Luke's Gospel, Chapter 9. I was telling Brother Larry this
morning, or yesterday rather, that I had something on my heart
that I was going to preach on this morning. And then I got
something else on my mind, and then I got this on my mind. Spurgeon
said one time, he said, as a preacher and as a pastor,
he said, there's nothing more awful to deal with except having too much. He said,
people complain about, well, I don't have anything to preach
on this morning. He said, well, there's something more dreadful
than that when you've got too much. So sometimes when you got
this message, and you got this message, and you're sitting there
thinking, what am I supposed to do with all these? But I preached
on this before, but it was on my heart, and I wanted to share
it with you this morning. In Luke's Gospel, chapter 9,
in just two verses, in verses 10 and verse 11. And the apostles, when they were
returned, told him all that they had done. And he took them and
went aside privately unto a desert place belonging unto the city
called Bethsaida. And the people, when they knew
it, followed him. And he received them and spake
unto them of the kingdom of God and healed them that had need
of being healed. Heal them that had need of being
healed. And that's what I was thinking
about this week, the healing of the needy. He healed those who had need
of being healed. That's our Master, isn't it?
I would say, and I think the Word of God would bear witness
with it, and I think probably the judgment will reveal it also,
that there has never been a needy sinner that has come to the Savior,
but he had his need met. That's just the way he is. He's
a physician. That's why he came into this
world, and before anyone else called him that, he addressed
himself that, as the physician. And what does the physician do?
He heals folks, doesn't he? And sometimes the physician seeks
to get themselves a great name. I have a friend of mine that
works with doctors, and he said some of the proudest and most
arrogant people in the world are doctors. And some doctors
are so proud and arrogant, they look for patients that no one
else can heal, because they want to make a name for themselves. When Jesus Christ came into this
world, He's not proud and He's not arrogant, but He's out to
get a name for Himself. And one of the ways He makes
a name for Himself is healing those that nobody else can heal.
He heals our souls' diseases, doesn't He? He healed those. And the Holy Spirit could have
moved upon Luke here to write, He healed all of those. He could
have put that in there because I imagine He did. Because we
never find His sin anyway without healing. He healed those who
had need of being healed. And you know, most of the message
I got today is probably we would apply it to lost people. But
when we talk about need in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, I
have been saved 47 years, and I was thinking yesterday to myself,
Lord, I need you today as much as I've ever needed you in my
life. And sometimes I spend time meditating and speaking to myself,
convincing myself of how I need Christ. I need Him. I need Him. Sometimes when I'm
praying, I take up David's prayer. You do this too. The Lord is
my shepherd. Don't you ever approach Christ
that way. Lord, You're my shepherd. I need
You because I'm a lost sheep. I need to be led beside still
waters. I need you to lead me in green
pastures. I need you to protect me from
the wolves and the lions and the bears. I sometimes think
of the Lord when I'm praying as my rock, because I sometimes
feel like I'm sinking. And I tell Him, Lord, You're
my rock in this mirey land. Let me stand upon You so I won't
sink. David said, when He brought me
up out of a horrible pit in the Murray clay, He set my feet upon
a rock and established my going. This is a Murray world, isn't
it? I tell you, there's traps, there's
mud that we get into, there's no standing. But boy, oh Christ
our Lord, He's a rock. I think of Him sometimes as my
high tower. They used to build the big high
towers, and when the enemy came, they got up in those big rock
towers, and the enemy couldn't get to them. He couldn't burn
them down because they were made out of stone. You couldn't tear
them down because they fit them together in a way they couldn't
be torn down. David said, He's my high tower. Christ is my high tower, and
I need Him. I need Him. And I spend time,
brothers and sisters, telling Him, Lord, I need You. I need
You. And it just seemed like the time when I realized that
I really need Him, that He heals me, He helps me. I was praying
to Him this morning, and that passage come to me, that of God
are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is maiden to you, Christ
is maiden to you, and the first thing He's maiden to us is what?
Wisdom. Why is Christ our wisdom? Because
we're so stupid. Aren't we? We're so ignorant. The first thing we need is somebody
to teach us. And He's our wisdom. And as our
wisdom, He represented us before God. He knew the will of God.
And so He represented us. I'll be your wisdom. And righteousness. He of God has made unto us righteousness. Why do we need Him to be our
righteousness? Because we're so sinful. And He's made unto us sanctification. Why is He made unto us sanctification?
Because we're so unholy. Unholy by nature. Filthy by nature. And finally, redemption. He's
made unto us redemption. Because we're bound in these
bodies of bone and clay. Oh, wretched man that I am! Who
will free me? Who will redeem me? Redeemed!
And we sing that here and we live in the hope of it, don't
we? Hope of being redeemed. The redemption of our body. We
lived in hope of that. I tell you, someday we'll look
back and praise God for redemption accomplished. And right now,
we say to ourselves, Lord, I need you. Lord Jesus, I need you. I need Him, brothers and sisters.
I need Him. When I was lost, He brought me to know my need
of Him. And now that He's saved me, I still need Him. I need Him. And my text tells
us this morning, it answers these two questions. If you're here
this morning and you're a saved person, the Lord has saved you,
I can tell you the way you come to Christ. I can tell you why
you come to Him. You needed Him. He healed those who had need.
And if you're here this morning and you've not come to Christ,
I can tell you why you've not come to Him. You don't need Him.
You don't need Him. So it answers both of those questions,
doesn't it? I need Him. I need Him. And He healed all
that had need of Him. I want to tell you about four
people who came to the Lord Jesus Christ this morning. And I want
to apply it to the situation that I have discussed with so
many different people. And I think this applies to just
about everybody that either don't feel their need of coming to
Christ or they do and they're hindered from coming to Him.
But I have ran into a few people, not many, but a few, that says,
I feel too vile. I'm just too sinful. I've told
you about a young man that I've talked to for years, and one
of his complaints, and I've come to realize this man is really
honest. He's trying to be honest. He
says, I just feel like that I'm too sinful. I wouldn't believe that if I
hadn't found other people like that. William Kalper. wrote so many
of the hymns that we sang, wonderful hymns. You know he attempted
suicide several times. And the reason he attempted suicide
because he thought he was such a vile, wretched sinner that
he was too vile to be saved. Now I know the root of such an
attitude. It's unbelief. It's unbelief. It's a Basically, a denial of
the marriage of Jesus Christ to save. Where sin abounded,
Greg, grace doth much more abound. The viler I am, the more grace
I can find in the Savior to save me. The trouble that we're having,
I think, mainly in our day, people are too good to be saved. They're
too good to be saved, not too vile. We don't hear that complaint
much. But let's suppose that's the
case, and if you run into anybody this way that says, I'm just
too vile, I've sinned, my sin runs too deep. I've sinned against
God, I've sinned against man, and I'm just too vile. Let me
tell you about a man that was vile. Let me tell you about one
of the most vilest men Jesus Christ ever healed. and see maybe
if you're that vile. There was a man who got out of
bed one morning and was getting dressed and as he was pulling
his pants up he saw a little blister on his knee. And he thought, oh my, what is
that? And he tried to put it out of
his mind and he went to work that day and come that night
to get undressed and go to bed and there was two blisters on
his knee. And his heart began to sink.
And he knew what his requirements was. He knew what was required
of him of the nation and of the authority. Being a Jew, if you
found blisters on your body, you had to go to the priest to
be examined. He went to the priest. And the
priest examined his blisters and said, we can't let you go
back home. We've got to confine you. And they did for seven days. The priest came back and beat
him again. And the priest said, oh no, oh
no, you've got leprosy. Some of you know what it is when
you go to your doctor and they run some tests and they bring
you back and the doctor sets you down and pulls his little
stool up close to you and looks at you right in the eye and says,
you've got cancer. And I have had dear friends and
loved ones that the doctor scooted up real close to them and said,
ìThereís nothing we can do.î I had a dear friend of mine and
he said, ìMy heart sank in me when I heard those words. My
heart sank.î And here was this man and the priest told him,
ìYou have the most dreaded disease that this world has ever known.î
A disease that cannot be healed. You're out to die an awful agonizing
death. You have leprosy. And the man was not allowed to
go home to say goodbye to his wife and children. Someone else
was sent to his house to get his clothes. They brought his
clothes to him. And a group of people took him
outside the town on an old dusty road and said, don't you come
back in town. If someone comes close to you,
you cry out, unclean, unclean, I'm a leper. Don't you be caught
in the temple. Don't you come back into society.
If this spreads, it will be devastating. He remained outside of society. They would take him out clothes
and leave him. They would take him out food and leave him. And
he lived with other lepers outside of town. There was this man that
his leprosy came so bad that the Bible says in Mark chapter
1 and Luke tells us that he was filled with leprosy. Now you and I have never seen
anybody probably with true leprosy that they had back in the Bible
days. If you want to read some heart-wrenching eyewitness accounts
of men with leprosy, go and let John Gill tell you about some
eyewitness accounts. I read one eyewitness account
of a man who would hear groanings. He said we were off in the desert
place and we heard these awful, awful groanings and screeches
and we finally went around through the bush and we found this man
and he said he was eat up with leprosy. His walls had broke
out all over his body. They would dry up in awful scabs
only to boils to break out again and dry up. And the fluid that
came out of those boils could not be endured for the stench
of it. The chemistry of the blood would
literally change. The blood in some instances would
gel that if you cut to someone's veins, they wouldn't even bleed.
Their fever ran anywhere from 105 to 110. They would go out
of their heads. The one man said he put an apple
in a leper's hands. In five minutes it was thoroughly
cooked. And if they raked their hands
over their head, not only the hair but the scalp, the skin
would come off of the scalp. He said his nose was gone. and he had two holes in his face.
His ears was rotted off, his private parts were gone. And
he said he died a horrible death. We're told in Mark chapter 1
that this man came to the Lord Jesus Christ. He came and he
was full of leprosy. You get his scabby body, his
stinking body, His nose and ears were gone. His hair and his scalp
was rotted away. And this man in that condition,
the Bible says he came to the Lord Jesus Christ and knelt down
in front of Him and said, If you will, you can make me clean. One of the most amazing And I
can't even think about this sometimes, that it just fills my heart with
joy. When he bowed before the Lord
and he said, if you will. Now you talk about submission.
If you will, you can make me clean. In other words, whether
I live or die, I'm leaving in your mere will. If you will, you can make me
clean. If it's not your will, then I'll
die just as I am. I don't see how in the world
that your Savior, the lover of souls, could turn a man away
in that condition. Do you? And when we come to the Lord
and we say like Him, Lord, I'm a poor, perishing sinner, and
my salvation is in Your hands, I can't a bit more save myself
than that leper could cleanse himself, if you will. And I tell
you one of the most precious words that any man ever heard
is when the Lord Jesus said, I will. Aren't you glad, dear
soul, that you're saved according to the will of God? Somebody talks about free will.
I tell you whose will is free. God's will is free. Our will
is bound in sin, isn't it? And when He says, I will to save
you, and He saves us, and we know we're saved according to
His will. But here's the thing, the Lord Jesus wretched out,
and the Bible says He put His hand on that leper. Why would
He have did that? It wasn't His touch that healed
him. It was His Word that healed him. He said, I will be thou
clean. But the Bible says he moved with compassion. That was the vilest man that
ever came to Christ. There is no doubt in my mind.
But he came. And he did not use his vileness
as an excuse. He used it, if anything, to encourage
him to come to the Savior. Yes, I am vile, but here is One
who can heal me if He will. Why did He come? He needed Him.
He needed Him. I need Him. And what does He
do when a needy sinner comes to? He heals him. He heals those
who had need of being healed. There's people who are too good
to be saved. But I don't think there's any
too bad. Do you? He said he'd come to seek and
to save that which was lost. Though they that are whole need
not a physician, does he? The sick need a physician. Are you bad? You say, Bruce,
I'm a believer, but are you a poor sinner? Then you're needy, needy. I'm here this morning to tell
you if you're saved or lost, you need Him. Come to Him. Come to Him. Maybe somebody's here this morning
and would say, I don't know how to come to it. I just don't know
how to come to it. You know, I spent years that
way. I didn't know how to come to Christ. There was a dear young
lady, young lady, young teenager. She came up to me and she said,
before ever service, I asked the Lord to open my understanding. Every service I ask the Lord
to open my understanding. She didn't know how to come to
the Lord. And poor thing, she still hasn't come to the Lord.
She's still so frustrated. I can understand that. I can
understand that. None of us know how to come to
Christ, do we? He has to teach us. That's why
He has to draw us to Himself. You and I are born in spiritual
blindness and darkness, aren't we? One man said we're doubly
blind. We're blind in our own spiritual
eyes and we're in a kingdom of darkness. If the Lord just opened
our eyes, we couldn't see because we're in this kingdom of darkness.
And it's got such a hold on us. I tell you, the devil is nothing
to mess with. He's nobody to mess with. The
Bible says he's the god of this world. He's the prince of darkness. And we have to be delivered from
the power of darkness and translate it into the kingdom of God's
dear Son. None of us know how to come to
Christ. When somebody comes up to me and says, I don't know
how. And I've had, I don't know how many people tell me that.
Preacher, I don't know how to come to Christ. I don't know
how to be saved. I don't doubt that because I didn't either. I didn't either. But before somebody despairs
and throws up their hand and says, I'm just not going to seek
anymore. I've called on the Lord. sought
directions, and I can't see. When I read my Bible, there's
nothing in there I can't understand, so I just give up. I just give
up. Before you do that, let me tell
you about a man who didn't know how to come to Christ. He could
not see his way to come to Christ. His name was Barnabas, and he
was not only blind, but he was a beggar. He had a double whammy,
didn't he? If you was blind and you had
a dear family to care for you and support you, that would be
bad enough. But to be a blind beggar and
to live to boot down in Jericho and sit on the highway side with
a little cup, begging, would somebody please? Do you have
some water that you'd give me? Do you have a little food? And
he had this old coat that he laid over his legs and somebody
gave him a piece of bread, he'd quickly get it under his coat
so nobody would steal it from him. Somebody gave him some money,
he had to hide it under his coat so nobody would steal it from
him. He lived off of the charity of people. And he lived just
outside of Jericho. And one day he heard that Jesus
of Nazareth was passing by. He heard all this commotion and
he said, What's going on? They said, This is Jesus of Nazareth.
This is the Son of David, the King of Israel. And he started
crying out. He didn't get up. He just stayed
seated. He just started crying out, Jesus!
Jesus, your Son of David, have mercy upon me! Why didn't you
get up and run to him, like this leper did? The leper could see. This man couldn't. I tell you,
we have to be careful comparing our experiences one with another,
don't we? If you're not saved like me,
then you can't be saved. Reminds me of them mud-outs and
anti-mud-outs. I told you all about that one
time. This man had a nose. He had ears. He had feet. But he couldn't
see. He didn't know how to come to
Christ. Why don't you go run to Him and follow His feet and
don't let Him go any farther? I don't know how to get to Him.
I can't see Him. I don't even know which direction
to go in. I'm blind, man. I'm blind. And they said, well,
shut up then. Shut up. Don't bother us and
don't bother Him. We've got more important business.
Just keep your mouth shut. Ain't that what they told that
man? Yeah, you keep your mouth shut, you're not blind. You're
not a beggar. You can see Christ and you can
follow Him. But I'm a blind man, I need,
I need the Lord. And he just kept on hollering,
just kept on hollering, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy
on me. And he got louder and louder.
And finally something happened that never happened before. You
never read about it in all the Gospels, what happened next.
The Bible says in Mark chapter 10 that Jesus stood still. You never see that, Larry. Nobody
could stop Him. He stood still for nobody. Devils
couldn't stop Him. His enemies couldn't stop Him.
The waves and winds of the sea couldn't stop Him. He was always
on the go. He was busy. But this blind beggar
seeking for mercy, stopped him in his tracks. Why did he keep calling? He had
a need. He had a need. And he still didn't
know how to get to the Savior. All he could do is keep calling,
Lord, have mercy upon me. Lord, have mercy upon me. And
if that's all you know to do, then keep on calling. You can call it whatever you
want to, praying through or whatever. But I'm telling you what, if
you need the Savior, keep on calling Him until He hears you.
Believe Him. Call on Him. All who call on
the name of the Lord shall be saved. And He stopped in His
tracks and He said, You go call that man. You bring Him here.
He can't see how to get to Him. He'll wander off astray. But
you bring Him. And they went and got Him and
said, Be of good cheer, the Master calleth for thee. And you know
the first thing He did? He threw away that old garment,
that old coat that He was hiding everything under? He threw it
away. Threw it away. That's what we
do when we come to Christ, ain't it? We don't hide these things
anymore. Well, we're naked and open. We
throw these things away and we come to Christ. And He come to
the Lord Jesus. They brought Him right up and
said, Here He is. And I imagine He's feeling that.
Is that you, Lord? Is that you, Lord Jesus? And
He said, What do you want with me? He said, Lord, that I might
receive my sight. I've heard that you're a physician.
I've heard that you're healing those who have need of being
healed. And He said, Look at me. I am blind and I am a beggar. Lord, would you give me my sight."
And you know what the Master said to him? Thy faith has made
you whole. Thy faith in me has made you
whole. You come to me with your need.
And immediately he received his sight. Brothers and sisters,
heaven is full of people who down here upon this earth had
difficulty getting to Christ. But they never gave up. And the
reason they never gave up? Because they needed Him. They
needed Him. It's not easy sometimes to come.
Is it? I'm not finding it easy to come
to that. Sometimes I find it difficult to get through the
fog and the confusion and sin and self and all the surrounding
trials and troubles. To get through all of that to
the Savior. But if you need Him bad enough,
You need Him bad enough. And I tell you what, He'll heal
all of those who have need of being healed. A blind beggar
came to Him. Consider this. Somebody might be here and say
this. And I've had people to tell me
this. Bruce, I'm so sick of religion. I'm just sick of all the false
religion, the pretense. I'm sick of seeing these guys
on TV. I just saw a guy the other day,
a pastor of some mega church, and he's got a jet plane, $35
million. One man pastors a big mega church. I tell you what, you wouldn't
believe when you saw what a cathedral that is. And one man was joking
about it. He said, boy, it would be hard
to be humble and pastor in a place like that, wouldn't it? We're bombarded with religion,
aren't we? And you talk to people sometimes
and they say, they make statements like, like, man, I've tried that.
I've tried that. And I've tried that. And I'm
sick of it. It didn't work for me. I've got a friend of mine
that started out as a boy, and he was an older boy in the Catholic
Church. And he went from one religion
to another, and when the Lord finally saved him, he was working
his way up in the priesthood of the Mormon Church. He ran the gamut. He's the religious
fellow. The Lord broke him and saved
him. He says he has to be careful
now. He gets on false religion, preaching against it, and he
has to be careful. It's made him sick. Made him sick. All of these physicians of no
value lying to a man. And people sick and tired of
it, aren't they? It don't work. I give up on religion. Don't
talk to me about religion. I had a fellow tell me that one
time. Started talking to him about
the Lord. He was sick of it. He just looked at me right in
the face and said with a very hateful, bold voice, Don't tell
me anything about Christ. I don't want to hear it. People
are sick and tired of this religion, aren't they? But let me tell you about a woman
who tried all kinds of physicians. She started bleeding one morning,
and it got worse. She started bleeding so badly
that she went to a physician, and she explained to him her
symptoms, and he said, Oh, watch, here I can heal you. I heal people
like you all the time. This is what you need to do.
Now give me some money." She went off and tried his remedy.
It didn't work. So she went to another physician.
Oh sure, I can heal you. I heal people like you all the
time. He gave her some remedies. It didn't work. She gave him
some money. She tried so many physicians
that she had spent all the living that she had. She mortgaged her
home. She sold her clothes at the rummage
sale. And the bad thing is about it.
She grew worse and not better. She suffered many things at the
hands of many physicians. You know what false religion
does to us sometimes? It makes us worse. It makes us
worse. It's bad, I guess, just to be
an old dead dog sinner. But it's worse to be a deceived
dead dog sinner. One man told me the other day,
he said, well, I'm a Catholic. I said, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for people that are
deceived. But that's what religion is in this world to do, is make
us more deceived. We're deceived enough, but religion
just makes us worse, doesn't it? And this woman, boy, she
ran the gamut. She tried all of them. And all
the remedies made her worse. She was none the better, but
grew worse. But listen, listen. She heard
of Jesus Christ. She heard of the Lord and Savior.
And she said, I've heard that He's really healing people. He's
a real physician. He's not like these imposters. And she said, I've heard that
He's healing all of those that have need of being healed, and
I need healed. She didn't despair. She didn't
say, I'm finished with it. She said, no, I think he's real. He's not like those other physicians.
Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters, you can't be saved by denomination.
You can't be saved by morality. You can't be saved by systems
of theology. were saved by a person, a glorious,
gracious person, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We talk about
a personal relationship with Him. It's personal, isn't it? It's knowing Him. This is life
eternal, that they might know Thee, might know Thee. We can
know Him. He reveals Himself to us. And this woman said, I know that
if I can just touch the clothes, I'm not going to have any more
pills forced down my throat, she said. If I can just touch Him, if I
can just reach out and touch Him as He goes by, I'll be healed
of my plague. I don't know how difficult it
was for her to get there. I know all these people were
thorning around Him and touching Him, crowds, and she had to press
her way through just to touch Him. But immediately when she
touched Him, she felt in herself, she knew in her heart, I'm healed. And the Lord Jesus said He felt
virtue go out of Him. Power went out of Him. Merit
went out of Him. And He turned around and He said,
who just touched Me? And Peter said, Lord, everybody
is touching you. The crowd is just throwing it
in. Everybody is just reaching out and touching you. He said,
no, somebody really touched me. Somebody touched me by faith.
Some needy person just touched me. Who was it? And this lady, she was going
to touch him and leave and not draw any attention. You can't
do it. You just can't do it. He just
don't have any secret disciples, does He? When you touch Him,
when He does something for you, when He heals you, He'll expose
you to the world. And that lady said, it's me.
Lord, it was me. I touched you. He said, come
up here. She came up there and got down
next to Him. And the Bible says she told him all the truth. I wonder what she told him. She
told him all the truth. She probably mentioned some names
of physicians. I went over there to old Dr.
Morality, and he said he could save me, but he couldn't. He
made me worse. I went over to Dr. Do-Good. He
couldn't save me. I went over to the doctor of
Reformation and he couldn't save me. I went over and got that
old physician of System of Theology and he couldn't save me. She
probably named some names, didn't she? But she said, Lord, immediately
when I touched you, just that quick, I was healed. I was healed. He said, Oh daughter, go your
way. Your faith has made you whole. Behold of your plague. Why did she come to Him? She
needed Him, didn't she? She needed Him. Give up on everybody
else. That's alright. But don't give
up on Jesus Christ the Lord. You come to Him. He can save
you. He can meet your need. Lastly is this. I have another fellow, I think
I told you about him, he told me just the other day, he said,
he said, if I thought that the Lord would forgive all
my sins, he said I would be the most happy man in this world.
But that man lives with a sense, and I can't shake him out of
it, I can't shake him out of it, the Lord's got to bring him
out of this. He lives with a sense that it is too late for him.
The day of grace has passed for him. He thinks he sinned to the point
and offended God to the point that there is no hope for him. Can you imagine living that way?
Wouldn't that be a miserable life? People live like that. There
are young people like that. There's a verse, I think it's
in Jeremiah 2.25. It's in chapter 2. But even in
Jeremiah's day, there were some people who made this statement.
They said he was seeking to turn to the Lord and yield and go
off into captivity, like the Lord said. And they said to him,
they said, Jeremiah, there's no hope. No, we have left strangers. So after them we'll go. There
is no hope. No, there's no hope. There's
no hope for me. For some reason or another, there's
no hope for me. So I'm just going to go on in my sins and my miserable
state and die there someday. There's no hope. This is why we've got to set
the gospel to lost people. and to people who are in great
trials. Believers get in great trials
and they almost lose hope. We've got to tell them about
the willingness and the power of the Savior to save them. He's
not only mighty to save, He's willing to save all of those
who come to Him. Let me tell you about a man quickly. I don't know what kind of youth
he had. He may have had decent parents. Imagine he had loving
parents. Had a dad that rocked him on
his knee and tucked him fishing. And a mom that taught him, tried
to teach him some responsibilities and morals. And he started stealing
little things. And they caught him and they
said, son, you can't do this. And they'd correct him. But they couldn't stop him from
stealing. Finally, he started stealing
from the neighbors. Then it got worse. He started stealing from
the authorities in town and the stores. Then he stole big things. Then he went out and become a
robber out on the road and robbing people and stealing from people.
And finally, the authorities apprehended him and said, you're
not going to do this anymore. Our laws are strict. And what
we're going to do is put you to death. We've got a fellow over here,
you probably know him. We're going to put him to death
with you. And we've got another man over here they just condemned
to be crucified, Jesus of Nazareth. And we're going to hang you on
his right side and your buddy on his left side. And we're going
to put all of you to death. You're not going to steal anymore.
You're a criminal. Boy, the law was strict back
in those days, wasn't it? And here this man was walking
towards the hill they call Golgotha, the place of a skull. And boy,
can't you see how his mind was gripped with this reality. Man,
a few minutes and they're going to drive nails through my hands
and my feet. I'm going out into eternity and
I've got no excuse for my life. I'm ready to stand before God,
and I'm going to have to accept the blame for my sin. I'm guilty. And there He was in the side
of that mount, and those crosses laying up there. And they took
Him and laid Him down on a cross, and they took the other thief
and put him on a cross, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst,
and there hanged those two thieves next to the Lord Jesus Christ. If anybody could despair of being
saved, It would be that man, wouldn't it? All he can think about, man,
how I treated my parents, how I treated my neighbors, how I
rebelled against society, the opportunities I had. Oh my goodness,
now I'm going out into eternity, I'm facing God, there's no hope
for me, and just a few more breaths and I'm gone forever! I'd say if there's any devils
in the world, they were around the cross that day. And I bet
you there's whispering to that man, if he had any thought about
being saved and calling on the Lord, you know what Satan told
him, it's too late for you, man. Look at you. You can't do anything. You sure can't join the church.
You can't reform your life. You can't be baptized. You can't
do anything but suffer and die. Die, you miserable wretch. Die in despair. Don't you know
Satan was telling him that? If anybody ever had a reason
to despair, it was that man. But he didn't. He didn't. And why didn't he? He began to
feel this need in his soul. And he had this hope set up in
his heart. This is the Lord of glory. His
Father's given him a kingdom. And he's coming into that kingdom.
And he said, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to see
if you'd have mercy upon me." And boy, he looked over in that
direction and he said, Lord, remember me when you come into
your kingdom. And you know that thief's in
heaven today? How do we know that? He is who the kingdom is. Him who is Lord over the kingdom.
He said to him this day, Shall you be with me in paradise? There's all kinds of people in
heaven who thought in this life that they were beyond hope, but
found out different. If we're hopeless, if we feel
hopeless, then go to the Savior. He's the helper of the helpless.
He gives hope to the hopeless. This day shall you be with me
in paradise. You feel vile? You feel yourself
vile? Job did. I do. I'm going to the
Savior. Do you feel like you're sick
and tired of religion? I am. But I need the Savior. I need the Savior. Feel like
you can't get to Him? You can't find Him? Well, welcome
to the club. A lot of us feel that way. Just
keep on calling on Him. Keep on seeking Him. You need
Him. And if you feel like it's hopeless? No, it's not hopeless.
I tell everybody all the time, as long as there's breath, as
long as there's breath, there's hope in the Savior. And you know something? If you're here and you've never
come to the Lord Jesus, I hope you're encouraged to come. I hope you're encouraged to come
now because you are coming. Everybody's coming. It's just
a matter of when, isn't it? Even those who are ashamed of
Him now, despise Him now, and have no need of Him now, they're
coming. Some of you have already come to Him, haven't you? And
He's healed you. He's healed your soul's disease.
And you just keep on coming. And you'll keep on coming. There's
others who haven't come. I encourage you to come this
morning, if you haven't. Because you will. You will. Lord bless this message. Let's
pray.