Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina presents
Word of Truth with Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.
My friends, I suppose I should begin today
by saying Merry Christmas.
But everybody says that.
Everybody, regardless of who he is, what his
religion is, what he believes, infidels, atheists, agnostics,
everybody says Merry Christmas.
So I think, since I'm a preacher and
a Christian, I'll say I hope you have
a Christian Christmas.
That's a thing very few people ever have,
you know.
Oh, we have, most of us, a formal
religious Christmas.
Some of us go to church, you know.
That's a matter of form, you know.
You can do that.
And, of course, some of us sincerely go.
God has his people scattered around the world.
But, you know, I just wonder sometimes how
few of us, just how few really are
out and out uncompromisingly on his side.
In a recent message I said that if
a person isn't willing to stand alone for
Jesus Christ, he's not a consecrated Christian.
I hope all the little children have a
good time and hope all you older people
will have the peace of God in your
heart.
And you can have if you want to.
You know, there's no doubt about the fact
that Jesus Christ, about 2,000 years ago,
came.
We know that.
He's been in the world.
No doubt about the historical Christ.
You can't get rid of him, you know.
You can accept him or you can reject
him, but you just can't get rid of
him.
You're meeting the issue of, day, what shall
I do with Jesus, which is called Christ?
The world's never been able to get rid
of him.
Wars have come and wars have gone.
We've had temporary peace and then new battles.
Sorrows and troubles and tears and graveyards and
funeral dirges and marriages and the smiles of
baby.
What a world.
Sunshine and shatters, but nobody's ever been able
to get rid of Jesus.
He's still here.
There's a story told about a certain founder
of a certain school years ago that said
he never wanted the name of Jesus Christ
mentioned in his school.
He said, we're going to leave that name
out of this institution.
We won't have his name here.
But they had the cornerstone, and on that
cornerstone they had A.D. a certain date.
One day a little girl said, Professor, what
does that A.D. mean on the cornerstone
of the building?
Why, he said, that's the year the school
was built.
But the A.D. A.D. What's A
.D. mean?
I said, the school was built.
He said, I know the year the school
was built, Professor.
What does A.D. mean?
He said, it means in the year of
our Lord.
No, you can't get rid of Jesus.
The issue keeps coming up.
You know, the issue is always the Jesus
issue, see.
It's not a church issue.
We try to make the church issue.
We try to make some other kind of
issue.
We try to make the financial issue.
That's not the issue.
We try to make the labor or capital
issue.
But that's not the issue.
The issue is Jesus.
What will you do with Jesus, which is
called Christ?
You're facing that today just like everybody else
has faced it.
All the folks who are dead and gone,
if they live wherever there's any gospel preachers,
they had to face the issue, and if
they wrote any letters and dated those letters,
they had to date them A.D. a
certain date.
Now, he's been here, and he went away,
and he's coming back sometime.
He'll be back.
He said so, and he keeps his word.
He said heaven and earth might pass away,
but he said my words never pass away,
so he'll come back.
You're going to have to meet him in
the future, too.
You've met him in the past.
You're meeting him now, and you're going to
meet him in the future.
You'll never get rid of him.
All through eternity, you'll have some relation to
Jesus Christ.
You'll either be related to him in fellowship
in heaven under a cloudless sky, or you'll
be related to him as his enemy in
the torments of the damned.
You can't get rid of him.
Now, we know he came.
There's no question about that.
That fact's accepted in the world.
But the question comes now, how did he
come?
Well, you know, people tell you all sorts
of things, you know.
Some people say he was conceived out of
wedlock.
Some people say Joseph was his father.
Some people say he's just human, and yet
he had a spark of divinity in him,
and maybe was God manifest in the flesh.
But you couldn't know how Jesus came if
God hadn't told you.
God said he was born of a virgin.
Back in the Old Testament, in Isaiah, the
prophet said this will be a sign to
you.
When you see this sign, you can know
what's happened.
This will be a sign a virgin shall
be with child.
So his mother was a virgin.
He had no human father.
He had a human mother, but God was
his father, and his mother was a virgin.
They're telling you today it doesn't matter about
that.
And they blaspheme the name of the Son
of God and trample on the authority of
the Bible when they say it.
So we know how he came.
And we know approximately when he came.
It doesn't make any special material difference about
the matter anyhow.
It's not so much when he came, but
from God's time, he came on time.
In the fullness of time, he came.
In the fullness of time, just as God's
clock of eternity was ticking, at the proper
tick of the clock, in the fullness of
time, he came.
Now, why did he come?
Well, I couldn't know that if God hadn't
told me.
You couldn't either.
Why did he come?
He said that he came into this world
to die.
He said that.
He just kept saying over and over, my
now has not yet come, my now has
not yet come.
And then one time when he stood in
the shadow of the cross, he said, this
is it.
This is why I came.
He came to die.
Other people have come to live.
He came to die.
You know, the most glorious thing in the
world is that Jesus Christ died for me.
He came to die.
He was a man of sorrows acquainted with
grief.
You know, people try to make Jesus Christ
into the kind of person they want him
to be.
You can't change him.
He's the kind of person that God wanted
his son to be.
He came down the son of the Father,
God incarnate.
He said, if you've seen me, you've seen
the Father.
He said, my Father sent me.
We are one.
And if you want to see God, just
look at me.
You can see God.
And here he is now.
God's son.
God manifest in the flesh.
He came to die on the cross.
He didn't come here just to show you
how to live.
What good would it do for Jesus to
say, blessed are the pure in heart, for
they shall see God, when he preached that
wonderful sermon on the mount, if he'd have
just left us there with our hearts dirty?
Well, I can't have a pure heart, unless
the blood of God's Son cleanses me from
sin.
It was necessary for him to die.
Nobody could have ever gone to heaven if
he hadn't have died.
He had to die.
So he came to die.
And he carried a cross on his bloody
back.
They tried to kill him, but they couldn't.
What was done to Jesus, I've said so
many times, would have killed anybody else, but
you couldn't kill Jesus.
He went up there at the cross and
laid his life down.
Oh, matchless Son of God, you said it.
No man takes my life from me.
I laid down on myself.
I have power to lay it down.
I have power to take it again.
And he laid his life down for you
and me, for us poor sinners.
You know, men have been known to die
for friends, but it's divine love that made
Jesus die for his enemies.
We are enemies of God, naturally.
All the theories of men run counter to
what the Bible teaches.
Man says, save yourself.
God says you can't.
Man says, work out your own salvation and
your own strength.
God says you can't do that.
By grace you're saved through faith.
Having all of yourselves is a gift of
God.
Of course, you work out in your life
what God gives you.
You have it in your life, you work
it out.
But it's not by which less any man
should boast.
So God came in the person of his
Son to die, to pay a debt.
You know what it is?
The wage of sin is death.
Jesus Christ came and died.
He took our place.
His back was made bare for the lashes
that were on that weighed our back.
He died in my place.
He died on my account.
It was a vicarious substitution of death.
He stepped into my shoes and let the
wrath of God his Father be poured out
on him.
So we might be saved.
I've told the story so many times about
that little orphan boy in the country, you
know.
In the country school years ago when they
made the rules that if a fellow did
a certain thing, he'd get a certain punishment.
One of the rules was if you did
a certain thing, you'd get ten lashes out
your coat.
And then one day a little boy in
school, a little orphan boy, came out of
a little cabin.
His mother was a widow, and the teacher
said, Did you violate that rule?
He said, Yes, I did.
Well, he said, The law says you have
to take your coat off, take ten lashes.
He said, Don't make me take my coat
off.
He said, Take it off.
We're going to fulfill the law just like
it says.
The rule's going to be enforced.
He said, Please, teacher, you don't understand.
He said, Take your coat off.
You're going to let the law, it's going
to take its effect just like it says.
And the little boy said, All right, but
you don't understand.
He unbuttoned and unbuttoned.
Got up to two old rusty safety pins
in his collar, and he waked on them
and waked on them and waked on them.
That far got him out, sitting in his
pocket.
The little orphan boy turned his back around,
and his back was naked.
He didn't have on a shirt.
And back in the school room, a boy
and all the students were watching, but especially
one little fellow.
And he saw that little naked scrawny back
turn around the teacher, and the lash was
lifted because that's what the law said.
And this boy back there ran to the
front and said, Don't hit him.
Don't, don't hit that boy.
I'll take his whipping.
Can't I take it for him?
He said, Yes, if you want to, you
can.
So he took the whipping for the boy.
And the boy fell in his arms and
loved his friend that took his whipping for
him.
So one day the lashes of God's judgment
will hang over me.
Ways of sin is death.
Wicked shall be turned to hell with all
the nations that forget God.
And Jesus Christ, the Son of God, bared
his back, and all the lashes of judgment
that were to fall upon me fell upon
him.
With his stripes I am healed.
And I love Jesus.
I don't know how you feel about it.
I celebrate the birthday of somebody I love
today.
I love him.
He's dearer to me than the memory of
mother, more precious than any human tie.
I wouldn't know how to get along without
him.
I wonder if he's real to your heart.
Remember you were celebrating his birthday.
I wonder if he's real to you.
Say, if you're not a Christian, why don't
you let this day be the day of
decision for you?
You could do it.
You're there in your home.
God's been good to you.
Maybe you have a happy home.
Maybe you had a good year.
Maybe God's brought you through great difficulties and
troubles.
Why don't you trust Jesus Christ and surrender
your life to him?
You could do it right now, right there
in the home.
He died for you.
There's nothing so wonderful as that.
He who knew no sin became sin for
you.
He took your place.
He died in your stead and on your
account.
And he came to do it.
All the years of his life he lived
in the shadow of that cross.
No wonder he was a man of sorrows
and a queen of grief.
But he never turned back.
He went there and died for you.
Now then, while we celebrate his birthday, let's
all of us Christians dedicate our lives anew
to him.
And you who have never known him, won't
you trust him as your Savior?
God help you do it.
Our Father, help us to meet somebody in
heaven sometime because of this little talk this
morning.
May somebody right now trust Jesus Christ and
be saved.
And someday when we get home, and we're
going there someday, by our grace, to see
our Lord face to face, help us to
meet somebody who can say on his birthday,
I celebrate it.
I gave him a gift.
I gave my heart and my life.
He gave everything for me and I came
and took the salvation he offered and yielded
my life to him.
Help us to do it today and to
be faithful to him in the days that
are ahead.
We pray in the precious name of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
You've been listening to The Word of Truth
with Dr. Bob Jones, Sr., a man who
went to his heavenly home after more than
70 years of influencing thousands with his compassion
for souls and the Word of God.