I want to welcome Jeff and Joe
as new staff members with Men of Grace. I am most grateful as our music
and praise program grows, setting the climate and atmosphere for
worship so important. Our guys do a great job. So glad
to have my entire family here today. And of course, especially my
sweetheart is here. I want you to turn in your Bibles
to the book of Acts, the second chapter. There is a God. And he doesn't like the way we've
been treating him lately. And I'm going to keep saying
that as long as God gives me breath. And the problem in America
is not the economy. The problem in America, we've
told God to get out and He has. How can you have a great economy
without God's blessing? Right? The fate of this nation
is bound up with its Creator. And I said, I not only say that
here, I say that out there. And that's exactly what I said.
We will be one nation under God or one nation gone under. If
you will just give Him glory. And my greatest fear, my greatest
fear is That we begin to think that we're something on the end
of a stick. That we think, you know, that we're orchestrating
all of these things that are happening. Let's give Him glory. And wherever you are, and you
have a testimony, give it. Don't be afraid to talk in public.
You know, it's amazing that the Muslims in New York City stop
traffic on their prayer day on a major street. I think it would
be great if we all got right here at the corner of Woodward
and Peary and got down on our knees. See if we'd be arrested. Christians have to become bold.
Right? My God is alive and well. I'm
not ashamed of the Gospel. Let's go to the book of Acts
now, chapter 2. And I want to begin reading with verse 29. Men and brethren, let me freely
speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and
buried. And his supplicant is with us
unto this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and
knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit
of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ
to sit on his throne. That actually through the loins
of David, the Savior was to come. And God had made that promise,
right? That's what that's saying. Verse 31, "...he seeing this
before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was
not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. This
Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore, being by the right
hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise
of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this which ye now see and
hear. For David is not ascended into
the heavens, But he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit
thou on my right hand. David said, My Lord is Jesus.
And God said to him, Sit on my right hand. Until I make thy
foes thy footstool. My friends, every knee is going
to bow and every tongue is going to confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord. Therefore, let all the house
of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus
whom you have crucified both Lord and Christ. Now when they
heard this, they were pricked in their heart and said unto
Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what
shall we do? Then Peter said unto them, Repent
and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ
for the remissions of sins and you shall receive the gift of
the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you and
to your children and to all that are afar off. even as many as
the Lord our God shall call. And with many other words did
He testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this unto
a generation. Then they that gladly received
the Word, His Word, were baptized, and the same day there were added
unto them about 3,000 souls. Verse 39, For the promise is
unto you and to your children and to all that are far off even
as many as the Lord our God shall call." I would first point out
to you that in the passages that I have read, the Scripture says
they were pricked in their heart. My aim this morning, and my aim
every time I preach, is not to put you to sleep. But it is this
purpose that men and women, boys and girls, will have their hearts
pricked. This is the first stage of Christian
ministry. Having the heart pricked. The preacher's business in the
beginning is not to try to convert men. I'm not trying to convert
you today. Just the reverse. I'm trying
to cause you pain in the power of the Holy Spirit. It's important that that happens. It's insane to attempt to heal
a man who's not wounded. If you're not a sinner, you don't
need a Savior. You're following me? To attempt
to clothe a man who is not stripped is insanity. To make rich those
who are not poor doesn't make any sense. As long as the world
stands, the preacher will need the Holy Ghost. That's right. The preacher needs the Holy Ghost.
You see, the truth is, people make light of this, but the truth
is, unless the Holy Spirit's here, nothing's going to happen.
You're going to go home the same way you came. You see, we need
a miracle here. We need God here. Of course,
people have to be changed from the inside out. And you know
I can't do that. Only God the Holy Ghost can do
that. When I was in Danville, Kentucky, I would debate this
Church of Christ pastor in the newspaper, which was kind of
crazy in itself. But anyway, he would always make
fun of me talking about the Holy Spirit. And in the paper, he'd
talk about, you know, Pastor Clark looks under the pews for
the Holy Spirit. You can't find the Holy Spirit.
Is the Holy Spirit under there, Pastor? Is the Holy Spirit in
the choir loft? And he would make light of that. Because,
see, they believe that it's simply an act of your own volition that
you trust Christ. Then you get dunked in water.
And presto vigo, you're saved. Nothing really supernatural happens
to you. You know, you just figure it
out. Okay, there's a God and there's a Savior. All truth is
revealed truth. You'll sit here as dumb as an
ox with regard to the gospel, unless the Holy Spirit does something
on the inside of you. You'd not even know there's a
God. You'll go like, I'm not even sure whether there's a God
or not. And if there's no God, then there's no sin. There's
just mistakes. And I don't know. See, what needs to happen here
today, you need to get stabbed. What I'm hoping, truly hoping,
is that I cause you pain and discomfort in the power of God
through the message of the gospel. That's what I hope. I'm not trying
to comfort you who have not confessed Jesus Christ. I'm trying to trouble
you. I mean, unless you come to know
that you're a sinner, why would you ever need a Savior? It doesn't
make sense. If you're such a goody two-shoes,
why are we celebrating Christmas? That God has come to earth, not
to spy out our sins, but to deliver us from our sins. And that's
the message of this Bible. And I know this about young people.
Young people get nervous. They see something's happening
in the world. They live. And they're going to see a lot
more instability here in the United States of America. They're
going to see things they've never seen. Amen. It's going to happen. I've seen this, too. And I've
always tried to figure this out, and I think I've got a handle
on it now. I have seen people make a profession of being converted
and turned back to the world, and I've always asked myself,
what happened? I want to tell you what happened.
You can't become a Christian without the Holy Ghost. Now,
you can walk on the aisle, you can shake the preacher's hand,
you can step over the line like we talked about last Sunday,
but I'm telling you, that's not going to get you in. You've got
to have a miracle on the inside. And all of those of you who came
forward last Sunday in both services, which was wonderful, If you stepped
over the line to Christ, but the Holy Ghost didn't urge you
to step over the line, had not done anything in your heart,
you know what? You're the same old person that
came forward. You've got to have something happen on the inside.
How many understand what I'm saying? I'm trying to make it
plain. You've got to have something on the inside of you. Really,
by the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit in you, subjectively
in you, you have to have a miracle. Have you had a miracle? Or did
you just join a church? Did you get sprinkled with holy
water when you were a baby? All you did is get wet. That's
all. There is no holy water. Holy
cow, it's not holy water that takes you to heaven. It's a miracle
on the inside. It's a personal living experience
with a living God and Savior. It's knowing Him. And so, My
old Southern Baptist professor that I used to read, B.H. Carroll,
and you've heard me quote him many, many times. He used to
say, if my poor voice is the only voice you hear today, you
may go to sleep. You know, you might get weary
and just, you know, you're hoping this thing will be over pretty
soon. But if in the providence of God through my voice you hear
the voice of God, you will leave here justified. You will leave
here knowing God. See, some of you today are probably
going to leave here and all you've heard is just me. And you may
come back and keep coming for a while. I have actually seen
people make a profession of faith and they turned out worse than
they were before. It's like these people who jump
in a lake of ice. It's like that. This guy cut
a hole in the ice and then ran out of a sauna and jumped in
the hole. I mean, he didn't stay too long though. That's the way
many Christians are. People in the church, people
who make professions, that they're a Christian. They jump in because
they've had some kind of gushy good... I don't know what happened.
But they jump out pretty quick. If any man be in Christ, he's
a new creation. You will not be the same if you ever get converted.
He'll change you from the inside out. I had a young man call me
this week and he said, Pastor Clark, please see me. I've got
to see you. We've kind of done business with
him for several years. And I said to him something like,
you know, something wrong? He goes, oh, no, nothing's wrong.
Something's happened to me. He said, I got to see. I said,
well, let's have lunch. He goes, no, I don't want to meet you
in a restaurant. I want to come over to your office.
So he come over and he starts talking about God and joy and
peace and happiness. And he looked at me and he goes,
What do you think happened to me? I said, I think you got born
again. He goes, I think so too. I've been in church all my life.
I mean, he was just out of his mind with joy. So, there are many who say that
they have found the Savior. But the Savior was never lost. And many make professions of
faith without ever realizing they need Him. Your profession
is no good unless you desperately, desperately knew that you needed
Him as your Savior, as your Redeemer, as the propitiation for your
sins, as the appeasing factor that God was angry about sin
and Jesus took your sins on the tree of the cross. The reason
the church is so ineffective in the world is because the world
is in the church. This church will be no more effective
in Pontiac than that of us having people who have truly been born
of the Spirit of God. And I know it's kind of old fogey
and it's not new modern religion to use terms like, you must be
born again. But you know, Jesus is not outdated.
And He said this, you must be born again. There's no compromise
there. And it's not getting religion.
The young man who came over with such joy had been in church all
his life. All his life. And let me say this to you. If
some of you got saved in church, Wow, you got a double blessing.
Because, see, you sitting in church and not a real Christian,
but acting like you are. You know, you use some of the
terms and, you know, you're a Methodist or a Presbyterian or something.
You go through the motions, but you've never seen yourself a
sinner. You're just as worldly as you ever were. And by the
way, those of you who are getting angry with me about abortion
and same-sex marriage. Somebody told me that they were
a liberal Christian. There just is no such thing.
What they meant was, you know, I voted for abortion, I voted
for same-sex marriage. So you getting angry about that?
Let me tell you this. When I read Romans 1, and God
says it is disgusting to me, it's an abomination in my sight,
for men to be having sex with men and women with women. You
know what every Christian says who has the Holy Ghost? Amen. And it's offensive to you. Let
me tell you, if this is not offensive to you, I would question. I would
question. Because you know who wrote this
book right here? The Holy Ghost. It's Holy Spirit breathed. That's
all. So you can get mad all you want
to get, but if you tend to, you're going to hear it. You're going
to hear this. And the question's going to be, who's on the Lord's
side? And what we all need to know who attend here is, am I
really saved? I mean, do I say amen to the
Word of God? Do I really step over the line
and take my stand for God? I do it in a humble way. Wherever
I go, I want you all to remember this. If you caught the ball
in the end zone and started toward the other goal line, that was
God. When you crossed the 50-yard
line, that was God. When you got to the five yard
line, that was God. And when you spiked the ball
in the end zone, that was God. It's God who puts you in the
way, leads you along the way, takes you all the way. It's grace.
There must be a probing of the heart. Really, you know, if we
take addiction, the only way you're going to overcome addiction
is to have a power in you greater than the power of addiction. That's all. You know, you can
go to all the rehab centers you want to go to. But if Almighty
God doesn't prick your heart, you're going to love crack until
you die. And if God ever troubles your
heart and does something on the inside, you're going to hate
every evil way, even when you do it. Right? Everybody that sinned this week,
raise your hand. The rest of you are liars. Everybody who didn't raise their
hand. Yeah, there's a war going on in all of us who are Christians. I fight against evil every day.
There's no one that makes me more sick than me. Somebody says,
well, I'm sick of you. I'm sick of me. Is that right? Because my heart
has been changed. I'm a new creature. And I hate
what I once loved and love what I once hated. You remember a
time when you hated going to church? You hated hearing... You know? You were so glad when
they had Saturday night church so you could get it over and
sleep in. Nothing wrong with having Saturday night church.
One of the old Puritans I was reading this week said this.
You can take a piece of silk thread and try to sew with it
as long as you like. But you will do nothing with
silk thread alone. You have to have a sharp piercing
needle that draws the silk thread after it. You get my drift? The
Holy Spirit. See, I can just talk to you and
talk to you and reason with you. You know, I get a little aggravated
when you don't understand. It's so simple to me. Some things
are so simple to me. I go, how come they don't get
it? Because there's no discernment there. There's no umption there. When the Holy Spirit borns you
again, He gives you an unction. You really know. Really. That's why when people say things
to me, you know, pastor, you need to move on. You need to
preach about this. You need to preach about that. I don't have
to tell you adultery is wrong. If you're a Christian, you know
you shouldn't be sleeping with somebody besides your husband
or wife. Amen. You know that. I don't have to
preach against that all the time. The more I preach against it,
the more people do it. What needs to happen is a change in your
heart. Amen. There's constraints on
me by the Spirit of God. There's me, this new creature.
You're going to think this is crazy, but that's OK. You ever
talk to the real you? I'm going to tell you something
I haven't ever told anybody. I talk to my spirit. I do. I talk to the real me. The Spirit
who knows Christ. The Spirit that loves Christ.
And actually, we have fellowship. The new me. I mean, when I lay
this shell down, something's gone, right? What's gone? The
real me. Somebody said, do you believe
in self-talk? Yeah, I talk to myself all the
time. Sometimes I sing to myself. Sometimes
I quote Scripture to myself. That's right in my face. Now,
you know better than that. I mean, that's kind of the conversation.
The amazing thing is the Spirit talks back to me. There has to
be birth pains. Has there ever been a time in
your life where you mourned over your corruption? I mean, you
actually saw it. That you were a rattlesnake in
the baby's crib. That there was something wrong. Something wrong. No one in here. No parent in
here. He said, now, children, today,
Daddy and Mommy is going to show you how to stick out your tongue
when we tell you to do something and go, na, na, na, na, na. You
didn't tell, where did they come up with that? Or, no! Or, shut up! You didn't teach your children
that. Where did they get that? How come you don't have perfect
kids who just fall right in line and do everything you tell them?
By the way, don't be too hard on your kids. They came out of
you. Look out, boys. I'm giving away secrets here
now. I just want you to think about
it. I will not be a preacher of comfort until I see pain. I can comfort you, but I've got
to see pain first. I will comfort you by telling
you If there's pain over your sin, that there's a Savior. That
there's one, though you've wallowed in the stables of sin and are
black as all hell, will make you white as snow. That there's
no condemnation to those that are in Christ. But if you're
not sick, you don't need a physician. If you're not lost, you don't
need to be found. If you're not a sinner, you don't
need a Savior. Now what is this promise? that
this verse talks about. Well, it's actually the Apostle
Peter's quoting from the prophet Joel. And the promise is that
in the latter days, the Spirit is going to be poured out on
all flesh. The Holy Spirit. Let me tell
you this, in case you're thinking, this is wacko. Right now, if
you're not a Christian, I mean, you don't know. You don't even
know whether there's a God or not. I mean, you know you've been
sprinkled. You know, mom and dad went to church. You know
something about all of that. There's maybe a big guy upstairs
or somebody. I mean, you're kind of like that.
Your greatest need is for the Holy Ghost to convict you and
convince you that you're a sinner. Because you'll never seek the
Savior. This will all be baloney. This will all be just Sunday
morning religion. There's nothing real about it. Just a formality
that we go through. We're fallen. We're poisoned. We need to be illuminated. You know, the Corinthian letter
says, God has cast a ray of light. And I was telling the earlier
crowd about when we were cleaning up that 1,700,000 square feet
of the General Motors plant. It had no electricity in the
plant. So when we were going in there, they had taken a pipe
out of the roof in this huge, monstrous factory. Where that
pipe was, it let the light some hundred feet up shine all the
way through down to the floor. God has cast a ray of light in
a dark place to give the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ. When God turned the lights on,
Every Christian in here can say this. When God turned the lights
on in your cellar, it was a scary place. There were roots growing
out of that place that looked like spiders. There were things
running across the floor. A lot of mess going on down there. And God cast a ray of light.
And that's when you cry out, God be merciful to me, the sinner.
Right? Let me close by saying this.
You get these two things together. First of all, the Holy Spirit
coming to you and convicting you of your sinnership. And the
Holy Spirit always points you to Christ. The Holy Spirit never
leaves you in the dark down and dreary. He'll always say this,
there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins. Trust Jesus Christ as your Savior
who bear your sins in His own body on the tree. Jesus said
this, I'm going away, but I won't leave you orphans. I'll be here
with you. That never made sense to me for
a long, long time. Oh, it makes perfect sense now.
Because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. And the Holy
Spirit wrote the Bible, which is one book about one man, the
God-man, Jesus Christ, who came into the world to save sinners.
Just contemplate this. That God invaded history. Now for God to come down here,
He must have had a great mission, don't you think? I mean, for
God who made this world to come down here, there must have been
some task that no one else could do. It was to save poor sinners. Now just think about this God
who so loved, who came to earth. And by the way, in all religions
there's no story like this one. And that Mary had a baby and
she was a virgin. That ought to give everyone's
attention. That's the only time that ever happened. It will never
happen again. And a virgin gave birth. And what did the angel say? The
Holy Ghost shall come upon you. And you shall conceive. And you
remember when Elizabeth came to Mary. And Elizabeth was pregnant
with John the Baptist. And Mary said, to Elizabeth,
I'm pregnant too. And she told a story about she
was going to bear the Savior, give birth to the Savior. And
John the Baptist leaped in his mother's womb. John the Baptist
did a little dance. I mean, he got down. It's the only recording in the Bible
of a baby yet born dancing. It was enough to make the Baptists
shout. And the Baptists don't shout. Some of you Baptists will
get that a little later. I was going to talk to you a
little bit about this. It says, for the promise is unto
you and to your children and to all that are far off, even
as many as the Lord our God shall call. There are many of our Christian
friends or professing Christian friends who believe this teaches
that Parents can have their children, their infants baptized. And because
the parents are saved, the children will be saved by sprinkling. Not... Let me tell you this. You're
not going to heaven because your mother and dad were Christians.
You have to have a personal experience with Jesus Christ for yourself.
It's true. It's very, very true. And the
promise is made to you. That if you come to Christ, He'll
not turn thumbs down on you. Whether you're a crack addict
or a king. Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. The Spirit and the Bride say
come. Let him that is a thirst come and whosoever will, let
him come and drink of the water of life. Are you wounded today? Are you sick of being sick? Are
you tired of carrying the baggage? Maybe you never used drugs. Maybe
you're just a young person sitting in here, but the world is crazy
and you're full of self-doubt and fear and you know there's
something wrong on the inside. And the Holy Spirit has showed
that to you. He will also usher you to the
feet of Jesus Christ. I'm so glad to know Jesus Christ
as Lord and Savior. Not a form of religion, but a
Savior.