most important men in the Bible. So far as I know, not one of
these men was a preacher. None of them wrote a word of
inspiration, or as far as I know, anything else. They were not
prophets, they were not apostles. They appear to have been men
who were utterly insignificant, if not completely unknown by
their peers. The names, ages, places of their
birth, we do not know. Yet these four men rank among
the most important men revealed in this book. You see, these
four men, these four unknown insignificant nobodies, were
instruments by which God Almighty was pleased to bring a chosen
sinner to the Savior in the experience of his salvation. What a privilege. What an honor. These four men
had a friend who was paralyzed, impotent, both physically and
spiritually. And the Lord Jesus Christ, when
they, when he saw their faith, as they brought their friend
to him, looked upon their impotent friend and said, thy sins be
forgiven thee. He healed his and healed his
soul, and this man went on his way rejoicing, glorifying God. The story of their remarkable
faith and zeal is recorded by Mark and Luke by divine inspiration. Never in all the world did a
mortal man perform a more important work than these four men performed.
Because of their labors, a sinner was saved and God was glorified. Now let's read the story. Luke
chapter 5, verse 17. Luke chapter 5. And it came to
pass on a certain day, as he was teaching, that there were
Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by. I read that just
a little bit ago and I thought that's what they do best. They
were just sitting by looking for something to carpet, looking
for something to criticize. They were sitting by watching,
always looking for a snare. They came out of every town of
Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem. Now look at this. And the power
of the Lord was present to heal them. They went home. just like they
came down, but it wasn't because of a lack of power. It wasn't
because there was no power to heal them. They sat by and perished
in their sin because they would not believe that the power of
the Lord was present. And behold, men brought in a
bed." Now, when we read about bed or a couch in the scriptures,
in the four gospels particularly, we have an idea, you know, of
a four-poster bed with a canopy over it. That's not what it was.
It was just a mat. It was kind of like, it wasn't
even as thick as the mat you'd have at the door. It was just
one of these blankets prepared so that poor folks could stretch
it out on the ground to keep from getting so dirty. as they
sat by the way and begged. And so they bring him in a bed,
they brought him just in a mat, sort of like a hammock, nothing
more than that, only no strings. They brought him in a bed, brought
in a bed a man which was taken with palsy, and they sought means
to bring him in and to lay him before the Lord Jesus. Verse
19. And when they could not find
by what means they might bring him in because of the multitude,
they went up upon the housetop and let him down through the
tiling with his couch into the midst before Jesus. And when
he, the Lord Jesus, saw their faith, when he saw their faith,
and I don't have any idea what all that says, but it doesn't
say when he saw the man's faith, it says, Gary, when he saw their
faith. the faith of these four men who brought it. When he saw
their faith, he said to him, man, thy sins are forgiven thee. And the scribes and Pharisees
began to reason these fellows who were sitting by. They began
to, they began to cart and find faults. That's what good religious
folks do. They began to reason, saying,
who is that speaketh blasphemies. Who can forgive sins but God
alone? And the Lord caught them in their
own trap. But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answering
said to them, What reason ye in your hearts? Which is easier,
to say thy sins be forgiven thee or to say rise up and walk? Well
of course it's easier to say your sins are forgiven because
nobody knows. Nobody can tell for sure whether it's got any
authority. So the Master says, verse 24,
that you may know that the Son of Man is himself the Son of
God, that the Son of Man has power upon earth to forgive sin,
he said to the sick of Papalzé. I say unto thee, arise, take
up thy couch, and go into thine house. And immediately he arose. He rose up before them, and took
up that whereon he lay, and departed to his house, glorifying God. And those fellows who were sitting
by, full of criticism, they were all amazed. And other folks,
they glorified God, and were filled with fear, saying, we've
seen strange things today. And they had. Now you try to
get a picture in your mind's eye of the scene before us. It's
a remarkable story. Let me show you what these men
knew and what they did. These facts are revealed in our
text. Number one, they knew who Christ is. They knew that he
had power. They knew something about the
power of his omnipotent grace for sinners. They knew that Jesus
Christ is himself that God in human flesh who has power both
to forgive sin and over all other elements of the world as well,
for he's God Almighty. They knew a man who needed him. They had a friend who was They
had a friend who was paralyzed. They knew Christ had power as
God Almighty, and they had a friend who desperately needed what only
Christ could do for them. And they knew where the Lord
was. He was out in this place, somewhere in the area of Galilee,
and there was a huge crowd around Him. He was under a pavilion
type thing, and these crowds were thronging around Him. And
they, knowing where He was, and knowing their friend's need,
and knowing that He is God Almighty, They resolved together. They
got together, these four fellas. I don't know, maybe they were
standing outside visiting and said, wait a minute, you know
Joe? Remember Joe? Maynard, if he could be brought
here, if we could somehow get old Joe
down here before this God, he might just heal him. And they
resolved to bring him. By thoughtful pain, by diligent
labor, by perseverance, they succeeded in bringing their friend
to the Savior. The Scripture says they sought
means to bring him in. They brought him. to the master,
but as they brought in, there was a huge crowd, they couldn't
get in. They couldn't nudge their way in, carrying a son on his
cot. So they found a way to get him with his cot up on the ceiling. And while the master is teaching
and folks are sitting around listening, they begin to break
up the tiles. I mean, they went to some trouble,
and they were, I'm sure, looked at with a good bit of scorn.
What on this earth do you think you're doing? They broke up the
tiles, made a hole big enough in the roof of the house to let
him down right in the midst. I can imagine the hush fell over
that crowd. Folks in Denver, what are those
folks doing? Look at those folks. I wish they'd not disrupt the
service. I wish they'd be still. What are they doing? What do
they think they're doing? Then the master looked at them,
looked at their friend, and everybody got real quiet. And he said,
as he beheld their faith, man, you're forgiven of all your sin.
And then he healed him of his disease. I hold these four men before
myself and you as examples we ought to follow. They show us
the importance and the necessity of bringing sinners to the Savior.
I know that salvation is of the Lord, and you do. No man can
save himself, and we can't save anyone else. It is not possible
for us to create a new heart in any sinner. We cannot give
men and women repentance and faith in Christ. That's God's
prerogative alone. We can't reveal Christ to men.
No matter how diligently I study and prepare, no matter how plainly
and forcefully I endeavor to preach the gospel, I can't make
Christ known to anyone. That's the work of God's Spirit.
But there are some things that we can do. Some things we can
do for needy sinners. And what we can do, we are responsible
to do before God Almighty. You understand that? What we
can do, what we are able to do, what God gives us the opportunity
and the means to do, we are responsible to do for the salvation of God's
elect and the glory of his son. Now these things we know are
plainly revealed in scripture. All men by nature are totally
depraved. Man is spiritually dead. He's impotent, yes, but he's
more than impotent. He's spiritually dead. He has
absolutely no ability to do anything for himself spiritually. He has
absolutely no awareness of his condition spiritually. He's dead. Absolutely dead. Not only dead,
but also rotten, he's depraved, corrupt, from within, defiled,
so that he can do nothing good before God, nothing good that
is right before God, nothing righteous in the eyes of God.
The sinner cannot save himself. You who are without Christ, you
cannot save yourselves. You cannot exercise faith on
your own. I tell you that right up front.
Only God Almighty can give you faith. Only God can bring you
to Christ. And yet there are some things
you can do. And if you're smart you will. There are some things
you can do and you're responsible to do. You remember that Ethiopian
eunuch in Acts chapter 8? That eunuch didn't know God.
He was religious but he was as lost as he could be and he knew
it. But I tell you what he did, he bought him a Bible. And he
read it. He read it. He heard about the
meeting up in Jerusalem, and he took a long, costly, dangerous
journey from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to hear about the God of whom
he read in the book. And as he came away, though he
did not find the Savior and did not meet God while he was at
Jerusalem, he came away still reading the book. He was reading
over in Isaiah 53, about the sacrifice of the Son of God.
And he was asking himself, who on earth is he talking about?
Is the prophet talking about himself? Is he talking about
somebody else? He said, well how do you know he's asking that?
Because as soon as Philip came up, God sent a preacher to him.
And Philip walked by and he saw him reading Isaiah 53. Maybe
you heard him reading it. He said, uh, he said, sir, do
you understand what they're talking about? He said, how can I except
some man show me? Of whom does the prophet speak?
Of himself or some other man? Philip said, scoot over and I'll
tell you. And he jumped up in the chariot
and preached Christ to him. And the eunuch had Christ revealed
to him as he sought him in the scripture. Now you will be wise
if you care for your soul to find yourself a book written
by God and make this book known to yourself. Read it. and seek
to understand it. Put yourself in the house of
God under the ministry of the gospel. Maybe, just maybe, God
will be pleased to have mercy on your soul. This I know. If
you seek him with all your heart, you'll find him. That's what
he says. Well, preacher, how do you reconcile? I don't attempt
to reconcile anything in this book. I'm just telling you what
it says. If you seek him with all your heart, you'll find him.
God has an elect people in this world whom he's chosen for himself
in eternal love and determined to save them and save them he
will, everyone. The Lord Jesus Christ redeemed
God's elect, everyone of them. He put away their sins by the
sacrifice of himself. We talk about forgiveness and
say if you believe you'll be forgiven. If you believe you've
already been forgiven, you just come to experience it. If you
believe, you'll be saved. If you believe you've already
been saved, you just come in, get in, get on the experience
of it. But I'm telling you, Jesus Christ has redeemed the people
who shall be saved by the almighty, irresistible, sovereign grace
of God the Holy Spirit. He will make his elect willing
in the day of his power. But this is also plainly revealed
in the book. God has chosen the use of men
to reach with the gospel. Merle, if he wanted to, he could
speak to you by an angel or by that box hanging on the wall,
if he wanted to. If he wanted to, he could speak
directly, without the instrumentality of anything, if that were his
pleasure. But God Almighty, in condescending mercy, love, and
grace, has chosen to speak to sinners by the mouths of saved
sinners, the word of his grace. It pleased God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. Now this is not some
limitation to God's sovereignty. On the contrary, it's a marvelous
display of God's sovereignty. I'll be honest with you, I could
understand him speaking by that box better than I can speaking
by me. There's nothing in that box to hinder anything. There's
much in me to hinder everything. I can understand God speaking
by an angel far better than speaking by me. But God Almighty in sovereign
mercy has condescended to give us the privilege of speaking
the word of grace to chosen sinners for the glory of his son and
the building of his kingdom. What grace! Now I want to do what I can tonight
to build a fire under our hearts, to inspire us to zealously give
ourselves to this business of bringing sinners to the Savior.
Let me try to answer a few questions. Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? That's the first issue to be
settled. Do you know the Son of God? Do you know the grace
of God? You can't tell anybody about
somebody you don't know. You can't tell anybody about
grace you've not experienced. Oh, you can talk about it in
theory. You can talk about Christ like you might talk about George
Washington. But you can't talk about somebody
you don't know with living knowledge. You can't introduce someone to
a person you've never met. You can't tell someone about
grace you've never experienced. Do you know the grace of God? Have you yourself then made the
recipient of God's sovereign mercy. Has God Almighty come
down to you by the power of His Spirit, opened your heart, and
dropped in your soul the rich, rich treasure of His grace, Jesus
Christ the Lord? Has God given you life and faith
in His Son? Has God made Christ known to
you? You say, Preacher, I don't know.
Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. There's no question in my mind. There's a lot of things I don't
know. A lot of things I don't know about myself. And regrettably,
a lot of things I know about myself I just do not acknowledge,
but they're just facts. But I know I'm married to that
woman. And I know I love her. And I know that our hearts are
knit together. I know it because it's just so.
I've experienced it. I've experienced the blessed
privilege of loving her and being loved by her. And I want to tell
you something. As contrary as my words and actions
often are to that fact, the fact doesn't change. And I know the
Son of God. I've experienced His mercy, love,
and grace. I've been taught of His Spirit,
and I love Him, and I trust Him. And I want to tell you something.
As contrary as my words and actions and thoughts often are to that
fact, that fact doesn't change. I'm his and he's mine. My beloved
has said unto me, I am thy salvation. And I have said, he is mine,
and it's so. This is what I'm asking. Do you
know the gospel of the grace of God? Do you know how it is
that God saves sinners by the substitutionary sacrifice of
his son? Now this is not a deep profound
thing. I know folks try to make it so. Folks try to, you know,
they We can, we can do the best job on this earth of confusing
things. We're good at it. We're good
at it. The gospel of God's grace, most profound, deepest truth
revealed in Holy Scripture, revealed and known by men in all the world.
And yet it's the simplest thing in the world. It involves these
three things. Ruin. Ruin. Do you know what it is to be
ruined? I mean ruined. We were ruined, Bobby, by the
fall of our father Adam. We came into this world as ruined
sinners, and we spent our lives ruining ourselves. And we brought
ourselves to utter ruin because of sin. Utter ruin because of
unbelief. Utter ruin because of our rebellion.
The gospel involves something else. It involves redemption.
Redemption. Boy, I sure would like to understand
redemption. Have you ever been in prison?
You ever been in bondage? You ever been sold into slavery?
Have you ever been shut up? Shut up by an enemy that you
could not by any means get? You could not by any means find
freedom? Have you ever found your hands shackled and your
feet shackled so that you could not move from your bondage to
be redeemed? to have somebody come along and
break the shackles and cast them away and heal the chafing. We've been redeemed by the blood
of Jesus Christ. He has paid our ransom price
to God's justice and by the power of the Spirit set us free. It's
redemption. The gospel is regeneration which
is just redemption applied, redemption experienced. It is God the Holy
Spirit giving Now, you start talking about
the new birth, and you don't better show it to the folks who
say, well, I know I was saved. Back yesterday, or the day before,
20 years ago, I was a rebel, I was a drunk, I was a dope head,
I was this, I was that, and I gave my heart to Jesus, and things
have been different ever since. I'm gonna tell you something. You don't know anything about
God's grace yet. No, sir. No, sir. If you've got to pull
out a birth certificate to prove you're alive, something's wrong
with you. Something's bad wrong. How do you know that you've been
born of God? I'm believing. I live before
Him. I trust Him. I call on Him. I worship Him. He's my Savior. Now if you know Christ, If you
know anything about God's grace, if you've experienced this blessed
thing called the forgiveness of sins, if you have been made
to know the privilege of being the sons of God, then you ought
to confess it. And you will. Do you know any
place where sinners are sure to hear the gospel of God's grace?
Do you know the place where the power of God is present to heal
the souls of men? I know this, I know this, the
purpose of every local church is the preaching of the gospel.
That's our only purpose. I'm not by any means the kind
of preacher I ought to be or want to be. I can't speak as
plainly or eloquently as some. My master deserves much better
than I can give, but he's taught me the gospel. And I deliberately
make it my business every time I stand to preach, to preach
the gospel of God's grace to you or wherever I go. It's my
business. I don't preach but when I preach
the gospel ever, ever. And our Lord promised, this is
what he promised. He promised Merle, when he established
the Ark of the Covenant and the mercy seat in the tabernacle,
he said, I'll meet you at the mercy seat. He promised he would. And Christ is the mercy seat.
He promises where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them. And I'm going to tell you something.
If God needs sinners, this is where you're going to meet them.
Where Christ is worshipped. Where the gospel of his grace
is preached. Number three. Do you know anybody who needs
healing? Do you? Do you know anybody who
needs the grace of God? Do you know anybody who needs
the touch of the master's hand? Do you know anybody who needs
mercy? Do you know anybody who needs
the Lord God Almighty to stop them in their mad rush to hell?
I know this. If we're truly concerned about
something, if we're truly concerned about it, We're diligent concerning
it. We're dead earnest about it.
You get talking to somebody about politics, and they'll tell you
right now how they're going to vote, most folks will, and how
you ought to. Don't hesitate, because they're
dyed in the wool Democrats, they're dyed in the wool Republicans. Why is it that so many people
take no pains with regard to the things of God? How is it
they never find time for prayer, the reading of this book, the
worship of God, the hearing of the gospel? What's the secret
of their constant string of excuses for neglecting the things of
God, the worship of God, the house of God? How is it that
the very same men who are full of zeal, I mean, I mean full
of zeal about basketball, football, making a living, earning money,
stock market, full of zeal about everything. I mean full of zeal
about everything. If they just get an opportunity, if they don't
just, you've got a slight crack, they'll talk to you for an hour
about something, because they're full of zeal about it. And yet
those same men, while professing faith in Christ, never show any
real interest in things of God. No real zeal, no real concern.
I'll tell you why. Because these things are really
irrelevant as far as they're concerned. These three things
are more important to me than anything in this world. More
important to me than this lady, our daughter and son-in-law,
our granddaughter. More important to me than you. I want to know
the gospel of God's grace. I make it my business to study
it. I don't presume that I've attained
anything. I want to be saved by the gospel. I want to know
Him. Him, who is the Son of God. I want to preach the gospel to
sinners. If the glory of Christ is important
to you, the worship of Christ will be important to you. If
the souls of your children are important to you, you'll see
to it that they hear the gospel. If the souls of men are important
to you, you'll do what you can to see to it that they hear it
as well. Pastor, what can we do to bring
sinners to Christ? We can't all be preachers, shouldn't
all be preachers. We can't all be missionaries,
shouldn't all be missionaries. But I'll tell you what you can
do. You can adorn the doctrine of God where you live. Adorn
the doctrine of God our Savior. What do you mean preacher? God give me grace to so live
in my house and so live in my community that folks who know
me want to know the God I worship. Give me grace to so live that
men will have no reason to stick their finger in my face and say,
there, that's what Christianity is. Give me grace to adorn the
doctrine of the gospel. There's something else you can
do. You can tell sinners what you know. I love the response
of that man whom the Lord healed of his blindness. They came and
asked him all kinds of questions. Religious folks, you know, they
put him on trial. He said, I know this. I was blind and now I see. I know that. Well, who did it? Let me show you. I'll be glad
to tell you about it. I'll be glad to tell you about it. Make
it your business to tell people about Christ and his gospel.
Do you know that he's precious? Do you know that he forgives
sin? Don't argue folks about religion. Just don't do it. Don't do it. We've been looking
at John chapter 4. Our master took great pains not
to argue with that gal about religion. Just tell the folks
that he's precious. Tell the folks he forgives sin.
Tell the folks that God saves sinners by his grace in Jesus
Christ. Make it your business to make
him known. Do what you can to put the gospel in the hands of
people. I don't mean, you know, walk around with your shirt stuffed
full of tracks and all that nonsense. No, no, no. But seek an opportunity
and put the word in the hands of men and in the ears of men
and before the eyes of men. You ladies, pack up all kinds
of stuff on your refrigerator. Every now and then I'll go somewhere
in our congregation or visiting somebody else who gets our bulletins.
And I'll see if cut out an article or a portion of it. Because if
there's somebody in the house, they want to see it and see it
constantly. Surest place to see it is right
where you put your hand on it. Stick it right there. Maybe they need to see it over
and over again. Some time ago, someone wrote to me and told
me he wrote it. He just told me in person. I
can't remember for sure. But folks have got an article.
I remember the article about that long. He said, will you
be content to go to hell? That was the title of it. Mom
and dad clipped it out and laid it on her dresser. Will you be content to go to
hell? Will you be content for somebody else to go to hell while
you do nothing? You can give of your means to
support the gospel. You can pray. You can do what
you can, go at some effort, go at some expense, go to some bother
to bring folks to hear the gospel. For the Paul Fackers, now with
the Lord. I went up to preach at Pike for one night. This had
been a long, long time ago. Congregation just to all, there
wasn't more than 10 or 12, 15 of them at the most. But Paul
had built the church building up there, built the parsonage.
said, Henry, find us a preacher. And so the church got started
just that way. I went to preach one night on a Thursday night.
And over here were, I guess, 15, 18 folks from the church
there in Pikeville. And over here were 75 or 100
people. 75 or 100 people. Well, what were they doing there?
One way or another, Paul had some influence over every one
of them. With a lot of them he wrote their checks. But one way
or another, he had some influence over them. And he managed to
figure out a way to get them to come hear the gospel. Now
what God does for them or doesn't do, I don't know. But he was
determined they're going to hear it. They're going to hear it. Built that
building. Somebody in this town is going
to hear the gospel. If I can do anything at all about it,
we can give ourselves relentlessly to this business of the gospel
of God's grace. But why should we do it? Why? Because Christ is everything. Christ is everything. You here
without him have nothing but wrath and judgment and death
forever. I don't care how fancy you dress,
how well you live, How pretty your face is. How brilliant your
mind is. I don't care how popular you
are in this world. If you don't have Christ, you
got nothing but death. Nothing but condemnation. Nothing
but bondage. And I know, because I've been
there. And we have this treasure. Oh,
Larry, the treasure of the gospel, the treasure of Christ in these
earthen vessels. And God has sent us to give him
away. That's right. Now, I'm not offering
him. Give it. Give it. Here he is. Spirit and bride say come. Come
to him. Taste and see that the Lord is
good. God to help me to come. Amen. All right, you listen to him.