Years ago, when I was a much younger
man, I preached my first public sermon in
a federal penitentiary.
Me and another man from church one evening
drove two hours from Memphis to Mississippi to
preach in a prison.
When we got there, we had to pass
through several security checkpoints.
Then we were led by a prison guard
to a large cement room where three rows
of wooden chairs were lined up in front
of a little wooden podium.
I was the man preaching that night, and
I was as nervous as a cat in
a room full of rocking chairs.
As we stood in the room, a heavy
door opened, and in walked about 30 prisoners
in their uniforms.
Then the guard introduced me as the speaker
that night, and he left the room and
closed the door behind him.
He left me and my friend alone in
that place with those hardened criminals.
And as I looked around that room at
the faces of those murderers and thieves and
rapists, my blood ran cold within me, for
I could just picture them getting angry at
me for something and rushing me in a
mob to hurt me or worse.
Well, I told them my text that I'd
chosen that night was Psalm 40, and I
told them I was going to read it
right now to them and tell them about
it because it spoke of a man in
a prison.
That this man, David, who wrote the Psalm,
he was stuck in what was called a
bottleneck prison, and I began to read Psalm
40 to them.
I waited patiently for the Lord, and he
inclined unto me and heard my cry.
He brought me up and out of a
horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and
I said what David was describing here was
a bottleneck prison that back in ancient times,
if a man was caught stealing or committing
a crime, and they were out in the
country, that man would be thrown into a
hole in the ground, a cistern, or a
bottleneck prison made of earth where the ground
was wide at the bottom.
There was a opening at the top which
was more narrow, and the walls leaned toward
one another so you couldn't climb out, and
it was wet in there and miry in
there and muddy in there and slippery in
there, and it looked like a coke bottle,
and all you had to do was just
sit there and hope and pray and wait
for someone to come by and pull you
out because either you fell in there by
accident or were put in there on purpose,
you were stuck, literally stuck in the muck
and mire of that prison until someone came
by to rescue you by dropping a rope
or a chain and pulling you out, or
like the prophet Jeremiah was pulled out of
the dungeon by placing filthy rags under his
arms, or by Joseph when he was cast
into a bottleneck prison by his brethren, he
had to wait until a traveling caravan passed
by and heard his cries.
Some prisons have cells of cement and doors
of steel.
This prison that David was speaking of was
one of mud and loneliness and suffering.
He had to wait to be pulled out
by another, but no matter what the prison
is constructed of, whether dirt and mud or
cement and steel, a prison is a prison
nonetheless, but you don't have to be incarcerated
to be in a prison.
Men have prisons of their own.
They are prisoners to physical addiction like booze
or drugs or pornography, or it can be
a prison of emotions like an unforgiving heart
toward another.
It can be a prison of grief that
is unreconciled or a prison of physical pain
and disease that medicine cannot alleviate or cure.
Some men live in a prison of resentment.
Somewhere down the road someone wronged them and
they're full of hate and resentment toward that
person or persons, but whatever the prison may
be, whether physically, emotionally, visible or invisible, there
is one prison that's far worse than any
of these mentioned and whose sentence is far
greater and more severe, of which I speak
is a spiritual prison where a man is
unreconciled to God, to the God who made
him.
Man enters this world with a poison in
his blood.
For when Adam fell, we fell.
We're each born with a fallen nature, a
spiritually ruined nature, and a bent toward sin,
and it is sin that causes prisons to
be built.
Sin causes all the misery in the world.
It causes tears to fall and hearts to
ache.
It busts me up even to recreate this
message tonight for you friends, but I'm gonna
do it anyhow because it needs to be
heard.
Prisons have to be enacted and built to
curb vice and murder and immorality.
That's why we have them in our cities.
That's why we have them throughout our states,
and my Bible describes sin as transgression of
the law, and the sentencing of the law
must be carried out upon all guilty lawbreakers.
The final sentence would be carried out at
a final judgment of all mankind, where the
dead, small and great, will stand before the
judge, the judge of all the earth, and
shall not the judge of all the earth
do right, but we each are sinners.
We each are sinners who deserve punishment for
our transgressions against a holy God.
Punishment in a lake of fire reserved for
the devil and his angels.
Trust me friend, when I tell you you
don't want to end up being bound hand
and foot and cast into that burning boiling
lake of fire, but there is hope in
our passage tonight friends, hope in a God
who can hear our cries and listen intently
to our prayers.
Our text when it says he heard my
cry, that means he cupped his hand to
his ear and bent over to hear David
more intently.
He bends his ear to us when we
cry to him and pray to him because
he loves us.
He loves us so much that he sent
his only begotten son into the world to
suffer and die on a bloody cross for
sinners like you and me.
For God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish but have everlasting
life.
Our passage from Psalm 40 says, blessed is
that man that maketh the Lord his trust.
Well that man is any man whosoever whether
that man is a big sinner or a
little sinner.
If you turn to God for forgiveness of
sin by faith and trust in his son
Jesus Christ, then you can have everlasting life.
That's what the Bible says.
That's what the word of God says.
And in Psalm 40 the psalmist says that
when he was delivered he had a new
song to sing.
He brought me up and out of a
horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and
set my feet upon a rock and established
my goings.
And he hath put a new song in
my mouth, even praise unto our God, many
shall see it and fear and trust in
the Lord.
I then said to those prisoners that our
passage tonight tells us that there is hope
here, hope for the one who puts his
trust in the Lord, that you can have
hope even in a hopeless place, a hopeless
place like a prison, a prison that is
man-made or a prison of your own
making.
There is hope here.
God is hope.
Then I closed my Bible and I finished
my message.
And when I did, my worst fears were
realized as the men on the front row
rushed me.
I was frozen like I was made out
of cardboard.
My arms were at my side.
My eyes were closed in fear about what
was going to happen.
I felt arms around me clutching at me,
but I was okay.
I opened my eyes and the man in
front of me had tears in his eyes.
The man just wanted to hug me and
tell me how thankful they were for me.
They were thankful for the message that night.
They were thankful for the time I took
to come visit them.
They had seen that God of hope that
night and it gave them hope.
Since that time, friends, I've preached over 2
,000 sermons in churches and conferences and meetings.
But that first public sermon that I preached
to those prisoners will always be fresh on
my memory and warm in my heart because
God showed me that night that men are
just men, whether inside or outside a prison.
We are all sinners without excuse and we
all need a savior for sin in the
person of Christ Jesus.