In the third chapter of John, just four
lines, there was a man of the Pharisees
named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
The same came to Jesus by night.
And since that is all I intend to
talk about tonight, that's all I'm going to
read.
I'm to speak tonight of the man of
the Pharisees named Nicodemus.
Out of the thousands of millions of people
who have lived in the world, and out
of the hundreds of thousands of Jews who've
lived in the world, even hundreds of millions
of them, and out of the tens of
thousands of Pharisees, the Holy Spirit lets a
pencil of light fall upon the head of
one man, Nicodemus the Pharisee of Israel.
And the Holy Spirit, who wrote the book,
and who is rigidly economical in his use
of words, nevertheless devotes twenty-one verses to
this story of Nicodemus' visit to Jesus, what
he said to Christ, and what Christ replied
to him.
Now this, if nothing else, would lead us
to believe that this is an important story.
We're not done with it tonight.
It is vastly important that God ever put
it in the Scriptures at all, and therefore
we want to approach it respectfully, reverently, and
with an inquiring mind.
It says that this man Nicodemus was a
Pharisee.
I think the man Paul, later, best described
the Pharisees in a phrase that is almost
comical.
He says, these people all know, if they
would tell them, how I lived all my
life in the most strictest sense of our
religion.
The most strictest sect was the Pharisees, the
most strictest of all.
That double negative doesn't bother God at all,
and I'm not going to let it bother
me.
It means that a Pharisee followed the strictest,
straightest letter of Judaism.
In addition to being a Pharisee, a fundamentalist
par excellence, he was also a ruler, that
is, he was a member of the Sanhedrin.
Now it's well known, but I'll throw it
in for the sake of those who might
not know, that the Sanhedrin was the supreme
governing body in Israel.
Not quite equivalent to our Supreme Court, but
very much like it, because the Sanhedrin had
some executive as well as judicial doings.
There were 70 of them, and they were
composed of the high priest, who was the
president, and all the ex-high priests that
might be living, and the elders, and the
legal assessors, and all these, says the books,
all these were drawn from the privileged families,
whatever that might mean.
The point is that not every Tom, Dick,
and Jerry got into the Sanhedrin.
He had to be a VIP, which I
understand in our day is a very important
person.
And he had to be in order to
get in.
He had to be a high priest, or
an ex-high priest, or an elder, or
a scribe, or somebody at least from the
privileged families.
And these members could be either Pharisees or
Sadducees, just as we can have on our
Supreme Court in Washington men who are either
Republicans or Democrats.
We can have in our Congress Republicans or
Democrats, and the way we have it, they're
usually fairly well balanced.
Sometimes only one or two will turn the
balance between one and the other.
Pharisee and Sadducee, they're in Washington.
But we're getting a parallel there anyhow.
Now, the Scripture says that Nicodemus came to
Jesus.
There were 70 of them, and Nicodemus came
to Jesus out of 71 kings.
Why?
He was separated from Christ by all the
white gulf that separated all the other 69.
High position, and Jesus was a common carpenter.
Religious bigotry, and Jesus was anything but a
straight-laced bigot.
His religious philosophy was as broad as all
Palestine, and he could take in the Mediterranean
too.
And then pride of his high position, for
remember, he belonged to the privileged family, and
so did they all.
And then remember the prejudice, the sharp prejudice,
that an educated Jewish member of the Sanhedrin
had against an uneducated fisherman, or an uneducated
carpenter who lived among the fishermen, and who
had in his little group some fishermen without
any education.
Now, why did Nicodemus cross that gulf?
What mysterious power laid hold on the man
Nicodemus, and not on the other 69?
And why he and not they, or why
he and not somebody else?
Is the answer simply that he was more
sensitive to God's voice than the rest?
Could I repeat again what I said only
a few weeks ago about the prevenient grace
of God, the mysterious secret working of God
in the souls of men, turning them toward
himself, influencing them toward himself, and magnetically attracting
them toward himself?
That's the prevenient work of God in the
human breast, without which there never could be
a conversion.
And I wonder if this man Nicodemus was
simply more sensitive to this operation of God
than the other 69, because nobody in a
thousand years of jumping up and down on
the family Bible could ever make me believe
that God showed anything like partiality, that he
picked out Nicodemus and let the other 69
go.
Well, the heart of God that yearned over
Nicodemus yearned over the other 69, too.
But only Nicodemus came.
Why?
I think that it was because he was
more sensitive to God's voice.
I'm talking to some people right now.
You've been reared in Christian homes.
You've been brought up in this Sunday school.
You cut your first baby tooth on the
back of a hymnbook when your mother wasn't
watching.
And still you are not right with God,
or you make some kind of a halfway
profession, but you'll never be much of a
Christian if you're a Christian at all.
And the reason is you lack sensitivity to
the in-workings of God.
Was it because this man was more receptive
to spiritual impulses?
Now, some people are more receptive than others
to spiritual impulses.
Some people are simply extroverts, and you can't
reach them.
They're not sensitive to anything.
They live more or less on the level
of the stomach.
But this man, though he were a Pharisee,
and though he was a member of the
Sanhedrin, and though he had all the high
pride of the rest, and position, and prejudice,
and bigotry, and all that cursed the rest
of them, too, there must have been a
receptivity here to spiritual impulses.
I want to keep that alive inside of
my soul, brethren.
I'd rather lose a leg and hobble along
the rest of my life than to lose
my spiritual sensitivity.
I want to keep it within me.
And then he must have had a humility
that the other ones didn't have.
You know, some people are not ever going
to get right with God, and the reason
is they don't have humility.
They simply will not humble themselves.
Some of us go to this church, and
not much of any place else, and we
shuttle in and out of here, and we
forget that the Christian and missionary alliance church,
this particular church, it pays its bills, and
it's honored that way, and its people behave
themselves fairly well, and not many go to
jail from this church.
But nevertheless, in spite of all that, we're
considered to be just a little bit cross
-eyed and just a little bit off-center.
We're eccentrics.
It takes humility to cast in your lot
with people who are possibly considered as it
being necessary that they see a psychiatrist or
that they do something to balance themselves.
Now, Jesus had that kind of crowd all
around him.
He himself was considered to be a man,
a very strange kind of man, and the
people that followed him were considered, of course,
also to be very strange.
Now, here was a member of the high
court, and he had to have a lot
of humility to humble himself and cast in
his lot with the plain people.
I got a bit of amusement out of
a news report that came in over the
wires here not so very long ago.
Now, one of the high officials in India
was apologizing because he said the news had
gone out all over the world that Christian
missionaries were being hindered in India.
Now, he said, I want you to know
that that is not true.
He said, we are not hindering the propagation
of the Christian doctrines in India, and we
understand that a few low-caste people have
believed.
I could just hear the pride in that
fellow's voice as this Brahmin spoke patronizingly and
in condescension about those low-castes that he
understood a few had believed in Jesus Christ,
and he wasn't going to get in their
way.
Oh, the bigotry and the pride there.
You don't have to go to Chicago's Gold
Coast or to the Midway.
You can go to India or Africa or
anywhere, and you will find that there is
human pride, and it feasts on almost anything
that will make it fat.
Now, he crossed over this gulf, and the
scripture says that he came by night, evidently
feeling his way.
Because, you see, Nicodemus well knew what it
would cost him.
He knew that to follow Christ would cost
him something.
I know my friend Randy Barthes too well
to believe that he would ever go to
Germany and tell the people there, just come,
just come, just come as you are, just
come and it will cost you nothing, the
price has all been paid, just come.
Brethren, there is always a price connected with
salvation.
And our missionaries, I know too well to
believe that they would ever go to any
part of the world and simply say, you
don't have to do a thing, there is
a program on the air, and I get
a magazine also, somebody sends it to me.
Brother, if it's you, quit sending it, it
doesn't mean a thing to me.
They send it in a plain paper without
a return address.
And this fellow has a philosophy of faith.
He says everybody has faith, everybody has faith.
Now that point number one, build on that.
Everybody has faith.
Everybody in the wide world has faith.
And all you have to do is turn
your faith in the right direction toward Christ
and it's all fixed up.
Now his basic premise is as false as
the devil, because Paul says, not all men
have faith.
Faith is not a plant that grows by
the way that everybody has.
Faith is a rare plant that grows in
a penitent soul only.
And so the basic teaching that everybody has
faith, and all you have to do is
use the faith you have, is simply humanism
in the guise of Christianity.
For the faith everybody has is a humanistic
faith and it is not the faith that
saves.
And it is not that faith which is
a gift of God to a broken heart.
This man had a faith that cost him
something, and he was feeling his way.
They say that the man, now this has
a question mark after it, but some scholars
believe that this Nicodemus was Nicodemus Ben-Gurion.
And Nicodemus Ben-Gurion was a brother to
Flavius Josephus, who was of course, as you
know, one of the great Jewish historians of
the time, perhaps the most famous of all
the Jewish historians.
And this Nicodemus was one of the three
richest men in all of Jerusalem.
And yet, history tells us that later on,
the daughter of Nicodemus, one of the three
richest men in Jerusalem, and brother to Flavius
Josephus, possibly, was found picking up corn off
of the street where the horses had thrown
it out of their feedbags as they traveled
down the street, and picking it up and
roasting it in order to get something to
eat.
Why?
Because when Nicodemus finally threw in his lot
with Jesus Christ, they took everything he had,
confiscated his property, and turned him out as
if he were the scum of the earth,
and his daughter had to pick up corn
from the street to get anything for her
stomach.
That's why he came by night.
There's been a tremendous lot of wind wasted
on this man, and a great deal of
abuse hurled upon him, abuse that he never
deserved at all, because he came to Jesus
by night.
He came feeling his way.
He came inquiring.
He came asking questions.
He wasn't sure.
He only knew that he was spiritually sensitive,
and he wanted help.
And he also knew the reputation this man
had, and he knew what would happen to
him and his family, and his position, and
his money, and his reputation if he were
to cast any lot with this man.
Now, his coming then suggests only one thing.
His coming suggests that the soul of man
is too nobly conceived and too high born
and too mighty a universe in itself ever
to be satisfied with anything less than Jesus
Christ.
His coming suggests that only Jesus Christ is
enough.
And I can stand without any embarrassment and
say to you that you will find either
now or later in your life or at
death or in the world to come that
only Jesus Christ is enough.
Out of all the rulers, one ruler came.
Out of all the Jews, this Jew came.
And I want to point out that those
who came to Jesus Christ, our Lord, came
of the various levels of life, and their
reason for coming was always about the same.
Let me mention some others that came to
Jesus.
Here was the rich young ruler that everybody
knows about.
Now here this rich young ruler was an
example of a model man because he had
four things or three things anyway that everybody
might want to emulate.
He had wealth and morality and position.
And I can hear a mother when her
little boy got out of line holding up
this rich young ruler that lived around the
corner and say, Now why don't you try
to be like that man?
Now there is a successful Jew.
There is a moral man.
Nobody's ever found him doing anything wrong.
There is a man of high position which
he earned by virtue of study and hard
work.
There is a wealthy man and his wealth
has come also from shrewdness and hard bargaining.
And here is a young man.
If you want to be like anybody, choose
this young fellow as your example.
I can just hear the mothers in Israel
in that day holding up this young fellow.
And yet one word tells the secret of
his great disappointment.
For notice he had the four things that
everybody wants.
He had youth.
Everybody wants youth.
And mourn when they begin to lose it.
Everybody wants wealth, although almost everybody modestly says
they only just want enough to get along
with.
And everybody wants morality.
Nobody wants really to be bad.
Everybody wants morality, or at least admires it.
And everybody liked to have a high position.
Now this young fellow had the four things
that are supposed to be desirable, which if
you attain to or obtain, will give you
peace of mind.
And yet this young ruler came to Jesus
and the language of his question tipped his
off, as they say, gave away what was
the matter with the young man.
He said, What shall I do that I
may inherit eternal life?
There was the answer.
That's what brought the young man.
Youth.
He looked forward to the time when youth
would be no more, and withered and palsied
and shaken with age, he would brush back
his few remaining gray hairs and lie down
stiffly on the bed from which he should
never rise again.
He had to have something with eternity in
it.
And he knew also that his wealth could
not help him then, and his morality could
not help him then, and he knew that
his position would have to be given up
and his place filled by another.
So he came saying, What shall I do
for eternity?
What shall I do that I might have
that eternal life, that eternal quality, which I
don't now have?
Oh, my friends, the world is filled with
liars.
And David didn't need to apologize when he
said every man is a liar, because until
we're really converted to Christ and the holiness
of Christ enters our heart, we are part
and parcel of a mighty deception.
And that deception is that you can have
peace of mind and be relatively happy and
get along fine and make a big success
of your human life if you have wealth
and morality and a high position.
But it's all false, as the rich young
ruler shows us, because there's one word missing
from it all, and that is eternal.
If it could be said of him he
had eternal youth, if it could be said
of him that his wealth was eternal wealth,
if it could be said of him that
his position was everlasting, then we might say
that wealth and youth and morality and position
might be enough for a man.
But the word eternal is not there.
You have to read it in.
The man knew that God had set eternity
in his heart.
That man knew that his soul was too
nobly conceived and too highly born, and too
much of a universe within itself ever to
be satisfied with anything that didn't have eternity
in the middle of it.
Let's look at another character that came, and
that was the Ethiopian chancellor found in the
eighth chapter of Acts.
Now he had something else.
He had authority, prestige, and religion.
Read that story sometime and think about what
I have said.
He had authority, for he was a man
of great authority under Queen Candacy, who was
queen of Ethiopia, and of course he had
the prestige that went with it.
And then in addition to that he was
a Jewish proselyte.
He was as black as could be for
he was an Ethiopian.
He wasn't a Jew, but he had joined
the Jewish religion and no doubt had undergone
the rites that had made him a Jew.
And there was some feast or other going
on up in Jerusalem, so he went up
there to pray, being a chancellor of the
Exchequer and a big shot in Ethiopia, of
course he could get permission from Queen Candacy.
And she said, why certainly go.
So he went and took in the religious
festival in Jerusalem among the Jews.
And they admired him and admitted him in
and took him in among them as a
proselyte Jew.
And still, not all of his newfound religion
and not all of the swinging of the
censors in Jerusalem and not all of the
chanting of the priests and not all of
the beauty of the form of their religion
could make his heart sing.
He couldn't rejoice.
His heart was too discriminating, that man.
But when he had met Jesus through faith
and the man Philip had preached Jesus unto
him, then he immediately, says the scripture, went
on his way rejoicing.
Now what was it that gave rejoicing to
the heart of the Ethiopian chancellor, the eunuch
who served under Queen Candacy, and he couldn't
get it any place else?
It was nothing else than that he found
the one of whom Moses and the prophets
did write.
The Ethiopian eunuch also confirms this, that the
Nicodemus suggests, only Jesus is enough.
Religion won't do.
It's amazing how many things religious people want
to do to you.
Thank God, I've never had the two things
done to me yet.
One, I was baptized and the other, I
had men lay their hands on my empty
head and ordain me.
And that's the only two things they've ever
done to me.
But you know, it's astonishing how many things
they can do to you in churches.
They can start when you're eight days old
with circumcision and end up with last rites
when you're 108 years old.
And all the time they'll be shooting something
into you or rubbing something on you or
putting something around your neck or making you
eat something or lay off of eating it
or something else.
Manipulate you and maul you and Swedish massage
your soul all the time.
And when it's all done, you're just what
you were.
You're just a massaged sinner.
That's all.
When you're finished, you're simply a sinner that
didn't eat fish.
And if you ate fish, then you're a
sinner that did eat fish.
And if you made the long journey to
the temple, then you're a sinner that went
to the temple.
And if you didn't, then you're a sinner
that didn't go to the temple.
And if you attended the church, then you're
a sinner that went to the church.
And if your name is on the rulebook,
then you're a sinner whose name is on
the rulebook.
And if it isn't, then you're a sinner
whose name isn't on the rulebook.
Measure it any direction and approach it from
anywhere, and we're sinners still after religion has
done all it can do to us.
It can put us on the roll and
educate us and train us and teach us
and instruct us and discipline us.
And when it's all over, there is still
something that says, eternity is in my heart
and I don't find anything to satisfy.
So you'll be searching and searching forever until
you find Christ, for only Christ is enough.
Then I think, and I'll bring this to
a hurried close, don't get too optimistic, though,
for it may be some little time, but
I won't take as long as you do.
This woman, Lydia, I'm interested in Lydia.
Now, Lydia was a career woman, and she
was born out of due time.
We have our business women now, business women
this and that.
Scripture made women to have homes and bear
children and keep their husbands happy.
But we have now career women and business
women.
And I suppose it's all right, and God
knows I can't do anything about it.
They just look at me and shrug, push
past me and take my seat in the
bus.
So I can't do anything about it.
But I can only say that the business
women, they told us back there a few
years back that poor women had been trodden
down, they said.
They said, we've trampled the poor ladies under
our feet and their faces show the marks
of hobnails for we men trampled them down
into the ground.
And so they passed an amendment, what was
it, the 17th Amendment?
And it emancipated the ladies and set them
free.
And now they can go vote and not
know what they're voting for, just like the
men.
And we set the women free to be
just as bad as the men and just
as miserable.
We've set the women free to curse and
swear and tell dirty stories and smoke filthy
cigarettes and run around and come in when
they please.
We've set women free to make nasty political
speeches and vote blind.
They say they're free, but they're not free.
They're simply free to be bad and miserable.
Of course, they're free to be good, too,
if they come to God in Christ.
But the so-called freedom of the modern
career woman needs to be reexamined in the
light of history and in the light of
the female heart.
But anyway, apart from that, Lydia came.
Now, Lydia had what every woman is supposed
to have when she's perfectly satisfied to have.
She's free now.
No more of this being an appendage to
a man.
No more of this simply being a helpmeet
strung on as an afterthought.
She now takes her place along with bearded
men.
All right, Lydia, you were born out of
due time.
You were a seller of purple.
And she traveled.
She lived in one town, and Paul found
her in another.
And she was converted, and she came to
Jesus, too.
Now, I wonder why.
Ladies, really now, if you were to tell
me the truth about this and not put
on that front and just break right down,
is your newfound freedom enough?
Is your freedom to yawn and stretch and
be a man, if you want to, is
it enough?
No, you know it isn't.
Lydia found it wasn't.
And every woman, when she finally wakes up,
she'll find she isn't.
It isn't.
Only Jesus Christ is enough.
Now, Lydia found that out.
And she came and gave her heart to
Jesus Christ, and she was so delighted with
what she found that she said to Paul,
she had a big house, and she said,
Paul, if you think I'm really a convert
now.
She was used to the Jewish way of
looking at women, and they didn't count women,
they only counted men, you know.
They belonged to the patriarchal way of looking
at things, but she'd broken over the fence.
She was one filly that had jumped over
the corral.
And she should have been the happiest Jewess
in all Asia Minor, but in place of
that she came humbly to Paul and said,
would you tell me about this one?
And he told her, and she said, now
if you think I'm a believer, come to
my house and make it your headquarters.
There was Lydia, and I think of another
man as the last, and that is Nathaniel,
the plain man.
Now, I've searched about this fellow Nathaniel, and
I don't know who he is.
There's not much said about him, and the
only thing I know about him is that
he was a fellow full of prejudice, like
any man on the street.
He thought nobody could come out of Nazareth,
and yet he was a man completely simple.
Now, psychology tells us that if we be
simple and sincere and put away strain and
pretense and just relax and cast out fear,
we will be real persons.
Have any of you read widely enough in
liberal religious literature to catch on to that
real person?
Harry Amerson Fosdick wrote a book called How
to Be a Real Person.
And being a real person is to be
a great big glory Adam of a man
or Eve of a woman and be all
you are, not have any little corners that
aren't developed, not have any inhibitions, but get
out in the moonlight and bathe the moon
and show that you're a man, stand up
on your hind legs and beat your hairy
chest and tell the world, today I am
a man.
Well, that's what they tell us, just be
a man, be a plain man, be a
real person, simple and sincere and honest and
direct and fearless.
And the high priest of that kind of
goo was none other than Walt Whitman, the
dirty, unkempt, smelly poet of the eastern seaboard.
And in his Leaves of Grass, which is
the Bible of a great many fellows now,
in his Leaves of Grass, he celebrates himself,
he says, and writes long poems addressed to
himself.
If this wasn't a church, I'd just bellow
and show you how it sounds.
But he was a man, if you please,
and a he-man, if you please, a
Tarzan of America.
Well, Nathaniel was a simpler man, but he
was what the psychologists say we ought to
be, unafraid, simple, direct, not covering anything, uninhibited,
humble, plain.
And yet the sun wouldn't come out for
Nathaniel.
He lived under a shadow and just couldn't
get the sun to come out.
And then somebody came and said, Come and
see what we've seen and find what we've
found.
And they came and found Jesus.
And then the sun came out and a
new life dawned.
And Nathaniel became, according to the scholars, Bartholomew.
And he became a follower of Jesus and
lives today in the memories of thousands.
But it started when he cried, My Lord
and my God.
And when he turned from his simplicity and
his relaxed position.
I got another book last week, Tell Me
to Relax.
And I get letters telling me, Now, Brother
told you, you must relax.
If I was as relaxed as all of
my friends want me to be, you'd have
to sop me up with a sponge.
But you know, you couldn't get a hold
of me.
I'd just be too slippery.
But they say, Relax and you'll be all
right.
Brethren, Nathaniel was a relaxed man.
But the sun wouldn't come out and the
joy wouldn't come.
Why?
Because man sinned and broke his fellowship with
God, lost the gold from his spirit and
wandered away like a sheep from the fold,
like a son from the household, pulled himself
free like a limb from a tree to
wither on the ground.
And we simply don't have in us what
we need.
The way of man is not in himself,
says the Holy Ghost.
Only Jesus Christ is enough.
And all of these men sinned.
Now there were many rulers in Israel.
Why do we find only Nicodemus and the
rich young ruler came?
There were many women, no doubt, who were
sellers of purple and career women even in
that day.
Why did only Lydia attach herself to Paul?
There were many plain men who walked the
streets of Jerusalem and other towns in the
Holy Land.
Why was it Nathaniel, whose name is put
here, was it, I repeat, some secret working
of God in the human breast?
Oh, friends, I believe in that secret working.
I believe in the secret working of God
in the human breast.
If I might be allowed a minute of
testimony.
There is something in the line from which
I come that is not religious.
Moral, on a certain level, but not religious.
Cold, earthy, profane.
It runs down both lines, my father and
my mother.
Moral, high standards, but completely without a thought
of God.
God might as well not exist, profane, secular,
without a spark of desire after God.
Will you tell me why at seventeen I,
surrounded by unbelief, one hundred percent, should find
my way to my mother's attic, kneel on
my knees, and give my heart to Jesus
Christ and be converted without anybody's help, without
a human being, without anybody with a marked
New Testament showing me how easy it is,
and without any friends to place an arm
over my shoulder and pray beside me?
That conversion was as real as any man's
conversion has ever been.
You tell me why?
I don't know why.
My little mother, cold as stone.
My high-strung English father, utterly without regard
to God.
And none of the members of my family
or the in-laws cared for God.
I found Christ, Jesus my Lord.
Why?
There is such a thing as the secret
working of God in the human breast.
There is such a thing as the prevenient
workings of the Holy Ghost within the human
personality.
Oh, man, if you feel the tug of
God in your breast, what a happy man
you could be.
What, what, what riches are yours if you
could be given Fort Knox and the government
would supply the trucks to haul all the
buried gold to your door?
You couldn't be as rich as you are
if you feel the inner tug of God
in your bosom and hear the secret whisper
that not very many men hear to be
on God's prospect list, to be on God's
active list, that God is working in whose
breast God is working is a marvelous thing.
And if you've got a trace of it
left in you in God's name, get up
tonight and do something about it.
If you feel a pull in your bosom
this night, do something about it.
Remember, a thousand men may work where you
work.
Only you will feel that tug.
God will have yearned over them all, but
they won't listen, they won't hear, and they
kill it within them.
If it's still alive in you, thank God
and follow the light.
Chicagoans are around us by the thousands and
even millions, but how few are they who
feel the pull and hear the voice and
realize that God is there.
You don't have to have a course in
theology or know a thousand things about the
Bible.
You only have to know that you're a
sinner and Christ is a Savior.
Put those two things together and you have
met God's condition.
You're a sinner and he's a Savior.
I say, the secret working of God.
Remember one thing.
It's possible to feel that secret working and
ruin the whole business.
Look at the rich young ruler.
He came, he felt it, pulled by his
longing for eternity.
Young, yes, but not eternally young.
Rich, yes, but not eternally rich.
Moral, yes, but how could he be sure
that his immorality was eternal morality?
High position, yes, but not eternal high position.
His soul said, Oh God, why did you
put eternity in my heart and then give
me time?
I must have eternity.
He went looking for a man that could
teach him how his eternity might be safe.
He found that man in Christ Jesus the
Lord.
Jesus stopped and turned from everybody else and
talked to this shining-eyed inquirer.
But the last Jesus saw of him was
when he was looking sadly at the back
of his neck as he walked away.
It isn't enough to be a recipient of
the yearnings of God.
It isn't enough to feel the tug of
the spirit.
It isn't enough to feel a longing for
heaven and God.
It isn't enough.
The rich young ruler proved that.
He had all that, but he went away.
He loved the world.
If you feel that tug within you tonight,
cherish it, and then follow it.
Follow it immediately.
Come every soul by sin oppressed.
There is mercy with the Lord.
Come every soul by sin oppressed.
The Lord will give you rest and give
you peace.
I want tonight to put out this invitation.
If the Holy Spirit has spoken to your
heart, come.
Come any way you can come.
The Nicodemus came by night.
Someone else came another way.
But they came.
Come, will you?
Remember, only Jesus Christ is enough.
Have the sensitivity to hear it.
Have the humility to obey it.