heaven. And maybe you Say, well, I have prayed, Peter, and my prayers have been answered.

[5:01] So does that mean I’m right with God? No, it doesn’t. Just because God in His kindness, you know what the Bible tells us about God?

Romans 2 verse 4 says, the goodness of God leads people to repentance. God may answer your prayer, with the desire to lead you to face the reality of your sin and repentance and save you.

But just because he answered your prayer, gave you the job, the dream job that you wanted, doesn’t mean that you are a Christian.

Now there’s more to Christianity than an answered prayer.

Well, you say, how do I approach God? How do I approach God?

You say, well, God is holy and maybe I should, if I’m gonna pray, I should just talk about the good things in my life. You ever think that?

I can’t tell God some bad things, even though you know there’s some bad things.

So if I’m gonna say my prayers, I’m gonna say some good things about myself just to make the point with God that I am basically good.

It’s like you go for an interview for a job and inevitably.

[6:22] They will ask you, So what would you consider to be your strengths?

Oh, you can lift them off like that.

You know what your strengths are.

Okay, so what about your weaknesses? And so you try to put a nice spin on those.

You say, oh, my weaknesses.

Well, I tend to work too much. And I probably try too hard to keep everyone in the loop.

Yeah, a real weakness. And once I start something, I’m almost obsessed about finishing it.

I almost obsess over it.

And some people tell me that I try to cover all the bases and then to.

[7:08] You know that you were just telling yourself those weren’t your weaknesses.

You’re just saying they’re weaknesses, but you know that they’re going to be perceived as strength.

So how do you approach God? We’re going to read that here in Luke’s Gospel chapter 18.

There’s a contrast in prayers. There’s a self-righteous church-going man who trusted in himself. A man, the other man knew that he was just a sinner.

[7:37] And Jesus said, one of these two men went home justified, or right with God. Here it is.

That was the long preamble, wasn’t it? Luke 18, verse 9. And he, that is Jesus, spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that, they were righteous.

And they despised others.

So they looked down on others. We’re good, they’re bad.

So he tells this story. Two men went up into the temple to pray. The one, a Pharisee.

That’s a very religious person. And the other, a publican.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself.

God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust adulterers, or you can almost see him pointing in his prayer, can’t you?

Or even as this publican.

[8:49] I fast twice in the week. He deprives himself of food twice a week to find favor with God.

I give a tenth of all that I possess.

The other man, verse 13, and the publican, standing afar, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his blessing, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

And Jesus tells the end of that story.

Verse 14, I tell you, this man went down to his house justified for right with God, rather than the other.

For everyone that exalted themselves shall be abased, and he that humbled himself shall be exalted.

So the religious man went home wrong with God.

[10:01] But the man who faced the sin went home right with God. That’s what Jesus said.

Justify. That means right with God.

How will you go home this evening? Wrong? Or you say, is it possible that I could go home?

I would love to just put my head. I don’t know whether you have a foam pillow or a tethered pillow.

So I hope it’s an air conditioned pillow.

And wouldn’t it be nice to say, thank God, I’m justified. Romans 5, verse 1 says, therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God.

Lord Jesus Christ, wouldn’t you like to rest your head on your pillow tonight saying, finally, there’s no hostility. There’s no barrier between me and God, justified by faith.

I have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. So let’s just talk about these two men.

The first man.

I have a problem when I speak in this section of verses because it’s tempting to almost mock the religious man.

[11:21] And in my room today, I thought, Peter, be careful how you present this.

That religious man is on the way to hell and he’s blinded by religion.

Oh, no, stop him.

You know, I have a few points about this religious man. The approach in the wrong spirit.

He came with pride.

There was nothing humble about his approach, was there? Jesus said he came into the temple and he stood, stood.

Oh, there was no slouching his shoulders back. He approached in prayer with pride.

He was conscious of God, but it seemed like he was actually oozing with self-righteousness.

He arrives in that temple plaza and he makes his appearance.

I’ve seen that on more than one occasion.

It’s like someone from town is coming, they’re going to church as if they’re coming to a prestigious country club.

[12:38] They make their, they walk up the center aisle and they take their seat and they go through all the forms.

This man approached in the wrong spirit. If you want to approach God tonight, you cannot do it with p-r-i-d-e, pride.

This man approached in the wrong spirit. He stood in contrast to the other who had his head down, he couldn’t lift his eyes up.

This man’s good confidently. I’m okay This is a message for down-and-outers Not for me. Oh, You don’t understand Have you ever seen like the charitable gifts that I put on this that entry in my my tax forms at the end of the year?

Oh, I can’t give gift.

[13:27] You know that God consistently hates pride People say, well, I know what’s called an abomination in the Bible.

It’s called an abomination, people say, and they’ll select a sin.

It’s called an abomination.

You know what’s most frequently referred to as an abomination in the Bible?

Maybe not the sin that I’m thinking of or you’re thinking of.

What’s most consistently called an abomination and most frequently called an abomination, is the stigma of pride in the human heart, where we think we’re just a little bit better than someone else.

And God says that is an abomination.

So no one can approach God and go home right with God if they come with pride in their heart.

That’s why a lot of people don’t like coming to these services.

They say, those aren’t, I’d like to go to a feel-good service.

You just now, Amanda, you’re like cringing in my seat.

I feel like I’m about this high by the time you guys are finished up there in the pulpit.

[14:41] No, no, we’re just trying to communicate what the Bible says.

We had to face that we were just sinners too.

And there was no, we were no more qualified for heaven than you.

We needed a Savior as much as you need a Savior.

There was no more chance of me being right with God than you being right with God.

Apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, the grace of God is as much needed in my life, as it’s needed in yours.

So please don’t think we’re pointing fingers at you. We’re just telling you what the truth is from the Bible.

So we’re not belittling anyone’s sincerity the fact that you respect God, God only has one thing against you.

[15:33] One thing, it’s one thing.

It’s not how tall you are or how short you are. It’s not your cerebral capacity.

[15:49] That’s not what God has, that’s not his measuring stick, the intellectual capacity of an individual.

I don’t know whether we’re handsome or beautiful or I come from one side of my family who have long noses and God isn’t looking at any the length of anyone’s nose.

The only thing that God has against anyone in this tent service tonight is sin, sin.

If you could come to Christ and have all those sins removed, there would be no barrier between you and God.

It’s your sin.

It is sin that keeps us from God. So he approached in the wrong spirit and came with pride.

He applied the wrong standard.

[16:41] He said, I’m not what these other people are. Oh my dear, I don’t have to wait till the other night.

I’m a good person. I go to bed before midnight, but I get up to go to the washroom the other morning, it’s four o’clock in the morning, and they were still partying.

The music was blaring away.

Oh, that’s not the standard, though. We measure ourselves by community standards, and by community standards, I’m pretty sure some of you qualified for a Good Neighbor of the Year award.

But that’s not God’s standard. This man was measuring himself by the standard of the neighbors.

[17:28] I wonder what standard you’re picking up tonight. You say, do I need to be saved?

Do I really need this salvation that you’re talking about?

I know that I’ve had an evil thought and I’ve had an outburst of rage.

The car, the light turned green and I was in a rush and I just kicked my fist and I pounded the steering wheel And I know that was road rage, but other than that, I’m pretty good.

[17:55] Wrong standard. God has a holy standard, and the only one who ever lived up to that standard, Jesus Christ.

And if you’re not as good as Jesus Christ, and no one is, then we’ve all fallen short of his perfect standard.

That’s why we all need a Savior. He applied the wrong standard.

It’s like he’s up there praying, because I’m in a class all by myself.

I’m not as other men are.

There’s always someone we can find worse.

[18:30] I think maybe I’ve told it since I came down here, but I was talking to a man in prison who killed 31 people, on behalf of the mafia.

And he was talking about another prisoner who killed six. And he said, oh, the guy who killed 31?

He’s like, oh, he’s disgusting.

He was killing people indiscriminately, no reason.

I was killing people for the mafia for a reason. So even, even there, listen, they’re comparing themselves. My sin isn’t as bad, but that’s not the standard.

This man applied the wrong standard. My dad used to paint the bottom part of our elm tree in the backyard, and then he’d get some clamshells the beach and he would paint them. It wasn’t real white paint, it was something called white wash.

I was looking it up this morning, it’s calcimine, we always called it white wash, but it’s some cheap, stuff that looks like, and he’d paint the bottom of the trunk of the tree, and then he’d put this, tacky looking thing around the base of the tree, the flat, all painted this white, white wash.

Then you do the side of the burn.

[19:45] Whitewash, and they looked pretty nice until the white snow fell in Canada.

And then you saw how grossly yellow the whitewash was.

And your deeds may look very nice and impress other people, but when you put your deeds alongside the beautiful, sinless life of the Lord Jesus Christ, Oh, we all must hang our heads in shame.

We fall short of God’s glory.

He applauded the wrong Savior. It’s like I’m, whoa, look at all that I do after his obligatory and ritualistic references to God.

The rest of all the clapping, he’s applauding, patting himself on the back.

My church, my faith, my prayers, my charity.

I give a 10th of everything, but I’m the one.

[20:46] Friend, if you’re ever going to be, there’ll be no one up in heaven singing, I did it my way.

Frank Sinatra may have sung it, Elvis did even a better job if I did it my way, but, there’ll be no one in heaven singing, I did it my way. Anyone in heaven will say, I came by the way of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I’m here because of him.

He’ll be applauding him for all eternity.

The blessed savior.

What does Christ mean to you tonight?

You know, is it resonating in your heart? Can you say, he rescued me, he saved me.

He applauded the wrong savior. He was applauding himself. So he approached in the wrong spirit, pride.

He applied the wrong standard, his neighbors.

And he appreciated and applauded the wrong savior.

And he appreciated the wrong sacrifice.

[21:38] I give a 10th of everything.

So those people back in the day, in Jesus’ day, even a little bit of cumin, the spice, just a little, little speck of it, they would take a couple of grains out and say, there’s a tenth of even that little bit of spice. Say, oh, I give this to the Lord.

Oh, those aren’t the sacrifices. There’s no sacrifice that a human could ever make that could ever measure up to the sacrifice that Christ made in the cross.

There’s only one sacrifice, we think.

The sacrifices that humans make. You may go without money.

You may give some hard-earned income to help the poor.

But those are not the sacrifices that deal with your problem of sin.

Only the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. He appreciated the lone sacrifice.

The Bible says, Titus 3, it’s not by works of righteousness, which we have done, never.

It’s according to His mercy, He saved us.

So let’s talk about the other man. So, I think needless to say, that man that I just talked about, went home wrong with God.

[22:58] Wrong with God. The publican, he comes, he stands afar off. He’s not like, he’s like a traitor to the Jews.

He’s working for the Roman Empire, and they hated the Roman Empire, collecting taxes.

You’re a Jew, you’re one of us, and you’re working for them, the enemy, and you’re taking our hard-earned cash, and you’re taking more of it than you deserve, and everybody hated them.

This man knew he was a sinner. It says he stood afar off. So how did he come? Unworthy.

I’m not worthy, timidity. He couldn’t lift his eyes heavenward.

All I can think about is my guilt, my sin, my shame.

I have nothing to be proud of.

[23:49] Sinner, do you ever tell the Lord that some of you are trying to figure out how to be saved, and like to be saved? Have you ever gotten alone in your bedroom and said, I am just a sinner? Period.

God responds, that’s what I was enjoying about that verse. He hears those who are brokenhearted in the trust in spirit, those are weighted down by the reality of their sin.

He couldn’t lift his eyes to heaven, and then it says he smote upon his breast.

I’m not sure what that means.

I think it’s a thing with intensity, but some say it could mean that he’s saying the problem is in here, in here, in here.

A lot of people say the problem is out there. If we could only get a president who could solve all the problems out there, we’d be, no, the problem is in here.

Out there is just a reflection of what’s in here.

[24:48] And he was smiting his chest. Not around, not my neighbors, I am the sinner.

Then he says, God be merciful to me, the sinner.

Like he’s saying, if ever there was one deserve to be in hell. It’s me!

Did you ever get there with God? If ever there was someone who deserved to be punished for their sin, it’s me, I’m the offender.

I fear that someone with us tonight, then that’s exactly what you’re thinking. I am the sinner.

[25:24] This man cried out, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. He needed mercy.

I don’t know what he understood about the biblical term propitiation, But this man knew if he was ever going to be right with God.

[25:41] His sins needed to be resolved.

Someone had to be satisfied. There had to be a sacrifice that he had no ability to bring himself.

So whatever he understood, he knew that he had nothing to offer and that mercy would only be granted on the grounds of a sacrifice that pleased God.

My friend, tonight, as you listen to Joseph, there’s only one sacrifice, not yours, that could ever please God, satisfy God’s holy requirement.

It’s the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. You’re hearing from Joe the other night about, it is finished!

It wasn’t a cry of defeat, it was a cry of triumph. It is finished!

God raised him from the dead.

God is satisfied with the sacrifice of his Son, the payment for sin, and it’s only upon that ground or that basis which anyone’s sins can be forgiven.

So we point you to the Lord Jesus Christ. If you could come the way this publican came, Jesus said, this man went home justified.

[26:54] Right with God. If you come as a sinner to Jesus, you’ll leave with your sins forgiven and you go home right with God.

[27:13] Ask you to turn a far ways to Luke chapter 18 again. The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 18.

I was sweating for different reasons, because we’re going to read the same verses, not because I can add anything to what you’ve heard, but maybe just emphasize one more thing before the meeting is concluded.

[27:38] Luke 18 and verse number 9, just to refresh your mind again on what the Scripture says about this story. First of all, I want you to notice who Jesus is talking to. Verse 9, it says, spoke this parable, a certain which trusted in themselves, that they were righteous and despised others.

Throughout the gospel of Luke, there are these religious people that trusted themselves, that they’re good and righteous, as you’ve already heard described.

And actually my brother Peter read yesterday in Luke 15, that they murmured that this man eats with sinners.

So they didn’t receive Christ with joy or gladness, but they rumbled at who he was associated with.

And so often many of the stories in the Bible are actually geared by Jesus to address these people.

Like the story of the prodigal son really is likely the story of the prodigal older brother.

We kind of throw him out when we preach the gospel, but I would suggest to you he’s the main character in the story.

Jesus is, because right when they heard that, they were gripped, they were gripped.

Are we that older brother? And Jesus is telling them, Well, God, God in heaven, he runs actually for a sinner.

[28:51] You see the older brother, he doesn’t even come in to eat. He doesn’t even come in to enjoy the feast.

And the Lord Jesus, one day he healed a blind man, John chapter nine.

And he used that blind man as like a visual picture. And he said, people who know they’re blind, they receive sight from God.

But see people who think they can already see, see who he’s targeting?

[29:13] He’s targeting people who think they’re right. people who think they can see.

So he speaks this verbal unto us, trusting themselves that they were righteous, despised others.

Two men went up into the temple to pray.

One a Pharisee and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself.

God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

And the publican standing far off would not lift up so much as his eyes went to heaven, but smote upon his breath saying, God, be merciful to me a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house, justified right with God rather than the other.

For everyone that exalts himself shall be abased and he that humbles himself shall be exalted.

[30:13] When it comes to being right with God, I want you to just think of it like this.

I’ll just add one little word to that. Right in the sight of God. In the sight of God.

We’re not talking about whether after this meeting, when you walk out, we have some kind of, of ESPN, right with God, wrong with God.

No, we have no idea.

There are people who could take part of communion and be wrong with God.

There are people who have been baptized to be wrong with God.

So we’re talking about how a person stands in the sight of God, the God who sees your heart, the God who sees you as you are.

See, there’s a man I was thinking about in this story, we visited a man who’s president and he’s leading a Bible study. I think it was yesterday on this story.

So hopefully this meeting is as good as his because his is probably gonna be pretty good.

But I was thinking about a story in Isaiah six of a prophet, a preacher, if you will, a holy man.

And he got a vision of the sight, his sight of God.

What do you think about God? Do you think about God? like he’s maybe like a grandfather?

[31:36] Really nice, loving, he’s gracious, he’s kind. Is that the trifecta of God?

That’s his character?

Maybe your idea of God is he’s angry and cruel and indifferent.

[31:52] See, this man got a sight of who God actually is. This preacher, Isaiah chapter six.

He saw God high and lifted up, far different than humanity, far different than any of us, and glorious, where even those angelic beings have to cover their eyes and cover their feet, and cry out in the presence of God, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts.

This man is preaching.

He saw that. He said, I am unclean. I am unfit.

He said, what this man said, this poor sinner in the meeting that Jesus is describing.

I’m a sinner.

And so see, it’s not so much about how you appear before your friends, as you’ve already heard tonight, the standard isn’t others, nor how you appear according to the standard of any church, whether you meet their marks or wear their clothes or pray the way they tell you to pray.

No, how do you think you are, how are you in the sight of God?

And you say, I know I am right in the sight of God.

[33:07] Can you say that? Or would you have to say, I hope I’m right.

I had an experience one day, some years ago. There’s a verse in the Bible that means a lot to me. No, no.

This man went home right with God. Can you say, I know, 100% sure, I am right in the sight of God?

I can say that. I don’t feel right in His sight.

I sin every day.

If you were to observe me, you would say, I’m not sure if that guy’s right with God.

But God has done something by a declaration of His own will based on something that Jesus did on the cross.

And I am declared in His sight right.

[33:52] And I just want to ask and answer the question because my brother’s already spent a lot of time on this story.

A question that Joe asked in one of the earliest books of the Bible.

How can a man write with God?

We’re gonna look at the second man. I want you to notice first of all, that he understood he was wrong in God’s sight.

As you’ve heard, me the sinner, me the sinner.

As he understood the God who has seen everything about him, the God who knows his heart, the God who knows what he’s thought and where he’s gone and what he’s done, all he could conclude is, I am a sinner, I’m just a sinner.

And again, I would just ask you, have you ever come there? Have you ever understood that in the sight of God, I am a sinner?

Do you understand how dangerous that is, that God’s wrath abides over you?

That there’s no, no- I don’t think you should have a sinner in none of us.

But we understood that he was wrong in God’s sight.

[34:49] But then, of course we learned, that he who understood he was wrong in God’s sight, according to the Lord Jesus, goes home right in God’s sight.

So I just want to ask a question, to the Bible, to God. How can a man, how can a person who’s wrong in God’s sight, go home right in God’s sight?

How can that happen? After all, God is a holy God. God is a God who not should, not it’s a good idea.

God is a God who must judge sin.

He has to. For God to let even the slightest sin enter into heaven would be to compromise who he is. Some people say, well, like the prisoners you were hearing about tonight, I could see how God wouldn’t want any of them in heaven. They’re filthy with sin. But sure, like lying or cheating, God should be able to just live with that. Let me ask you a question.

You ever go out to eat at a nice restaurant?

[35:57] And imagine on your plate, what do you like? Do you like a steak? Is that okay?

Steak, and you got all the fixings. And imagine if scurrying across your plate was one cockroach.

Not a hundred.

Not an infestation. Just one.

Bottoms up. Bone apathy. How many would it take for you to be like, no thanks?

How many would it take for you to say, I’m not coming back here until there’s an investigation, until there’s a fumigation?

Right, how many?

A hundred? Or is one too much for you? One doesn’t make a difference.

I’ll tell you that. For some people, one piece of hair is enough.

Nevermind a cockroach. Listen, sin is more disgusting in the sight of God, than a cockroach is to us.

Sin is a deep offense. A lie is never gonna get into heaven.

How can God look at a sinful person like that? through this man admits himself to be.

I’m just a sinner and we know he is. The cheater, likely a thief.

How could he ever be declared right?

[37:10] How can a holy God just do that? Does he have a magic wand?

And you say a prayer, man said a prayer, right, wrong. How does it happen?

Do you have any idea?

Very important question. The answer to the question is the center of the gospel.

See, this man, Keith Ray, he understood he was wrong in God’s sight.

He goes home right in God’s sight because he depends on what was enough in God’s sight.

[37:49] It took me a long time to think that up. Not that brilliant. So can I repeat it?

He is wrong in God’s sight.

[37:59] He goes home, one meeting, right in God’s sight, because he depends on what was enough in God’s sight. Not necessarily what was enough in his sight, or enough in the sight of the other man with the church. That was enough in God’s sight. And that’s that word, Lord be merciful or Lord be propitious. You heard my brother say, propitious to me the sinner. That word propitious means this, God, I’m a sinner. I’m a sinner and I could never satisfy your justice for the soul that sins must die. I could never give any reason why, no matter how much I wash my hands, I can’t get rid of these sins. I could never give any reason why I should be in your holy, pure, clean presence.

But is there any reason you have? Is there any reason you can provide that would satisfy your own justice? And that’s the message of the Gospel. That’s the marvelous message of the Gospel. See, like, the mystery in the Gospel is not how God allows filthy, sinful to be in hell. That is no mystery to God. That’s what should happen. The mystery is, how God provided a way for filthy people to be in heaven. That’s the wonder! How did that And that’s why it’s central to the gospel.

[39:27] Outside the city of Jerusalem. That’s why Paul said, I came not with excellency of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. That’s what it says in the Bible.

The preaching of the cross. The cross. There’s a preacher who spent many years here in the United States named Billy Graham.

He went on a little park and the place was filled, He said there wasn’t much response, and he couldn’t understand because he had been a lot of places.

And he wondered at that. And I’m not sure who it was, whether it was one of his advisors or his own wife who told.

[40:08] Him, Billy, you didn’t preach the cross.

You didn’t preach the cross. And that man said this later on.

It’s a marvelous thing to say. I’m not sure how true it is for every preacher, but I have never preached many times.

He says, I have never come to the point in my message where I preached the cross and did not feel help from God.

God wants the cross to be lifted up, not us, not them, not church, but a stake outside the city of Jerusalem, where an innocent man who came from heaven, went to deal with the problem of this man’s sins, and my sins, and your sins. That’s the story of the gospel.

That’s what I say at 53 and verse number 6. All of us were like this man.

We were like sheep that went astray.

Each of us turned our own way.

But the Lord on that cross, God, laid on the Lord Jesus the sin of us all, of us all.

And the great thing about the message is that whatever happened on that cross, I don’t understand everything that happened.

[41:20] I know that they nailed him there. I know that they nailed him after mocking him, mocking everything he claimed to be.

Bible tells me that on that cross there were three hours where there was darkness.

The Bible tells me that on that cross that God, as we read there, God laid on Jesus the sin of us all.

The Bible says His soul was made an offering for sin.

[41:47] I’m not sure everything that happened on the cross, but I know this. It was enough.

It was enough. It wasn’t enough in the sight of God. That’s the important thing.

As the offended party said, that’ll do, right?

You wrong someone, has the one who’s been offended say, okay, that’s all I require.

Sin is an offense to God. And God said to the cross, to the man who suffered there, all I require. the storm of God’s wrath bungled on that cross.

[42:30] It was like, if you think of it as capital punishment, it was like those who should die by a firing squad or something like that.

It was like heaven had a firing squad, really. I know it’s not a pretty picture, but heaven had a firing squad against every sinner for the soul that sins should die.

And my dear friend, listen, if you’re in your sins, the guns of heaven are aimed at you.

Make no mistake tonight.

This is no happy-go-lucky message. The Bible says in John 3, 36, the wrath of God.

The wrath of God abides in the person.

And the guns of heaven are aimed at a sinner. What happened on the cross is all heaven’s guns turned, and fired on a man on a center cross who had no sin.

Who had no sin, so there was not one bullet left in the chamber.

God said that to him.

[43:27] According to the Bible, Paul says it’s not a big secret. It doesn’t take a theological degree.

Paul says, here’s the message of the gospel. Christ died for our sins.

If there’s anyone who has sins, here’s the great news. That’s why Christ died.

For those sins. For you.

We were just helpless if Christ died for the ungodly. The reason we know today that it was enough in God’s sight is as you’ve already heard.

After that man bore the full weight of sin, he cried out, it’s finished.

He died. He dismissed his spirit back to God, bowed his head in all the dignity of his person.

Tucked his body down, and they put him in a tomb, a cave. On the third day, God raised that man from the dead.

The reason we preach the Resurrection is not just, well, there’s a living Savior.

No, like, do you understand the implication?

I know it’s a hot, humid day. Have you followed the implication of that?

God has said that there are people who are wrong in His sight.

God treated Jesus on the cross as being wrong in His sight, and judged Him.

[44:53] And then God raised him back from the dead, saying, I’m satisfied with you.

And Jesus today is at the right hand of God in heaven.

You see, it’s no church that satisfies God. No prayer.

[45:10] No verse.

Christ says the Bible, He is the satisfaction for God. And so you see, when a person trusts and depends, like this man, God be propitious, God find satisfaction for me, the sinner, you provide it.

God says, well, that’s why I sent my son.

Then they’re wrong in his sight, but there’s something that was enough in his sight.

And when they depend on, they can leave a meeting like this, right in the sight of God.

It’s an amazing thing today that when God looks at me and all my sins and all my weaknesses, I am no perfect person, but God sees the perfect person of his own son.

God says about me, I am well accepted in the beloved one.

God says to me, I am highly favored in Christ. You know what happened when I trusted Christ?

I didn’t know that would happen.

All I knew was I was going to hell, and yet there’s one who took my sins. I trust him.

Do you know what happened when I did that? God actually placed a sinner like me in His perfect Son!

[46:31] And holiness looks at me and says, I need nothing else. I need nothing else.

That’s amazing. You could leave with that, you know. You could leave if tonight, from your heart, if you were to depend on the Lord Jesus Christ, you would leave right beside of God.

It says that verse in John 3, 36.

He that believeth not the wrath of God abideth on them.

[46:58] But for those who believe there’s no wrath in John 3, 36. Why?

Why is there no wrath there?

Because the wrath fell on another and they’re relying on him.

And so we would appeal to you tonight, all of you who have come, thanks for coming once again.

But we would appeal to you tonight if you have not to trust the Lord Jesus Christ.

Don’t leave like that first man.

Don’t leave saying, well, that’s good for other people. And I’m happy with my own resume.

No, scrap your resume and trust Christ.

Gospel tent meeting with Peter Ramsay and Joseph Baker.

[0:01] Now I want to read in the Gospel of John in chapter 4.

That is the fourth book of the New Testament, John chapter 4.

If there’s anyone here who hasn’t maybe heard of a gospel meeting or anything like that who’s here tonight, the word gospel simply means good news, and you can think of it like the Bible is a rather big book, Genesis to Revelation.

Really what we’re presenting here tonight is the core message of this book.

Is it from Genesis to Revelation? What is the core message? The core message is about who we are in the sight of God, what God has done for us, and the response expected from us. And that’s really a message of good news, it’s the message of the gospel. And it can be presented from, as you heard in the announcements, through different stories or verses. I want to look at it through a story, tonight that just fits in in my own mind with the weather going on outside. I want to talk about a woman who was thirsty in John chapter four.

So I’ll read from verse number one.

If you have a Bible, you can follow along or I’ll just read it to you.

[1:07] John four and verse one. When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, though Jesus himself baptized not but his disciples, he left Judea and departed again into Galilee and he must needs go through Samaria.

Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.

Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well, and it was about the sixth hour.

There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water. He saith unto her, Give me to drink.

For his disciples were gone away into the city to buy food.

Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria?

For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.

Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

The woman said unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.

And whence, then, hast thou that living water?

Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well and drank thereof himself, and his children and his cattle?

[2:30] Jesus answered and said to her, whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again.

But whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.

But the water that I shall give him shall be in him, a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

The woman said unto him, sir, give me this water.

[2:53] When nature and science get together, pretty sweet things can happen.

He whom thou now hast is not thy husband, and this thou sayest truly.

The woman said unto her, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet.

Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus said unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour comes, when you neither shall worship in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem. Worship the Father.

Drop down, verse 24, God is spirit. Those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

The woman said to him, I know that the Messiah, the Christ is coming, which is called the Christ.

When he has come, he will tell us all things. Jesus said unto her, I that speak unto thee and he.

[3:40] And upon this came his disciples, and here’s our word, and marvel that he talked with the woman.

Yet no man said, what seekest thou? Why talkest thou with her?

The woman then left her water pot and went her way into the city and said to the man, come, be a man which told me all things that ever I did.

Is not this the Christ?

Then they went out of the city, came unto him.

A rather lengthy reading than what we’ve usually done so far in these meetings, but a very beautiful story.

And really, I would consider it a good spending of my time. If you were to leave tonight with just four things about Jesus that you’ve learned from this story, that I appreciated today as a believer.

First of all, Jesus, the Lord seeking, seeking.

Secondly, the Lord giving. He said to this woman, if you knew the gift of God, the Lord giving.

Thirdly, the Lord knowing.

[4:44] She said, I perceive you must be a prophet. The Lord knowing.

And lastly, the Lord satisfying.

Satisfied, because she leaves the water pot she came with and she leaves because she has been satisfied with something that she received at that well that was not found in the well, but actually was seated on the well.

And she leaves satisfied. And my brother Caleb and I didn’t talk, but that incurs me just in this, that there is really none but Christ that can satisfy, and he could satisfy you tonight.

So those four things about the Lord Jesus, seeking, giving, knowing, and satisfying.

And I hope all of us, those here who are Christians, will leave with that, but especially those of you who don’t know the Lord Jesus, if you leave with those four thoughts of him, that would be a well-spent meeting, in my opinion.

First of all then, the Lord be with you.

[5:35] I’ve really enjoyed this more and more as a Christian. I’ve just noticed how cold and how indifferent my own heart is as far as compassion to other people, but I get so used to seeing people in need, that it’s so easy to just keep driving by or to just ignore it and carry on with my life, and it just so touches me more and more actually as a Christian than ever before.

How interested the Lord is in an individual person. is just one single person.

Like there was a man and he was having a big revival. Like a lot of people were coming to meetings he was having, actually in Samaria, his name was Philip.

And God took him away from there and sent him out in the middle of the desert for one man.

One man, and he was riding in his chariot, but he was seeking, he didn’t understand parts of the Bible.

And God was so interested in that one man from Ethiopia that he sends this preacher to that one person.

The Lord Jesus, when he was here, he knew that there was a man up in a tree, a rich man actually, up in a tree.

And he knew that he was there and he passed purposely right under the tree for that man.

[6:46] There was another time where the Lord Jesus was journeying with a bunch of people around him.

It says the crowd was pressing in on him.

And there was a woman who reached out and just touched just a piece of his clothing.

And he stopped and called out just one woman. No one else really cared much about her.

And he singled her out and called her.

And another time he’s journeying through the city and there’s a blind man, a blind beggar, really a very common sight in that day.

And the blind beggar says, Lord, have mercy on me. That’s amazing, those words.

It says, Jesus stood still.

He stood still at the cry of a blind beggar because he’s interested in individuals.

And you know, if you’re here this evening, I want you to know that God is not just interested in the whole lot of us here, this whole group.

He’s not interested even in just a specific race or a specific country, but he’s interested in every single person here.

He knows everything about you, and He is speaking.

And it says there at the beginning of the story about Jesus, He must please go through Samaria.

He had to go through this city because He was interested in one woman that as we look at her story, really, she was very, she would qualify as a person who really shouldn’t be having much interest.

[8:02] She wasn’t like a prime candidate for heaven. She wasn’t religious.

She wasn’t good living.

She wasn’t part, in that day, of the right race.

Jesus is crossing boundaries, and He’s very provocative, really, in the whole structure of the Gospel of John of what’s happening here.

He’s going into a race that people would think is contaminated, Samaritan.

And then He’s going to a woman.

And then He’s going to a sinful woman, because Jesus is interested in every single individual.

And I just want you to know that God is here.

I also want you to know that if you’re here tonight hearing the gospel, I don’t know what you think about it.

Maybe you think, well, I’m here because it’s just kind of by random chance, my parents brought me or my friends, or well, out of kind of just to be nice, I agreed to come, whatever.

I want you to know that there’s no such thing as hearing the gospel by chance.

You are here because God is interested in your soul. And you’re hearing a message that God, more than any other human being wants you to hear, the gospel.

[9:11] As we go through the story, we learn that Jesus comes to a well at a time of day when most people wouldn’t have been going to the well. You’d understand this is before the days of water in your home and stuff, where people would have to go quite a ways journey to a well to get water for drinking. And it says that she came to there about the sixth hour. That means about 12 o’clock.

Now, this is in the Middle East. There was a time of day where people would go to the well, maybe earlier in the morning or later in the evening, because no one would go at noon.

Noon was the time where it would be the most blazing heat at a well. Noon was the time where, the scorching heat would be there and no one would want to gather at noon.

So Jesus is going strategically, purposefully, because there’s a woman in the city who every day comes out at noon. For this reason, she doesn’t want to be seen by the rest of the of the people in the city.

She has a lifestyle that makes her look, people look down at her.

They don’t wanna be associated with her. And we’re gonna find out a bit about what she’s done.

And so shamefully, in the heat of the day, she is going to come and Jesus knows she’s gonna come.

[10:25] So he’s seated on the well, waiting for her. Somebody once asked me, I didn’t even think of this.

They said, you know, with Jesus, our Lord Jesus, Him knowing all things. Why didn’t He time it so that He came right when she came?

Why did He time it where He actually had to wait on her? Does that not tell us something about the compassion and patience of Christ? Isn’t that what He does in gospel work? Does He not wait on sinners? Does He not wait patiently on people to respond and to learn and to come? It’s just the patience of Christ to come at a time where he’s weeding.

We learn as well as he came, something about the Lord Jesus, that he was truly a man.

It says here that he was weary with his journey.

He was tired. You know, Jesus Christ wasn’t some kind of insulated man who didn’t face some of the pressures we face.

We learned that he knew the pressures of poverty.

[11:25] There was death likely in his family as far as his earthly parents were concerned.

We learn in another place that he was hungry, and another place that he was thirsty. And here it says he was tired, he was weary. He was a real man. He was a real man without sin, but a real man.

And he’s coming for this woman, who very shamefully and to avoid the rest of the people in the city of Samaria, would have made that journey. I think sometimes as we go through to the story of the woman, we may perceive her as, we might read into it our Western culture here in the 21st century.

We might think of a woman that says she had five husbands and the one she was with was not her husband.

We might think of a woman who maybe has left her husband here and there five times.

Likely, I would suggest to you that that’s very unlikely that that’s the case.

[12:17] Simply because a woman in that day, her security was in her husband.

They didn’t have the whole women’s rights that we have today where they could work.

Very likely it was because her husband had left her.

They didn’t find any satisfaction in her. Not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, five times, and the next man thinks so little of her they won’t even marry her.

And here’s a woman quite, quite feeling very shameful, feeling very used and abused, coming to a well in the heat of the day, and there that values her so highly.

He’s there for her, the Lord Jesus.

As she comes there, he asks her for a drink of water.

[13:04] Now, it’s hard to understand really the racial issue back then, but I think, thinking of the racial issue that was here in our country a number of years ago, with, in the slavery times and in all the laws that were passed and segregation and certain water fountains for one color and certain water fountains for the other, that might help us understand a little bit of what it was like here, that here’s a woman and she’s being asked to give water from her water pot to this pure rabbi, this Jewish man, and she says as much herself, she says, how is it that you, as a Jew, ask water from me, who am a Samaritan?

Sure, the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.

And the Lord Jesus takes the opportunity to tell her about why he had actually come.

Do you know why Jesus came?

[13:58] Do you think Jesus came to start a religion? Why do you think Jesus came into our world?

He says, I have come to give.

If you only knew the gift of God, and He it is who says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked me, and I would have given you living water. This is why Jesus came.

Now it might not make sense to you, maybe you’ve never heard that.

Jesus came to give living water.

I’ve never heard that. I’ve never seen that in a Christmas movie or an Easter movie.

Yeah, but that’s what the Bible says.

You saw that in John chapter four. Jesus came from heaven to give people, like this woman, living water.

It says water that she would never have to thirst again.

We should be very interested in what this living water is.

Now, I want to just emphasize here at this point that whatever this is that Jesus has given, it is a gift.

[14:51] It is a gift. He says, if you only knew the gift from God. It’s not something that a person has to earn or even can earn. Not something you get to pray for or pay for or go to church for. It’s a gift from God, this living water. And so the Lord giving. And we do have a very giving God, but I’ll just move on to the next part. The Lord knowing. Now I have a question. I’m not going to call on you. I have a question. They’re sitting here talking about water. And the woman, now just, put yourself in the shoes of this woman. She has to come out for however many days at noon, high noon, in the Middle East, with the scorching sun right on that equator line, scorching. So just just avoid the rest of the crowd.

And Jesus just says this, I have water, I’ll never be thirsty again.

And she thinks, sir, give me this water. So, why? So I’ll never be thirsty again?

No, so I don’t have to come here and draw. Like I don’t wanna come here anymore.

Give me this water. So of course, she’s still thinking, that’s a good idea.

And Jesus is going to use this to talk to show her that he’s actually talking about spiritual water, spiritual refreshment, spiritual satisfaction that he came to give.

But my question is this, when they’re talking about water, how come Jesus changes the conversation to husbands?

[16:15] Doesn’t really seem to fit. They’re talking about water, and she says, give me this water.

And he says, go call your husband.

Why?

[16:28] You see, whatever this spiritual water is that a person can receive, this living water, in order to receive it, they must face some of the dark and hidden things of their past in the presence, not of a preacher or a church, but in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.

A person must face, this is what the Bible speaks of as repentance, they must face their sin in order to receive living water.

There cannot be forgiveness without repentance. It’s just the message of the gospel, of the Bible.

And so she faces, she has to face her sin. Now she does what all of us did, I think before any of us were saved, became Christians, we hid it.

[17:11] He says, go call your husbands. Oh, I don’t have a husband. She’s hiding.

She’s hiding her past. She’s hiding her sins. Have you ever tried to hide sins in your life?

There’s sins that we don’t mind talking about because we all share them, like lying or swearing, or maybe cheating on a test, but is there any skeleton in the closet?

I have a friend actually, and every time there’s a school shooting in the United States, he gets all worked up, because he goes back to the fourth grade When he bullied another kid.

And when they all talk about school bullying and what it can result in and he just gets all worked up then. Like what happened to that kid? What’s that kid gonna do? Why did I do that? And it’s not like a hundred cents that he’s worried about. It’s just that one. And it so grips him. And he, just wishes he’s and he just says, I wish there was some way to wipe it out of my memory. You Do you have a sin like that?

Is there anything in your mind that, if you had brain soap, you would wash it away?

[18:32] You know, the Lord, He knew all about it. We learn that even in the Psalms.

I think it’s in the 90th Psalm, that the Bible says that our secret sins are in the light of His countenance.

But there’s no such thing, really, as a secret sin.

You know, people today, they do different things on the internet.

And they do private browsing or clear search history.

There’s no such thing as doing that with God.

There’s no such thing as privately browsing with God or deleting our history with God.

Like, He knows it all anyway.

And that’s what he was teaching this woman. She said when he found out, you’ve had five husbands.

You’re right. You don’t have a husband right now. You’ve had five.

And the one you’re living with is not even your husband.

She says, Sir, I perceive that you’re a prophet.

I perceive, like you must have been, you’re a man of God. You’re in touch with somebody who has told you about my life.

How often, you know, in Gospel days, there’s people who walk in who know nothing about this. Like I’m from Michigan, my brother Peter’s from Prince Edward Island, and people came I turned to the door and I said, who told you about me?

[19:38] Who fills you in? That’s not very nice, you know. I am telling like no one’s told me anything.

It’s God who is speaking to a person. God is the one who’s doing the work, like I am totally ignorant of it all. Because God knows and he wants this woman in order to receive the water, he wants her to face her sin. And it’s the same thing with us, my friend here tonight. If you are going to receive water so you never thirst again, something that fills the void, something that success, success could never fill the void. You know, more money, a different relationship, a different job, all the things we look for. So a young man here if you’re waiting for the iPhone, what is it? 15? I don’t even know. You think that’s going to fill the void? You think when they have technology and you can actually have glasses that can read text messages or whatever else they’re going to do, you think that’s going to fill the void? No, there’s nothing in our world that can fill the You know why? We were made for God. You were made for God.

The Bible says this, you were made by him and for him. And there’s a void in the human heart. And if you were honest tonight, if you were honest and forgot all about the other people sitting beside you, and you just faced yourself before God.

[20:56] You would admit that there’s a void that nothing in this life has ever filled.

No matter how rich the successes may have been, or the pleasures, There’s something that can never be filled because we are made for God, and Jesus knows that.

It’s a void that has been caused by sin, sin that has separated us from our God.

Says the psalmist, I thirst for the living God. I thirst for Him.

I’m panting after Him, just like somebody whose throat is dry and thirsty.

So Jesus wants her to face this sin. She not only hides from that, but then she tries to change the subject.

It’s so interesting when you talk to people about their sins, like just specifically, not like, uh, tell me about your sins or confess them to me. There’s no reason for you to do that.

But when you start talking about a sin that you’ve done against God, it’s so interesting how quickly people change the subject.

[21:51] Like, uh, did you hear about the president’s wife who had her funeral today? Yeah, but we’re not talking about that. This woman did the same thing. She was faced with her son and she said, so, you know, you Jews believe this and we believe this, which is right, Jesus.

We have a religious debate, we Samaritans, and you Jews think it’s this mountain, and we think it’s this mountain. Right? She’s trying to change the subject. Let’s just talk religion. You know, let’s just talk Protestantism and Catholicism. Let’s just talk, you know, you know, communion or baptism.

Oh, people do that all the time. Just to avoid the subject, just to avoid the root.

But you see the Lord Jesus knew that.

So he goes down her walkway about the subject of worship.

And he says to her, you know, the Father, he does seek worshipers, but he seeks those who will worship him in spirit and in truth.

What he’s saying is he seeks those who will be sincere in truth.

He seeks those who will be genuine.

He seeks those who will be honest. In other words, woman, you’re not being honest right now.

You’re dodging the issue. You’re avoiding your sin.

So whichever mountain it is is irrelevant just for right now.

God is seeking those who will come to him in truth. Have you ever come to God in truth?

[23:12] I’m sure just faith, God, and truth, just exactly as you are, no mask, no extra, you know, performance on that. Well, I’ve done this and I’ve done that. No, this is who I am. Or do you cover it up?

To human nature, I should tell you to cover it up. That’s what they did in the Garden of Eden.

Right when they sinned, you know, the first thing our great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers did and grandmothers, they made clothes, aprons, and they covered it up. That’s our human nature. We We all did it.

And I would ask you tonight, don’t cover it up. Just face God in truth.

You know why? Because the God who is speaking to you is a God of grace.

And He is not here to judge and punish and throw you away, but to forgive and cleanse and to give living water.

And so as he dodges the issue and as he focuses her on the subject of truth, she comes back and she says, well, I know that the Messiah is coming. I know that the Christ is coming.

And I know that when He comes, it will all be right.

And I know that when he comes, it will all be right.

I don’t know if I have the ability to just get you into the scene.

Like, just think of it.

Here she is, and she’s looking forward to this mystical, wonderful person who’s coming.

And here’s this man sitting on the well over here beside her and he says to her, The person you’re looking for, you’re looking at.

[24:37] The person you’re looking for, you’re looking at. I am the Christ, he says. That’s who I am.

And that’s why I came to give this living water, that when a person faces their sins, and trust me, they can have a well of water where they’ll never be thirsty again. They can have real satisfaction.

And as I sit down, I just want to tell you how Jesus made that possible.

It wasn’t easy to give water to sinful people.

He had to go himself to a cross. And the one who made the waters and the seas, and the one who has control to send the rain, he said on that cross, I thirst.

[25:23] I thirst. You see, true thirst is not so much the parched tongue.

True thirst is the emptiness without God.

And that’s what Jesus experienced on the cross. He said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

He went through that emptiness so that thirsty sinners like myself and like everyone of you here tonight, could never thirst again.

He said, I thirst, yet he made the rivers. He said, I thirst, yet he made the seas.

I thirst, said the King of all the ages. And in his thirst, he brought water to me.

If you were to trust the Lord Jesus Christ today, like this woman, it’s almost humorous.

Here she comes at our 12 o’clock noon to get water.

Did you leave the water pot?

She leaves it.

And she goes home and she tells everyone, come, come, see a man who told me everything I ever did.

Is not this the Christ? We pray that that’s how you would go home tonight, even as the meeting concludes.

[26:26] It would be wonderful if you got a drink of that living water tonight. I know we’re drinking the water out of the bottles and that meets a very physical need, but we’re talking about a spiritual thirst. And I think that lady went back to the town and she didn’t say, come see the church.

He said, come see a man that’s told me all things that ever I did, who met my deepest needs.

So just to clarify this for anyone that’s wondering, is this a church membership drive?

This absolutely is not a church membership drive.

We’re not asking no one to leave their church and join ours, there’s nothing about that.

We want to present a man to you. His name is Jesus Christ.

Many of us know Him personally as our Savior, and we love Him, and we have a relationship with Him.

John chapter 10, for one verse, and then I’m gonna read you a little story in Luke 15.

John chapter 10, where we’ve already been reading John 4, but John 10, here’s what Jesus said, verse 11.

He said, I am the good shepherd.

[27:45] The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. Or the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Now that is a good shepherd. Most would say, well, I’ll go so far, I’ll put some effort into it.

But a good shepherd actually is willing to lay down his life for the sheep.

And that’s exactly what Jesus said, I am.

I’m the shepherd that you’ve been waiting for.

I’m the one who’s willing to lay down my life for lost sheep.

Now flip over to Luke’s Gospel, chapter 15, and Jesus tells another story.

It is about sheep.

Luke 15, verse 1.

[28:37] Then drew near unto him, unto Jesus, all the publicans, and those were sometimes the scoundrels of society, not that tax gatherers today would be cheaters, but back in the day, they seemed to have a bad reputation. And so they were called publicans and sinners to hear him.

And the religious elite, the Pharisees and the scribes who meticulously copied out the Word of God, letter by letter, so the religious elite and the scholars, they murmured, saying, this man, Jesus, receives sinners and eats with them.

I look at that verse and I say, thank God, he wasn’t a loot.

He actually received sinners and he can come down to their level and he eats with them.

And Jesus spoke this parable unto them, saying, What man of you, having an hundred sheep.

[29:38] If he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?

He’s not going to give up.

And when he hath found it, he laith it on his shoulders. Plural.

Plural. What’s he doing? Oh, just another day, found another sheep. No! It says he’s rejoicing.

You see the imagery God is using, what he’s painting, what the Lord Jesus is saying?

Look at, when I save a lost sheep, I am thrilled. I’m rejoicing.

[30:21] Verse 6, and when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.” You have it all over Facebook.

We’re having a get-together. I have found the lost sheep.

I’ll say unto you that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repents, more than over ninety and nine just persons, good people, which need no repentance, think they need no, they have nothing to repent over. So that’s the story Jesus told.

You know, sheep and shepherds, probably you’re not that familiar with them in New Jersey, in a densely populated state, but there’s a lot of imagery in the Bible about sheep and shepherds.

And if you were to go over to the Middle East, even today, we were over there in a few years back and we saw Bedouin shepherds out in the fields with their flocks, with their sheep, and it’s still a big industry.

I looked it up today.

The revenue, not including wool exports, The revenue of the lamb and sheep meat market in the Middle East amounted to $7.8 billion in 2019.

[31:44] So it’s big business for the Middle East. Lamb and sheep meat.

Well, Jesus is meeting with people. I’m glad he wasn’t a lewk.

You know, sometimes religious people can be somewhat removed and distant from people, And you have to come in the right costumes, and you have to do your little bows and everything the right way.

But, oh, the Lord Jesus, He was just right there with them, and He was reaching out to them.

[32:17] Jesus says, give me one last sinner, and I will seek until I find him.

Matthew chapter 9, that is a beautiful verse there, it says, When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.

So it’s not just once you read about the Lord Jesus being a shepherd, that was his heart.

I don’t know what you think of the heart of the Lord Jesus, or the heart of God.

You say he’s some mean, cruel despot ruling in the skies, striking out willy-nilly, unpredictable.

Don’t you think of God? Oh, read your Bible. Read the Bible. It’s entirely different.

Message conveyed from the Word of God about the heart of God. You’ve been hearing about it.

Compassion, how Jesus went out of His way to find that one woman who was so thirsty in more ways than one.

[33:22] Let me just put up a little picture here. I hope this doesn’t offend anybody.

There’s some young people here.

This is not a very flattering portrait of anyone in the meeting, in the service tonight,.

[33:41] So the Lord Jesus calls people, they’re like sheep.

You say, well, I hope I don’t let know you all look quite normal to the speakers at least.

The long nose. Just speaking about the long nose sheep, you know that I was looking the statistics up, on 2018 poll conducted by the American Academy of facial plastic and reconstructive surgeons.

55% of surgeons reported having patients who said they were seeking cosmetic procedures to improve their noses because of the way they appeared in selfies.

Too big of noses. And there was a 42% increase one year over another.

People wanting their noses made smaller because when they do the selfie, they look so big.

Well, we’re not concerned about anyone’s noses tonight, but the picture that we want to leave in your mind, at the close of this service is a lost sheep.

Are you lost? I can say I was lost, but Jesus found me.

[34:57] He saved me, he rescued me. And I would like you to ask that question yourself. Am I lost?

The plight of the lost sheep, know that the characteristics of sheep, they have a tendency to stray, they don’t have any ability to return, they wander further away, the grass is always greener on the other side, and they keep going and going and going. And someone has rightly said, sin will take you much further than you ever intended to go and keep you much longer than you ever intended to stay. I’ve worked with a lot of people who have chemical dependencies and addictions of many different sorts. They never intended, but sin got a hold of them and just put them in a certain direction and kept them longer than they ever intended to stay. The.

[35:51] Plight of a lost sheep. Maybe there’s someone here tonight and you’re saying, well, you, You know, this is sort of old time stuff you’re talking about.

Have you ever been to the city and seen some of the bright lights?

Like, how do you expect me to focus on these things? Isn’t this sort of ancient?

Oh, it’s right up to date. There are lost sheep. I’m sure there’s a lost sheep right in this tent.

People are dazzled by the night lights, mesmerized by all the options and the new options for fun, energized by the possibility, wow, I can climb this ladder and be famous.

There’s just, there are so many possibilities.

[36:37] Like a bubble. Do you ever think of yourself? I just go after bubbles all the time. They look so sparkling bright. And I reach for this one. It’s empty. It’s a wet spot in the hand.

Do you ever think of your life like that? Oh, this achievement. Well, then I’ll be able to reach a plateau and level off and just be restful and contented. And you’re not satisfied.

Here’s what the psalmist said, Psalm 58, sinners are estranged from the womb.

They go astray as soon as they are born. Doesn’t take long, does it?

For even little children to start wandering away and doing all their own things, and their parents have to correct them.

The last verse of the longest psalm in the Bible, the longest chapter, Psalm 119.

Here’s what the last verse says.

I have gone astray like a lost sheep.

There’s a beautiful verse, probably if I ask for a show of hands, if anyone trusted Christ reading this verse, they might, someone might put up their hands, a little nervous about their hands, but here’s what it says in Isaiah 53, verse six.

All, without exception, all we like sheep have gone astray.

[37:56] There’s not one person in this tent this evening from God’s perspective who hasn’t gone astray.

All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned each one to our own way.

You’re not taking God’s way. We do what we want to do. They say, follow your heart, they say.

That’s not what the Bible teaches.

Follow the Lord!

[38:23] And that’s exactly what Isaiah 53 says. Oh, we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to his own way.

And then it ends this way. The Lord God laid on him, that’s Jesus, on the cross, the sin or the iniquity of us all, for lost, perishing sheep.

Well, the night of the lost sheep, I don’t know whether your life has ever seemed like a dark tunnel and things closing in around you, despair, there’s storms in life, howling winds in life.

Now you say, but I’m not a drug addict.

[39:07] I’m not an out of control gambler. I just occasionally indulge, but I’m not out of control.

So the whole concept for you, The whole basis of your message is for lost sheep.

Those that show up at a food bank, maybe. No, no, no.

For them too, they are lost. There are people in the audience tonight and you are lost too.

There are people in executive offices and they’re plagued by feelings.

Is there anything more to life than this?

What are they? They’re lost sheep. There are lost sheep, very skilfully, Kicking the ball down the field, scoring a goal.

[39:55] And they’re still experiencing emptiness. They’re lost. They’re lost. They’re lost.

Sheep under the bright lights of the big stage clutching their Oscar trophy at the Academy Awards night.

And when you reach the pinnacle, is that all there is to life?

They’re lost. They don’t have that relationship with God. They’re lost sheep in Christian families.

Lost sheep. So I’m not talking about those who are out wandering in the sidewalks of the city, people in this tent. The one lost sheep here tonight. You know that you’ve lost your way.

[40:47] They say, does anyone really care? That’s why we’re glad you’re here.

The Bible tells us there is one, a good shepherd who cares for you.

You’ve already been hearing about that, how he singles out individuals.

And he loves you and wants to show you compassion. He wants to save lost sheep, loneliness.

Just picture that little bit, the imagery the Lord Jesus used.

Lost, vulnerable, fragile, sheep out in the hills, just wandering up the hill, down the, valleys, crevice, precipice, hot in the thorns, tumbling down, maybe bleeding.

That’s the imagery the Lord Jesus uses.

Loneliness, helplessness, no ability to see themselves.

Do you think he values you, friend?

[41:51] He really values you. The preciousness of just one soul. You’re wondering does he care?

There’s someone missing tonight. Missing, lost, just one heart. You know what sheep do? They go baa. That’s where the infant’s in the back. Baa. Is there one human heart that’s sort of silently bleaking, lost. You’d never know if you look at your face. You look like you’re prosperous.

You look like you’re faring well. But you say, no, not my heart. Look, I’ve got story after story on our little website, whether it’s Brad Pitt or Michael Jordan who’s gone, Michael Jackson has gone Michael Jordan, the whole list, Tom Brady, and they’ve all experienced that certain emptiness no matter what they achieve. Quotes from their own mouths. Lost, that’s what they are. Lost, helpless, perishing, without strength. Does he notice just one missing when he notices you?

Absolutely. You see, but there’s so many others. He knows you. You know, you’re of.

[43:15] Infinite value to the Lord. Oh, you see, look at I, I don’t, I’m not a big, I don’t swear a lot, but today I don’t know what I was thinking, but I just jammed my finger in the corridor And I jumped up and down and I, Jesus, thank Christ!

Is that it?

Do you think he still loves you? He does. He does.

I was looking for a $50 bill today. I don’t know what your $50 bills look like in the United States.

I know what they look like in Canada, even though I’m colorblind and we have bright colors.

But you know what? That’s a $20 bill.

[44:03] If you saw that in the grass after the rain and it was all crumpled up like that and you say, and you don’t want that.

Yeah, it’s all muddy.

No good to me.

I see some of your questions. You say, absolutely not. If I saw that all crumpled up in a mud puddle, I would bend down and I would pick it up and my heart would be 12 and 20 dollars.

Man, I would be telling my friends, I would clean it up and I would get the mud off it.

[44:37] You know why? because it is inherent value. It’s worth $20, whether it’s money or whether it’s clean.

And you have an inherent value in God’s sight. Whether you’re down in the darkness of sins, you’re as valuable to him as the best living person is in his tent.

He doesn’t have a grading scale to that mud in that person.

You are made in the image of God.

Oh, how broken we are.

How little we can see of the image of God in our lives, but that’s what the Bible teaches.

You are inherently valuable to God, and that’s why He goes after lost sheep.

He loves the missing one.

There’s a verse, there are three words in the Bible that I love, and it’s God is love.

See the little sign, God is love, but it’s mentioned more than once.

And as you read your Bible.

[45:41] It can’t help but be in breath. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, a sacrificial giving.

That’s how much he loved. God so loves you that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Let me tell you this, good shepherd.

He goes after the lost one. You’ve been hearing about a woman who went to the well and that’s exactly where Jesus went to.

There’s another beautiful story. There are many stories in the Bible where Jesus reaches out to those who are lost.

But one stormy night, he went to a part of the Sea of Galilee that he had never traveled before.

He’d never gone to the other side.

The disciples must have wondered as they got into that little boat and sailed through the dark night.

And a big storm. Why ever is the master Jesus taking us to the other side? You know why?

You can read this story in Luke chapter eight. There was a man over there, tormented.

[46:51] There was no psychologist, no psychiatrist, no social worker, no counselor, no spiritual advisor could meet the man’s need.

And Jesus went through a dark stormy night because he had no but one man over there who needed to be rescued, a lost sheep.

He knows about you.

And there’s nothing that would thrill his heart more than to rescue you, to save you tonight.

He finds the missing one. That’s what he can do. He not only goes after the lost sheep, he finds it.

[47:27] Sometimes people go looking, but they can’t locate that which is lost.

The Lord Jesus can find it. Sometimes people go after one, they find the person they’re looking for, but they can’t rescue them. They don’t have the right equipment or technology.

The Lord Jesus not only has, as you’ve already heard tonight, this is not a coincidence.

I know in your book you said, I got to check this off. I’m going there tonight.

We’re glad you’re here, you really are.

[47:57] But you don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. It’s no coincidence that you have a Christian friend.

It’s no coincidence that your neighbor has invited you to this tent service, that your colleague is invited. That’s not a coincidence.

Behind the scenes, God is at work in your life, and he wants you to hear the message tonight, because you could be saved and rescued tonight.

So he finds the missing one, and he rescues the missing one.

He’s the only one who can rescue a lost, perishing, lost in our sins.

You know what Isaiah 59 says? The Lord’s hand is not short that it cannot save.

Be a tragedy, wouldn’t it?

If you could see someone lost there, but you just couldn’t reach.

Well, the imagery, the metaphors used in the Bible, the Lord’s hand is not too short, his arm not too short, that he can’t reach you.

He can reach you right where you are, but that, and he says, he’s not hearing in prayer that he can’t hear the bleatings of your heart.

He hears you.

[49:05] He knows what’s swirling around in your mind. He knows exactly where your mind is right now.

He knows all of that.

Oh, there are no deficiencies with the Lord. Thank God he is able to save.

You know, before Jesus was born, 750 years before He was born, it says, And to us, Isaiah wrote, and to us a child is born, and to us a son is given, and the government of the world will be upon His shoulder.

Singular. But did you notice the story?

When He rescues a lost sheep.

[49:43] When he saves a perishing sinner, so the image of it was, he puts that sheep up and it’s on his shoulders, oh, the security.

It’s not on one shoulder, maybe the government can rest on one shoulder.

But when it comes to a lost sheep that he went after and valued so much, oh, it’s secure, secure on both shoulders.

And there’s rejoicing in heaven.

I don’t know, there’s a lot of things that we can be proud about as a human family.

A lot of ingenuity, a lot of things that are created.

When Thomas Edison made the first modern incandescent light bulb, that was back a few years ago, 1879, I don’t know what the celebrations were back then, but I don’t think it caused much of a stir in heaven.

When the Wright brothers flew their first little airplane, you know, probably made the headlines.

It didn’t do much up there.

[50:44] And Henry Ford, first Model T, that was a big step forward. Apollo 11, 1969, that was quite something on the moon.

And then when we set up the, I wrote it down this afternoon, the James Webb Space Telescope last Christmas, December the 25th. That was quite a feat too of technology. But you know, the courts of heaven didn’t rejoice over any of that. Do you know what would make them sing tonight? You know what they would rejoice over? If someone came into this little tent service.

[51:23] Bothered about their sins, no fulfillment, a certain emptiness, searching for something to to satisfy and they repented of their sins.

[51:37] And he turned to Jesus Christ and he saved them. Jesus says there’s joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents.

Tonight as we close this little service, have you faced this question?

[52:02] I did. I was lost, I said it, and Jesus found me and I’m eternally secure in Him.

Are you lost tonight?

I can assure you on the authority of the word of God, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners and He came to seek and to save those who are lost.

And if you’re that lost sheep tonight, we point you to a loving Savior who is also the good shepherd who laid down His life for the sheep.

You can have every sin forgiven, Every trace of guilt removed from your own heart, things that can never be removed from the records of the law of the courts of the land, can be erased in God’s eternal records.

And you can have peace and fulfillment and joy and you can be 100% sure you will be in heaven linked to Him forever.

Appeal to you this evening, look to Christ and trust him as your Savior. Shall we pray?

Gospel tent meeting with Peter Ramsay and Joseph Baker.

[0:00] We’re going to read in the New Testament, 1st John, not the Gospel of John, but 1st John, Chapter 5.

I don’t normally speak with my shirt sleeves rolled up, but people say when you have your shirt sleeves rolled up, you mean business.

[0:17] And, unless you, maybe you haven’t noticed this other night, we are, we do mean business.

This is business for eternity.

There are business transactions that are taking place every day of the year, at a corporate level, at a horizontal level, and they will mean absolutely nothing 250 years from tonight.

But what we are talking about is eternal business, and whether we roll up our sleeves or not, We are concerned that the, what is it, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday nights remaining, that there may be someone who has had a beautiful opportunity to hear about Christ and they will miss the opportunity and never end up being in heaven.

That’s the sad possibility of a gospel effort like this.

Now on the more optimistic, the brighter side of things, people attend services like this, and they hear that they can have their sins forgiven and they can be absolutely sure.

I hope no one’s just hoping they’re getting to heaven.

[1:31] You can be absolutely sure. In fact, 1 John chapter five, we read about being absolutely sure, but you could come to a meeting like this tonight and you could hear about the Lord Jesus Christ, salvation through him alone, and you could leave, go out to your vehicle in the parking lot with a smile on your face, and joy in your heart and peace in your soul.

And that’s what we’re praying for this beautiful Tuesday evening.

First John chapter five and verse nine.

And while you’re looking that up, regarding Christianity, who really is a Christian?

Who has eternal life? Who can you believe about existential matters and matters, spiritual matters, about where you’ll be for the eternal ages?

How do you know if you are a Christian?

How do you know if someone else is a Christian?

So the Apostle John is writing about some of these great matters.

And here’s what he says, verse 9, if we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater, for this is a witness of God which he hath testified of his Son, that’s, Jesus.

He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself.

He that believeth not God hath made him a liar.

[2:57] So it’s one thing to not believe me, by me untrustworthy, but when someone cannot believe God, you ever think that you’re calling God a liar?

You say, I’d like to be saved. I have a Bible.

I know those verses, but yet you’re not saved.

You probably can believe me, but you cannot believe God.

In other words, God is a liar. What sort of a stark, this is what he’s saying, Gideon believeth not God hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of his son.

What is the record? The Bible. The Bible is God’s holy, reliable record.

And this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, this life is in His Son.

It doesn’t say in the church.

It doesn’t say in baptism.

You don’t get an announce of life through baptism.

No church can give you a spark of life, eternal life. This eternal life is in His Son and in Him alone.

Verse 12 couldn’t be clearer. he or she, whoever has a son, has life.

[4:25] And he or she that hath not the Son of God, hath not life. And you don’t have to go through online, look for a lawyer in Manhattan to figure this out.

It’s so clear, isn’t it? If you have the Son, you have life.

If I was to ask you, everyone who has the son, a moment in your life when you receive the son personally, consciously, in your life.

[4:58] All of you stand here, and those who do not have the Son of God, stand here.

Where would you stand tonight? It’s just that clear with God.

There’s no foggy area, there’s nothing misty, nothing hazy.

You either have eternal life, the Son, or you don’t have eternal life.

And this little tent service is divided just that clear. We don’t know who is a Democrat and who’s a Republican here.

We have more parties than that back home in Canada, but we can’t look at an audience and say she’s a Democrat and he’s a Republican.

And we don’t know whether you have money. Some of the richest people shop at Goodwill stores.

So we don’t know that.

[5:46] Do you know something? God divides this meeting.

You either have his son and you have eternal life, or you do not have a son, and yet, and you do not have eternal life yet, but maybe tonight you’ll leave with eternal life.

That’s our prayer. One more verse here. These things, John writes, have I written unto you, that you that believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God.

But I just want to speak for the opening part of the meeting on verse 12.

Whoever has the Son has life.

But whoever does not have the Son of God has not life. You know, it’s really disturbing.

It’s sad to meet people who are accumulating many things in life.

But they’re missing Christ.

They are maybe rich with material possessions, They’re spiritually poor because they don’t have Christ.

[6:58] Do you have Christ? I’m not asking you. There are a lot of people who have got what they call God experiences, God experiences, or a religious memory that happened at a summer camp.

No memory will ever take anyone to heaven. God’s salvation is not in a memory, and it’s not in like a God experience or people have existential stories to tell.

Or a near-death experience. You know what I mean? You see them online, near-death experiences.

And they’re relying on those things. That’s not what this verse says.

Only the ones who can say, I have the sun, have life.

Those who do not have the sun, do not have life.

Well, how about you? Do you have eternal life? Some people have years of prayers.

They have an abundance of religious knowledge.

They have baptism. They have a lot of spiritual credentials.

[8:13] They have a lot of sincerity. I remember visiting an elderly lady back in Prince Edward Island and, oh, she said, come on in, dear.

And I went in and we were sitting there talking and this come over here.

I got his brain. This is my baptismal certificate.

[8:33] Well, it’s nice to have a baptismal certificate saved and preserved and framed, but no baptismal certificate will ever take a person to heaven.

I spoke with an 80-year-old woman in Northern Ontario in Canada, and we sat there, we said, what are you relying on to get into heaven?

And she said, well, I played the organ in the church, and I was a choir leader as well.

And she went over the whole list. She said, my mother and father were both religious people, two different denominations, but we were raised as a very religious family.

And then she said, I taught special needs kids in school.

And she thought about all the things that she did. And then it’s like her mind was going, what can I get into heaven?

Oh, she said, yes. And I was involved with girl guides.

[9:32] Those are wonderful things to be involved with. But checking off the list doesn’t get anyone to heaven.

You must have Christ. That’s why I’ve read this verse. Whoever has the Son has life.

Not whoever has a profession. Not whoever has a verse.

I mean, most people who have been raised in an evangelical church of any kind know the verse, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, Acts 16 30 31 can say it like that. A verse will never take anyone to heaven. Christ alone. You may see Christ in the verse. I saw Christ in the verse and realized that he died for me. But, Christ alone saves.

Well, tonight I was thinking of an analogy that I have used quite a few times, because I think it’s something we can all relate to.

You probably knew that this iconic beast that you… it costs so much to fill only up halfway now.

You probably know that it was invented in… designed and invented here in your country, as many other things have been.

And you probably know that the shopping cart was initially rejected by shoppers.

[10:56] Shoppers thought it was a beast of a thing. They thought it would be copped dead, but I will take and use my hand basket any day.

Not going to go around with one of those albatrosses.

And the person who invented it saw that they weren’t flying, they weren’t going anywhere. No one wanted, no one was going to stoop so low as to get a, make up a shopping cart, and to make a fool of themselves pushing a shopping cart around the store, so he was quite creative.

He said, I’ll hire a bunch of fine-looking young men and women, models, back in 1937, and I’ll have them go up and down the aisles pushing the cart, and people will say, look at it, it can’t be that odd.

They’re pushing. Those are fine-looking people.

And the shopping cart, the rest is history. We use shopping carts, right?

I don’t know whether you’ve ever thought of your life as a shopping cart, a shopping trip.

You’re going up and down the aisles of life.

You arrive at the shopping store.

[12:01] Grocery store, and you sort of have a list. Well, when did you pick up your cart of life?

Most who are old enough know when they arrive. It’s your birthday when you arrive here, when you start of your life, you know the date.

But there’s no one in this audience who knows the date that you will arrive at the checkout when you will leave.

But when you die, you know when you arrive, you know your birth date, but you don’t know when you will check out.

It depends very much on what you have in your car, whether you’ll ever be in heaven or not.

[12:45] Life is very serious. We said it other nights. You are different than the rest of creation.

God has made humans in, he said, our own image. That’s what he said.

The trying God, After our likeness and God, we’ve been created with a sense of God’s consciousness.

The Bible tells us that he has placed eternity in our hearts.

And you are here on planet Earth.

[13:16] To live for God, that’s his desire for you. And if you’re not, how could you ever expect to be fulfilled?

You are specifically designed to have a relationship of communion.

But it’s broken by sin.

But tonight the gospel can bring it all back together and you can have a vertical relationship that will never be severed.

We’re so glad you’re with us this evening. Arriving.

Well, as I said, we don’t know when we’ll arrive at the checkout.

Life can end quite abruptly.

It seems like such a short distance.

[14:01] From the cradle to the coffin.

From the fast race cars and the dirt bikes, the motorcycle to that very slow car, long car, with a little flag on it and lights flashing.

It seemed like such a short thing, time.

From the sand in the play box to the ash in an urn, such a short distance.

My grandchildren back in PEI, or our grandchildren back in PEI, On Sunday they went to a little cemetery and they looked at the Ramsey relatives who were buried there and they were looking at all the headstones.

You ever look at a headstone in a graveyard? Nineteen.

Two thousand. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.

That just says, that’s how quick life is. Some die young, some arrive at the checkout older.

Eighteen.

Nineteen. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Sixteen. Eleven.

[15:13] But if you were to arrive at the checkout tonight, do you have what it takes to get into heaven? Well, you arrive, you pick up your cart, and you’re looking around.

OK, that’s the meat pot, like especially down here. Like I don’t know your stores.

I was in the store last night buying some fresh fruit.

And I went to three parts of the store before I actually found the fresh fruit. I was in the meat section and I was in the bakery section and I was going to ask somebody, where is the, I need fresh fruit for tomorrow. Not because they’re not giving it to me where I’m staying, but I had another purpose. So you look around, a lot of people looking around, maybe you’re looking around tonight. You know you’re here on planet Earth, but you’re looking around and saying, okay, where is it? What is it I need in life? And you’re looking around and trying to get located. We’re glad you’re checking out a gospel service like this. And we hope that your look will come to an end and you’ll focus on the Lord Jesus Christ.

People are looking around to calm the turmoil within, the unrest inside. Something that That will give them joy, a smile on their face, bring them pleasure, bring them satisfaction to look around.

And they go up and down the aisles of life. Some of you are maybe a preteen year.

[16:39] Some of you may be in your teen years, the aisles of the teen years.

My friends, my peers, if you’re going down the aisle of the teen years and others are in their 20s, it’s finished up our education.

And then my first job in my career path, my first set of wheels that I can afford, a nice one.

Maybe I should be looking for a life partner and you’re looking at all the things on the aisles of my 30s.

Anybody here in their 30s aisle?

And you’re thinking about promotions. Maybe if you’re married, maybe I should have some children, and maybe the payments are not getting weighed down with mortgage and payments.

And 40s, you know, dear, we should go on a little extended vacation and do some traveling in our 40s.

And check our investments have been doing pretty miserable the last few months.

[17:40] Um, I need to get. Like, I really need to find, I want to learn how to golf.

Forties. That’s the 40s aisles. Midlife crisis. Forties. I remember being down the road here in Hatboro, um, in Pennsylvania, and I just saw the first specks of white hair. And I went into a drugstore and I thought, is it too late to get some of that coloring stuff? And I picked up bottles. I guess that would be a mid-life crisis. It’s too late now, you’d all catch up.

But 40s, 50s, worried about getting old, trying to stay young, jogging more, and trying to stay current in the job unless some MBA, some river snapper of an engineer comes into the workplace and you’re just shoved out to get a golden handshake. Text me. Text me.

Retirement. Well, should we downsize? Well, we might need some extra space for our grandchildren.

Oh, I hope I’m not becoming a senior. 70s? 80s? What isle in life are you on? Are you, making the right choices? You’ve seen people go up and down the isles of life, the aisles the grocery store, and they go up and they say,

[19:07] And the reason above.

[19:11] No. Too many calories. And they put it back up.

It reminds me of people who come to a gospel service like this.

And they think about Christ. And they think about the implications if they trust Christ.

How He will change your life. Because mark my words, Christ will change your life no matter who you are.

Your life will be changed.

It won’t be just more of the same.

If you don’t want your life changing, Christ isn’t for you, but if you want your life changed, Christ is for you.

Some people think, no, I’m putting him back up on the shelf.

They go out to their car.

Not in the car. They don’t take Christ home with them. Choosing.

Never underestimate the importance of the choices that you make.

[19:59] Sometimes at a critical juncture in your life, you’re just turning the aisle and around the corner, and you’re going down and all of a sudden you’re blindsided. You never even thought of buying high detergent. And there’s a huge end of the aisle display. I know this because I used to work in the grocery store and mostly I was just tapping, just stopping the shelves. I remember when the manager said to me, Peter, we would like you to try your first end of the aisle display.

The whole idea was to catch the consumer off guard. They were never intending to buy it, but they see this beautiful, magnificent end of the aisle display.

I really must eat it. That must be on sale. And they take it and they put it in their cart.

Do you know what Satan often does? He has end of the aisle displays.

Just when you start thinking about being saved, you’re blindsided by a friend that you haven’t seen for a long time, or a job offer and you can’t focus.

End of the aisle displays to distract you.

Oh, don’t be distracted this evening. This is, this is for eternity, friend.

Please don’t take Christ off the shelf and think about him for five minutes and say, no, I’m putting him back. Not for me.

[21:22] Our prayer is that you will choose Christ tonight. You know, when you go to the grocery store, there are things that you must go home with, you really need. There’s things that you’d like to have, chocolates and chips. And then there’s a night, like we should get a few more paper towels and maybe some vinegar and sugar, although I got a few bags of sugar left.

I must have eggs and flour and whatever.

Well, it might be nice to have a new vehicle. And it might be nice to have a lot of things, but if you’re ever going to be in heaven, you must have Christ, Christ.

You’ll never be in heaven any other way. You must have Christ.

You know, you can go to heaven without money.

[22:13] You can go to heaven without friends. You can go to heaven without an education of any kind.

You can go to heaven without a church.

You can go to heaven without a baptism.

You can go to heaven without ever taking Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper.

You can go to heaven without a job, but you cannot go to heaven without Christ.

You must have Christ.

Arriving, looking, choosing, needing, leaving, checkout.

It must be an awful thing. It’s scary enough at a grocery store when you’re supposed to be there to pick up a roast.

You fill your cart up with a whole bunch of other things and you’re standing in this long line and they’re just about ready to say, next.

[23:07] Will I go back? It must be an awful thing to end that the checker come to the checkout of life, and realize I’ve got this and I’ve got that but I don’t have Christ. Some of you are old enough to remember Senator Ted Kennedy, John F Kennedy, his brother. Ted Kennedy died a few years ago and it seemed like he was going over all the things at the end of the shopping cart of his life that he was hoping to go to heaven with, and so he wrote the Pope.

[23:38] And he had President Obama deliver a letter, and the content of the letter, it’s no secret, it’s been publicized, and Ted Kennedy, I printed it out, Ted Kennedy told the Pope all the things that he had done in his life, all the things that he had put in his card of life over fifty years in elected office. He said he fought for education, he fought for access to health care for everyone in my country. This has been the political cause of my life. I’ve always tried to be a faithful Catholic, your holiness.” And he went on about all the things. He listed all these things. I fought against discrimination. I worked hard to welcome the immigrants. I, opposed the death penalty. I fought to end the war. And the list goes on. And he asked the President of the United States to hand deliver this to the Pope, thinking, I’ve got all these things in my cart, and I read that, it touched my heart.

None of those things will get anyone into heaven.

[24:46] What you have in your cart tonight, will that get you into heaven?

If you have Christ, it will.

Well, let me give you one contrast, and then I’m finished.

Into some here, related to some here, a man by the name of Paul Prins. And he arrived at the checkout of life. Just as he was turning 50 on his 49th birthday, cancer specialists told him the grim news of the severity of his lung cancer. That’s what he got on his 49th birthday. Then he says this, he said, I was allowed to celebrate my 50th birthday. He said, I love my wife Stacey and my children Alexander, Fraser, Spencer, Olivia, and Anastasia, but soon I will have to say goodbye. I pray for their future, but for me, my future is heaven and it’s nearer every day. And I have peace, because I have Christ in me.

[25:57] You got that news that you’re arriving at the checkout much sooner than you ever expected.

By way of a car accident, by way of a deadly disease.

Are you ready? You don’t know when you’re going to arrive at the checkout.

[26:14] You won’t always have a chance to rush back and open a Bible and say, oh, I’m going to scramble now. Doctor’s only giving me an hour to live. You know, we said that some people are taken like that have an applause. And if you don’t have Christ, he that has a son, she that hath a son, has, life. Oh, there’s nothing more important in your life than making sure that you have Christ.

Don’t go home without Christ tonight as you listen to Joseph.

And I’d like to read in the book of Romans, New Testament, the book of Romans in chapter Romans chapter 3, and we will just read verse 19. See everybody who’s here tonight? Thank you for coming. Romans 3 verse 19. Now we know that what things soever the law sayeth, it sayeth to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Every mouth may stopped and all the world may become guilty for God. Now over to the Gospel of Matthew. That’s the first book in the New Testament, Matthew chapter 27.

[27:43] Matthew 27, and we’ll read from verse 11.

And Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, saying, Art thou the king of the Jews?

And Jesus said unto him, Thou sayest.

And when he was accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing.

Said Pilate unto him, here is thou not how many things they witness against thee?

And he answered him to never a word, insomuch that the governor marveled.

[28:24] Greatly. That’s all we will read. Notice a couple of men this week who have marveled at the gospel. Nicodemus marveled. The Lord Jesus told him that he had to be born again. I think there was a man last night, despite the rainstorm, who marveled that Christ Jesus came into the world to save a sinner like him.

We have read an interesting expression here, that Pilate marvels greatly.

That little added bit is only found in the Gospel of Matthew when I tried to look at it today.

The governor marveled greatly.

What he marveled at was the silence. Right. So for these last few minutes, I want to speak about.

[29:24] Have you ever noticed how loudly silence can speak?

Sometimes I think when we preach, I’m speaking myself, we get so excited. We talk so fast.

There’s something about just taking a pause, letting people think about what you just heard.

Are you going to leave this meeting without Christ?

Silence. I’ve learned that humorously now. Wasn’t as much so.

I have two toddlers, and silence can speak.

We don’t enjoy their fighting and yelling. All of a sudden, sometimes during the day, it gets strangely, sweetly.

[30:18] And we have learned that that’s a bad thing, that there’s something happening.

And sometimes there’s food and sweets missing, or things that they’re not supposed to be into.

Into. Silence speaks. If you’re married or in a relationship, maybe you know firsthand experience of the silent treatment. Anyone know about that? Usually marriage is made up of somebody who’s really good at it, and someone who hasn’t a clue what is happening to them. The silent treatment.

You know, when somebody all of a sudden just won’t talk to you, and you’re supposed to get this message through silence.

[30:56] People have even said, when they were going through a hard time, that what spoke to them, more loudly than all the criticism of their enemies was the silence of their friends.

Where are my friends?

And so silence can speak very loudly. And it spoke so loudly to this governor, Titus.

Silence, the silence of Christ spoke to him. And I just wanna look at that at the close of this meeting, the silence of the Lord Jesus, because I want you to notice how beautiful a thing it is.

And believe it or not, it will tie into what you’ve already heard.

So just wait for that, because it does tie in so beautifully that the reason Christ was silent, was for people right here in Wyckoff, New Jersey, and for a person like me.

The first thing you have to understand that it was a peculiar silence. Like, this man’s pilot is going to, humanly speaking, determine whether Jesus of Nazareth lives or dies. This is not a time where you just don’t say anything. Your life is at risk. This man has the power, he says himself, to release him or to crucify him.

[32:06] And it’s peculiar, because if you and I stand before a judge, just like the Lord Jesus stands before a judge, we’ve read that actually in Romans chapter 3, when we stand before a judge, we’re silent too. I don’t know if you’ve ever had your mouth stopped by the Word of God. It’s a good thing when that happens, by the way. It’s a good thing when you’re faced with the claims of God that yes, you are in fact a sinner before God.

You have broken His law.

You are guilty. You are condemned to death. And there’s no buts.

[32:39] There’s no excepts. You just take what the Word of God says, and every mouth is stopped.

Stopped. And all the world, all of us are guilty before God when it comes to the issue of sin.

And so a person is silent as they stand before a judge when they’re guilty.

Boy, my kids are silent when they’re doing things. When they’re guilty, when I ask them, what did you do?

They get even more silent.

When a person’s guilty, they’re silent. There is solemn scene, the Lord Jesus talked about it as a, as a wedding feast, when a man came into the wedding feast without a wedding garment.

And, you know, there are people and they talk to me at times and they say that when they see Christ or when they see God and they stand before God at the final judgment, that they’ll have all the questions to ask God for why they didn’t believe in him.

They’ll ask him about bone cancer in children, and they’ll accuse the Almighty God.

They’ll tell him about how they didn’t have enough evidence.

You know what the Bible says?

You’ll be absolutely silenced.

[33:38] Says the Lord Jesus, when that man was brought without the wedding garment, this is what it says, he was speechless.

There will be no talking in front of Christ. It will be silence when a person stands in the austere presence of the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. Silence.

[34:02] So the silence of a sinner, as I look at God’s law, it tells me that the sinner understands I’m guilty.

I have no buts. I can’t look at that standard and have any excuses.

The silence of a person at the Great White Throne tells me that they have no excuse.

They can’t tell God, well, if I had that opportunity.

No, I sure hope this isn’t the case, honestly now. I hope no one from the Great White Throne will remember a tent in Wyckoff, New Jersey.

Silence because there was opportunity.

My sleeves are all the way rolled up. As we do mean business friends.

Like this is for eternity.

This is your soul forever and ever and ever far beyond this time and the things that we think, are so important here today. But why is he fired up?

The governor marvels. The governor is amazed, greatly amazed.

The governor understood some things about Jesus. He understood that he wasn’t guilty.

[35:08] I find no fault in him. Before Jesus was even standing before Pilate, Pilate’s wife got a dream.

And in that dream, after that dream, Pilate’s wife comes to him and says, have nothing to do with that just man.

That innocent man, that perfect man. Pilate has a lot of evidence that this one is not guilty.

And he marvels at Jesus’ silence because he knows.

It says if he kept writing the story, he knows that it’s for envy that he’s being delivered.

He knows that the whole thing is a charade.

He knows that there are false accusations. Have you ever tried to remain silent when there are false accusations?

One thing to remain silent when somebody says something that’s partially true, and yet there’s maybe some things that are false and so you wanna clear it up, but you know that they actually have a point.

But imagine if it is a completely total false accusation leveled at you, hurled at you.

And if people agree with it, it’s going to mean your own shameful death.

This man is staying absolutely silent. He’s innocent in the face of false accusation.

And it’s a very strange thing. And it caused the governor in that day to marvel greatly.

[36:29] Not only was it a peculiar silence, But it was a powerful sight.

Just on the point of peculiar, I remember when I was a kid, I really enjoyed college football.

And it seemed like the big thing. And every Saturday there was a game, right, when the different teams played.

But I remember a Saturday when there was no games played.

I’m not talking about COVID.

I’m talking about the Saturday after 9-11.

[36:57] Not a football game. America. There was like a national moment of silence. It spoke to me. I didn’t really know everything that happened. I was just very young. I think I was in the fourth grade. But it spoke to me that something has happened that has made things silent, shut things down. It does take something peculiar. That’s the Lord Jesus.

Powerful silence. Some people think that the reason the Lord Jesus is silent is because maybe he’s weak, maybe he is like Gandhi or any of these peace-loving people and he’s just not going to say anything in his own defense.

[37:37] I want you to think about how powerful the silence is. Listen, the one who is silent here spoke the sun into existence.

At the word of his power, the ocean that if you wander out into, you disappear, was spoken by this one who’s standing before Pilate.

Spoken words, he created the whole show, people. The whole show.

And it’s almost afterthought, it says, he made the stars also.

This one, when he was here on earth, they marveled at his words.

They never a man speak like this man.

They said he speaks as one who has authority, not like the other teachers and scribes and preachers of the day.

They marveled at the gracious words, it says, that came forth from his lips.

No, as he just spoke, there was authority and power and grace and distinction.

It’s not like he couldn’t speak. So why is he silent?

There’s power in silence.

There’s power. Any of you struggle with an outburst?

Any of you come to a point, there’s some people and their personality is personality outburst.

That’s just who they are.

There’s others of us, and it takes a while to build.

You know what happens, right? They say, it’s the volcano.

And it bursts out at the most inopportune time, at the most embarrassing time.

Imagine the power.

[39:05] Like they’re going to spit on him.

[39:11] They’re gonna mock everything he was and everything he stood for and everything he taught.

Imagine the power in the face of that and just say, absolutely so.

[39:25] Heard a story, you said I come from three young men hopped onto a bus in Detroit, quite a ways back, in the 1930s.

And they tried to mess with and bully and mock a man who was sitting in the back of the bus by himself.

And they insulted him, and the insults got more personal, And the insults got deeper.

And they actually just started rubbing anyone in the back of that bus.

And that man didn’t respond.

Just stayed quiet. As these three young men basically bullied him.

They turned up the heat of the insults, says this that I read today.

And he still said nothing.

Eventually the stranger stood up.

The boys understood now that this stranger was quite a bit bigger than how they had estimated when he was seated.

He reached into his pocket as he was at his bus stop and he pulled out a business card and he handed it to him.

And he walked off the bus.

As the bus drove away, the young men gathered around the car to read the words.

And this is what it said.

Joe Louis World-Class Boxer.

[40:44] And there’s a fist in the state of Michigan, in the city of Detroit, pointing to Canada.

And there’s a fist that those men never saw, but deserve to see, of this man, Joe Lewis, who is still ranked as one of the all-time greatest boxers.

And for him to stay silent against a number of pipsqueak boys who are bullying him and insulting him, I want you to know that isn’t weakness, that’s strength.

Do you know with one swing, one swing, he could have stopped the whole thing?

And I want you to know, the Bible tells me this about the Lord Jesus.

He tells his disciples, he says, listen, put away your little pocket knife there, Peter.

I have the power to call 12 legions of angels.

Two angels, two, went into the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and wiped them out.

To 12 legions of angels, 72,000 angels.

72,000 angels and he says I could just motion and they would all come.

[41:53] They say silence. I want you to realize when someone has authority like that, when someone with one word can stop everything from happening, that is ultimate power.

So his silence is not only peculiar, but powerful. His silence was predictive.

[42:13] This is why, by the way, you should put full confidence in the word of God.

Maybe there’s somebody here tonight and you think, well, that’s what you preach from the Bible.

So-and-so talks about the Quran, so-and-so talks about the Baha Gita in the Hindu religion, so-and-so talks about the various different holy books.

[42:31] I want you to know that the Bible can be foolproofed. The Bible can be tested because the Bible actually makes predictions hundreds, thousands of years before Jesus was here, before other events took place.

You know one of the predictions it says about Jesus?

It says this, he will be led like a lamb to the slaughter.

And as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, though he will open not his mouth.

The whole thing was predicted. There is Jesus before the judge, silent.

Is that this is the word of God and it was all planned before the foundation of the world.

This is no accidental reaction to anything. But I wanna move now to the main point of it.

It was a purposeful silence.

Why not answer?

Like if he has the power to stop it, if he has the power to change the whole thing and to show everyone that he is who he says he is, he is the son of God.

There was a day he took three of his disciples and before them, he showed himself in blazing glory, blazing glory, and they all fell down.

There was another day where a person fell on their face when they realized that he was the son of God.

And here he is, and he could do it all right there, but he’s not doing it, he’s silent.

And the governor in that day is amazed.

Why?

[43:54] Because if he would have spoken he could never have saved you.

[43:59] It could never have saved me You know why he’s silent not because he’s guilty, Because he’s willing I Want to now tie into what you heard at the beginning of this meeting, There is nothing more important to have in the shopping cart of life than Christ But I want to tell you something if Christ didn’t want you you have no hope You understand me?

We are not talking about some village carpenter somewhere.

We are talking about Christ, King of kings, Lord of lords.

And if Christ had nothing for you, no matter how much you may want Him, you could never have Him. But the great news tonight, Christ wants everyone.

Christ has come from heaven to pay a price for everyone. And He stayed silent because He came to save the world.

He came to save every single person in the world. And so there is a Christ available for people to accept and receive and bring into their life because He’s willing.

He’s willing, He said, I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.

The verse says Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

And so this silence tells me this about Jesus. He’s willing to go to the cross.

More than that, He wants to go to the cross. This is the purpose for why He came.

He came for that spot outside Jerusalem, Golgotha’s Hill.

That’s why He came.

[45:28] Later in the story that Jesus, He bearing this cross, went forth knowing all things that were gonna happen to Him.

You see, He came for this purpose.

He realized that for a sinner like me, there could be no hope.

There is no way that I could ever work my way back to God.

There is no way, like, look at the standard over me. Did you hear that in Romans chapter three?

My mouth is stuffed. I’m guilty. Guilty is a very stubborn word, isn’t it?

[46:01] It’s not like you could say, I’m more guilty or less guilty.

It’s not one of those words you put on a spectrum.

Guilty is still black and white. Guilty or not guilty. And I’m guilty.

And a guilty sinner, how does a guilty sinner get into heaven?

And yet there was one who saw guilty sinners from the heights of heaven, weren’t really very unimportant people.

And yet he valued them.

He valued them. We were talking to a man today.

I didn’t have a pen and paper. They didn’t let me take my phone in there.

So I had to just paraphrase what he said.

But he was wondering that Christ would ever value, would ever see worth in someone like he is, and for everything that he has done.

And he would come into this world to die for a sinner. If you’re a believer here today, do you wonder at that too?

When’s the last time you thought, and dish the holy and the just, the sovereign of the sky, shoot down to wretchedness and dust that a guilty worm might rise?

When’s the last time it came out of your heart? He came for me.

He came for me. And he stood silent as they spit on him and crucified him.

He stood silent for you, my friend.

He stood silent for you. And he stood silent for me.

[47:24] I was just thinking at Sunday school, One of the first songs I learned, all the way to Calvary, he went for me. He went willingly.

No one forced him to go. No one twisted his arm. No, he went willingly, willingly to Calvary.

We often say that it must have been something. We know that one of the centurions that day was actually saved.

He said, surely this was a righteous man. Surely this was the son of God.

What must it have meant as they pried open the hands and held down the body of a person?

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that, The people, when they’re resisting, are unbelievably strong, even people who seem kind of weak.

[48:01] I used to work in a place where we’d have to hold down people for their own safety.

People that you would think, oh man, she’s only 90 pounds and she’s 90 as well.

I tell you what, if they don’t want to be held down, people can become extremely strong.

And yet here’s one, what must have meant to those Roman soldiers as he willingly lays himself down.

As he willingly allows them to nail his hands and feet to be lifted up on the cross, so that the sentence for guilty sinners could be placed on him.

[48:34] There was one who was willing to die in my stead, that a soul so unworthy might know.

In the path to the cross, he was willing to tread all the sins of my life to forgive.

Friends tonight, don’t pass Christ. I tell you what, there’s a savior who’s willing to save you right here tonight.

If you were to trust Christ tonight, he wouldn’t ask you to do any more prayers.

He wouldn’t ask you to do any more things.

He would take you as you are here tonight. If you were to turn from your sins, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for what he has done.

So he came willingly out of his value for us. We don’t feel that value, but I, from this story, I learned that Jesus Christ says of every person in this time, if he says about you, you are worth his own blood, you are worth his own death.

And what a shame to see all that.

What a shame to look up at that and say, no, not for me.

[49:32] And so the silence of Christ tells me he’s willing. He goes to the cross, he pays the penalty for sin.

He’s in heaven today dealing with it fully. Anyone in this tent tonight, anyone on Zoom, anyone who can hear me tonight, if you were, to believe on that Lord Jesus Christ, he’s my Lord.

If you were to believe on him, he would save you.

Talked to a lady not too long ago, and she was talking to me as she was really trying to be saved.

Maybe there’s someone like that here in this tent tonight.

And you try, when you come to meetings, not to get too worked up because it sends you into some kind of a spell of depression, where it just goes through endless cycles, and you’re just frustrated at the end.

He told me, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

Every night, I get down on my knees And with tears down my eyes, I ask God to save me. He never does.

[50:27] And I didn’t know what to say, except, you think God wants you to do all that?

You think he wants you to make a big show of it? You think he wants you to get down on your knees, spill a bucket of tears, tell him you’re the worst sinner?

Listen, he knows far more about your sins than you do.

You know what God wants you to do? Take his son.

Trust him! Turn from your sins, as dark as they might be, and trust the Lord Jesus Christ.

The sad thing about this story to me is here’s a man pilot and he looks at the silence of Christ, and it says he’s not just amazed. I don’t know what you think about it tonight. Maybe you can, tell me. What do you think? You ever heard a message like that? Maybe it’s non-conventional.

I don’t know. I haven’t been around long enough to know. The silence of Christ, because he’s, willing to save you. You think that’s amazing? Pilate says, it says, he marveled greatly.

[51:33] He was so amazed that this perfect one stayed silent. And yet he missed Christ.

He missed him. He never trusted him. Is it possible for somebody to be so amazed at the silence of Christ, so amazed at how willing he was to come, and look at him in the shopping aisles of life and see, wow, he loves me! He loves me!

[52:07] My brother Peter said at the beginning of this meeting, we are not here just as a, well here we are and take it or leave it type of preaching. I would plead with with you with all my heart. Don’t miss Christ. You understand? And don’t settle for anything except Christ. Nothing else is more important. Don’t miss Christ.

Whatever else you miss, don’t miss Christ. Miss anything else, miss straight A’s.

Miss whatever else you have in life, but don’t miss this man. He loves you, friend.

He loves you. Don’t you miss him. He stayed silent on that cross to take your And if you would trust him tonight.

Gospel tent meeting with Peter Ramsay and Joseph Baker.

[0:01] I’d like to read from the Bible, 1 Timothy, Chapter 1, 1 Timothy, Chapter 1.

[1:16] We began last week by looking a little bit at a title that’s actually in this book in 1 Timothy, the glorious gospel.

[2:25] And what encouraged me here, even for those of you here who are Christians, sometimes you hear, that being amazed that you’re a Christian or being amazed at your testimony, is really like preschool Christianity. Like you grow out of that. But there’s a time where you appreciate other things beyond that. That’s true. And it’s kind of elementary. It’s kindergarten to enjoy your salvation. Or you’ll have a hard time swinging back by the Apostle Paul.

[3:27] Just before the final words of the Bible, this man John, an old mature Christian, he’s just amazed at who he is as the disciple who Jesus loved.

[4:12] Live rejoicing every day. So, whether it’s right or wrong, I was just looking up this guy who wrote this hymn. I wondered, like, did he not have any trials? I struggled to rejoice. I know what it’s like to hear the news on the end of the phone that somebody has passed away that you love, or somebody is really sick, or somebody gets into a car accident.

[5:32] If your child does? Not that you’re happy those happen, but do you have something that would bring you joy every day? See this man that we’re talking about tonight, Paul, he also had a very difficult life. He was beaten, there were times people threw stones at him, people didn’t like him, they drove him out of the cities, he spent many years in in a jail, ended up being executed. A lot of the Christians that he saw become Christians turned their back on him. There was a time they wouldn’t even acknowledge him as a real preacher or as an apostle. Yet there was one thing that he could rejoice in every day and that’s what we’ve read tonight. Did you notice what we read? This is a faithful state. Worthy of all acceptation, worthy for everyone to accept. What is it?

[6:31] And if you don’t know that joy that comes from no matter what’s going on in your life, knowing this, that actually there was one who left heaven to save me, then you can have that joy tonight.

[7:13] I want you to think of it as a solid foundation beneath you.

[8:03] I just want to appeal tonight to anybody here and all of you here to give you the benefit of the doubt for an intelligent thinking people.

[8:19] Is the most important thing that it is presented enthusiastically?

[8:41] It’s the most important thing about a message that it makes sense of your experiences, the different things, and it just makes sense of everything going on in the world. And as long as it makes sense of things, then yeah. Or would you agree with me that the most important thing about a message is that it’s true? And that if it’s not true, even if it makes you feel good, even if it makes sense of things going on, even if it’s presented enthusiastically, you have every right to reject it. I’ve said this before, but I got an email once from the Prince of Dubai telling me, that he had transferred six million dollars into my bank account, and it made me feel very, very good.

[9:54] But no, that’s spam. No matter how good it makes you feel, you understand, like, that is not true. So I have to get rid of it. I have to delete it. And we’re struggling with that in our world. It’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not, right? Even in the news and different things that are presented to us. And so it’s so important that this is a solid foundation. Whatever Paul’s about to say, he’s saying, this is rock solid underneath your feet.

[10:25] Listen, I don’t have to be, really, I don’t want to say insane, but it’s hard not to be thinking properly to reject something that’s true.

[11:40] Sinners. Maybe if you grew up in Sunday school, I grew up going to church, maybe you’re used to that, yeah, I’m a sinner.

[12:28] That is so hard to say. And I think if you don’t find it hard to say, maybe you don’t know what it is to be a sinner.

[13:13] The reason it says to save sinners, this is another thing that really hits at the pride of human beings.

[14:15] And I’m helpless to bring myself back to Him. I’m helpless to clear my own record.

[15:08] Look at this. This is a faithful saint, worthy of all exaltation, that Christ Jesus came.

Gospel tent meeting with Peter Ramsay and Joseph Baker.

[0:01] I’d like to read in the Gospel of John, that’s the fourth book of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and then John, and chapter 19.

[0:32] And they took Jesus, and led him away. He bearing his cross, went forth into a place called the place of the skull, which is called in the Hebrew, Golgotha, where they crucified him.

[1:35] Extremely simple. In fact, I don’t know, everyone who’s here tonight or some people I see for the first time, I don’t know what you think about maybe salvation. I don’t know if you think it’s a process that one has to go through from the caterpillar until they arrive at the butterfly.

[2:58] The most important announcement that was ever uttered on human Earth, or on this district.

[3:08] The simplicity of the gospel. The reason it amazes me, just before we get to this verse, is really, I suppose, two reasons.

[4:05] Existence. It comes from the mind that created the mind of Albert Einstein. It comes from the mind that created the mind of Thomas Edison. And, you know, our minds as human beings are rather.

[4:19] Fickle. They’re weak. You know, they even have to say about us that some of us are left-brained or right-brained. Some of us are mathematical and orderly and logical. And other people, There’s no therefores or wherefores or because. It’s just color pastels. It’s beautiful.

[5:44] And what amazes me is that it comes from the most profound.

[5:51] It’s also amazing to me that how simple it is is because it deals with the most complex issue.

[6:35] But do you know that there is a cause behind cancer?

[7:00] And it is, it is a principle in our world. And it is so complicated. Like, think of the thing that gave rise to cancer, that we have our best minds on the planet on that subject. Figure out cancer. We haven’t solved it for all these years.

[8:30] It is finished. It is finished. We’ll follow those three points, and then I will sit down.

[8:51] The gospel means good news, in case there’s somebody here who doesn’t know what gospel means—gospel meetings.

[9:49] That’s not a good news meeting. That’s a lawsuit and something else waiting to happen.

[10:28] Is death. That’s what it says in Romans 6 and verse 23. The Bible describes those who sin.

[10:35] Not as people that make a few mistakes, not as people who couldn’t help it, not as people who had a certain upbringing that hardwired them to do the things, and if they didn’t have that boss or that girlfriend or that neighbor. No, the Bible says that when a person sins, Jesus said this, they are the slave of sin. That’s why they sin. They are sin’s servants.

[11:59] A person does not have that matched by turning over a new leaf.

[12:34] Not, it is started, not, it is fifty percent done, finished, it is finished.

[13:59] As the perfect Son of God, as the one who is sinless, Jesus Christ, who was put on that cross, lifted up between heaven and earth.

[14:52] They stripped it from him. And in shame, and he felt the shame, says prophetically in the Psalms, I may tell all, my bones, they look me, stare upon me.

[15:16] Human beings and they look and stare upon me as he’s hanging there. His body is bathed in his own blood. There are nails through his hands and feet. Spit is flowing down his face. He looks like a victim. He looks like somebody who has been beat up and defeated.

[16:23] Notice that, it’s all done.

[16:26] It is finished! Finished! The battle’s done. Sin has been dealt with.

[17:53] Like, what… And this is what they said. Saw it on YouTube, I think.

[18:04] It’s finished. Oh, a bunch of people started following me.

[18:14] Come on, is that what Christianity is? Probably following a man who just went up on a hill to look at a sculpture.

[18:52] The Bible says that on the third day, on the Sunday morning, that tomb was empty. The stone was rolled out of the way and it says in the Bible that God had raised him back from the dead.

[20:16] That sin is… sin stands forever finished. Listen, if not one person trusted Christ, sin was dealt with by the cross.

[21:26] A great work right now actually going on where my wife used to live among the Hutterite colonies.

[22:17] And Jesus said, it’s a big shot, 100 Red Ministries. I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen one, quite scary.

[23:28] It is finished.

[24:03] See, this is the—these three words stand, shine against every form of religion.

[25:27] An absolutely thrilling message and I’m sure I’m going to be in heaven because I’m working hard at it. No!

[25:45] And I just, along with others here tonight, rested on the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that made the eternal connection between me and God through the Lord Jesus, Christ. What about you? Are you still working at it? I sat as an honorary pallbearer quite a few years ago now and it was a distinguished person died in our little town that needed to be an honorary person in a little village like we live in. So, but beside me was a millionaire, and well-known in the community, and he was an honorary pallbearer, and the premier was there, and everybody was there, and he looked up at the wall, and he nudged me to Peter.

[26:59] But Jesus didn’t say it’s 99% done. Then you must do your 1%.

[27:19] And we’re just going to read the first four verses. It was just before the Lord Jesus went to the cross.

[28:34] And some of the theologians here, they can debate whether this is New Jerusalem or heaven.

[29:18] Some of you are old enough to remember, you’re dating yourself if you say, if I say you’re not in your head, a lady by the name of Barbara Walters, she’s 92. I just looked it up while I was sitting down there. I wanted to make sure I was right.

[30:14] And she would go to the banquet in DC and she would get up from the table and push herself back very politely.

[31:28] 21-22? That’s what I want you to answer. In your heart, where will you be? I’m going to keep You know what the question is.

[32:54] But are you sure tonight where you’re going to be in 2122?

[33:54] What about you? Are you sure? You? Now, this isn’t a lecture where you just say, okay, go on to your next point now. No, we want you to think about this. Ask yourself this question.

[35:02] I remember a young man saying to me, he wanted to be saved and I went into his home and he was on the floor in his living room and he had his Bibles open, different translations of the Bible, really want to be saved and then he said, but Peter, what about my dad?

[35:25] And I said to him, everything your earthly father failed to be.

[36:47] So the real Every healthy minded clear-thinking person wants to end up in heaven even if they think you know with all the guys They said I don’t even believe that crash, Well, it’s pretty brave talk, right?

[37:33] I’d love to hear from you. Well, heaven, I don’t know how you want to characterize it, a magnificent kingdom, a real place, it’s not restricted by the normal boundaries of time and space, but it is very real, heaven. The Lord Jesus spoke about it. There are other references to this wonderful place throughout the Word of God. It can be seen, it can be touched, experienced, occupied by beings with physical bodies. The Lord Jesus is in heaven. And he went back to heaven from the cross with a body, a glorified body. He’s there, in a body. The Bible uses a number of metaphors to talk about the character of heaven. Hebrews 11 refers to it as a country.

[38:48] Will you be there? Where will you be in 21-22? Another place Matthew 14 is referred to as the kingdom. That just means perfect rule. Years ago we had a prime minister in Canada and he was going to bring in perfect rule to our nation. And he didn’t quite achieve what he set out to achieve. But the kingdom that we’re talking about, it’s marked by orderliness and perfect Justice, the rule, paradise, Luke 23.

[39:51] Warmth, acceptance. And I think about father’s house.

[41:15] So, in heaven, I wish I could just whet your appetite. I couldn’t do it justice.

[41:59] No evil, no evil, no emptiness, no friction, no fighting or feuding.

[42:58] What else can I tell you about heaven? I said it’s not a place of eternal rest.

[44:11] Do you think it’s going to be anything less than what we already see down here?

[44:54] Than the God of the universe. The God of energy, light, and dynamism. It’s a real destination.

[45:09] Say. What are the qualifications for heaven? It’s a destination I know, but have you ever gotten excited about going to an exotic location and it just seems like it’s all coming together?

[45:40] Sneaking feeling, but I’ll never get there. Well, I’ve had a few of those experiences in my life. And we get all excited. We thought our dad and mom were taking us to Florida one year. It never happened. Never. But I’m going to be in heaven. Not because I had the cash to pay my way there, but just as you’ve been hearing there’s someone who paid my sin debt in full, that it is finished. Paid it all. And I’m going to be there because of Lord Jesus. Revelation 5 says, redeem to God by the blood of Christ. That’s why I’m going to be there. Sinners saved by grace, sins all forgiven. A Christian is not a professor. People say, I profess to be saved. A Christian is not a professor.

[46:41] A Christian is a possessor. I remember the night when I became a possessor of eternal life.

[47:02] Something as wonderful as this tremendous transaction, and unless you’re afflicted with hardening of the arteries or advanced Alzheimer’s, I think you’re going to remember, that I remember when I first fell in love with the Lord Jesus Christ.

[48:16] Think you’re gonna be in heaven?

[48:56] There’ll be people up there we never expected to see. We didn’t know they were Christians.

[49:14] Are you sure? Are you sure where you’re going to be in 21, 22?

[50:43] You make your reservation? Is your reservation made? Are you booked through?

Gospel tent meeting with Peter Ramsay and Joseph Baker.

[0:01] So we’re going to read in the New Testament, we’re going to read in Acts chapter 13. And while you’re looking that up, I’m going to talk about the Lord Jesus. I suspect everybody listening this evening has heard about the Lord Jesus Christ. Celebrate his Christmas. Others celebrate Easter. But we’re not talking about Christmas or Easter, but we’re thankful that he came and he was born, and we’re thankful that he died and he was buried and he raised again. But tonight our question to you is very personal. If you know about Jesus, Why haven’t you personally accepted him? Why is he still outside your life? Some people accept their church or accept things going on and they conform to all the different rituals of the church, but yet they draw a blank when you say, do you have a moment in your life, when you trust with Christ as your Savior? I have a moment like that. It was in an attic bedroom. No one was coaching me, say a certain prayer.

[1:17] I’ll just put your mind at ease tonight. We’re not gonna ask you to come up to the front, and you don’t have to shed tears and we’re not gonna ask you to quote anything. You can just relax and listen to the word of God. But I was in my attic bedroom as a young boy, just starting out in my teen years. And I discovered that I was a sinner and Christ died for my sins. And you can tell as I have friends back East and they call me a fossil. I think it has something to do with the color of my hair. But all those years, since my teenage years, through my 20s and my 30s and my 40s and my 50s, and yes, I’m definitely well into my 60s, I have known Jesus Christ as my Savior, and I highly recommend him to you. But why haven’t you accepted him? I’m gonna put a little sign up here. I printed it off. We’re gonna talk about this man, Jesus. And this is what I want you to think about for the opening part of the meeting is, what is wrong with this man? Like, why haven’t you? You know the Jesus story.

[2:31] So what is wrong with him? Why haven’t you just, why wouldn’t you just tonight, oh you say I didn’t intend to make any consequential major decision this evening, but why not? If you know about the Lord Jesus, who he is, what he accomplished, why wouldn’t you want to walk back out into that parking lot knowing Christ as your personal Savior? So what is wrong with this man is the question that I want you to think about. What is wrong with this man Jesus. The background to where we’re going to read in Acts chapter 13, the apostle Paul, he was, no one was always a Christian. The apostle Paul, some of you are older, old enough to remember a man by the name of Osama bin Laden. The apostle Paul was the Osama bin Laden of his day. Way, he was out to put to death every Christian, everyone who named the name of Jesus.

[3:31] That was the trajectory of life that he was on, to wipe out Christianity, until he found out that the very one that he was rejecting and so vehemently opposed to was the one who who loved him and died for his sins on the cross, and on a road one day, this man Paul embraced Christ as his savior. And so he’s in a synagogue on a Saturday in the city of Antioch. He had just been to Cyprus, like that’s in the Mediterranean, Cyprus. It’s his first missionary trip. Like what I like about, one of the things I like about the Bible, it’s not fantasy.

[4:16] You can visit Cyprus today. I have a second cousin who works in Cyprus. And when you open your Bible and you read about Paul visiting Cyprus, these are AD 48 real places, modern day Turkey, GPS coordinates. These are not fantasies. Not like C.S. Lewis’ Narnia or Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz. I was in a store today and they said, so what’s your name? Peter, oh, it’s Peter Pan. No, and it’s not Peter Pan’s Neverland. No, and it’s not the Hobbit’s Middle Earth or Jurassic Park. These are real places. The Bible is the word of God and definite historical facts. They don’t dismiss it. And so he’s in a synagogue in this place in the city of Antioch, and someone read from the scriptures and then they invited Paul to speak.

[5:14] And he stood up, and he motioned with his hands, and he asked those who feared God to listen very carefully, we hope you’re listening tonight, we’re so glad you’re here. You could have been a lot of other places, but you’re here. Thank God you are here. Carefully and as we heard last night, think. About what the Bible is saying. And so the Apostle Paul, he’s reviewing their history and God’s dealings with the people. And then he presented the credentials and the claims of Jesus, who ended up being rejected and crucified. And then he made a crucial point, and that’s where we’re going to pick up our reading. Acts chapter 13, 29, 30, it says, They took him down from the cross, and they put him in a tomb, verse 30, but God raised him, that’s Jesus from the dead, and here is the verse I want you to think about. Verse 38, be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man, that’s why I wanted you to think about this question. What do I have against this man? What is wrong with this man? Paul said, through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, what better message would there be? Like you must acknowledge that you’ve had sin in your path.

[6:35] Maybe even today, you experienced some road rage. You were first off mad at the red light being so long. And then the people ahead of you being so pokey. And you just, whoa, you restrained yourself. You didn’t blast the horn or anything, but it was inside you a little bit of a rage, Oh, that’s a sin. Anger, that kind of stuff.

[6:58] And to think that every one of your sins can be forgiven through this man? That’s what Paul is saying. Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by him all that believe, not most that believe, all that believe are justified from all things, are made right with God in every way from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. Here’s what I want you to think about.

[7:24] The greatest three years in human history, the darkest three hours of any day in history, and the longest three days of any time in history.

[7:40] The greatest three years in human history, I don’t know if you’re a student of history, I can’t say that I really was, and I can’t say that I am, but I guess it depends on where your interests there and how you define the best three years in human history. In the empire-building age, Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, some may think the British Victorian period was the greatest age when England expanded its empire. Some are very opposed to that thought as well. Or it could be when it comes to intellectual ingenuity, it could be all the inventions, you know the early civilizations, they were really advanced. Sometimes we portray them as just somewhat inferior intellectually than we are ourselves in 2022. Like we are head and shoulders above them we sometimes think, but those ancient civilizations were extremely advanced.

[9:01] Maybe you think it’s, if you’re into culture, maybe you think it’s a renaissance period, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th century, art, music, literature, all of those things, the Industrial Revolution. But I want you to think about this. The greatest three years in human history, a Roman emperor was ruling, Tiberius Caesar, he was reigning, and late in the summer of AD 26, A young man, 30 years of age, stepped out onto the stage in the public limelight at a river called Jordan. I was telling somebody the other day, my wife and I visited the Jordan River. We felt the wetness of that river and the muddiness of that river. This young man was about 30 years old, and he emerged on the public stage.

[9:54] His name was Jesus, and from his baptism in the River Jordan until his ascension back into heaven, I don’t think anyone could dispute the fact those were the three most momentous years in human history. Just think of his ways, that young man, Jesus, so different from all the significant religious leaders that you’ve seen some today, and they dressed in robes. Now, we’re sort of not dressed up in a hot summer evening, but we know how to dress up, too. We can get our big, heavy-duty suit coats on and—but back in the day, the religious leaders, they were dressed in their robes and their sashes and their turbans and their scarves and their colors—nothing wrong with a little bit of ritual. But out onto the stage emerges this 30-year-old man wearing sandals. Just the way the commoners would be dressed. No special clothes. No halo around his head.

[11:00] He wasn’t carried in a little special eunuch designed just for a significant religious leader. He didn’t have an entourage of people running before him, playing the trumpets and going like this. No, just up and down the dusty roads of Israel.

[11:19] This lovely man, Jesus, went. His ways were so different. He reached out to the people. He shunned no one. If someone was feeling introverted or isolated or marginalized by society, there was something about his holy heart, compassion, and heart, and he gravitated to that. He reached him out in the audience, and he crossed him, and he changed their lives. He put a smiling face on them and gave them peace in their heart. The ones who were written off by others, oh, his ways were absolutely unique. His wonders and his works. He was able to heal what no doctor could heal. He proved that he was God in human flesh. He turned water to wine. He calmed the angry seas. He fed thousands from a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. Absolutely amazing. I think people had a jaw-dropping experience, a whoa experience every day they followed him.

[12:32] I thought yesterday, nothing could be better than yesterday. But then today, they’re back out in the fields and up on the mountainside because they’ve traveled all over the countryside just to see him. They closed their shops, they brought their children and they held their children up. They said, can you hold my child? and he would lift them out of his arms and hold them, sit them on their knees. Years ago, President Putin of Russia, you perhaps recognize that name, he was the photo op, and he was trying to show that he’s just a lovely ruler over there and everybody loves him. And perhaps you saw the picture circulating where he was just going to pick up a child and he sort of picked up the child and the child was terrifyingly frightened. It was a really lousy photo of someone reaching out to a child, but the Lord Jesus, for some reason, parents brought their kids to him. And he turned them not away, not one. And my friend, he wouldn’t turn you in. You prayed to come. Maybe you’ve been disappointed by others. Maybe some have let you down. You’ve had a good friendship, and then you all of a sudden were rejected for some reason. Let me commend the Lord Jesus Christ to you. His ways, his works, his wonders, absolutely amazing. You know, Einstein.

[14:00] He was asked if she accepted the historical existence of Jesus. You know what Einstein said? Now I got this out of his very recognized thick biography of the life of Albert Einstein. So this is not out of People magazine, some hearsay or something like that. This is an authoritative summary of Albert Einstein’s life.

[14:35] On page 386 of that book, New York Times bestseller, when they asked him, do you believe in the existence of Jesus, his response couldn’t be clearer. He said unquestionably, exclamation mark. He said no one can read the four Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. He said his personality pulsates in every word. Have you read the Gospels lately? Have you opened your Bible and read the Gospel of John? I know people who didn’t know much about the Bible and they were reading the Gospel of John. We have the Gospel of John at the back table. I’ll take one home with you. It’s powerful. It’s the Word of God. It’s a portion of the Word of God. And people were reading that, trust to Christ, their lives were transformed. He said, his personality pulsates in every word. He said, no myth is filled with such a life. Not a myth, he said. But with all his brains, he was not ready to accept Him. There’s no record of him accepting Christ as his Lord. And his savior, but he didn’t deny that Jesus existed.

[15:55] I don’t know what he had against that man, Jesus. What do you have against him? Why are you not just rejoicing tonight in Christ? Why are you keeping him out of your life? You know about him? Perhaps you went to catechism or Sunday school and you read about him, you heard about him. Maybe you did a Christmas play at Christmas time and maybe you were Mary or maybe you were Joseph in the play. You know all those facts, and yet, on this night in July, you’ve never accepted him as your savior. What’s wrong with Jesus? Why not? His words, oh, if you look at his words, truth and grace. John 7, verse 37 says, here’s what Jesus said, if anyone thirsts, maybe you’re thirsty tonight, you’ve tried this. You ever get one of those smoothies or a fresh cold, drink or a milkshake, and it’s so good you’ve got the straw I’ll point it right to the bottom.

[17:06] And you’re sucking it up, and you get right down to the last thing, and then you tilt the little glass cup right to that corner. There’s a little bit more left. Then it’s empty. Look, there are Christians here older than me, and they have never thirsted. Once Christ, they met Christ, they have never thirsted again. There’s no emptiness with Christ. He keeps you, your thirst quenched. Jesus said, if anyone thirsts, let him come unto me and drink. John 8 and 36, Jesus said, think of these are his words. If the Son shall make you free, that’s the Son of God shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. Well, there are a lot of words and I’m not gonna go over them, but those, I believe those three years were the most outstanding years in human history. His ways, his works, his wonders. What touched me last night as I was thinking about this, His world was so big.

[18:16] Look, you have your little family and your extended family, and like around Wyckoff and Midland Park, and all the world that the Lord Jesus came to save. He embraces every culture, every nationality, every type and stripe of sin. His world is so large, for God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”.

[18:50] The greatest three years in human history. What were the darkest hours, the three darkest hours of any day in history? Well, this entire day was dark. Jesus had been arrested. In Matthew chapter 27, we read these words. From the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. From twelve o’clock noon to three o’clock, pitch black over Jerusalem. So physically it was dark, but oh spiritually it was dark. You know what was happening when the Lord Jesus hung on that cross? I can’t explain in my simple little mind, but all I know is that the vast load of all all sins of all people of all ages. Now God had a way, of accumulating all the load.

[19:54] And Jesus, I love Him, He was my substitute. He died for my place. I was the one who committed sin. I was the one who should have been punished for my sin. But when I look to the cross, I think of that lovely one in those hours upon the cross. Oh, the darkness of that experience. God punished Jesus.

[20:22] Punished, judged, whatever word you want to use, Christ Jesus paid the penalty in full for all our sins. And he dealt with the sin problem on the cross, those hours of darkness. Corinthians 5 says, God made him, Jesus, who had no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God. I don’t know how people can use Jesus’ name in blasphemy. I don’t know when they’re in a rage why they say, Jesus Christ. He’s the one who loved you and went to the cross and shed his precious blood, died for your sins and for my sins. How can anyone ever shake a fist at God and say he’s not a loving God, he’s a cruel monster? Oh, the cruel monster is Thank you.

[21:32] Thank you. God wants to save you out of that sin, and He wants you to be with Him forever. That’s a wonderful message that you’re going to hear more about as Joseph comes up. But here’s how Isaiah puts it. 750 years before Jesus Christ actually came and before He died, here’s what Isaiah wrote. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him, that’s Jesus, the iniquity or the sin of us all. Righteous? See why we love him? Why we sing? You say, well, the singing wasn’t your, you sort of exaggerated the quality of the singing. Maybe. It’s not to say it was hard to go, right?

[22:26] But you see why we sing, love lifted me. But at the end, I get my wife, I don’t go to the dollar store to buy a Valentine’s card. You know, like you can get them quite reasonably priced there. Oh, I invested all in our card. And if the local grocery store has red roses or pink roses marked down, I’ll get a whole dozen. And then she’ll say, you shouldn’t have wasted our money on them. That’s my big statement of love, right?

[23:00] God didn’t send a Hallmark card and say, I love you folks down there in Whitehawk, Midland Park. God said, I’m going beyond the Hallmark card. I’m going to give my son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die on a cross. He’ll be your savior if you’ll trust him. What do you have against this man that tonight, while Joseph speaks, why you wouldn’t trust him, that I will have this man to be my savior. But what were the three longest days of any time in history? The people who loved the Lord Jesus, when they saw him take his last breath and he was dead on the cross, they thought it’s all over. All over. They went home weeping, sad, brokenhearted. All the rest of Friday, all of Saturday, and they woke up Sunday morning the third day and they were just all so blue. What will our life be like without Christ? We loved Him. And they went to the tomb that morning.

[24:11] And the stone was rolled away and they looked in and someone says, He’s not here. He is And tonight, as you listen to the gospel, we’re not talking about a defeated Lord Jesus Christ. We’re not talking about a one that went down to defeat on the cross. We present to you one who accomplished exactly what he came to do. Christ died for our sins. He was buried and he was raised again the third day, according to the scriptures. It through this man preached unto you the forgiveness of all your sins. I’d like to read in the book of Hebrews, please. Hebrews in chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10. And we’ll just read at verse 11.

[25:10] Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, is what you have just heard. And the verses I want to read tonight say something else about this man. Hebrews 10 and verse 11, every priest stands daily ministering and offering, oftentimes the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin, forever sat down, right hand of God. I just noticed what it says about the same man, the Lord Jesus that you’ve already heard about tonight. It says in contrast to others who have tried to do something for sin. That could never, it says they could never do it, never take away sin. In contrast, but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin, forever sat down, right hand of God. And we’re gonna talk about that verse tonight, but one other verse in the book of Romans, book of Romans in chapter three. Romans chapter 3, and we’ll break in at verse 22.

[26:17] At the end of verse 22. Romans 3 at the end of verse 22 says, for there is no difference, for all have sinned. Short. Glory. Yeah. Last night I said, for those of you who are here, and if you haven’t been here, I’ll just take a second to repeat it, that I’ve been looking at the word awesome. Used sometimes to describe how somebody’s feeling, or how they did on a test, or how good a sandwich was, I said last night. But really the word means something that provokes awe, or inspires awe. Something truly awe-causing, awe-inspiring. And I was making the point that the gospel is awesome, And for this reason, the reason the gospel causes awe, number one, we learned last night, is because when you listen to the gospel, not just here, not just under this tent, not just necessarily put on by this church, anytime anyone stands up and opens the Bible and clearly faithfully preaches what the Bible says, you’re hearing the voice of God. God is speaking through that person. You are hearing God speak. And that in itself, you just take a moment. We’re all together, I know, and thinking about a million different things. But you take a moment to think about that. But as I sit in this tent, listening to God, that is awesome.

[27:40] But today, I want to look at another thing, and something I was thinking about back home, where I come from, and that’s that when you listen to the gospel specifically, you’re faced with a standard that you don’t really think about out in the world. You think about different kinds of standards that you use maybe for hanging something up or certain standards to get into a specific university, maybe you need a 3.8 or something like that, test score standards. But there’s a standard that you hear about when you come to listen to the gospel. It’s described in this verse in Romans chapter three. It doesn’t just say that all have sinned. Sometimes that’s where we stop and we point the finger and we say, listen, all of us are in the same boat and the verse does say that. We’re gonna talk about that. But it gives us amazing standards. Something we don’t really think about in our lives. It says all have sinned. There’s no difference. of sin, and come short.

[28:35] The glory of God. The glory of God. Awesome. It is a standard that the Bible says we’ve all missed. And as you just start to think, what does that mean? If I asked you after this meeting, and I won’t, so don’t worry, but if I asked you, what is the glory of God? Describe it for me. I don’t know what that is. What would you say? How would you describe the glory of God? How would you describe, like you and I, on a bright sunny day, we can hardly even look straight at the sun. Imagine looking at the one who gave the sun its life. Imagine the glory of God and what that must be like. And the Bible says and gives us this standard that truly is awe-inspiring, that this is the standard for heaven. This is the standard for how you and I were intended to function as human beings. That we were made by God in His image and we were intended to function in and for the glory of God. What does that mean and what does that look like? And I wanna try to explain it here tonight in just a few simple ways for the next 20 minutes.

[29:56] I want to talk, first of all, about the standard that has been missed. Standard that has been missed. Secondly, about the sin that must be punished, according to these verses. Thirdly, satisfaction that has been made. That’s what we read in Hebrews chapter 10. But this man. My dude, work for that verse or work for that concept in the Bible. There’ll be no meeting here tonight. Listen, if it weren’t for this man, there’d be no gospel meeting. No good news meeting. There’s no gospel without Christ. Satisfaction that has been made. And we’ll close the meeting just with those three points.

[30:34] A standard that has been missed. The word sin, if you’re not familiar with it, we’ve used it already in this meeting. The word sin simply, in its original language, the Greek word, as the Bible was originally put it, the word means to miss the mark. It was used sometimes in other situations outside of the Bible, when, say, they would go and they would try to recruit people into the army, and it was back in the days of hand-to-hand combat. So you know what all the people wanted to do when you’d go into the city and enlist people, and say you were drafted to fight for whichever empire, say the Roman Empire. All of a sudden, everyone would volunteer to be an archer. Why? Because no hand-to-hand combat. To get to stand far back and pull back the bow and strike people from a distance, less risk. It was amazing how many archers were in every city. And so what the generals decided to do with all this plethora of skilled archers and no one who could use a sword.

[31:35] The general decided to have triumph. They put a target out and one by one all the skilled archers who are very good at using the bow but couldn’t use a sword, they were asked to draw back the bow and fire. And if they missed the target, this Greek word would be called out, hamarkano, the little lieutenant would say, which means, sin, miss, miss the target. And you know what the Apostle Paul is doing here in Romans chapter 3? He’s saying there was a target for how every single one of us were as intended to live. The glory of God!

[32:15] Without exception in this temple, all of them, every girl, every boy, every man and woman, has missed the mark. All have sinned, according to the Bible, and fallen short. Glory of God. That’s the standard. Again, I will echo what you’ve already heard tonight. Sometimes when you come to a meeting like this, I know there are people and they leave very upset because they, they think, well, those people in that particular church, they think everyone else is sinners except them. Now, listen, I’m just a sinner saved by grace. Understand that? It’s all I am. More than that, when we talk about the standard of God, it’s not the standard of any church. It’s not the standard of any creed. It’s not the standard of any influential person in history, any normal person. This is the standard of God. Steve, I were to take somebody, I were to find, if I could, the most admirable person in this tent and bring them up, and I’m not gonna do this, but if I were to ask you all to stand, and I were to list the admirable characteristics and the things this person does and doesn’t do, likely a number of us would be left standing. We haven’t missed his mark or her mark. We’ve lived life about the same!

[33:42] All of us have missed the glory of God. There’s not one person left standing. The Apostle Paul, you’ve already heard a little bit about him. The Osama bin Laden as he was described of that day. Saul of Tarsus. You know, he lived such a righteous life that he said, I wouldn’t even know I had sin. Thus the Bible says, Thou shalt not covet.

[34:09] Covetousness, wanting something that’s not yours. lusting after something that you don’t have. That made Paul, Saul, sit down, it crushed him, the law. And if you were to go to the 10 commandments today and read them, all of us have missed that mark. Whether it’s thou shalt not lie, swearing, lusting, coveting, theft, missed the mark. I should just say, it’s not my subject tonight, But the law, the Bible, the law in the Bible, it’s like a thermometer. When you stick it in and you find out whether you’re doing well or not doing so well. Have you kept them all or have you not? Every one of us, if we stick the 10 commandments in, we’ll all find out we come out the same. We’re sick, sick of sin. You know what you don’t do? You don’t swallow the thermometer to get better. Nobody does that. Nobody got better from COVID by swallowing a thermometer. It’s not better. I’ve heard some strange ideas, but I’ve never heard that one. No, the thermometer tells you you’re sick, but you don’t swallow it to get better. And you don’t try to follow the law to get better. All it does is tell you, I’m sick of this sinner.

[35:25] So the law is a standard for the glory of God, but more than that, you know what the Bible says about Jesus Christ that you’ve already heard about? It says this. It’s a different expression, we might not fully understand it, but this is what the Bible says about it. He is the brightness, God’s glory. He is the outshining of God’s glory. You know what that means? You want to know what the standard of the glory of God is? Look at Jesus Christ. This is the glory of God. This man, watch him as a boy, as a teenager, as a young man. Watch him move with every motive pure, with never doing anything out of selfish ambition, or never seeking his own praises. Every motive, every action, perfect. This is the standard of the glory of God. I would say this, I would say it authoritatively, not dogmatically or rudely, but I would say it authoritatively. Listen, if Jesus Christ, if this standard was here, there’s not one of us in this town, there’s not one of us in this city or in this world who’s left standing compared to him. Every one of us, according to the Bible, there is no difference. All have sinned. For sure. Glory of God. And so we’re all in the same lot. We’ve all missed the mark. God’s standard.

[36:50] So the standard has been missed. That’s what it means to sin. There’s a must with sin. I want you just to remember that. The must. Not what could happen with sin, or what should happen. It’s what must happen. Sin must be punished. Must be. And this is the must that we find in the Bible. I didn’t read the verse tonight, But it says in the Bible, the soul that sins dies. The wages, what a person has earned for serving sin, death. This is the must. This is what God requires for missing that mark. And sometimes people think, that’s so extreme. But remember, it’s God who he’s sinned against, and it’s God who’s been offended. Let me just give you an illustration. I hope it won’t take away from what we’re saying here tonight, but I want you to imagine this. It, it, it helped me just to think about, imagine if you’re out driving, whether you’re driving or in the car, you’re stopped at a stop sign somewhere in the city and somebody comes up, they’re texting or doing something on their phone and they run through the other stop sign and hit you.

[38:15] And there’s major damage in the vehicle. Thankfully, nobody’s hurt. That made your damage to the vehicle and the guy gets out he’s very apologetic for what he did look at my phone I wasn’t and he agrees to pay all the damages so you take it to your mechanic or your auto body shop and you get a quote and out comes the quote for how much it’s gonna be for everything you, and to get it all back to how it was.

[38:41] There you have that quote, and you take it to the man. Let’s just, for example, let’s just say it’s pretty major damage. Let’s call it six grand, $6,000 to get your car back to how it was, to get the paint and everything back to how it is. Then you take the quote of the expenses and you go to this individual who’s hit you. Just before you tell them how much they’re going to owe to fix everything, imagine if I stepped in and I said to this individual hit you, now listen, I know you meant it, you didn’t mean to do that. I know it was an honest mistake. 200 bucks, say you’re sorry, promise never to text and drive and all’s good. Once you came to your senses of what I had just done, once you understood that this is real life and not Peter Pan, that this guy is just interfering And mentally, in my situation, even if you were the sweetest soul on earth, you know what you would say nicely to me? Sir, mind your business.

[39:52] Quit my car. He’s offended me. He hasn’t offended you. What business do you have interfering as to what would settle and satisfy you? You know who that rude person is? Thank you.

[40:12] God has been offended by sin, and religion says, just confess. Just say you’re sorry. Just pay a little bit. Just pray a little bit. Just promise you’ll never do those things again. Just change your life around, and everything will be fine. God hates religion. I’m talking about religion as I’ve just described it. Religion is meddling. For God is the one who has been offended. God is the one who has been wronged. God is the one who must be satisfied. So it doesn’t really matter what I think about sin. Doesn’t really matter if I think that lying is big or small. What does God think about it? You know what God says about lying? Because it’s an abomination. The lying lip, the lying tongue is an abomination in the sight of God.

[41:06] So to use the little car example, I might think that, yeah, running to somebody, distracted driving is a big offense, but maybe keying somebody’s car, I mean, they could still drive it. Hey, if it was your car, if it was your car that I keyed, it wouldn’t be as simple as, yeah, I could still drive it, no problem, carry on. No, you’ve been offended, you’ve been wronged. And there’s a just requirement that must be met. And so I want you to remember that about sin’s must. We don’t have to wonder what God will do to sin. There’s no such thing as, I know I’ve done some mistakes. I know I’ve messed up, who hasn’t? But I’ve also done a lot of these good things. And I wonder when I get before God, when he weighs the scales out of the sins I’ve done, but all the good things I’ve done, I wonder what the verdict will be. You don’t have to wonder.

[41:58] The sentence has already been leveled for every sinner. It was leveled for me as well. I just found a man who took the sentence. That’s the only difference. But it was leveled for me as well. Do you know what the Bible says about the sentence? It’s death. No one has to wonder, what the verdict will be at final justice. The Bible describes us as condemned already.

[42:20] No mystery. No vagueness. All clear. And the one thing God won’t do, He won’t pass over sin. He won’t just pretend like it didn’t happen. He can’t do that. If He did, that, He would cease to be God. God is holy and just and pure. He won’t pass over any, sin. He just lets certain ones into heaven. Listen, you know how many sins it took to make Earth the way it is today? This one. One sin in a perfect garden. It plunged Earth to where we’re at today. Wars and diseases and inciting, shootings. The list could go on. One sin got into heaven, heaven would cease to be heaven. God will not let that happen. It’s a perfect standard. So the standard has been missed by all of us, every one of us in this tent. I hope there’s no one here who would doubt that. Now I talked to a lady not too long ago in Ontario. She’s a Christian now, a dear believer. Her husband was a bit of a hardy animal and he liked to do all the things, but he had no trouble admitting he was a sinner. Listening to the gospel one day when he learned that sinners actually don’t just die like dogs, but after they die, there’s judgment.

[43:37] He literally shook in the meeting and was saved before the night was over. This lady, religious, good, came to meetings far before her husband did, friendly, couldn’t get past this thing that I am a sinner like him. There’s really no difference, that I’m in the same boat, that God doesn’t have a special class for me. Took her a long time. She was telling me the story of when a preacher came to her home and was talking with her, and he asked her to read this verse. That I want you to read this verse. There is none righteous, no not one. So there is none righteous. Stop. So I just can’t agree that there’s no one who is trying the best they can. There’s no one who is, I’m trying the best I can. They went back and forth for a while, and I guess in a moment of inspiration, the preacher said this, OK, I want you to read it like this. There is none righteous. No, not one. Except Dawn.

[44:48] You read it. There is none righteous, but not one. Dawn. And she was gripped with how proud she had been. That the whole Bible puts everybody in the same boat, but she says, except Dawn. And she couldn’t believe it. And the tears flowed down her face. The sin of pride. That she was exempt from what God said had leveled everyone. I wonder if there’s someone like that here tonight. You say, I’m not a sinner. I hope not. No, the Bible says that compared with the glory of God, we’ve all missed the mark. But thankfully, my last point here is just a few minutes. You’ve already heard about it. Yes, the standard has been missed to the glory of God. Yes, sin must be judged. And if that was the end of the message, that would leave us in an awful situation. We’re just sinners that have missed God’s standard and we all should be judged. And the punishment is death.

[45:45] But, this man, I love that word, that three letter word in the Bible. But, maybe it’s because when I was saved, lying across my bed in an upstairs room, not quite the attic, didn’t make it that far, but upstairs anyway, I didn’t know how to get saved. I put my name in a million verses, it felt like, and nothing didn’t do anything. I was on my knees, and I fell across the bed in my sins. No hope, no way of knowing how it could ever be dealt with. And a verse came into my mind I learned in Sunday school. But he, who did for my sins, but he was trust. And I didn’t have my name in any verse all the time I saw my name in them all. You know what I mean? Maybe you don’t. I opened John 3 16 and I tried to put my name that verse like 10 times that night. I opened it the next morning I didn’t have to put my name. See it. Who’s Joe Hubbard? That’s me. He died for me. Oh, my friend, the gospel is all about this man, and this is what the verse says, but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin forever. You know, the Lord Jesus, He was God Himself. He came into our world. He became a man. As you’ve heard, He lived an impeccable, perfect, spotless life. But He did not just come to do miracles. He did not come to start a religion.

[47:14] He did not come to teach just a number of people, although He did many of those things. According to the verse, He came for one specific mission, but this man, when He had offered one sacrifice for sin. The Lord Jesus came from heaven to go to a cross, deal with sin. That’s why He came. And the standard that we had all missed, when He went to that cross and they nailed Him there. He’s hanging there between two other criminals, but he has no crimes on his record. This brings me great peace, you know, to think of it. The standard that the Lord Jesus was held to was not the standard of any church.

[48:00] It wasn’t the standard of the holiest person who has ever lived on earth. He was held accountable for sin according to the standard of God. That brings me great peace, you know why? Because in my Christian life, when I was saved, there were certain things that I thought were sins. And as I’ve grown in understanding the Bible, I’ve learned that there’s a whole lot more things that are actually sinful.

[48:24] And I wonder to myself, Well, if Christ was held accountable on that cross by what I think is sin, I may wake up one day and realize he wasn’t held accountable to God’s standard. And it brings me great peace, the verse you already heard tonight. The Lord laid on him. The Lord laid on him. It was God who did it. The standard of God. And the Lord laid on him the sin of us all. Wonder of all wonders. Awesome. It pleased the Lord. crushing. And that’s what happened on the cross. Sin, placed on Christ. According to the Bible, God crushed him for sin. He’s there as a sacrifice. It says here, one, sacrifice for sin’s sin. One sacrifice. It’s all that God required. One payment. Sin question had been settled. Claims of sin had been met. What was the claims? The soul that sins must die. Eternal death. Eternal death. That’s what the standard or the claims are. Eternal death. And here he is on the cross as an eternal, infinite being. God himself. He’s taking the full weight of sin on himself. Dies on that cross. And as the verse goes on to say, this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever. Where is he today?

[49:53] He did it at the right hand of God. Again, it’s not complicated. I hope I haven’t made it complicated. It’s God that we have offended. It’s God that has been offended. It’s God that must be satisfied. Christ was held accountable on that cross according to God’s standard. Christ is back in heaven with God because Christ has satisfied God. And do you know what the Bible says, if we were to keep reading in Romans chapter 3? It says that this is what God has done. Taking his own son and everything he did that satisfied him, it says these words, as a propitiation. Whether it’s a whole list of sins, or just a few that have offended your God, take my slide. These are done, not because of anything you’ve done, but what He’s done. See, sin must be judged. I didn’t do any special dance. I didn’t say any special prayer.

[51:07] The reason my sins, I will never be judged for my sins is because Christ was judged for them. That’s the message of the gospel through this man. And so in these two messages tonight, you’ve heard about this man. I will just close with the same question that you were faced with just up here. If he’s done everything for sin, what’s wrong with him? Why not trust him for long? That’ll be great.