The text I want to use tonight is
so familiar we needn't look at it at
all in our familiar King James.
Everybody, for God so loved the world, he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have everlasting
life.
And here, in a 25-word compendium, we
have the Christian evangel, the message, the good
news, as though God had compressed all of
the meaning of the scriptures into this 25
-word text.
They say that diamonds are made from native
carbon, which has been placed under tremendous pressure
and crystallized, so that if we might allow
our imagination to soar a bit, we would
say, and could properly say, that the Holy
Ghost has taken the redemptive evangel and has
put it under the emotional pressure of the
triune God, so unbelievably strong and powerful that
it has been crystallized into this shining diamond
of truth.
It is probably judged by its value to
the human race.
It is probably the most precious cluster of
words ever to be assembled by the mind
of an intelligent man.
I believe that if we were to take
this text which we have read here tonight
and should place it on one side of
some vast eternal scales, held yonder in space
by some Watcher and Holy One, who might,
in the language of the scriptures, place one
foot on time and one on eternity, on
the sea and on the land, I believe
that that one text alone, viewed, I say,
and judged by its value to mankind, would
prove to be of more precious use to
the human race in the long run than
all of the books that have ever been
written since the art of writing was first
invented.
There appeared in the little islands of Greece
some four, five, or six hundred years before
Christ a cluster of mighty minds, so mighty
were they that they seemed almost to belong
to another species.
Their names are common names, and their books
are still to be found advertised in our
magazines.
You will see them.
These mighty men who wrote or had written
for them these mighty books, Plato and Aristotle
and all that cluster of great minds, yet
I believe, and I say this seriously, that
if everything all of them had written could
be placed in one side of a scale,
and John 3, 16, and the other, that
they would prove to be as light as
air by comparison.
And I believe that all of the writing
of all the great minds of the world,
and I say this not as a very
young preacher might carelessly, but I say it
thoughtfully, after having had a fairly good lifetime
to read and think and pray, I trust
some too, I do not believe that there
is in all the libraries of the world
now, I do not believe that all of
them put together, if you were to take
and bind together or put in one place,
in one end of the scale, all the
plays of Shakespeare and all of the sonorous
compositions of Milton, and everything that Leigh Hunt
and Scott and Victor Hugo and Emerson and
Bacon and all the rest, all of them
put together that they had ever written, it
could not mean to mankind what 25 words
in our golden English means to the human
race.
That's how highly I value John 3, 16.
And this is a favorite of young preachers,
this John 3, 16.
And yet I must say that to my
knowledge, as far as I can remember, I
have never preached on this text.
I was trying to recall this or trying
to scrape up or dredge up out of
my memory.
Any time that I ever may have preached
on John 3, 16 down the years, it
could be that somewhere there, behind the veil
of forgetfulness, I have or did preach on
this text.
But I cannot recall it.
And I am quite sure that I have
never used it as a text since I
have been in Chicago these 25 years but
I have quoted it, I suppose, 15 or
20,000 times in prayer and in testimony
and in writing and in preaching, though never
used it for a text.
And I never quite knew why I couldn't
get to this text.
And then I was reading just a few
verses here the last week from Ellicott, not
new, really, but newly brought out, one of
the noble old commentators of a hundred or
more years ago, now brought out by Zondervan,
called the Ellicott Commentaries.
I think there are only one or two
books out now, but they'll be all out,
I understand.
And the old, wise old Saint of God
came to John 3, 16.
And he said something to this effect.
Now, I don't tend to say much about
this text.
He said, this is a favorite of young
preachers, but older preachers feel that it's better
felt than talked about.
So I'm going to confine my comment on
this text to the minimum, and he did.
He said very little on John 3, 16.
And I have held back from this text,
as I say, most of my preaching lifetime,
if not all of it, making allowance for
a possible slip of memory somewhere.
And I have avoided it, not because I
did not and do not appreciate it, but
because I appreciate it so profoundly that I'm
frightened by it.
My reason for avoiding it, as near as
I can recall them, would be, or recollect
them out of my mind, would be an
overwhelming sense of inadequacy, almost despair, at the
thought of marked weakness in the presence of
a task which takes tremendous strength.
And knowing, as I do know, that I
am marked by deep ignorance, and it seems
to me that anyone to preach on John
3, 16 ought to have a tremendous amount
of information.
And then, when I also think how by
nature unfeeling I am and how hard, and
anyone to preach on John 3, 16 confronts
a task that requires a great sympathy and
a generous love for God and men.
Therefore, I recommend that young preachers lay away
these truths they can learn about this text,
but never preach on it for a long
time.
Preach around it, but don't preach on it.
And yet, here it is, I have been
preaching on John, and I have come up
to it, and this burning bush is before
us in the way.
And I cannot go around it, and I
dare not flee from it.
So I approach it.
I approach it as one who is filled
with great fear and yet great fascination.
And with my shoes off, my heart shoes
at least, I want to talk about John
3, 16.
I think I'll probably not get beyond the
first line.
Tonight, for God so loved the world.
Now, I believe, as I have said, that
in this line alone, I believe that the
important part of the New Testament evangelism is
here confessed, worthy of the annunciation by an
archangel, that God so loved the world.
Now, this can be restated, and that's really
all that I can do with it.
I cannot hope ever to run up any
ramp and take off.
I can only hope to restate it in
terms more familiar, and say that restated in
personal terms, it means this.
To me, it means that I mean something
to God.
Now, I want you to write that down
in your hearts and think about it.
God so loved the world means to me
in personal terms, I mean something to God.
I matter to him.
God is emotionally concerned about me.
Now, if I said those three things to
you and sent you off with a benediction,
if you have been listening with your heart
as well as your ears, it would have
been and will have been well worthy of
your trip here, no matter how far you
come, that God so loved the world, restated
in personal terms, means that God is emotionally
concerned about me.
That I matter to God, I mean something
to him.
Now, here is one of the strange paradoxes.
It's funny, isn't it, how preachers talk about
paradoxes?
I never heard anybody else talk about it.
My son today told me he'd been attending
some political meetings, and he said no politician
can ever say yes in less than 25
words.
He said he never can say yes in
less than 25.
I think he's generous there.
But politicians never have used the word, to
my knowledge, paradox.
It's remained for the preachers to use the
word paradox.
In case you don't know what paradox means,
it means an apparent contradiction that really isn't
a contradiction.
Here is a strange contradiction in human nature,
that a man may reek with pride and
be swollen with offensive egoism and struck like
a poultry pigeon, and yet at the same
time, deep within him, he may be filled
with a great loneliness, a heavy sense of
orphanage, that he has been orphaned, and that
there isn't a father to whom he can
run, there isn't a mother under whose kind
hand he can run for comfort, there isn't
anywhere anybody that's emotionally concerned about him, outside
of his own narrow little family that will
die.
And the result of this strange sense of
loneliness and cosmic orphanage may be summed up
like this, or the feeling we have about
it, that for me, as a person, nobody
cares.
I matter to nobody except the little mortal
circle around me.
And when they go, then I'll matter to
nobody.
They'll bury me and pay a mound amount
of money to a company and give it
what they call perpetual care nowadays.
And perpetual care probably means till the second
generation's dead.
And then they may conveniently forget their perpetuity.
But there the man lies.
And this is the heavy burden of the
race.
My brethren, when Jesus said, Come unto me,
all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest, he didn't
invite tired people to him, although tired people
are welcome to come.
He didn't invite to him those who have
been economically oppressed, though they also are welcome
to come.
He did not invite to him those who
have been politically oppressed, as the Jews were
under the Romans.
No, no, they can come too.
But he invited to him those who are
inwardly tired and emotionally fatigued with the heavy
pressure of the knowledge, or at least the
belief, that in the vast universe they don't
matter to anybody, that in the wild, vast
world nobody actually cares, that there's no one
emotionally concerned with them.
I mean, of course, except your own little
flock around you with their limited time and
their limited ability.
But in the great vast world we're orphans
there.
There's nobody that cares.
I don't matter.
And there we have it, this strange paradox
tearing at the human heart.
Here in one side is an egoism that
is offensive and rancid and makes the man
boast and lie and strut.
And on the other hand, deep within him,
he's a whimpering, frightened, homesick, heartsick, broken boy,
knowing that there isn't anybody in the universe
that's emotionally concerned.
He doesn't matter to anybody.
God has made us as we are, so
vast, so huge inside of such tremendous proportions
intellectually and spiritually.
And then sin has brought to us this
sense of orphaning, this sense of having been
put out of our father's house and then
the house burnt down and the father died.
I know it's all mixed up.
I know it's all crazy.
I know it isn't true.
But that's the trouble with the world.
Sin has done that.
And the same devil that once came and
said, Ha, yea, hath God said?
Was really saying, in effect, you don't matter
to God.
Has God said to you or God lied?
God doesn't have any emotional connection with you.
You don't matter to God.
God isn't concerned about you and he believes
a lie.
And sin came into the world with all
its woes and its ugly trail of death
alone behind it.
And there we find ourselves now and that's
the trouble with the world.
That's why men rise like Napoleon and Hitler
and Stalin and the rest and try to
immortalize themselves and try to arrange it so
that when they're gone somebody will care.
And that is why, as the poet said,
when he was a little boy, I wrote
on high a name I deemed would never
die.
And when he went back at eighty years
of age and saw his name carved there
in his crude boyish lettering, he smiled and
was ashamed and yet wrote his beautiful poem
that when he was a lad he wrote
on high a name he deemed would never
die.
It's that craving to matter to somebody, to
mean something to somebody, to have somebody that
amounts to something emotionally concerned with us as
persons.
Now the hour in which we live happens
to be the hour of a great humanitarianism.
Or rather I should not say a great
humanitarianism.
I should say a great humanism.
For the two are not the same and
I mean the latter not the former.
We think of the human race in a
lump.
We think of the human race statistically and
we think of it as we might think
of a breed of ant as something very
populous and related intrinsically.
But the individual doesn't matter and that is
the curse of statism.
That is the curse of the totalitarian government
such as old Rome in her day and
such as Nazism was and fascism and now
the curse of communism.
The state means everything, the organization means everything,
but the individual means nothing at all.
And the Christian evangelist comes into that wondrously
alike and says you matter to God.
You as an individual matter to God.
God isn't thinking in terms of gender and
species.
He's thinking in terms of individuals always.
And when the Son of God walked the
earth he always called individuals to him.
While he preached to the multitudes he did
not preach to them en masse as though
they were a faceless crowd.
He preached to them as individuals that he
knew each one.
And these individuals mattered to him.
And so the woman taken into adultery lying
there in the dust ready to be stoned
to death was raised gently to her feet
and sent away.
And told that God would forgive her to
go and sin no more.
And the mother was a crippled baby that
she brought to Jesus that had been kicked
around and pushed everywhere until she had no
feeling anymore that that baby or she amounted
to anything in the vast world was selected
out of the crowd and thumbed over and
touched and blessed.
And Jesus blessed the baby and called his
name.
Statistics, statistics.
Jesus doesn't know statistics.
He doesn't deal in them.
He deals in individuals and the Christian message
is God loves the world and God doesn't
love masses, he loves people, individuals and loves
masses only because they're composed as individuals.
The world doesn't know that.
I think I'm beginning to understand as I
talk, Cryer Boone said, if I could get
everybody in the world to believe God loved
them I'd get everybody in the world converted.
I think that was an overstatement but at
least I believe I know what he meant.
Now this deep feeling the devil planted in
us that we don't matter to anybody is
confirmed by observation.
All you have to do is look around
you and see and you will find that
nature alone, for instance, appears to be very
little concerned with the individual.
Very, very much concerned with the species but
very little concerned with the individual.
Chris Tennyson said of nature, Nature is so
careful of the type she's seen, so careless
of the single life.
And so nature has planted deep within every
normal human being a tremendous urge for self
-propagation.
And that urge begins in babyhood and doesn't
die till we die.
And that urge guarantees the perpetuation of the
race and yet when the individual has perpetuated
his kind he dies and goes back to
dust.
And there isn't a spot scarcely anywhere but
that is tainted or blessed as you like
with the dust of men where once they
have been and are no more.
And if we take the wings of the
morning, says the poet in the barrack in
Desert Pierce, and hear nothing but the sound
of the splashings of the great Amazon, yet
even there the dead are.
And all the tribes that walk the earth
are but a handful to the tribes that
slumber in its bosom since the long flight
of years began, matron and maid and soldier.
And old man in the gray bloom of
his old age and kings and learned men
and fools and wise men all lie down
together and the dead reign there alone.
Nature seems to confirm that idea that you
and I don't matter in the great vast
universe.
Who cares about the past generation?
If you want to check on that go
out to a cemetery somewhere as I sometimes
do and don't say I'm morbid, I'm not.
Go out to a cemetery and look around.
Who's alive to care about that old man
there?
There he lies, he's been dead 200 years.
Who's alive to care about him?
His great, great, great, great grandchildren may carelessly
come with their camera and between the joke
and the wisecrack snap old great, great, great,
great grandfather's old bent and leaning stone that
tells where he lies.
Who cares about him?
He's all around in earth's diurnal turns with
rocks and stones and trees and he matters
no more than the rock there on the
hillside.
Few there are that care when we live
and fewer still when we die and when
they die nobody cares.
Now Christian message comes and says God cares.
Christian message comes to the tramp, that old
tramp.
Once he was a shining lad, crawling across
the floor with shining face and dripping chin
and shining eyes and his parents ran to
grab him and stood him up on his
wobbly legs and grabbed him when he fell,
he meant something to somebody.
But they're gone and society has not done
right by him and he hasn't done right
by society and now he's a bum, a
tramp.
Old clothes that fit him as if he
had been born in them.
Every wrinkle, every crease in his old tired
body, his clothing fitted now, greased to him
and his old feet in shoes that fit
his feet as though they too had been
stretched on and the whole body alive with
dirt and toothies and there he lies, smelling
of every place that he's been in the
last 15 years and if he's sober enough
to think, he'll be saying and thinking within
himself, well here I am, why am I
here?
Nobody cares.
I don't mean anything to anybody.
There isn't anybody anywhere emotionally concerned about me.
My father's gone, my mother's gone, my brother's
gone to some other part of the world
and he's forgotten that I live.
When a policeman comes, I duck or if
I don't duck, I get told to move
on, buddy and I've been turned out of
all the places that bums even are taken
and so with a deep sense of sadness
and complete orphanage as though all that meant
anything had died and he was alone in
a vast and gusty universe blown about like
dust grains or leaves of autumn meaning nothing
to anybody, nobody concerned, nobody caring and the
Christian evangelist said wait a minute you, dirt
and whiskers and smell and hollow sunken cheeks
wait a minute, somebody is emotionally concerned about
you somebody isn't happy because you're the way
you are somebody knows your name and remembers
you and loves you where you are and
as you are you mean something to somebody
who do I mean anything to?
The girl I once knew 30 years ago
has long forgotten me my parents are gone
long, long, nobody cares for me and then
the smiling worker says God so loved that
he gave his only begotten son that whoever
would in you were included believe in him
should not perish but have everlasting life and
I am here from God to tell you
that you do matter you don't matter to
Mayor Kennelly you don't matter to Chief O
'Connor you don't matter to Edgar Hoover you
don't matter to President Eisenhower you matter there
is somebody that masters something in the world
to whom you matter somebody cares about you
that's the high compression that's the shining passage
of the diamond of truth which God has
thrown almost with happy carelessness out to the
world and says take it and there's that
wounded soldier from all I can learn I
suppose the most complete loneliness that can possibly
come to a human being would be to
have all your company march on before and
lie wounded in an enemy country surrounded by
no one whose language you can speak and
surrounded by thousands who would kill you on
sight the cold cold settling down on the
evening and there you are bloody on the
hard frozen ground you know one of my
boys lay like that and I suppose that's
the loneliest most complete sense of forsakenness and
abandonment your pal, your buddy the commanding officer
drop voice sergeant everybody's gone on and left
you the firing is in the distance and
if you're dying, thank God you wasn't and
didn't die but if you're dying in that
last moment even the stars are cold and
full of accusation and the hard biting wind
that pierces your torn and bloody uniform confirms
what you've always feared nobody cares nobody cares
I was a number to Uncle Sam now
nobody cares nobody and the Christian message comes
smiling up and says somebody does care you're
only a number to the army but you're
a living breathing pulsating human being made in
the image of God and the God in
whose image you are made cares you amount
to something to God you're a treasure to
God you matter and I imagine that there
were many many many boys brought up in
Baptist churches and Presbyterian churches and Alliance churches
and other gospel churches throughout our great broad
country among that what was it 20,000
or so that died in Korea I imagine
that there were many many of them that
in that last hour when loneliness seized upon
them and they felt a sense of orphanage
remembered the text that they had memorized and
gotten a little cheap prize for memorizing when
they were in Sunday school they're lying with
their last flickering breath they turned their eyes
upward to the God above and said oh
God when I was a boy they told
me I mattered is it any different now?
have you changed your mind God?
when I was a boy in Sunday school
they told me that you were emotionally concerned
about me oh God is it any different
now that I'm a big man and I've
carried a gun and sinned is it any
different now God and somewhere within them the
ancient memory her old memories came back and
the ancient voice of God said no boy
I'm still not happy about your condition for
I so loved you that I gave my
only begotten son that whoever believed in him
should not perish but have everlasting life and
I wouldn't go indiscriminately and say it but
I'm quite certain that there are mothers grieving
over boys they believed are in hell tonight
boys that would greet them in that happy
day do you not think that the thief
on the cross had a mother?
he was not an old man he was
a young man do you not think the
thief on the cross had a mother?
and do you not think the thief on
the cross when he was dying there was
in the tender heart of his mother?
and do you not suppose that that mother
thought I failed him?
and society's failed him and he's failed society
and he's dying a criminal crucified on a
cross my boy, my boy but what she
didn't know was that the one who cared
was within touching distance what she didn't know
was that that outcast that young rebel and
traitor turned his eyes to the one who
cared and said, remember me when thou comest
in thy kingdom and he said, this day
shalt thou be with me in paradise all
she knew was that her boy had died
by execution and her hair was grayer and
her face more tired and her wrinkles deeper
and her gloom heavier when the day was
over and she knew her boy was dead
but what she didn't know was that somebody
in that universe beside her cared and that
that boy mattered to somebody beside his mother
that there was somebody that wasn't happy about
that thief dying a criminal and going to
hell that there was somebody who was emotionally
wrought up about this that man meant something
he had gone there from a cell, a
number gone to the execution but now he
matters suddenly he becomes significant and there isn't
an angel in the wind choir above more
significant than he his name sounds yonder in
God Almighty's heaven because the Christian message says
God so loved and that love is not
the love for a species but a love
for individuals and it was people that he
loved Jesus lover of my soul not Jesus
lover of the human race but Jesus lover
of my soul in one strict sense there
is no human race human race is composed
of individuals and if you take away the
individuals you have no human race there is
such a thing as a crowd but in
yet another sense there is no such a
thing as a crowd evangelists love crowds crowd
mad these days they look out upon them
as crowds in one sense there is no
such a thing as a crowd for a
crowd is simply a congregation of individuals and
every individual has eternal significance and meaning in
the heart of God God so loved God
is emotionally concerned with the individual and that
prisoner that prisoner yonder may be in a
prison camp cursed and beaten and half starved
and threatened and brainwashed and cuffed around until
he's been made to believe his own country's
turned on him lies have been told him
his own country has been produced until his
mind is filled with a belief that even
his own people don't care anymore that nobody
cares his country's deserted nobody cares and after
months and months of weariness and tiredness and
undernourishment and anemia and a deep fatigue that
from no amount of rest can cure he
arrives at that place where he can't shake
it off by shaking his head anymore the
great sense of cosmic loneliness orphanage somebody's death
that used to care and the Christian message
comes and says no sonny you've had a
rough time of it maybe some people back
home are forgotten maybe the girl that swore
at the station she'd be true to the
end is married to somebody else now maybe
your company's written you off and you've been
notified as missing in action your folks don't
know you're alive at all maybe your people
back home are dead maybe for all you
know sonny, your country has gone over to
the other side but I have a message
for you there is somebody that doesn't change
and there is somebody that cares and he's
not happy about you and he'll never be
happy about you till you're safe in his
bosom he'll never feel good about you until
you, he's single alone you with all of
your discouragement and gloom and weariness until you
have come back into his heart and found
your home there to live and to die
there and live again there that's the Christian
message, my friends so all around the whole
world we can go and we can tell
them the shipwrecked sailor and the chronic failure
the man who fails at everything he touches
some people have success at the ends of
their fingers they just have to touch it
and it turns to gold other people are
chronic failures they've established a pattern of failure
everything they do fails they add up, two
times two turns to five nothing they can
do wins and so it's failure all the
way and they say, well, it's all right
big fellas, men of popularity men who make
money, I fail at everything I'm just no
good the English language is such an almost
humorously downright blunt and accurate language he's no
good, they say and those two little words,
no good they just mean everything a couple
of women will say about another woman and
anybody with a little imagination could write a
book on that let me hear two old
biddies say about some girl she's no good
and I can write a book about the
girl I don't even need to meet her
just use your imagination and put so much
into it no good, no good but you
know there isn't anybody in the whole United
States of America spill it over into Canada
and down into Mexico and go on across
the ocean of Europe and on around yet
and come to Asia and take them all
in to the last twisted crippled black boy
deformed in some hut in Africa there isn't
one human being about which God says he's
no good in that sense he says there's
no unrighteous no, not one we all must
be saved and we'll all perish if we
don't repent and we must all be born
again but in the sense of being written
off as no good and hopeless there isn't
anybody thank God there isn't anybody and don't
you listen to any of these interpreters of
truth who say God has chosen some and
not chosen others and the ones that he
has chosen will be and the ones that
he hasn't chosen are no good they're vessels
of wrath fitted to destruction and God created
them to have the fun of damning them
don't you listen to such what Wesley called
a horrible decree there isn't anybody like that
in the universe, sir I don't say there's
good in everybody but I say there's somebody
that likes them whether they're good or not
I say there's somebody that's emotionally concerned about
them everybody matters and you tonight, my friend,
matter now, I repeated that over and over
again not because I have no other language
but because I want that to come home
to your heart I want you to take
this out with you tonight I want you
to go away not carelessly talking about this
or that but I want you to go
away saying the one who was with the
Father and who came and reported what he
saw says you matter he came down from
above not to condemn the world but that
the world might live and whoever believes in
him whosoever is singular believes in him that
the individual should not perish but have everlasting
life and so there is one who is
from above who came and said this is
what I saw there I'm reporting what I
saw everybody matters and God's concerned about you
as an individual that you say if only
you knew me, Mr. Tozer you wouldn't talk
like that I don't know you I don't
know you, of course all of you individually
but it wouldn't make any difference it's still
true God is concerned about you you say
yes, concerned about the race no, concerned about
you concerned about my family no concerned about
you as well as your family you that
you say, Mr. Tozer I've sinned I've lied
I've failed I've made vows and broken them
I've made promises and failed to keep them
I'm no good well, all I can say
to you is that if you persist in
your gloomy unbelief there isn't anything even God
can do for you because it's unbelief that
tells you at the same time your heart
is swollen with pride another part of your
heart says there's no use I'm no good
and God Almighty went to all the trouble
to say you are not that you're good
morally but you're some good to God because
God's going to make you over and He's
proved that He cares by sending His only
begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shouldn't
perish but have everlasting life I'm nearly done
I can only point out that faith cometh
by hearing the Word and it begins to
work as we begin to affirm now if
you would begin to affirm and say to
God this affirmation O God believing Thy Word
I affirm I mean something to You I
affirm it God You said it to me
now I say it back to Thee You're
concerned about me might change the whole complexion
of your life for all the years to
come you start saying it tonight I matter
I matter I'm sinner but I matter I'm
hell bound but I'm not going to hell
with nobody caring somebody cares don't power to
express I matter I all alone I I'm
a number to the government I'm a statistic
but to God I'm a person that matters
write your name in there you know what
I do sometimes I never do this except
when I'm by myself maybe once or twice
in the presence of Brother McAfee he and
I in our prayer life almost have become
not two people but one when I pray
and quote scripture back to God I give
my three names so God won't make any
mistake I want Him to know exactly who
I am and unless there be any confusion
I remind Him it's senior now you say
that's silly the old man going soft is
he falling apart in his old age oh
I only wish I'd fallen apart decades before
I did if that's what you mean I
won't let generalities and broad sweeps of thought
and the en masse idea I won't let
that get me down when God says in
His word that He loves He means He
loves me I tell God who my my
father's name and my mother's name where I
was born I tell God now remember that's
who it is God this doing this praying
and the one that we're talking about here
I don't spend all my time praying about
myself certainly but when I have occasion to
go before God for anything and I want
to know that somebody's talking to God I
tell God who my father was Jacob Schneider
Tozer that was his name J.S. Tozer
and I remind him that's the boy well
affirm I matter to God and then turn
to God and say oh God I matter
to you then you're pretty close to the
kingdom brother I matter to you God after
you've said to yourself I believe it's true
I matter I'm a sinner I'm on my
way to hell but somebody cares tremendously about
me and after your heart believes that for
that's part of the Christian evangel then you
begin to pray faith comes by hearing and
faith becomes perfect by praying oh God I
I believe I matter to thee you see
how simple it is and how easy to
come into the arms of God to come
back to God if you've wandered away to
come back home if you've strayed to come
to him for the first time as a
sinner and with a full confidence that God
has taken the great truth the truth the
devil never discovered truth that mankind never dreamed
of discovering and compressed it by all the
pressure of the triune God into this shining
diamond of truth and held it up as
the church's bright message God soul of the
world that he gave his only begotten son
that whosoever believed in him should not perish
but have everlasting you believe it?
you believe it tonight?
say amen do you believe it?
I believe it I believe it how about
you friend?
you're not a Christian we're not going to
fix you up and tell you that everything's
all right it isn't all right that word
perish is in John 3 16 don't overlook
that perish is there but it's there after
the word love perish that's there so it
isn't all right if you're of sin then
you haven't come to Christ in believing surrender
it isn't all right you shall perish most
surely but no matter how bad or how
far away from God or how often you've
failed him or how many lies you've told
him or how terrible you've been or how
no good you feel you are I have
the word for you you do matter God
is concerned God isn't happy about you he
says come home and let whoever here say
come whoever will let him come sinner man,
sinner woman you can come you can God
waits to receive you just as I am
without one plea but that thy blood was
shed for me and that thou bidest me
come to thee, O Lamb of God I
come those that have known you known your
dirty temper known your impossible disposition known your
past and have no faith in you they
can't keep you out for they don't have
the keys of death and hell they can't
keep you out and if every cop in
town has once been on your trail they,
he, they can't keep you out because there's
one to whom you matter so much that
he gave his only son