In John the 14th chapter, verse 1, Let
not your heart be troubled, ye believe in
God, believe also in me.
Now I approach the passage that lies ahead
of us, John 14, 15, 16, particularly these
opening verses, with feelings that are somewhat mixed
for two reasons.
This passage is to the believing and enlightened
heart a gallery filled with the most ravishing
beauty.
It is a treasure house, where it is
located.
It seems to me the very gold with
which the streets in heaven are paved, and
the very jewels that are on the walls
of the city of God.
And yet, this passage, particularly these opening verses
of John 14, this passage has had the
hard fortune of being made into a funeral
text almost exclusively.
And yet it is not a funeral text.
Clearly it is not a funeral text.
And that leads me to say that the
usefulness of many scriptures and many hymns has
been limited not by the scripture or the
hymn itself, but because they have been applied
in a way to limit them.
For instance, here is John 14, Let not
your heart be troubled, ye believe in God,
believe also in me and my Father, house
or many mansions.
That's not a funeral text.
There was nobody dead there.
They were bearing nobody.
This was scripture preliminary to our Lord's death,
certainly.
But he was not talking about his death,
he was talking about and to his people.
And then 1 Corinthians also, that brilliant and
penetrating passage dealing with the future, the future
life and the glorified bodies of men.
That has been turned into a funeral sermon,
and you never hear it any other time.
And then Revelation 21, that passage that says,
I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem,
coming down from God out of heaven.
Well, that passage has nothing to do with
a funeral.
It says that that city was prepared as
a bride adorned for her husband.
That's a wedding passage, not a funeral passage.
And yet you never hear Revelation 21 except
at a funeral.
You never hear John 14 or 1 Corinthians
15 except at a funeral.
Have you noticed that the hymns of the
Incarnation are limited to Christmas season, when everybody
is too busy to give them much attention?
And the hymns of the Resurrection are limited
to the Easter season.
Now, that is the way we do it,
and yet it is just in the daily
grind that we need these passages.
It is just in the kitchen and the
office and the home and the school and
the shop and the factory and on the
highway.
It's just in the downright tough business of
living that we need John 14.
It's not when we die only, but it
is when we're alive here on the earth.
And we need Revelation 21.
We need the knowledge that there is a
city foresquare adorned as a bride for her
husband, coming down from God out of heaven.
We need to know it then.
And it is the Incarnation that would cheer
our spirits, the knowledge that God has come
to dwell with mankind.
Why limit that to Christmas?
Yet we do it habitually.
And Christ the Lord is risen today, hallelujah.
Son of men and sons of men and
angels say hallelujah.
We limit that to Easter and hear it
one time out of the year.
Now, I believe that this is all wrong,
because I believe that the power of the
Incarnation lies, not in one time a year,
but lies and resides in the Church of
Christ for all the year round.
I believe that the glory of the resurrection
is not for one Sunday out of the
year, but it is for 52 Sundays out
of the year, plus all of the days
that lie in between.
Now, our Lord Jesus Christ said, Now, that's
the reason that I hesitate to enter this,
because people say, Brother Tolleson is preaching a
series of funeral sermons, I think I'll stay
home and watch television.
I hope you don't get that idea, because
this is not scripture that you use at
funerals only.
But it is good for all the days
and all the times.
Now, our Lord said, Let not your heart
be troubled.
And this presupposes a world of troubled hearts.
The wicked are like the troubled sea, says
the Holy Ghost, that cannot rest.
Sin, you see, has destroyed our peace.
You know, it is a noteworthy thing that
the only place where you find distress and
disharmony and lack of uniformity is in the
realm of the moral.
You never find it anywhere in nature.
The sun sets and rises in peace, and
rises and sets again in peace, and it
can be predicted for centuries to come.
And if you look on the front page
of your newspaper, it will tell you exactly
the minute the sun will rise and the
minute the sun will set.
And if they wanted to do it, they
could tell you the phases of the moon
all the way through, and they could tell
you what star would be in the ascendancy
at what given day and what given moment.
Their heavenly bodies move in perfect and beautiful
precedence.
And so it is with the seasons, they
come and go harmoniously, and the wild geese
fly to the north at the right time
and back to the south right at the
exact time, and all of nature moves harmoniously.
And it is even so with man's machinery.
Man has invented machines that are better than
the men who invented them.
We had a clock back there that amazed
us one day by stopping.
It was an electric clock, and do you
know how long it had been running without
a drop of oil, without anybody tinkering with
it, nor touching it, nor even dusting it,
nor cleaning it?
It had been running nearly 20 years in
this auditorium and the other one for just
transferred across.
And when it stopped one day, we said,
what in the world has happened?
We forgot that man had made an electric
clock that for nearly 20 years kept perfect
time and never had any disharmony, nor trouble,
nor discord, never quarreled with itself, had a
nervous breakdown or got a complex.
Man made a machine that's better than he
is, a machine that can do what he
can't do.
It is only when you enter the realm
of morals where there is will and personality,
where people are made in the image of
God, it is only there that you find
disharmony.
Now, I call attention, this is not really
a part of the sermon, but I call
attention to the fact that man can make
a machine that will run untended for days
and weeks and months and will with great
and beautiful precision do what it was created
to do.
But that same man, strange and contradictory as
it may seem, that same man capable of
making a machine that can run smoothly and
with perfect internal harmony, that same man can't
achieve the harmony that he can put into
his machine.
The reason being that the machine works according
to mathematical laws and mechanical laws, whereas man
runs all twisted and crooked and out of
order because sin has done him in.
The clock can't sin.
The birds that fly north and south aren't
sinners.
And the heavenly bodies as they move haven't
sinned.
And the seasons come and go without sin.
And the worm crawls on the leaf without
sin, wraps himself in a cocoon and stays
so many weeks and comes out a butterfly
in the spring.
There's been no sin there to disrupt the
order of nature.
But if you want turmoil and agitation, you'll
find it in the realm of personality and
morals.
And does not this reveal something, ladies and
gentlemen?
The fact that men can make machines where
there's no discord in and that the heavenly
bodies and all of nature can run in
harmony, and it's only when we come into
the realm of personality and morals that we
find turmoil and agitation?
Does not this tell us something about ourselves
that we'd rather not hear?
Does it not tell us that people are
spiritually sick?
Doesn't it tell us that there is in
the human mind and heart a foreign, wild
element that shouldn't be there?
Doesn't it tell us that man has broken
loose from his central sun and is no
longer evolving in his proper orbit?
Doesn't it tell us that he's a vagabond
and a fugitive on the earth and a
stranger from God?
It certainly does.
Jesus said, Ah, I'm so glad to tell
you that the man who said that a
little while later went out and died on
a cross.
The man who said that didn't write it
into a book and draw royalties that would
buy him a yacht.
The man who said that went out and
died on a cross to make it possible
for a man to have the peace that
he's never had.
And when he said, Let not your heart
be troubled, he went straight from saying that
to die to make it possible.
I can listen to him.
I can't listen to the man who writes
a book on how to have peace of
heart or peace of mind, to have peace
of conscience, because he is a bestseller and
he's driving a huge car on the proceeds
from that book and never turned his finger
for anybody.
But I can listen to the one who
said, Let not your heart be troubled, because
he went out on a cross to make
good on that and died and rose again
and is at the right hand of God
now to make good on that.
And he can build into your heart with
such precision a work that will be as
harmonious as the heavenly bodies, that will run
with all the smoothness of those bodies.
Let not your heart be troubled.
That indicates that a man does have some
control over his heart, particularly a saved man.
Don't let your heart get disturbed.
Let it not be troubled.
Now, I want to talk a little about
how men try to find peace.
They try to think away their troubles.
I suppose that's one way of doing it.
Our good friend down here told about being
saved from Christian science.
A lady called me up last week and
said she wanted to see me.
I thought she sounded too good to be
true, but I'd committed myself, so I said,
All right, I'll see you at one o
'clock.
She arrived an hour early.
And rather nice-looking, elderly lady, round, happy
face.
And she said, I am a Christian scientist.
And I have a folder here which you've
been circulating.
There's the other part.
Maxine.
I have a folder here which you've been
circulating.
And she said, It's good.
I've enjoyed it a lot.
It's good.
What is the Christian Missionary Alliance?
That's the name of the folder.
She said, Now, there's just one thing about
it that I don't understand.
She said, Why did the writer, Dr. Simpson,
Why did the writer have to say that
about us?
And what he said was, I believe we
teach healing, but not the false doctrine of
Christian science or Emmanuelism.
And she said, Now, I want to know
why.
Why did he have to go out of
his way to say those bad things about
us?
And she was as coy as a kitten.
And so we talked.
I said, Have you got a Bible?
Oh, sure, she said.
So she picked me a Bible.
And I said, Now, I'm your neighbor.
She lived down my way.
Same street.
And I said, I've got to talk to
you honestly.
I've got to tell you something.
So we talked about Christian science.
And she said, Now, just what is wrong
with it?
And of course, that's what is known in
the vulgar language of the street as sticking
your neck out.
So when she said, Just what is wrong
with us?
I was able to tell her.
We parted good friends, I hope.
And she was just as sweet as when
we started.
But she said, Now, the words of Gamaliel,
If it is of God, you can't destroy
it.
And if it isn't of God, it'll fall
apart.
Well, I said, Would you mind telling me
then why it is that you made a
trip from Beverly Hills up here to try
to get us to stop circulating that because
it has two lines in it about Christian
science.
It's not complimentary.
If you're of God, why do you worry?
And I said, Deep in your heart, there
is a fear that you're not right or
you wouldn't be here.
I don't run around worried.
Folks can circulate all the tracts they want
about this church and about what we teach.
God Almighty's on our side, and I'll never
drive a block to get it stopped.
Go ahead, circulate.
Circulate it.
God told me a long time ago this.
I will be an enemy to thine enemy
and an adversary to thine adversary, and I
will go before thee, and I will drive
out thine enemies, and I will make them
turn their backs on thee, and I will
send hornets to chase them out ahead of
thee.
Still there.
And I'm at peace because he said he'd
go before and take care of my enemies.
This dear little old lady, and God bless
her.
I said, I'd like to say this about
you, Christian scientists.
You always seem to be nice people.
Well, she said thank you.
That's the one thing I can say.
What I started to say was, people, that
we try to think their troubles away, and
I told the dear lady that was one
of her troubles.
She was trying to think them away.
But you know when you think them away
what happens to them?
Came a man over here years ago by
the name of Emil Clay.
He was a Frenchman.
He was a kind of Norman Vincent Veal.
Norman Vincent Veal sort of fellow.
And he got a string, a kind of
a rosary, just a homemade rosary, you know,
buttons and string.
He said, when you get up in the
morning, take a deep breath, stand, and square
back your shoulders and say, and every day
and every way I'm getting better and better.
It was a big joke throughout the United
States.
A big joke.
Every day and every way I'm getting better
and better.
Every day and every way I'm getting better
and better.
He said that that would create a positive
conviction within your heart and that you would
wonderfully move in the direction.
It was sailing on the beam before there
was any beam.
He was creating a beam with a string
and some buttons.
And the beam was, and every day and
every way I'm getting better and better.
Then one day he dropped dead.
I only, he died, did you know?
He dropped dead.
God bless him.
I don't know where he is, but I
know that you can think your troubles away,
but they come back on you.
And if you drop dead, they come back
on your family.
And very likely come back on you and
the world to come.
No.
If you see the disease is too deep,
it won't, you can't cure it by thinking
about it.
They tell me now, this I say with
caution, because I have not checked it with
doctors and nurses who might have had experience
with it, but they tell me that one
ingredient, or mental ingredient, one psychological ingredient in
tuberculosis is the cheerfulness of the patient.
That when everybody else knows they're dying, they
think they're going to be all right.
And when everybody knows they have only a
few weeks to live, they'll be laying plans
for months and years to come and then
be as cheerful as can be.
Now I don't know if that's true, I
know it's true in the case I know
about.
A woman was buying a farm and she
was moving and she was going to do
this and that, and everybody knew the poor
woman was dying.
Something about it, cheerful and optimistic, I don't
know what it is, but they say that's
characteristic of certain forms and certain stages of
tuberculosis.
And that's also characteristic of certain developments in
human sin, that we can cheer ourselves up
and believe we're all right when we're dead
wrong and God knows we're on our way
to judgment.
But we get a strange optimism, an unusual
sense of well-being, and everybody in heaven
knows and God above knows that in a
very short time we'll be gone and we'll
face our maker without a protector or a
shield to account for the deeds done in
the body.
Everybody knows it, but the victim.
So some try to get peace by thinking
their troubles away.
Others try to get peace in a more
practical and direct manner by amusement.
Now you probably won't like this, and some
of you will go home and say, I
think the old man is getting some strange
notions.
But you know what I believe, ladies and
gentlemen?
I believe that amusements were created by the
devil to take the minds of dying men
off of their dying.
I believe that entertainments and amusements are the
work of the enemy to keep dying men
from knowing they're dying, and to keep enemies,
men who are enemies of God, from remembering
that they're enemies.
Today there were thousands, I would guess, oh,
a couple of three hundred thousand people watching
doubleheader ballgames.
Now that in itself is harmless, of course.
But if those several hundred, maybe three hundred
thousand people today, or two hundred thousand that
watched ballgames, had taken those two or three
hours with their Bible to settle eternal issues,
heaven would be populated and hell would be
less full than it will be.
But fallen human nature plus the work of
the devil have given us something to keep
us thinking harmless thoughts and pleasant thoughts in
order that we might not settle the matter
of our eternal soul's welfare.
And the man who comes home at night,
God in his heaven knows, and nobody else
does, that just three weeks away is a
coronary thrombosis that will drop him on the
sidewalk.
God knows it, and he doesn't, and his
family doesn't.
If he knew it, he'd be calling in
the preacher and reading his Bible and getting
straight with God.
And why isn't he going to call in
anybody and get right with God?
Too many funny things on the radio, too
many funny things on TV, too many live
magazines, too many comic strips, too many things
that he can do, too many bowling clubs,
too many theaters, too many night ballgames, too
much everything to take his mind off of
the fact that his troubles are real and
that the agitation and disharmony and discord within
him are the result of his fall and
his sin.
And if he could know that and didn't
have so many things to take his mind
off his troubles, maybe he would get to
God and get delivered from his troubles.
Now if that's radicalism, you can quote me,
I don't care.
I believe that.
I believe that play and all of these
things, which might in themselves be harmless, I
suppose in heaven there will be play.
Somebody told me the other day, God bless
them, I don't remember whether it was a
man or a woman, but somebody said to
me, Do you know, Mr. Tozer, I believe
there will be children in heaven.
I don't think that heaven, being the human
race, I don't think it would be normal
without having children in heaven.
I don't know about that.
I'm no authority on such matters.
But if we don't have any children to
run around up there and make it a
nice place to live, we'll have something equivalent
to them, if there is any equivalent for
them.
We'll have something up there like it.
I'm sure I'm positive of that.
And I believe that God will give to
his people delights and plenty of delights.
John Flavel wrote a brilliant and convincing sermon
a century or so ago showing that heaven
wasn't a place where you quit living and
where you reached your goal and where maturity
stopped all activity.
But he said as long as the ages
rolled, there would be happy, joyous activities, growth
and development on toward God-likeness forever.
I believe he's right.
I believe that when earth's last picture is
painted and the tubes are twisted and dried
and the oldest colors have faded and the
youngest critic has died, we shall rest in
faith we shall need it, lie down for
an e'en or two, till the master
of all good workmen shall set us to
work anew.
Then writes Kipling, how we shall go on
and on working through the ages.
I believe that.
And I believe there will be pleasure.
And I believe that there will be entertainments
and amusements and all to take the heart
of man and make it glad.
But then a man will have a right
to rest and he'll have a right to
those things.
But a sinner has no right to anything.
He has no right.
I mean his own moral right.
No sinner has a right to look at
a TV screen and tell his soul has
been right with God.
No man has a right to take an
evening off to watch a ball game whose
soul is not right with God.
He has no right to do it.
He's sinning against himself.
He's committing spiritual suicide.
He's killing himself, doing anything until he gets
right with God.
So that amusements are at least they're used
if the devil didn't send them.
It's a man's sinful heart using them in
amusements and competitive sports.
And then of course there's always this other
terrible thing, alcohol and narcotics.
Men drink, say they're psychologists, to escape from
themselves.
And it is my conviction that much of
the love of music in the day in
which we live, certain kinds of music particularly,
is nothing that can be explained only as
an escape from themselves.
I've been in music stores looking over some
good records, trying to find some nice and
good records, and we've got some wonderful records.
And I have seen them come in with
Levi's so tight that only God, I think,
knows how they got into them, and sideburns
and too much hair and a general dirty
look that indicates, you know, lack of something.
And then go into one of those rooms
and sit there and prance and listen to
the wildest music.
And they buy them by the tens of
thousands, buy them by the millions.
Why?
To escape from themselves.
The average young fellow can't live with himself.
He's got too much trouble inside.
So all the carefree hours of youth, that's
what you think.
You'd find when you get into the heart
of the average young fellow in these late
teens, you'd find not peace there at all,
but trouble.
Get into the heart of the average young
woman full of quips and fun and jokes
and springy step and all the rest, and
you think, oh, to be young.
No, don't you remember when you were afraid
of everything and you were worried about everything
and you were afraid to go to bed
and you were miserable?
Don't you remember when you were young?
All the trouble and distress there is in
the world, you can't cure it with music.
You can't cure it with fast music and
you can't cure it with soft music.
You can't cure it at all except the
one who came and said, let not your
heart be troubled and then went out and
died to make it possible.
He can cure it.
Christ gave the prescription.
Believe in God.
Believe in me.
Believe in God.
Now he didn't say understand God.
See, we got into our present confusion by
unbelief.
And unbelief is a fundamental loss of confidence
in God.
That's unbelief.
Then say, oh, I wish I could believe.
You know what you're saying?
You're saying, I wish I could stop thinking
that God isn't trustworthy.
A fundamental loss of confidence in God, that's
unbelief, and that's what got us into our
present condition.
Is this so bad, then?
Is this so bad?
Why do you preachers talk about unbelief?
Is it so bad?
Well, let me illustrate.
You go up to a friend of yours,
a neighbor or a friend of yours, a
fellow with whom you've bowled or played cards
or something else.
You go up to him sometime, look him
in the face and say, Jim, I have
lost confidence in you.
I no longer trust you.
I no longer believe what you say.
I no longer have any confidence in your
character.
You know what would happen?
Lose him like that.
There would be instantaneous alienation of heart between
you two.
Maybe for a minute he'd plead and say,
but Ed, what do you mean?
What have I done?
Well, I find it totally impossible to believe
in you, Jim.
I find it totally impossible to have any
confidence in your character, in your honesty, in
your trustworthiness.
I have absolutely no confidence in you.
I can't trust you.
I wouldn't trust you with a dime.
By that time, you and he are no
longer friends.
Now turn that same thing onto the mighty
God in heaven above.
For nobody would have the courage to say
that, but that's what unbelief says nevertheless.
Unbelief says, I have no confidence in God.
God says it, but I don't know whether
it's so.
It's in the Bible, and I believe the
Bible, but still I can't believe it for
myself.
I can't pump up any confidence in God
myself.
Ah, that's dreadful because of who God is.
I quoted over the radio what St. Anselm
said about God.
He said, God is that which needs nothing
to make him complete, but which everything needs
to make him complete.
It completes.
God is that which everything needs to make
it complete.
There isn't a star that's complete without God.
There isn't a seed that can roll without
God.
There isn't a mountain that can stand without
God.
There isn't a bird that can sing without
God.
There isn't a worm that can crawl without
God.
There isn't a planet that can revolve without
God.
There isn't an angel that's complete without God.
There isn't a human soul that's complete without
God.
Withdraw God from creation and you have chaos
and all night.
God is that which everything needs to make
it complete.
But God is that which needs nothing to
make him complete.
He is complete in himself without any addition.
But nothing is complete without God.
God is the adhesive agent that holds the
entire creation together.
So loss of confidence in God, you know
what results.
Loss of confidence in God means internal chaos.
Faith brings peace.
Believe in God.
And doubt brings discord, disharmony and trouble.
Heaven is going to be a place of
perfect peace because it will be a place
of perfect confidence.
Nobody in Heaven will be whispering behind his
hand about God.
Everybody there will have perfect restful confidence in
the character of God.
So we'll have perfect confidence and perfect peace.
Hell will be a place where there will
be no confidence in God, hence perfect hell.
Hell will be hell not because of fire
and worms, though they're in the Bible too.
But hell will be hell because there is
no confidence in God.
And all faith is banished into night.
Earth, on the other hand, is a place
where there is a little faith and a
little peace, and much unbelief and much trouble.
And always remember that trouble goes along with
unbelief and peace goes along with faith.
But faith in what?
Faith in food.
A man pulled out a fountain pen one
time.
He said, Now I believe in faith.
Faith in that fountain pen.
If I have enough faith in that fountain
pen, I can move mountains.
I was buying some books the other day.
That is, I was in looking over books.
And I saw one, Faith Made Them Champions.
I didn't read the book.
I wouldn't be caught dead buying it.
But I know what it said because I
looked through it.
And I have a way in all getting
an education at the expense of the man
who sells the books.
Browsing around.
And what it said was, This woman was
a golf champion because he had faith.
This woman was a baseball champion because he
had faith.
This woman was a great theatrical leader because
he had faith.
All having faith.
Faith in what?
Faith in fountain.
Oh no, brother.
We believe in God.
Believe also in me.
The faith I have in a fountain pen
will come back to plague me and curse
me.
But the faith I have in God stabilizes
me and the universe.
Believe also in me, said Jesus.
Let not your heart be troubled.
What are you going to do then?
Take a hold of your heart and study
it as old, what's-his-name studied the
Ark?
No.
Can't make your heart behave by hanging on
to it and putting cushion springs under it.
Your heart will be agitated like hell and
filled with confusion and misery until you believe
in God and believe in Christ.
That stabilizes the heart.
Puts the stabilizer on and holds it steady.
Steady.
Well, believe also in me.
I want to say, and I might as
well say it now, that faith in Christ
is possible only where there is a previous
faith in God.
Ye believe in God, believe also in me.
Believe in God.
Most versions don't have the word ye on
it.
It just says believe in God, believe in
me.
I have said a hundred times and maybe
more from this pulpit that the greatest thought
the mind can entertain is God, and the
greatest word in the universe is God is.
Until we can say, I believe God is,
you can never believe in the Son of
God.
It takes a previous faith in God.
There's a lot of talk about the unbeliever
coming to the great, the great companion, the
great white companion, all that stuff.
The man upstairs, all nonsense.
There's got to be a basic faith in
God.
How could there be a Son of God
until there was God?
How could God give his only begotten Son
if you did not believe there was a
God to give his only begotten Son?
Believe in God.
Jesus Christ our Lord said, Believe in God!
In another place, Mark, 7th chapter.
So I say believe in God tonight.
Dust off your brain and think a bit
and say to yourself, I'm going to believe
in God.
I'm going to believe in the character of
God.
I'm going to believe that God doeth all
things well.
I'm going to believe what the Bible says
about God.
I'm going to be a believer in God.
Believe in God.
Get that settled.
God is.
God created.
God made.
God spake.
God is here.
Believe in God.
And having believed in God, believe also in
his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
You can believe in God in the sense
that you could believe he is, and that's
some confidence.
You can believe he's holy and that's more
confidence.
You can believe he's just and that's more
confidence.
You can believe he's love and that's still
more confidence.
But how can you get right with a
God who is holy and just, unless there
is somebody to take away that alienation?
When your heart down the years somewhere said,
I can't trust God, you notified God, you
no longer believed in him or never did
believe in him.
You believe he's up there, but you don't
believe that you can trust him.
And you live your life to show you're
not trusting him.
So that's alienation.
That's alienation.
Paul called reconciliation.
He said, Be ye reconciled to God.
There's reconciliation needed there.
So this Jim and Ed that I talked
about, Jim goes to, Ed goes to Jim
and says, I don't have confidence in you.
I believe I can't trust you.
I can't trust your word.
I can't trust your conduct.
I wouldn't trust you in my home.
That's alienation.
That's enmity.
How are they going to get together?
Who's going to take one in one hand
and one in the other and bring them
together?
Who's going to do it?
I don't know that.
But when man said by his conduct, I
don't have any confidence in God.
And that great alienation took place and the
soul of man was broken off from the
heart of God.
I know there was somebody who knew how
to get them together.
God became man.
And so he could represent God because he
was God and he could represent man because
he was man.
And he laid a hand on them both
and brought them together.
Believe also in me.
Not fountain pens, positive things.
Believe in me, Jesus Christ, who am your
brother.
So he takes us by the hand and
introduces us to the Father.
And what is repentance but getting on our
knees and telling God, we're sorry we've been
such fools, just about it.
What is repentance but getting before God and
saying, oh God, I swallow and take back
every word I've ever said and every part
I've ever entertained about these.
It wasn't holy.
I take it back, God, I'm sorry.
That's real repentance.
Real repentance isn't saying, oh God, I stole
a dollar from my wife and I turned
back the speedometer on my car 10,000
miles when I turned it in and I
cheated on my income tax.
Yeah, I suppose that's a kind of repentance,
too.
We ought to straighten up those things, sure.
But that's not real repentance.
That's only surface stuff.
Real repentance is going down before God and
apologizing to the majesty in the heavens for
our wretched, shoddy treatment of the holy God.
Down on our knees, we say before Him,
oh God, I've lived as if I didn't
exist and I've doubted You and I've worried
and I've worried forgetting that You were there
ready to look after me.
I've passed over Your promises, neglected the Bible,
I've read everything else and neglected Thy word,
oh God, I apologize before Thee right now
in the name of Thy Son for ever
doubting Thee.
That's real repentance, brethren.
Other things come along, certainly, but that's basic
repentance.
Apologize to God Almighty for the shoddy way
You have treated me.
Believe in God.
But you'd never straighten that out, never straighten
it out.
Justice would hound you through the dark recesses
of the millenniums to come and find you
at last and punish you for the way
you have treated God.
Except you have a daysman, a brother, a
kinsman, one who took your mortal flesh to
dwell among us and died on a cross
to reconcile us to God.
He finds us and he reconciles us and
he presents us to his Father.
And the Father forgives.
My God, he's reconciled, his pardoning voice I
hear.
He owns me for his child.
I need no longer fear.
With confidence I now draw nigh and Father
above, Father of Christ.
Reconciled through the blood of the Son.
Reconciled through him who died for us.
We don't need angelic helpers.
We don't need saints and virgins.
God bless them all.
I'm glad they exist or existed.
But we don't need them to help us.
We only need Jesus Christ who the Bible
says is God and the only mediator between
God and man himself.
Man, Christ, Jesus, the Lord.
You believe in God, believe also in me.
Do you know something?
That will bring harmony to your heart.
I'm too nervous a man, too imaginative a
man, too sharp and able to see things
coming and know what's happening.
Ever to be a man of any peace.
I'd have a nervous breakdown.
I'd be gone.
Would have been years before.
Except there was a fundamental peace that came
because I believe in God and believe also
in the Son, Jesus Christ.
Let not your heart be troubled.
Believe in God and believe in me, his
Son.
So simple, so wonderful.
Faith, you see.
Unbelief brought us, got us into this mess.
Faith gets us out.
Restoration of confidence in God through his Son,
Jesus Christ.
Are you a believer tonight?
Do you believe in God?
Do you believe in the God of the
Bible?
Not a homemade manufactured God of poetry and
nonsense, but a God who made heaven and
earth.
The God who holds up the universe.
Do you believe in him?
Do you?
Do you believe in his Son, Jesus Christ,
who died for you?
Do you believe in him?
If you do, you have a right to
get up and say, My God is reconciled,
his pardoning voice I hear.
That's salvation, you see.
That's salvation.
That's how you're saved.
That's the way you're saved.
You're saved by believing in God and his
Son, Jesus Christ, and then act in it
if you believe it.
Tell people you believe it.
And a wonderful miracle takes place in your
heart.
Peace comes.
Instead of the distress and looking forward to
the future.
I never was near death, but I know
it.
But a doctor scared me nearly to death
here a couple of years ago.
Between McAfee and the doctor, I was about
one short jump from the grave.
He wouldn't even let me walk in.
I never was so humiliated in my life.
A young woman wheeled me into the hospital
room.
Ah, I could have walked.
Not only that, they wouldn't even let me
undress.
The doctor told them I was a heart
case.
Watch me, I was about to go.
And I never was so humiliated.
And I said, Ah, let me alone.
I'll undress.
He said, No, you won't.
He dragged my clothes off of me and
got me into a nightdress.
And I thought, Well, if it's getting this
bad, I must be pretty bad off.
So I lay there thinking of the worst.
Now I've always been afraid, you know.
I was afraid of the wind when I
was a kid.
Afraid of dogs.
God knows what I wasn't afraid of.
And I thought it was time for me
to start getting scared.
So I began to think it over.
And I'll tell you this.
There came a great sense of absolute peace.
Because he had died.
And I said, God, maybe I haven't long
to hang around here.
But I want you to know one thing.
The blood of Jesus Christ is between me
and hell.
Between me and judgment.
Between me and any possible harm or loss
in the world to come.
And then I got all right.
I'm all right now.
And the doctor even backed out and told
me there's nothing wrong with my heart.
Told me my heart was better than his.
So maybe they just scared me in order
to, for a few minutes, let me know
whether I could die or not.
I had never knew before, you know, whether
I never went upstairs except three at a
time, two at a time in my life,
until later.
So there's peace for those who believe in
God and believe in Jesus Christ.
Peace, peace, peace.
Thank God.
Not the lit piece of the Father Divine.
Not the cheap piece of the psychologist.
But a solemn, profound, deep peace that goes
to the roots of your being.
Believe in God.
Believe also in me.
And then face the world.
We inherited it.
That's right.
Oh, God.
How we thank you for that.