Gospel—Bill Prost
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
We'd like to welcome everyone to the Gospel meeting tonight.
Many of the faces that I see here in the audience I recognize, if not personally, at least by distant acquaintance. But there may be someone here or a few here who do not know. Most of us, and I don't know you, but we want to welcome you to the gospel of the grace of God.
The word gospel means good news, and God has good news for each one of us here tonight.
But this meeting is specially called for.
Reaching out to those who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. So let's begin with a hymn.
And I would like to sing the 1St and the last verses of #26.
#26 There's life in a Look at the Crucified 1.
There is life at this moment for thee. Then look, Sinner, look unto him, and be saved unto him who was nailed to the tree.
Sometimes it's interesting.
To know where hymns came from and who wrote them.
This hymn happened to be written by a 20 year old girl back in 1832.
She came from a well to do home in the southwest of England. Her name was Amelia Hull.
And during that time there was a bit of a revival in that area and some gospel preachers had come through.
Preaching the gospel. And she went to hear them, while her heart was stirred with an interest. She wanted to hear more.
And she happened to mention it to her mother and father, and, to her shock and surprise, her father.
Reacted very strongly, said don't you ever dare to go to that gospel meeting again. I don't want any of that in our home. And if you ever go there again?
I will horse whip you.
Amelia was so interested that a few days later she said to herself, I love my father.
I want to obey him, but I can't. I need to hear more. So she went to the gospel meeting again.
And she got saved.
She came home and told her father that she'd gone again and said that she was saved. Well, her father, despite his rough exterior, was really a relatively kind man underneath.
He said to her. Look, I'll give you one more chance, so you go up to your room tonight.
And I want you to give all this up. I don't want to hear any more about it. And you come down tomorrow morning with your decision and if you don't reject all this and get rid of it. I meant what I said about that horse whip.
She came down in the morning.
In the den, there was her father sitting in his arm chair.
And it was very obvious he meant what he said, because there was the horse whip curled up on the coffee table.
Ready to be used on her and she handed in the words of this hymn.
She hadn't slept much that night. She had written this hymn. She handed them to her father, these verses.
Her father looked at the, looked at them, read them through, read them through again and crumble to the crumble to the floor.
And I'm happy to tell you that he got saved that day too.
Pardon me for choking up a bit at that story, but that's true. And we hope that if there is someone here tonight who doesn't know Christ as his or her Savior, that you will be able like Amelia and like her Father.
As your savior.
Let's sing the 1St and the last verses of #26.
The.
1.
There is twice at this moment.
For him then, but still I want to live in a man, be safe unto him. It was and untrue the truth.
00:05:43
What day when we joy sing from Jesus?
And no way assurance I'll never can start sinning.
There's the fire and there's one man for me.
Let's ask the Lord for His help.
Blessed God, our Father.
We thank Thee for the precious truth contained in this hymn, that there is indeed life and a look at Thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
The one who was crucified on Calvary's cross, but the one who is now risen again and seated at thy right hand, are God.
And we pray tonight that Thou bless Thy precious Word as we open it together.
We know that there may well be someone here in this room tonight who is not saved, who is going down what thy word calls that broad Rd. that leads to destruction.
And we pray that whoever he or she may be.
They may indeed obtain life in a look at the Lord Jesus.
We commend the meeting to thee, and we pray too that we who are thine own.
We who belong to the Lord Jesus.
May be refreshed and encouraged, and at the same time solemnized too, as we consider the issues of life and death and time and eternity.
So we look to Thee for Thy help and ask these things in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Turn with me, please, to the Gospel of John.
John's Gospel, chapter 5.
If you have a Bible.
Go ahead and turn to this chapter.
If you don't have a Bible, then just listen to what we are going to read.
John's Gospel chapter 5 and we'll read from verse.
16 And just as a little bit of an introduction, the Lord Jesus, who as God had the power to heal, had just healed a man who had a withered hand, or or rather, a man who was sick beside a pool.
He done it on the Sabbath day and the Jewish leaders were very upset with him for doing that.
And so that is the context in which verse 16 begins.
Therefore, did the Jews persecute Jesus?
And sought to slay him because he had done these things on the Sabbath day.
But Jesus answered them, and my Father worketh hitherto, and I work.
Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath.
But said that also that God was his father, making himself equal with God.
Then answered Jesus, and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you.
00:10:05
The Sun can do nothing of himself but what he sees the Father do.
For what things soever he doeth these, also doeth the Son likewise.
For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth.
And he will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.
For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them.
Even so, the Son quickeneth whom he will, for the Father judgeth no man.
But hath committed all judgment unto the Son, that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father.
He that honoured not the Son on earth, not the Father which hath sent him.
Verily, verily, I say unto you.
He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent Me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but His past from death and delight. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming. It now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.
For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.
And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.
One more verse in the book of the Acts. The Book of the Acts, chapter 20.
Again, you can just listen if you don't have a Bible. Acts chapter 20.
In our chapter it was the Lord Jesus speaking.
Here we find the Apostle Paul speaking.
Verse 20 of chapter 20 of Acts and how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you.
But have showed you, and have taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks.
Repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
And then one final verse in first John chapter one.
First John, chapter one I Epistle of John.
And verse 7.
But if we walk in the light, or could read, since we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and here it is. And the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
In this 5th chapter of John, I would suggest we have three things that I want to mention tonight.
First of all, we have the Lord Jesus.
Claiming for himself as the Son of God, the honor that was due to him.
Number two, we find him bringing before the crowds very clearly that he was the giver of new life.
And #3 we have him bringing forth in a very solemn way that he also was the one who would be the executor of judgment.
I'd like to talk about those three tonight. Again, I say, if anyone here does not know Christ as Savior, these things are most important. We are living in a very confusing world today.
And we see many nations around us who have serious plans to try and do certain things.
Nations that perhaps in the past didn't amount to very much are suddenly jostling with one another on the world scene.
To gain ascendancy. But you know God has plans too.
God's plans were formed way back before this world was made.
And he has plans that his beloved son.
00:15:00
Is going to be head over all things and to reign over all things.
Many of man's plans today are for the exaltation of man, the aggrandisement of man himself.
The God's plans which are always going to be fulfilled.
Concerning his beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ and the exaltation and his glory. And we want to start the gospel off on that note because.
The gospel first and foremost, if we look at the Word of God, does not primarily and first of all concern you and me. It does concern you and me, and that's why.
If you're not saved, you have been invited here tonight, but at first and foremost starts with God's purposes in His beloved Son and then brings in you and me.
We need to be clear about that.
Because sometimes we get so concentrated on ourselves that we forget the glory that is due to God and the glory that is due to His beloved Son. And in a coming day when you stand before God.
It will not matter who you were in this world or what you were connected with.
What will really matter will be.
What think ye of Christ?
Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior or do you not?
It's a very solemn thing to think about.
I've told this story before, Bear with me if you've heard it before, but a good friend of mine who's with the Lord now was a chaplain in one of the big hospitals in Toronto, ON.
And one day he was called to the bedside of a relatively young woman, still in her late 30s, who was in the business world and moving up. She was doing very well. She was single, not at this point interested in marriage. She was going to have a career and she was doing very well.
But all of a sudden she was struck down with a sudden illness and I do not know the character of it. It doesn't matter.
But suddenly she was there in intensive care and she was clever enough to know that there was a very good chance.
That she might not make it.
And when my friend went to see her.
Her first words were not what's this going to do to my career or what's going to happen to my life down here and all the rest of it. Her first words were chaplain, what comes after death? What comes after death?
I go to a Barber who's a woman middle-aged.
And I learned when I went there the last time that I was in the only one that had been trying to reach her with the gospel, because another brother in Christ, whom I know very well, had already spoken to her and said to her.
If you were to die tonight, where would you go?
The chaplain's answer to that woman that I referred to a few minutes ago was excellent. He knew the business world. He knew how good it was to have the right connections and how important it was to know the right people. And when that question was asked, what happens after death? He said to her, looking her straight in the eye. It all depends on whom you know.
It all depends on whom you know. Suddenly all the connections she had in the business world didn't matter anymore because she was facing eternity. I don't know the end of the story. Whether she came to Christ or not, whether she recovered from the illness or not, I don't know.
But I ask you tonight, where do you stand with the Lord Jesus Christ?
And why is it so important?
It brings us to the second point.
And it was brought up very clearly in that hymn, and that is why I chose to sing it. There is life in a look at the crucified one. And I have to tell you on the basis of God's Word, that the way you are now, if you are not saved, is not a sufficient way to stand before a holy God.
00:20:07
You need.
A new life and you may answer why? What's wrong with the life that I have now? I am doing fine.
I feel quite good. You may be young, you may be in the prime of life.
You can take a look at me and it's very obvious from the way I climb those steps that I'm not in the prime of life.
But the point is, it doesn't matter what age you are, whether you are young, middle-aged, getting older, whatever it is, or whether you're just a young child. The point is that your heart, as the Word of God tells us, and this is God's word, not mine, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.
I knew a man many years ago, and some here will remember him, a very faithful gospel preacher by the name of Philip Gladding.
And in those days, you didn't travel across the Atlantic on planes. Most of the travel across the oceans were in ships. And he was on board the ship crossing with his wife from England over to Canada. And while they were on that ship, he had the privilege of being invited to dine with the captain. That was a real privilege. The captain didn't invite everybody to his table, but he invited.
Gladding and his wife.
Hilda to come and have dinner with him.
Well, if you knew Philip Gladding, he didn't miss an opportunity to preach the gospel. And during that, Neil, he brought before the captain that he needed a savior because it became obvious from his conversation that he was not saved. And in that conversation, Philip Gladding used the word Sinner. And that captain fired up, his face blackened with anger, and he said.
Sinner. Don't you call me a Sinner.
Don't you call me a Sinner.
That term, in his mind, was reserved for drunkards and.
People that were in prison and all the rest of it, it wasn't reserved for a respectable man like him.
Who was captain of a large ocean going vessel?
Is that the way you're reacting tonight?
Another time I remember a young brother spoke to a young girl and he told her she needed to be saved and her reaction was from what? From what?
Oh, that brings us to the Third Point.
God is a God of judgment.
And whether you like it or not, you are responsible toward God. We have a lot of people in the world today who call themselves atheists, some who call themselves agnostics, some who call themselves by many other names. But many of those other names, and whether people are atheists or agnostics or whatever, I have to say that in many cases it is.
An shall I say an attempt?
To get rid of the idea that they are accountable to God for the way they live their life in this world.
Do you realize that that God will hold you responsible?
Yes, you say. Why is that? I can't help the way I'm made. I can't help what I do.
I admit that in one sense that is true, because ever since Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, they brought sin into this world, and every child of Adam and Eve all down through the ages has been, if we could use the term, infected with that same terrible virus called sin.
We've just recently come through a pandemic of COVID. Some people escaped it, I was one of them. Other people got very, very ill.
And many people died from it. But sin has not missed some people and infected others.
Everyone of us was, as David said in the Psalms, born in sin and shapen in iniquity. That means that we were born with a will of our own, a will that is against God.
All you say my will isn't against God. I'm not against God.
Yes, you are. Deep down inside there is something that says.
00:25:02
I don't want God in my life and the natural man, and you are one of them if you are not saved.
Says I want God to give me all the happy benefits of life in this world. Give me good food, give me a nice life.
Keep me free from illness and bad times and all the rest of it, but stay out of my life. Just give me a good time.
Most of you know that I am a medical doctor, although retired now, and I remember well in the hospital in which I worked for many years. We had a young nurse there.
Very good looking and her attitude was very plain.
Very evident and a good example of the natural heart.
She said. We're not in this world for a long time, but just to have a good time.
That was her philosophy. Now there have been others who have done different things in this world.
But whatever the philosophy of life is.
Man's heart is directed against God.
You need to recognize yourself, not because I say it, but because God says it.
That before God you are a Sinner, and not merely a Sinner but a loft Sinner and you need a Savior.
But the gospel means good news, as we said before, and the good news that we have before you tonight.
Is the fact that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
That's First Timothy chapter one and verse 15, and we get it here right in this.
5th chapter of John. It says in verse 24, Verily, verily, or truly, truly I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me half what everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation.
Or judgment, but is passed from death.
Unto life.
Perhaps you say, oh, but we're all going to die someday.
Yes, if the Lord doesn't come, that is true. But for the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, what does death mean?
Death simply means a transition from this world to go to be with that one who saved me, the one who saved many in this room, the Lord Jesus Christ. Why? Because we have new life in him.
And so the woman, the young girl, I should say, that wrote this.
Hymn #26 of which we sang part of. Notice what she says in a verse that we did not.
Read it says in verse three, we are healed by his stripes. Wouldst thou add to the word? And he is our righteousness made the best robe of heaven. He bids thee put on O could spell be better arrayed.
The Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's cross has suffered for sin.
And what is more important, he suffered there and satisfied the claims of a holy God against sin.
Now my question to you is, if I can put it this way, if God is so satisfied.
With the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, are you going to find fault with it? Are you going to say no, I don't want it?
I have had people say that to me.
I met a woman once in India. She recognized someone who spoke English with a Canadian or American accent and she started to talk to me. She turned out she was from the United States. I forget just which part.
And we chatted a little bit and after a while she said, well, what brings you to India? Oh, I said, I know the Lord Jesus Christ as her shape, as my Savior. And I know some dear believers here whom I want to meet with. And as the opportunity arises, we preach the gospel. But I'm here to try and be an encouragement to them and they to me.
00:30:00
Her face suddenly hardened. Oh, she said. I don't believe all that.
Well, I said, what are you going to do about your sins? Oh, she said. I'm a Buddhist.
Well, I said, did Buddha die for your sins? Did Buddha wash your sins away?
What about your sins before a holy God? Oh, she said. Sins. I don't have any.
And away she walked.
Oh, what an awful attitude to take, pretending that she didn't have any sins. What an awful thing to say.
Somehow she had gotten it into her head that she was not a Sinner, but God's word is true.
And this precious book is the word of God. We cannot add to it. We cannot take away from it.
How do your sins get put away? God has only one way, one way to be saved. It's popular today to hear people say, well, it doesn't matter how you come to God, you can come any way you want as long as you are sincere.
Does that really work even in natural things? Does that work in natural things? You know very well it doesn't. Can remember once I was driving.
Through the city of Lansing, MI, heading towards Chicago and sometimes it can be a bit confusing if you're not paying attention.
Because there's a highway there.
Called Hwy. 69 and there's another highway there called number 96 and they intersect with one another and there you turn them upside down and you've got the same thing. And I had traveled that route before and I wasn't paying attention and I got on to number I meant to stay on 69 and then get eventually on down to.
Route 94 heading West to Chicago.
But instead I got on to number 96, which if you go West takes you to Grand Rapids, MI, and if you go E takes you right back toward Detroit. And I got going east. And after about 15 or 20 miles, I thought, this doesn't look right. It wasn't a sunny day, so I didn't have the sun to guide me. But I thought, this is wrong. And all of a sudden I saw the sign.
Route 96. Uh oh.
Was I sincere? I was very sincere.
And I was very sincerely wrong, and I had to turn around and retrace that 20 miles. And I say to you today, in all seriousness, you have to stop if you're going in the wrong direction, because going God's way is the only way to go. And God says the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son.
Cleanse us.
From all sin.
Will you come to Christ tonight and accept Him as your Savior?
Sometimes people have a hard time trusting the Lord Jesus Christ. They say I just can't do it. I just can't believe it.
Earlier today you might have been here, you might not have been here.
But a brother who's sitting here, Bruce Conrad, gave an address and he referred to a tightrope Walker who way back in the 1800s.
Had them stretch a cable all across the Niagara Gorge and he proceeded to go across it with a balancing pole and he was an expert.
And crowds came to see him, all kinds of people.
They wouldn't let you do it today, but back then you could get away with it.
And he did many stunts.
Going this way and that way, walking across different ways, and I get mixed up as to who did what, but it's interesting that children will find this interesting. On one occasion, in order to show what he could do, strap the small stove on his back and went across halfway, then put the stove down, sat on the cable stove on his knees.
Lit it up, fried some eggs and all the rest of it and it was very entertaining.
But you know, it was very interesting. On the serious level, do you know why most people came to see Blonde? And that was his stage name, wasn't his real name. I think his real name was a French name, Henri Gravelly. But anyway, the point is he was going across that tightrope and he did it a number of times and most people came. Can you guess why they came?
00:35:22
They were watching because they were very sure that he'd fall off.
They were very sure that he'd fall off and they wouldn't take their eyes off him because.
I want to watch.
If he falls off.
Rather sadistic, perhaps, you say, on their part. But let's face it, that's the human heart, and it was probably what Niagara Falls is about 160 feet high, and the cable was above that. So I suppose he fell between 160 and 200 feet if he did fall.
What most people didn't know was that the odds of blonde and falling into the Niagara River.
Or at least 1000 to one and maybe even greater than that. Why? Because before he went out and tried to do all that, he had trained for many years. And his final training was he stretched the rope across his backyard. And I'm not sure how long the rope was. And he got on that rope with his balancing pole and he told his manager, he said now.
Knock me off this rope and I don't care what you do. You can grab that rope and whip it. You can.
Give me a violent shove. You can come up behind me by surprise. You can do anything you want. You can create a loud noise, but do anything you want to knock me off this rope.
He couldn't do it, couldn't do it. He tried till he got tired and he couldn't do it.
Blonde and said OK, I'm ready to cross Niagara Falls.
Could Blonden have fallen in?
We're all human, aren't we? Something could have happened. He could have had, speaking commonly, a heart attack right out there where he couldn't have. He could have gotten a terrible cramp suddenly in one leg or something along that line. What I want to say to you.
Tonight.
If you have any doubt about trusting the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's worthy to be trusted.
Because God cannot lie, and when the Lord Jesus Christ says to you, come and I will give you life, and I will give you rest.
There is no possible way that God doesn't mean it.
And if you don't think that it's real, come afterwards and let's have a talk together. And there are many here in this room who will attest you on the basis of their own experience that when God.
Says something, he means it now. I don't want to be misunderstood.
I say it with all reverence, hating the very thought God didn't have to practice ahead of time in order to be able to say something that could be believed.
That's not the point. Blondin had to do that. He had to train.
But the work of Christ on the cross is complete.
It can never be added to.
And you can trust what God has said about His beloved Son.
I've mentioned this story before, but my wife's great grandfather went to be with the Lord 110 years ago.
He had been a preacher of the gospel for many years.
Many years, all his life.
And on his deathbed, one of his sons said to him, Father, do you have any doubt about where you're going?
To me his answer was absolutely beautiful because Satan can throw doubts into our hearts, but what he said was beautiful, he said. I have no doubt as to the value of the blood of Christ.
And I have to say to you, neither do I. And there are many here in this room who would re echo that and say neither do I, neither do I.
Will you come to Christ tonight?
Our time is nearly gone.
It's a wonderful thing to know Christ as Savior, the blessings that come.
Are not merely being saved for all eternity, but God gives you a new life in Christ that.
00:40:04
And indulge you with His Holy Spirit, so that you want to please Him, and He'll give you a joy in your heart that you could not know otherwise.
Is there pleasure in the things of this world and in the sinful things that men do? Yes, yes, for a short while. And the Word of God calls them the pleasures of sin for a season.
Of season.
I'm going to finish up with one story.
My father worked for a wealthy man most of his life. He owned a fruit farm, but he was wealthy enough to build houses and small apartment buildings.
And my father enjoyed working for him and I worked for him too when I was in high school and often during the summers when I was in university. And he was a good man to work for, a very good man, and most of the time in his life.
He had Christians working for him. He liked having Christians working for him. He could depend on them. They were honest, they were upright. They did a good day's work they could be dependent upon. They would come through, as we say commonly today, in the crunch.
But he didn't want to hear about Christ, and he would make a mockery of the gospel. He would use the inconsistencies of Christians. I can remember once when he made a mockery of some faith healers and people like that who would go on the television and talk about healing and so on.
He would make a mockery about other inconsistencies he saw and.
Those who worked for him, including my father, would mention to him, yes, but remember the inconsistencies of Christians.
Do not touch what God is and what He says to you.
He was only 55 years old. He wasn't a drunkard, he wasn't an alcoholic, but.
On occasions such as Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve and other holidays.
He would often take a little more liquor than he should and he would normally just sleep it off the next day with a good hangover. But on this particular occasion.
On New Year's Eve, again he took a little too much and he probably would have slept it off but it was rent day because he usually collected his rents on the 1St of the month and rather than depending on people to have a bunch of post dated checks or whatever it might be.
He would go personally and collect the rent, go from house to house and apartment to apartment and collect the rent.
And he was a good landlord and most of his tenants really liked him and they would invite him in for a cup of coffee or something like that and.
Chit chat for a little bit and then he'd give or they'd give him their rent check and he'd go on to the next place.
Well, he went to this one place and it became very obvious to the ones there that he had a bit of a hangover and wasn't feeling the best. And so they said, and it's quite true, they said, you know, if you take sometimes, if you take just a little bit more to drink, not too much, just a little bit more, it'll stave off the effects of the hangover.
Well, that is true. So he took a little more, I'm not sure how much. And then they said to him, by the way, you know, there's something and I forget just what it was that's wrong. Down the basement here. And my father, of course, was the handyman that they usually called on to be Mr. Fixit, so to speak. But in this case they said this, or I forget what it was. Would you just take a quick look at it?
Oh, he said. Sure, sure, I'll do so.
So he proceeded down the basement steps.
And the Lord allowed this makes me cry to think about it. He made a misstep.
Tumbled head over heels down the stairs, smashed his head on the concrete floor and never regained consciousness. He was gone within less than 48 hours. They took him to hospital. They did all they could for him, but the injury was so severe that it was fatal.
I don't like to say for sure.
But he had no time to make a last minute decision. He had no time to accept Christ on his deathbed. He never had a deathbed.
00:45:05
And I fear that he went into a lost eternity.
What an awful thing to think about.
I don't know what they said at his funeral. I wasn't living in the area at the time. I don't know who took his funeral or what they said. What could they say or could anyone say? I have an idea that his father was a believer, but certainly his mother was not. I knew her very well too, and she was had a deaf ear for the gospel. Where do you stand tonight?
We won't turn to the verse, but Scripture says he that being often reproved.
Hardeneth, his neck shall suddenly be cut off, and that without remedy.
But I don't want to leave you with that thought, because it doesn't have to be that way. That poor man.
Didn't have to go into a lost eternity and neither do you because Christ is waiting for you to come. One day that man is going to stand before God and he will have nothing to say because he had heard the gospel many times. He won't be able to say, nor will anyone else in that situation be able to say, well I don't know what all this is about or I don't know how I ended up here.
Or what I did to suddenly be sitting before the Lord Jesus as judge.
No, you will know and you will remember.
That on a certain night in July of 2023, you heard the gospel and you heard the way of salvation. We're going to have a word of prayer now, and we trust that God will bless His word to you and you can receive Christ right there in your seat. But do you really mean it?
I didn't mean to tell another story, but maybe you can bear with me for another story.
This is absolutely true.
When I was in medical school, we had some Christians in the class, but we had a lot of people who had nothing to say to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Who had no use for the gospel, and this young man by the name of Lee Clark was one of them.
And he was a thorough going, worldly young man, not wicked in the sense of causing terrible problems, but he certainly had nothing or no interest in the Word of God or in the gospel. Well, my class had a reunion about every five years. He rose right on every five years. And I didn't go to all of them, but sometimes it was nice to go and see who had gotten saved.
And Lee Clark was one of them. And I said, Lee, tell me about it now. I tell this.
For each one here, I said, Lee, tell me about it. Well, he said, I heard the gospel when I was at a fall fair when I was a teenager.
And I was with three other boys, and a man with gospel tracks approached us and wanted to talk about the things of the Lord.
And I was the one that said, I don't want to hear that. The other boys, he said, stayed and listened. But I was the one who went away and said.
Meet me over there in a few minutes when you're done with this guy. But I don't want to listen to him.
But he said no. The Lord started to work in my heart, and I realized that what that man had said was true. And I forget all the details now, but someone else had spoken to him about Christ and he recognized that he needed to be saved. And so he went up to his room.
And he stood there, and he prayed to the Lord, and asked the Lord to save him.
And he said I said the right words, but I knew I wasn't saved.
And something said to me inside Lee, kneel down.
And so he thought, well, I'll put one knee down, I'll knee down, I'll kneel down on one knee. And he did it. And he said the words again. He said I get up off my knee and I knew I wasn't saved.
And something inside, said Lee.
Put the other knee down.
He said. Bill, you have no idea.
How hard it was to get that second knee down, he said. I finally had to grab that knee with both hands.
And force it onto the floor.
And then I said the words.
00:50:00
And that time when I got up, I knew I was saved.
No, I don't want to be misunderstood. Does that mean you have to kneel down to be saved? Absolutely not. But for Lee, that kneeling down meant total submission to the will of the Lord and saying Lord, I come not merely as a Sinner, but as a lost Sinner, and I deserve nothing but eternal judgment.
And I want to be saved, not on the basis of any good that's in me, but I kneel down before you, my God.
Because you are worthy.
That's what you need to do.
And you can do that right in your seat. You don't need to get out of your seat and kneel down or anything like that. You can come to Christ where you are.
Let's pray.
Loving God and our Father, we thank Thee for thy precious word. Thank Thee for the light that it gives us. Thank Thee for the life, Lord Jesus, that Thou art willing to give because thou didst shed Thy blood on Calvary's cross.
Thank Thee for the grace that has kept the door open till tonight. And now we pray for Thy blessing upon Thy word and on each one here. O Lord, if there is anyone here to night who is not saved, we pray that Thy word may have its effect for Thy glory and for their eternal blessing. For we ask it, Lord Jesus, in Thy precious and worthy name.
Amen.