I want to attempt this morning to enter
into the agony and the conflict, if I
may, between Jesus Christ and the folks who
did him to death on religious principles.
I'm asking you to turn, if you ever
would like to follow the scripture, to 8th
chapter of the Gospel of John.
There is nowhere in the Gospel of John
to begin reading.
If you start at verse 12, you wish
you had started at verse 11.
It is a tremendous book, as I understand
it, in the 20th chapter of John.
The Holy Spirit directed a man named John
to say something like this.
The Lord did a lot of other things,
said a lot of other things, but I
hadn't recorded them in this book too many.
But he said, what's in this little book
called the Gospel of John, these things are
written, that you might believe that Jesus Christ
is the Son of God, and believing might
have life in his name.
One thinks of Pilgrim in Pilgrim's Progress, who
puts his fingers in his ears and runs
away from his companions, screaming as he runs,
life, give me life.
He felt that he had to stop up
his ears so he couldn't hear the rumblings
of the Spirit of his day, and run
to him who gives life.
Men and women can be brought to a
lifelong believing that he is the Son of
God.
Here in the 8th chapter, there is a
controversy between this one Jesus and the leaders
of the most religious nation on earth, rapidly
coming to a head.
We just have a few more verses to
read until we get to the 11th chapter.
You are familiar, those of you who study
your Bibles, with the fact that it was
the raising of Lazarus from the dead that
sealed the death of Jesus Christ.
The high priest of that religion, unable to
deny this, said it is convenient that one
man die for a nation.
That just brings up the focus of the
controversy of my Lord when he was here
in the days of his flesh with the
religious leaders of his day.
It is a solemn thought to remember that
the people who did the Lord Jesus that
death were the most devout religious people of
his day.
If you read the Gospel of John, you
can almost hear the groans of the people
who finally found out what the score was.
And the score was this.
We've got to get rid of this man.
We've just got to.
The whole nation is going down the drain
if we don't set the high priest.
And they did, leaving God out.
They nailed him to a tree.
They thought they had accomplished the one thing
that had to be done to enable them
to continue in their religious forms and doctrines
and creeds, and at the same time live
by devouring the widows.
In the first part of this 8th chapter,
when these religious people bring the woman taken
in adultery, all the Lord has to do
to get rid of them is to point
to the fact that a bunch of adulterers
are pointing the finger at adulterers, and they
skeet at them.
When he said, which of you is without
sin, he wasn't talking about going to the
movies, he was talking about the same sin
they wanted him to condemn this poor woman
for.
I believe with all my heart, and whatsoever
not, that the cycle has come full circle
now.
I believe it's your privilege or your misfortune
to live in a generation exactly like the
one that with wicked hands nailed Jesus Christ
to the cross.
They didn't do it just as an afterthought,
they did it out of stark necessity.
It's Jesus or us.
Somebody's got to die.
If we don't get rid of him, we
will.
That's the issue of this hour.
When it comes to a focus share, I
believe I'll read verse 20.
These words of John 8 speak Jesus in
the treasury, as he taught in the temple.
And no man laid hands on him, yet
they wanted to.
7 John, they already got signs all over
the country, so much money for information leading
to the apprehension of one Jesus of Nazareth.
But they don't lay hands on him yet,
for there's somebody else on the scene, Almighty
God, for his hour was not yet come.
Then said Jesus again unto them, he'd said
it before, he said, I go my way,
and ye shall seek me, and shall die
in your sin.
And whither I go, ye are not able
to come.
Then said these Jews, the leaders of the
Jews, wonder what he's talking about.
Will he kill himself?
Because he saith, whither I go, ye are
not able to come.
And so he pressed it a little closer,
and he said unto them, don't run out
of the building now, ye are from beneath.
Isn't that a compliment?
I tell you, the Lord was a diplomat,
forever was one.
This is a good way to win friends
and influence people.
Remember in the book of John, there are
two classes of unsaved people all through that
chapter.
They're children of wrath, they're not God's children
yet, but the door hasn't been closed on
them.
But these folks that the Lord is talking
about are not children of wrath, but they're
sons of hell.
Their character is crystallized.
The die has been cast.
My Lord will say in this chapter, ye
are of your father the devil.
Ye are of your father the devil.
When I say that the circle has turned
full circle, I know it's true or not,
I think I've got a good deal of
evidence for it is.
I'm going to plead with men and women
this morning, face the fact, pretty certain you're
going to go to hell, brother.
You're living in a day, you're living in
a day, not of child's play, but of
bitter hostility to God's Son.
You're living in a day when in the
name of Christianity, Jesus Christ is being crucified
afresh.
And you're living in a day when there's
a spirit back of all of the manifestations
and crack-ups everywhere.
That spirit is diabolical and satanically inspired.
And under God there's a war going on
now to get rid utterly of Jesus Christ.
And I think with your little Nambit Pambi
experience that most any kind of preacher could
shave with a little lollipop.
I think in this day of the pampering
of the flesh, until our religious flesh, s
-t-i-n-k, stinks in the nostrils
of the Holy Ghost.
I think chances are most of us have
been crystallized in our character.
Sonship has to do with character, maturity.
Sons of hell, ye are from beneath!
Brother, the crack-up of everything that's going
on in the world.
He'd laugh
at
us.
He'd laugh at us.
He'd laugh at us I'm from above, these
crazy liberals on that doctrine of evolution that
are turning our schools into incubators for eternal
hell, there to see my Lord never claimed
to be God.
He does here, I'm from above.
He says, Year of this cosmos, your breath
is saturated with the God-hating, Christ-denying,
Holy Spirit-despising spirit and atmosphere of this
age.
I am not of this world.
He says, I'm just going to put the
cards on the table for you now.
Here it is.
I said therefore unto you that ye shall
die in your sins.
For if you believe, and the word if
here, I'm pretty certain means since.
Because these folks he's talking to, but they've
already cast their vote.
Since ye believe not that I am he,
ye shall die in your sins.
In our churches, in our homes, in our
society, it looks like this generation is made
up in my.
Whoever Jesus Christ is, he's dead sure not
going to be my Lord.
And I say, I'm going to stick to
my little namby-pamby stuff they call experience,
that knows nothing of the crucifixion of the
sinner on that cross of shame, and the
resurrection into an entirely new way of living.
I'm going to stick to the spirit of
this age that crucified the Son of God
one time over just one issue.
It is amazing that they killed him because
of their perverted view of the doctrine of
election.
A fellow told me the other day that
this Church don't cede on election.
I think it has.
I asked the Pastor him, and times he
had preached on his line, and he said
twice it took out both times.
But I think we, just about all of
us, don't cede on it when we look
at this awful truth, that the reason those
people with wicked hands, in spite of warning,
in spite of plain talk, in spite of
being faced with the alternative that we've read
here in the scripture, the reason they did
him unto death and made fun of him
in his agony and congratulated themselves on their
wonderful achievement is because they wanted to be
claimed to claim that they were children of
Abraham and live with our holiness and godliness
and surrender.
That's why they killed him.
Why, they'll say to the Lord, what's he
talking about?
You could do something for us!
When he said, if the Son shall make
you free, they said, what in the name
of heaven are you talking about?
You mean to tell me we need anything?
No, sir, we be children of Abraham.
If you read the book of John, that
was the issue.
Even if Jesus has got to go, we're
going to have to prove that we're children
of Abraham.
But there are two things that we ain't
got.
My Lord said, if you were children of
Abraham, you'd have his faith.
And my Lord said, if you were children
of Abraham, you'd have his what?
His words.
They both died out some time while we've
been asleep in our generation.
And in order to continue to have a
religion that would leave men in control of
the reins of their own lives, the religious
leaders of that generation did not stop until
they saw that Jesus stretched out on a
gory tree, and carefully watched as his body
was placed six feet under the ground, and
went home to a state dinner, thanking God
they'd got rid of him.
This is about how serious it is now.
We're going to have to quit sitting on
the fence.
The issue my Lord made was this.
I am he.
And unless men and women can come to
the faith in the Bible, meaning of the
word, that they believe that he is the
Son of God and God the Son, the
only remedy, they're going to die in their
sins, too.
My Lord says three terrible things here.
He says you're going to die in your
sins.
That's physical death.
He says, second thing, you're not going where
I'm going.
That's the second kind of death.
In language that all of us youngsters and
all can understand, he said, you're going to
die in such a fashion, physically, that we
are going to be forever separated whatsoever our
chums are.
You're from beneath, like Judas, you're going to
your own place.
I'm from above, going to the bosom of
the Father, and you're not going to be
able to make it.
My soul, how strict this is, you're not
able to enter.
He calls your attention to the only way
of escape.
I wish I knew how to meditate with
you in this awful day.
I wish I could come down and sit
down beside you and stick a knife in
your spirit and your soul and your heart
and get you in this fat day of
our Christianity that's putting Christ to an open
shame and crucifying him afresh.
I wish you'd just face what an awful
price man has to pay if he dies
in his sin.
I wish I knew how to proclaim it
until somebody would believe it, that there are
some things God hates a whole lot worse
than he does death.
I know none of us can believe it,
I guess, in this soft age in which
we live.
I wish we had somebody that actually had
a conviction, before I'll succumb, before I'll go
the way of this age, before I'll let
down the standards, before I'll say, Comrade, before
I'll join the movement, I'll die!
Because there are some things that are worse
than death.
In the catalog of God's book of remembrance,
I am said, is more intolerable to Almighty
God than H.E. double L.
Hale.
In the Bible, it sure will tell us
about a God who hates hell, but he
hates sin more than he hates hell.
The Bible, that God we've thrown into the
trash can and got us a God with
whom we can live like hogs and still
be comfortable.
That God will tell us that thistles and
thorns and sweat are better than sin.
That sorrow is better than sin.
That suffering is better than sin.
That pain and poverty and affliction are better
than sin.
That wars and plagues and famines and disease
and destruction and death are better than sin.
Oh, my soul, this is the language of
the God of the Bible.
The one thing that provokes his anger and
his destruction is this I am saying.
How terrible.
Endless tyranny, unpitted tears, broken hearts are better
than sin.
And that God today, when we've been told
on every hand that whatever Lord wants, he's
got a right to.
That any impulse of my mind or my
spirit or my body must be satisfied.
Oh, God, for a consciousness of what it
means to live in sin.
You know what it means?
It means to die there.
It means as the tree falls, so it
lies.
How terrible to die and face God, the
God of whom the psalmist said, If thou
shouldst mark iniquity, write it down.
Who should be able to stand?
That's the only story inspired by the fact
that I don't think anybody believes it.
Nobody can stand.
If God marks down H.
G.
Wells, you know, the godless writer of this.
H.
G.
Wells, that godless writer of our day gone
down.
Ain't such a picture of what's going to
happen.
He said when he was a little boy,
he came to H.
A.
T.
E.
Hayden, the God they told him about.
He said, My mother and father told me
that God sees what's going on.
He said, My mother and father told me
that God takes note of what's going on.
He said, My mother and father told me
that God records what's going on.
He said, I came to H.
A.
T.
E.
Hayden, a God who watched me and kept
a record on me.
But under God, that's exactly what God does.
And we desperately need to face the truth,
and we desperately need to face the truth,
and we desperately need to face
the
truth, and we desperately need to face the
truth, and we You hate righteousness, and you
lap iniquity like water.
That's the kind of folks you are.
You've got a heart that's a cesspool of
hostility to God's holy law.
You've got a nature, and you can improve
it and dress it up, but you can't
change it that actually hates any kind of
authority.
You've got a will that's a cripple and
perverted.
I wouldn't brag on what you're going to
do too much.
You are living in a generation whose God
is at its belly, and even now we
churches and preachers are being pressured on every
hand to turn the meeting of the Saints
into an entertainment.
I think there is just one thing worth
living for now, and that's to gratify the
desires of my body.
You know anything else worth living for?
You know anything else worth working 8 hours
a day for?
Watching the time clock hurry home so you
can pamper?
Oh, pleasure!
That which I want, I've got a right
to.
That which I want, God almighty, just get
out of the way, I'm going to have
it.
That spirit that has turned God's holy day
into a Roman holiday.
That spirit, a reading this morning where 77
percent of the Church-related college students in
America say that sex relationships are desirable before
marriage and the right of boys and girls.
That spirit that enables a college professor to
say that in another few years our society
will be almost 100 percent utterly un-moral.
You live in that day when nothing under
God's shining sun is going to be allowed
to get in the way of Ralph Barnard,
God-hating, God-hating Ralph Barnard, with a
corrupt, corrupt, corrupt style, evil, filthy nature that
makes me just laugh, iniquity, that's rebellion, like
a dog, thirsty, laughs, water!
Ralph Barnard that the Old Testament calls a
wriggling maggot, just a cesspool of water.
Ralph Barnard!
I'm going to have his way, whatever I
want, I'm going to get!
And if your religion gets in my way,
out you go.
You're living in a generation, more and more,
finding ways to beat Almighty God.
I remember when girls were afraid to lose
their virtue.
Not now.
Birth control, contraception.
I remember reading in a book, seemed to
me like it was the Bible, Whatsoever you
sow, that shall you reap.
That's one verse of scripture.
Anybody that's got that sense on their head
knows it ain't so.
We've just found ways to beat God, brother.
We've found ways to raise hell and not
have to pay the bill.
Yes, old crazy brother Barnard going up and
down this land, said all hell's going to
burst on this generation that has absolutely discarded
the law of God and the God of
the law.
We don't need him.
That old book is a bunch of fairy
tales you need to tell me!
The wages of sin is death.
I'm getting by all right.
And I will forget when the biggest drunk
in the city, my last pastor many, many
years ago, they caught me out of town
and they had a business meeting and the
doctor put a shot in his heart, the
old drunk, he was chairman of the board
of deacons, and they sobered him up in
an hour's time so he could stand up
and pass a motion to fire the preacher.
You can tell me that booze will kill
you!
Well, they've got a high pole to sober
you up in 30 minutes.
My old army colonel, in the first camp
I was in as an army chaplain, he'd
get as drunk as a boiled owl ever
sun-tattered a night, and he'd sit on
the front seat every Sunday morning in chapel
just sober as an owl.
The doctor would give him some medicine to
sober him up.
And immorality?
Well, there ain't no such animal now!
It's just whatever I want, I'm going to
get.
There is nothing that Ralph Barnett wrongs that's
wrong.
That's right!
This is the atmosphere.
This is the kind of thing you're living
in, in which a gospel has been invented
and is preached in most of our churches
that allow you to be a Christian and
never forsake sin.
I expect you will join a church that
allows anything under this wonderful term that we're
not under law, we're under grace.
That's all.
We can't be perfect.
So let's go to church on Sunday and
raise hell the rest of the time, and
we'll go to heaven when we die.
That's Christianity.
My Lord said, you know, there's just one
escape.
If you believe that I am he.
I suspect there's more dynamite crowded in that
word there in the context.
If you believe that I am he, that's
the only way of escape.
If you could get to where you could
actually believe that I am the sent one
of God.
Holy MacShane wrote in almost the last year
of his holy ministry, said Mr. MacShane, the
man who made such a contribution to the
cause of Christ in Scotland.
Mr. MacShane said, I had this evening a
more complete understanding of that self-emptying and
self-abasement with which it is necessary to
come to Christ.
A denying of self, trampling it underfoot, a
recognition of the complete righteousness and justice of
God that could do nothing else but condemn
us utterly and thrust us down to the
lowest hell.
A feeling that even in hell we should
rejoice in his sovereignty and say all was
rightly done.
He was a man, Brother Pastor, the holiest
man maybe Scotland ever knew.
Almost a saint of God.
His conception of the character of Almighty God
was so high.
His experience with himself so deep.
He never got to that nice little something
that we call Christianity.
He never got to the place where he
wasn't constantly trying to find something he could
let hold of that would give him a
little assurance in his own language that such
a worm as he could dare to claim
an interest in the merits and benefits of
the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
It looks to me like there is a
man that is trying to come to terms
on the most tremendous proposition any of our
Lord ever faced with, come to believe that
Jesus Christ is the only way of escape.
Not a convenience, but an utter necessity.
Not an option!
Oh!
That some assurance that when Christ hung on
that awful tree he did something for me
that had to be done, R-H-E
-L-L-A-O, that I can't do
for myself.
Some conception of the fact that this call
for an agonizing, all-out, closing with the
Christ of the gospel on his terms for
time and for eternity.
If you could just come to where you
believed it, actually believe it.
These folks never did.
These folks died in their sin.
These folks didn't hear the warning.
Maybe it came too late for them.
I don't know anything else except to say,
Brother, you need Jesus Christ.
I wish you'd try your dead little best
to get in contact with him.
I wish you'd make it the all-out
effort of your life to get in the
only door, the only door, to get on
the only fire escape, to get in the
only lifeboat.
I wish you'd press through the crowd until
you'd touch him, with hands like a beggar
laying hold on him, never to let him
go.
I wish the Spirit of God, he's been
absent from this generation so long, I wish
the windows of heaven would be open and
he could take this truth, who Jesus is.
Is he what he claimed to be?
Is he a necessity or an option?
Has God put all of his eggs in
that basket?
Is it Jesus or hell?
I wish he'd set us crawling on our
knees, if that's what it takes, to get
under the rug, Brother, find a shelter, find
a hiding place underneath his wings.
I wish these next few minutes would be
a time of seeking the Lord Jesus Christ.
I'm going to ask the congregation if you'll
be so kind.
If you will not, please nobody leave, nobody
make any disturbance, I'll not hold you long.
Will you stand quietly to your feet?