Gospel—Robert House
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The brethren here in.
Scranton area have asked me to present the gospel. They've asked me to take on that responsibility tonight and I'm glad for the opportunity. It's a.
Great burden. So I would like to ask the Lord for his help.
Lord Jesus, I come to Thee. I know I need the help of Thy Spirit. Ask for Thy guidance and wisdom.
Pray for those listening that if there's someone in the room tonight.
There is not, no.
Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, that they might have their heart touched and their conscience touched.
That there might be entrance of Thy word to give light and salvation. Thank you that it's Thy desire to have all men to repent, come to the knowledge, Thy Son, the Lord Jesus, and to have a future with thyself in heaven for eternity. We ask for thy blessing now and for Thy help in Jesus precious name, Amen.
I have two words on my heart today. Acts chapter 20.
And verse 21.
Testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And if you turn to Hebrews chapter 6, please.
And verse one.
Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on onto perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God.
The two words that I have in my heart. The 1St is repentance, the 2nd is faith.
Repentance very simply is a change in the way I'm thinking and in the first verse that we looked at in Acts chapter 20.
It's repentance toward God.
And that means that our thinking has to change to be lined up with God's thinking.
And in the verse in Hebrews, its repentance from something and it's from dead works. Now it's the time of year when all the children are probably in their first or second week of school, and the Word of God talks about a teacher, and we're just going to take a couple of minutes and bring the teacher into this room.
The teacher is the law.
It's our teacher to bring us to Christ, and so we're just going to do a little bit of letting that teacher work. First question, what's the first commandment?
The first commandment.
In the list of the 10 words.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
What's the 1St and great commandment?
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.
With all the heart.
What's the first commandment with promise?
First commandment with promise. Honor your father and your mother.
That's the first commandment with promise. Now the school teachers here, and I won't let the school teacher teach and I'm going to let you.
See what the school teacher does in this way. I know a Sinner, and the Sinner that I know best in this room is me.
And I just want to tell you a little story from when I was the age of some of you teenager just turned 13.
Grade 8 and I wanted to go to school.
That first day we just had a nice weekend. My dad had kindly gone out and purchased some patio slaps to build my brother and I at basketball area with a net where we could play some hoop.
That was going to be real nice. And when the delivery came, I helped my dad unload those patio stones and my dad noticed one of them was slightly cracked. He said let's put that on top where we can make sure it doesn't break. And it very carefully helped them unload that patio stone and put it on top of the stack.
00:05:03
And that was on Saturday, but on Monday when I was going to school.
My mom saw what I was going to wear on the first day of school and she said no, you're not wearing your old jeans, you're going to change into some nice looking pants and I didn't like that.
And she made me change and I was mad. I got on my bike. I drove past the pile of patio stones and I saw the cracked one right on top. And as I drove by, I took my foot and I kicked it and I broke it off.
You think about the kindness of my dad wanting to build something nice for me and my brother. What kind of mean, spiteful person breaks something that he particularly tried to preserve? When I got home from school that day, my mother sent me straight to my room.
And that's exactly where I deserve to be till my dad got home.
Now.
What's the lesson of the school teacher?
Talking about me, honor your father and your mother. I dishonored my mother by my rebellious attitude. Have any of you ever had a rebellious attitude?
I've seen it in little 3 year olds, 4 year olds.
You know, you break one transgression of God's law, you're guilty of the whole thing.
The whole thing.
And when it talks about repentance from dead works though, any idea that you would be able to do anything that would please God?
Falls by the wayside because we're born sinners.
You know that as hard as I tried, there is absolutely no way that you can reattach the corner of a patio slab once it's broken.
I had no way to undo what I had done.
The same thing is true after that first time, you have a bad attitude. You don't honor your mother.
It's too late. Your chance of extending your life is gone.
And what can you possibly do?
You know, I'd like to extend that slightly.
Let's look in.
The Epistle of Timothy.
2nd Epistle of.
Timothy, Chapter 3.
And verse one this Know also that in the last days perilous times shall come, for men shall be lovers of their own selves.
And then in verse four, the last phrase, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.
What was the first commandment?
Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.
What do we in these last days do all the time? We love ourselves.
And we love pleasure.
It's all about me. That's what our natural hearts do. We're guilty of breaking the commandments of God. It's a very, very solemn thing.
What can you possibly do about it?
No man can by any means.
Redeem his brother. You can't redeem your own soul. You're lost. And if that was all the story that I had tonight, it wouldn't be a gospel meeting. It wouldn't be a good news meeting, but it is a good news meeting. And that's the second word that I want to talk about. That was in those two verses, and that is faith. Faith towards God in the one verse, faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ in the other verse.
And the grace of God, the glory of the grace that shines in the face of Jesus Christ.
There's no way I could fix the patio stone.
My dad came into the room.
And he told me how he felt.
He told me what my behavior had been.
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And I felt it in my heart.
And I told my dad that I was sorry for what I had done, but no matter how sorry I'd been, I could not fix that patio. Patio. Still, it was broken.
And so.
My dad forgave me.
And he found a way to make it work. He put the post for the basketball hoop right where the broken corner was.
And that's his grace to me, to still do what I didn't deserve. And that's exactly what I'd like to try and communicate to you right now about God in heaven.
God.
The Father in a past eternity.
With God the Son, God the Holy Spirit decided that in spite of the wreck that you are going to make the broken life that you're going to have by just one transgression 1 dishonouring of your father or your mother.
That he would find a way to restore what he take, what he didn't take away. God sent his Son. They called him Jesus.
God sent his son a babe.
To the Manger in Bethlehem.
God sent his Son.
For 3 1/2 years to the land of Israel and God sent his son.
To Calvary's cross.
On Calvary's cross.
God took my sins.
My dishonouring of my mother. My meanness to my father.
And he put them on Jesus Christ, his Son.
And he punished Jesus Christ for my sins.
And then God.
The.
Gave up his own life after he bore my sins. They took him down and they buried him. And God raised his Son from the dead. And that's the glorious power of the gospel, that Jesus Christ is raised from the dead. He's no longer held by my sins.
He's at God's right hand in heaven, elevated. There every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. He alone is worthy.
And the good news is of the gospel is that whosoever will.
Can believe in Jesus Christ, faith towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. This book that I hold my hands is a revelation of Gods. It's the truth.
He gave it, and that's part of the truth that I'm presenting to you tonight. He tells us, if you believe that Jesus Christ died, as the Scripture said, and that God raised him from the dead, that He died for your sins and was punished for your sins.
You believe that in your heart.
You'll be saved, and what that means is those sins.
That you committed those transgressions against the holy, holy God that broke your life, even if it's just one little crack.
It's gone.
God wants to make of you a new thing tonight, a new creature in Christ Jesus.
That whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life. I experienced the grace of my father in finding a way to take the mess that I'd made on that Monday morning and still give me what his heart desired. A basketball court that my brother and I could play on. And it's the desire of our Heavenly Father to give you the life.
That you don't deserve.
To give you new life in Jesus Christ through faith in his Son. And so we have those two things. There's a need to recognize that you've come short of the glory of God and that you cannot do it on your own.
There's a need to change your thinking around and accept God's truth.
As it is, and then there's a need to believe, and that's what face about.
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Believing that God tells the truth every time, and then when he says believe in my Son, that he took your place, that his blood, the blood of Jesus Christ cleansed us from all sin, that that's the truth.
And it can be yours tonight. You pass from death unto life by that belief. And you know, there's one thing for to know that they'll be rejoicing in heaven tonight for you believing that. But it'd be really nice if also tonight in this room, if you have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, that you have confessed Jesus as Lord. And then there can be rejoicing at this conference.
I let you think about that while I pray.
Our God and Father, we thank Thee for thy love that would make thine only begotten Son.
The sacrifice for lost sinners such as me.
And the others in this room tonight.
Our God and our Father, if there's a person listening that has never accepted Jesus, thy beloved Son.
As their savior.
Touch their hearts now that they might accept Him.
He loves them.
He wants them. He died to redeem them. Help them believe.
Our Father, we ask for thy blessing now in Jesus precious name, Amen.