I'm in my 68th year as a preacher,
and next October I'll be 80, so I've
been around for a pretty good while, but
this is the busiest year I've ever had
in my life.
I don't know what that means exactly, but
I always have had a prayer in my
heart, and it ought to be the prayer
of everybody who comes to church, that I
might enter the pulpit every time as though
it were the first time, fresh and new,
anointed from heaven, and as though it might
be the best time, best service we ever
had, and as though it might be the
last time.
And you give me a group of people
that go to church like that, instead of
some of the awful reasons they do go,
and if they'll go for the first reason,
as though it were the first time, fresh
and new, and as though it might be
the best meeting they ever attended, and it
could be, and as though it might be
the last, and it could be, and this
might be somebody's last attendance at church.
I think something would happen that we're not
seeing happen in a great many of our
churches today.
I just want to call your attention to
a very strange text for a Mother's Day
sermon.
It's found in Luke 23, 27 to 31.
Jesus was on his way to be crucified,
and there was a crowd of people.
Some of them were his enemies.
Some were curious just to see what was
going to happen next.
Some were friends, and in this group there
was a band of weeping women, and Jesus
turned on them.
There followed him a great company of people
and of women, which also bewailed and lamented
him.
But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of
Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for
yourselves and for your children.
Then he went on to say the days
would come, and it would be said, Blessed
are you if you don't have any children,
in that next verse.
And verse 30, Then shall they begin to
pray to the mountains, fall on us, and
to the hills cover us.
For if they do these things in the
green tree, what shall be done in the
dry?
That's a very mysterious passage of scripture.
I don't hear sermons on that much.
Let it be said to the credit of
womanhood that there's no record in the Bible
anywhere, and especially none in the New Testament,
that they ever took a stand against Jesus
Christ.
Pilate's wife sent him a note and warned
him, Don't be careful what you do about
this man, Jesus, because I've suffered things in
a dream about him.
Mary and Martha loved him, and he had
the support of some women, Luke 8, 3,
who gave him money, who contributed to his
support.
That's forgotten oftentimes.
Jesus didn't just go around on charity.
He was partly supported, at least by women,
says so, Luke 8, 3.
Only God knows how many women through the
centuries have held the church together.
I am from the First Baptist Church of
Greensboro.
That's where I belong.
There's an old history of that church in
which one of the pastors a long, long
time ago said I was often laughed at
when I preached because Baptists were held in
poor repute in those days.
They were scorned and looked down upon.
And he said we had a few faithful
women in those early days.
He recalls a snowstorm when one of them
made her way with her little child by
her side, threw all of it, she said
somebody's got to keep up the work of
the Lord.
Well, we could stand some more of that
these days.
And how many of them have prayed down
revival when the situation looked absolutely hopeless?
How many preachers' wives, by wise counsel and
gentle reproof, have kept their husbands in the
ministry when they might have been cast away?
And how many have prayed down healing from
heaven after midnight when the doctor had already
given them up and they lived?
How many mothers' prayers have followed sons and
daughters away from home and brought prodigals back
from the far country to the father's house?
One of our evangelists today tells the story
that when he was quite a baby, his
mother built a little altar out in the
backyard, went out there and laid him on
it and knelt, dedicating him to the Lord.
That was making it literal, and her prayers
followed him.
And I remember an old Corinth Baptist church
where I grew up in the country.
I remember how old Sister Pope used to
get up and ask us to pray for
her boys.
Well, I don't think anybody prayed for them
much because they seemed beyond redemption, a lot
of them.
But it wasn't that way with her.
And I go back there now to preach.
One of those boys grew up to be
superintendent of the Sunday school, and three of
them were deacons, and there are two preachers
among the grandsons.
She didn't take no for an answer.
She prayed God for those boys, and they
all came through.
I remember that years ago, my mother was
very sick, taken rather suddenly while I was
in conference in Michigan, and the message came
that your mother's quite ill.
I remember old Dr. Bob Jones Sr. put
his arm around me and prayed for me
as I left to go home.
And the last message she ever sent to
me, as my crippled brother was trying to
write a letter, tell Vance to keep up
the good fight, for God is with him,
and if God be for us, who can
be against us?
I tell you, if we had more like
that today, there might be more preaching from
the pulpit and more godly living from the
pew.
I've spent a lifetime seeking things I've spurned
when I have found them.
I've fought and been rewarded many a petty
cause, but I give them all fame, fortune,
and the pleasures that do with them, for
a little of faith that made my mother
what she was.
The same year my mother died, I took
my wife-to-be up to meet her,
and I didn't know that.
Talk about changing horses in midstream.
I was changing from mother to wife, and
in the same summer and within a few
weeks, mother had gone out of the picture.
Just a little later, Sarah came in, and
now Sarah's been out of the picture for
seven years and a half.
As old Dr. Robert G.
Lee said when I was in his home
some couple of years ago, we walked in
and looked at that fine picture of Mother
Lee over on the wall.
He said, and it doesn't get any easier.
It doesn't if you really love them.
Of course, a lot of people today are
not in love when they get married.
That's showing up everywhere.
They don't miss them much when they go.
Some of them help them to go.
So we're living in very strange and mysterious
times.
So for 33 years, we traveled America together
all over the country.
When she did stay at home and I
was away, we sent an airmail letter to
each other every day, and especially on Sunday,
and called each other up over the week.
We meant business, and we could stand some
more of that today.
I did the same, and now even in
the motels where I've stayed all these years
since I started in the ministry, I mean
my 41st year on the road.
If you think that's a picnic, you ought
to try that.
I have to readjust every week of my
life, bed, food, water, climate, and not many
people have ever been able to do it.
I've had strong preachers to say, man, I've
got to get back to my bed.
I can't take a life like this.
Change every week somewhat, but by the grace
of God, but I find myself sometimes walking
down the steps at the motel.
I was so used to getting that special
delivery in the mailbox, you know, back of
the desk always at the hotel.
My eyes, my subconscious mind still operates it,
I guess.
I find myself unconsciously looking over at that
box as though there might be a letter
in it, knowing full well that there isn't.
But Jesus turned to this little group of
women and said, don't cry for me.
Now, what did he mean?
Didn't he appreciate their sympathy, their tears?
Was their grief out of place?
Well, they were crying about the wrong thing.
Jesus was saying, I'm not a helpless victim
of a mob.
I could have snapped my fingers and called
down 12 legions of angels.
I'm not that weak.
And I'm climbing this hill voluntarily on purpose
to lay down my life.
And they think they're killing me, but I'm
going in the purpose of God.
He said, I can lay down my life
and I can take it again.
You can lay yours down, but you can't
take it again.
You can't resurrect yourself.
But Jesus died as nobody else has ever
died, took charge of his own funeral, made
arrangements for his mother to have a place
to live, bought that old FIFA ticket to
paradise, all kinds of things, and died himself.
And he was the son of God, which
explains it all.
He went up there for your sake and
mine to take care of our sins.
But he said to Pilate, you couldn't do
a thing if you didn't have authority in
heaven.
He was in charge of the trial and
he was the prisoner.
He could have called down 10,000 angels
to destroy the world and set him free.
He could have called 10,000 angels, but
he died alone for you and me.
Now these days when Easter comes along and
Good Friday, a lot of dear people get
weepy about poor Jesus.
And in the pictures and in the music
and in the sermons, we sigh for the
suffering Savior and think we're very religious, but
we miss the point entirely.
We miss a lot of points.
There's no way in the New Testament we're
told to celebrate the birth of Jesus, for
instance.
We do it, but it's not told in
the New Testament.
It's all right, I enjoy Christmas as well
as anybody, but we're not told in the
New Testament to observe the resurrection as a
holiday.
We are told to commemorate his death at
the Lord's table.
So we ought to get it straight, but
he didn't need sympathy then.
He doesn't need it now.
We weep for him, and I believe he's
saying to mothers today, and he's saying to
fathers and husbands and wives, don't cry for
me.
Weep for yourselves and for your children, because
there's more to weep about than there ever
has been before.
Why did he call them daughters of Jerusalem?
Because 40 years later, the very things he
said here would come to pass, and the
awful things broke loose.
He said, if they do this to an
innocent person, if they do these things in
a green tree, what shall be done when
the time comes for judgment?
They'll begin to say that the mountains fall
on us and the hills cover us.
Just 40 years after he said that, the
inhabitants of Jerusalem were butchered.
Their city was plowed under, Josephus says, the
multitude that perished exceeded all the destruction that
God or man has ever brought on the
world.
Of course, that was up to the time
of Josephus.
And Jesus said in this very verse that
you noticed a while ago, you're better off
when that time comes if you don't have
any children.
He'd already said it in Matthew 24, 19.
Now, for a Jewish woman not to have
any children was a disgrace, and it was
grounds for divorce.
And people will say in that day, he
said, blessed are you if you don't have
any, because of the awful judgment upon Jerusalem.
And cry for the rocks and the mountains.
He had wept over Jerusalem.
I stood on the Mount of Olives.
Some years ago, I told the rest of
the crowd, go wherever you want to.
I'm spending the rest of the day up
here by myself.
I want to be by myself.
And I stood up there and looked off
of that mountain where he stood and said,
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets
and stonest them which are sent unto thee,
how often would I have gathered thy children
together even as a hen gathers her chickens
under wings, and you would not.
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate,
for I say unto you, you will not
see me any more till you say, blessed
is he that cometh in the name of
the Lord.
For the days will come that thine enemies
shall cast a trench around you, encompass you
around, keep you on every side, lay thee
even with the ground and thy children with
thee, and they shall not leave in thee
one stone on another, because thou knewest not
the time of thy visitation.
You didn't have your calendar right.
You didn't know what was coming.
And just a few hours before this, that
generation had cried out, His blood be upon
us and our children.
What an awful thing to say, asking it.
And Jesus said, Well, it is.
And it is.
It has been through the ages for those
who crucified him.
But that's not all he meant.
He was looking forward to his second coming.
You have them both in the Olivet discourse.
And the Bible scholars still argue on when
is he talking here about the fall of
Jerusalem?
And when is he talking about the end
of the age?
Well, I don't know that anybody's ever figured
it out perfectly.
But it's like looking at two ranges of
mountains, one higher behind the front range.
He was looking first at the capture of
Jerusalem, beyond that the time when he will
come.
We don't hear much about Judgment Day anymore.
It's out of style.
Preach about it.
Don't hear much about it.
But the Bible has plenty to say about
it.
When the sixth seal was opened, there was
a great earthquake, and the sun became black
as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became
as blood, and the stars of heaven fell
on the earth, even as a fig tree
casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken
by a mighty wind.
We read that the heavens will depart as
a scroll when it is rolled together, and
every mountain and island move out of their
presence.
And the kings of the earth and the
great men and the rich men and the
chief captains and mighty men and every bondman
and every free man hid themselves in the
dens in the rocks of the mountains.
He said to the mountains and rocks, Fall
on us and hide us in the face
of him that sitteth on the throne from
the wrath of the Lamb.
For the great day of his wrath is
coming, who shall be able to stand?
Now, that day is coming.
That's not a figure of speech.
This is on the books, friends.
I don't know when it's coming.
We don't hear much about it.
But Jesus presided the compassionate Father who could
also be a consuming fire.
God is both.
We think of God today as a good
-natured grandfatherly being, about as much authority as
Santa Claus has, the big buddy upstairs.
We used to sing, I dreamed a great
judgment morning had come, and oh, what a
weeping and wailing as the lost were told
of their fate.
They cried for the rocks and the mountains,
they prayed, but the prayer was too late.
I'll never forget in that country community when
one of the boys, one of the farm
boys in one of the homes died of
pneumonia, and we went out to the house,
and it was packed with folks gathered around,
and the old country doctor was there.
And this boy, before he died, he had
never trusted Christ, tried the same with when
he was practically out of breath.
Where shall I be when the great trumpet
sounds?
When the great trumpet sounds to wake up
the dead, where shall I be when it
sounds?
You don't forget that when somebody's ready and
not ready both, going to die and not
prepared.
And you have that in the Word of
God, and Jesus talked about hell.
Hell is a byword now, and so is
God.
And we toss the name around.
I can't help but feel a holy indignation
to allusion God and hell and damn as
curse words when damnation has such awful meaning
in the Word of God.
And the weeping and the wailing in the
fire where the worm doth not, and the
fire is not quenched.
Nobody wants to hear about it.
They say we, those are back in the
old times, the times have changed.
You're right, friends, they've changed.
But I'm not proud of it, and neither
should we be, because we're to weep, not
for him.
He's all right.
Jesus is in good shape.
His troubles are all over.
Bless God he's coming back one of these
days.
But our troubles are not over.
And we do well to weep for ourselves.
If you have sins that stand between you
and the were you there when they crucified
my Lord?
We sing it.
Yes, we were there.
The whole human race was there.
Everybody that's ever lived is there.
We helped put him there.
We helped crucify him.
We get sentimental about poor Jesus.
And America is laughing itself to death these
days in front of all the garbage of
television and making a joke out of the
solemnities of God's word.
We're in a strange time.
I woke at two o'clock this morning,
and I couldn't get it off my mind,
pondering the state we're in.
Skepticism.
We started out with that.
Then we got around to secularism, which somebody
has called the practice of the absence of
God.
People are living today as though God had
gone out of business.
Have you stopped to think how many millions
of America this morning are living as though
there were no church?
Plenty of them right here in Spartanburg.
No God.
And that was the beginning, and secularism came
along.
And now we've got humanism.
And you know what humanism is?
Humanism is when we make ourselves God.
The first thing the devil said to our
parents in the Garden of Eden was, You
shall be as God's.
And we are becoming like that today.
And one of the great scholars today, Dr.
Schaefer, says that when we throw away the
absolute, the absolute authority of the Bible, the
absolute sovereignty of God, the absolute lordship of
Jesus Christ, then we're the absolute.
When you're the absolute, you're your own God.
If I think this is all right, for
me it's all right.
That's what people are saying by the thousands
and thousands today, in every direction.
Man decides.
And we're therefore headed for the day when
all these gods, the same crowd you're looking
at now, these gods, people who make themselves
God, we're going to get in the worst
mess we've ever been in.
And we are already in the worst mess
since Adam and Eve ate us out of
the house and home in the Garden of
Eden.
We're in the worst condition.
But you ain't seen nothing yet, friends, because
the day will come when, in desperation, America,
like Germany, turn to Hitler.
Germany, we and the rest, will turn to
the strange character that is to come in
the last days by the name of Antichrist.
And he will claim to be God.
Don't forget it.
The devil started off.
You'll be gods, and we are becoming fast
now.
Man is the absolute.
We're getting so smart these days.
We're going to start inventing clones.
Now, you know what a clone is.
You're going to make people in laboratories, not
the old way.
You're going to invent them.
And there are already dissects in the Bible
of all the stupid, inane, idiotic things that
I've read lately.
You want to get out of the Bible
and know he or she isn't a god,
just the parent.
And that's part of some of the feminist
movement, of course.
And we are doing things that you wouldn't
think intelligent people who can put a man
on the moon and split the atom.
But the trouble is, we're smart enough to
walk on the moon and not safe enough
to walk down the street anymore.
Some time ago, I sat in my room
when I was preaching in Jacksonville and watched
the fellows go up into space on the
television and looked out the window in the
park.
I wanted to walk in, didn't dare.
They said, you better not.
There's enough creeps and crooks and demons around
there.
They're clobbering you if you go out.
And I said, now aren't we in for
something?
Why, when I grew up, we didn't even
lock the old house to go to a
revival meeting in the summertime.
Now I live in motels, and I was
in one the other day where they had
the telephone screwed to the table.
You heard about that woman that said, what
in this world are we coming to?
Why, somebody broke in my house the other
day and stole all my Holiday Inn towels.
A terrible thing.
I said it at the, I'm going, I'm
supposed to go down in a couple of
weeks to Los Angeles to speak to the
preachers at our convention, the pastoral conference part
of it.
And I am much concerned about, I think
about when I was out there the last
time to the evangelistic conference.
And we had, of course, a crowd of
preachers.
But the strange thing is that I made
a statement that a few years ago you'd
get a lot of amen's on.
I didn't expect it this time.
I said America is sex crazy, show crazy,
and sports crazy.
I still don't get any amen's on.
I'm not against clean sports, but we've come
to a day when it has become a
monster.
And the Bible itself says, well it helps
a little.
It says bodily exercise profiteth for a little.
But not much evidently.
Bodily exercise profiteth little.
But here's something that does profit.
But Godliness is profitable and all things.
Having promise of the life that now is
of that which is come.
I don't, I walk a lot.
That's one thing that's kept me going all
these years I think.
I don't jog.
I heard of a fellow the other day
dropped dead jogging home from a health food
store.
Now you figure that one out.
Something didn't work, some work.
Hmm.
But Dr. Louis Evans said that
one of these great nuclear engineers, he was
out there at one of the bases, he
said he's showing me these monsters, the replicas
of them out on the exhibit take off
into space.
Telling me what something as much as he
thought a preacher could take in, how they
got it together.
And then when he finished he turned to
me though and said, preacher, you're a man
of God I suppose.
Pray for me.
My wife is leaving me tomorrow.
And my home is breaking up.
Smart enough to invent all that and couldn't
keep the family together.
So, it's about time.
We're proud today of our devices.
We don't have the trouble with what we've
invented.
It's great stuff.
These are marvelous things.
They're brain-boggling.
They're things that they're turning out the laboratory's
butt.
We haven't got now the moral character and
capacity and integrity to manage it.
Because if we'd had that integrity, we wouldn't
have had some of the things that we're
going to have to manage on these days.
You see, that's where somehow we missed out.
In the first world, when the last of
our world fairs was held, somebody said the
theme of it was the achievements of science
and their application through industry to the creation
of a larger life for all mankind.
He said, I could see the achievements of
science all right.
I could see their application through industry, but
I couldn't find that larger life for all
mankind.
That's what I call gaining the whole world
and losing your own soul.
What's it going to help us if we
invent all this stuff and end up with
the morals of an alley cat?
The wisdom of man and the wisdom of
God are set side by side in the
Bible.
The world holds the wisdom of God foolishly.
Jesus said to these women, weep for yourself
and you'll be killed.
Two years ago, teenagers set a record for
suicide.
Wouldn't you think they'd be so full of
the joy of life it wouldn't occur to
you?
They're serious today.
I have a better response from young people
today at my age than I've ever had
in the ministry.
I don't believe in lambasting the kids all
the time.
They didn't create this, they inherited it, and
they got most of us from us.
But you know conditions.
I don't need to read statistics.
Thousands of minds being blown by drugs and
young alcoholics and unmarried, unwed, mothers in early
teens all over the land.
We need to weep for a generation pure
in its own eyes and not watch the
maturity the Bible calls it.
Weep for this new set fruit of abortion,
homosexuality, pornography, broken homes.
There was a time when mothers, more than
now, and I say this with all respect
for those who do, if we didn't have
some of them left we couldn't operate in
the church.
But I don't know when I've heard any
dad or mom come to me and say
my boy's lost, my girl's lost.
They used to say it.
That's the kind of people Jesus came to
seek and to save was the lost.
I remember in the olden times when they
were bothered and came and knelt at the
mourner's bench and prayed for the salvation of
their souls.
I don't I don't hear that word.
That's out these days.
God's been trying to warn us.
One of the strangest things that ever happened
in our history was the sinking of the
Titanic in 1912.
There are books coming out now about the
Titanic.
There's been a movie about it.
Instead of being forgotten, we can't forget whatever
happened.
How come?
I found eight volumes in the library in
Greensboro and got hold of another one the
other day.
They're going to send an exhibition as soon
as the weather gets a little warmer over
there to try to get at it this
time.
It's so deep.
They have seen it from a distance, quite
a distance, but with the new submarine equipment
they hope to get close enough to maybe
get to it but get a better picture
of it.
What in the world?
It couldn't sink, they said.
It was the finest thing we ever made
up until then.
Oh, this is okay.
Nothing could sink it.
And the only thing it ever did was
sink.
And on the first trip, and 1,200
people drowned.
Old Mordecai Hamm used to say God was
trying to teach us an object lesson in
American.
We didn't get it.
We didn't learn it.
But I think God was saying, now you
think you're smart.
And it can't sink.
The only thing I need is a hunk
of ice to slit open one side of
it and prove to you that it deep
can't.
I wonder when we will awaken to what
God's trying to whisper to some of us
today.
The people who used to say pray for
my children, they say, well, my Johnny's a
good boy.
And I say, yes, so was the rich
young ruler, but he wasn't God's boy.
And you don't go to heaven by being
a good boy and a good girl.
You go by being born again and becoming
a child of God.
Lost a generation of youth because too many
have had us leave the Bible standard.
Too many children would have to say over
this country.
One after an automobile accident and dying in
a hospital said to her mother, mom, you
taught me to drink cocktails.
You taught me to smoke.
You didn't tell me how to die.
And it looks like that's the next thing.
What would you say if faced with that?
I'm glad they're smart as they are.
I think we're spoiling their childhood.
These kids today can make a fortune on
TV commercials acting and others in acting in
the play.
I heard a bunch the other day talking
about ecology.
Imagine, not teenagers even, and talking intelligently about
it.
They ought to have been out in the
backyard, I think, playing hopscotch.
They ought to have had their childhood.
It's a terrible thing not to have it.
I started out preaching when I was 12
years of age, and I think God was
in it in that case.
But you lose something in the process, and
we shouldn't do it for just anything.
No wonder people are agitated.
No wonder you can't sleep without Valium.
I don't know.
I wonder how many people here have got
some Valium pills at home.
Can't sleep.
The doctor after my wife died, and I
suffered for two years, years ago, with insomnia
and depression, and only the Lord knows what
I went through.
And I didn't take sedatives then.
But the doctor gave me a bottle of
them and said, take them, said they won't
hurt you.
Well, I said, Lord, I'm not getting hooked.
I'm not getting hooked.
I said, I've got to preach, and if
I'm going to preach, you've got to sleep,
and you're going to have to help me.
And I'm making it.
Of course, I'm getting the other way now.
I can't sleep all the time.
It's giving me a chance.
I'm like that old boy in the mountains
who, when the doctor says, see, now I'm
kind of having trouble sleeping.
The doctor said, well, how does it treat
you?
I said, do all right overnight and do
pretty well in the afternoon, but it seemed
like in the morning I'd just roll and
toss.
Well, I'm having some of that.
Well, it's a good thing to be ready
and have the Lord at your side.
We need to weep.
But could my zeal know respite?
No, could my tears forever flow?
All for sin could not atone.
Thou must save, and thou alone.
It's not a fountain of tears.
That wouldn't take care of your sin.
It takes another fountain.
Godly sorrow, work of repentance.
But that fountain for sin and cleanliness is
not a fountain of tears.
It's a fountain filled with blood, drawn from
Immanuel's veins.
So I urge you this morning, I know
you may think this is a strange sermon
for a brother's man, but I'm concerned about
these times.
I could take it a lot easier.
I don't have to preach as much as
I'm preaching these days, but I'm overdoing it
for the sake of some that are underdoing
it.
And somebody ought to be concerned, and somebody
ought to be bothered.
And I don't know how I make it,
really I don't, but thank God I've made
it this long.
And when you're practically 80, you've had a
long span, you can't grumble then with all
that stack of years behind you anyhow.
But I'm glad that we have a Savior
who came down here.
He didn't come down when people sin today,
everybody jumps on top of them.
Somebody said that they do that even in
church.
And Martha Brannon sang last week in my
meetings in Virginia Beach, that wonderful woman who
sings as few can sing.
She passed on something to me that I
hadn't heard.
She said, the church is the army of
the Lord, and it's the only army on
earth that shoots its wounded.
Do you ever think about that?
If a fellow makes a mistake, they all
jump on top of it.
I know a man now that's in deep
trouble, and I'm shocked like everybody else.
I can't believe he did it.
And I'm not exonerating him, and I'm not
justifying him, but I'm not going to jump
on him because Jesus came down here to
deal with that, and he didn't come down
here to rub it in.
Bless God he came to rub it out,
came to take our sins and let that
be the source of our joy.
So it's these few evenings, and now we
have such short meetings.
This is a long meeting now for me.
They run them now Sunday through Wednesday.
We're in a hurry, Lord.
Are you going to have a revival or
act quick, you know?
But I'm staying a long time, Brother Tim,
I declare.
And you've been here a long time too,
34 years.
Bless his heart.
Thank God for preachers who can stay a
while.
We got a crop of two-year preachers
now.
They tell all they know in two years,
and then they go into life insurance.
Lord, help us.
Tim, if I ever hear you selling life
insurance, I'm out with you.
Aren't you glad that we've got a Savior
who, although he doesn't approve of sin, he
saves sinners.
Trust him.
Get on that old road, the T and
O, trust and obey.
I used to ride on the C and
O and the B and O, but I'll
tell you the one that takes you somewhere
is that old T and O.
Trust and obey.
That's the way to be happy in Jesus.
God help what he does.
Father, we thank thee for this church and
for this dear man of God that we've
learned to love in the gospel, and for
these dear people.
Help them to understand why I said what
I said this morning, and a strange sermon
for mothers, but I know that every Christian
mother in this place will say, Preacher, you
were right.
We ought to be weeping more.
We ought to be praying more, and the
women of this country are not doing too
well, by and large, and they need to
be doing something about it.
Lord, apply this truth to every heart.
We're not preaching things that folks like.
We're trying to preach things people need, and
we all need this message in our own
hearts.
We're all failing thee in our watchfulness, in
our prayer life, in our Bible reading, and
during these two evenings together, and maybe this
morning, Father, Brother Tim closes his sermon.
It might be somebody who says, I've heard
too much this morning to walk out of
here and do nothing about it.
Bless this hour to our hearts in Jesus'
name.
Amen.