Please bow your heads as I pray.
Heavenly Father, I come before you by the
blood of your dear son Jesus of Nazareth,
who shed his blood for the forgiveness of
sins.
I pray that you grant the grace of
saving faith to someone here to where you
awaken them to their lost condition.
And that your spirit will come and disturb
folks.
That they will see where they're going.
That they're going straight to a devil's hell.
That you will open their ears so they
can hear your voice.
That you open their eyes and turn them
from darkness to light and from the power
of Satan onto God.
That they may receive forgiveness of sins through
a revealed Christ.
That they may look unto you and be
saved.
That they'll be blinded by the cross and
turn from their wicked ways and turn to
a bleeding and dying Christ who loved me
and gave himself for me.
Make someone here feel your love for a
world of guilty sinners and change their heart
by your grace so they can believe on
Jesus your son.
So they can be saved by Jesus.
So they can be changed by Jesus.
So they can live for Jesus.
So they can fall head over heels in
love with Jesus.
I pray these things in the strong name
of Jesus.
Amen.
I want you to pay attention to this
message today friends because it may be the
most important one you'll ever hear.
Because it concerns your eternal soul.
Yes, I said your eternal soul.
You have a soul within your body that
will one day through death take you out
of this world and take you into another
world.
Either the glory of God's heaven or the
miseries of a devil's hell.
I'm not going to sugarcoat things for you
today friends like some preachers do by telling
you what you want to hear so that
you'll like them.
I don't care if you like me or
not.
It doesn't matter a hill of beans what
you think of me.
I died a long time ago.
But it does matter to me what a
risen Christ thinks of me.
And I must preach Christ and him crucified.
The title of my message today friends is
blinded by the cross.
And I'm going to give you the undiluted
gospel of the cross.
Like we say in the south, I'm going
to give you the oil straight from the
can because I care about your soul.
Turn with me friends in your Bibles to
the book of Acts.
We will be in chapter 22 and we'll
be taking a look at verses 6 through
9.
This striking passage of scripture is the apostle
Paul's own testimony of his conversion.
So it's pretty important I think we better
pay attention to it.
Here now is the word of God.
And it came to pass that as I
made my journey and was come nigh unto
Damascus about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven
a great light round about me.
And I fell onto the ground and heard
a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why
persecutest thou me?
And I answered, Who art thou, Lord?
And he said unto me, I am Jesus
of Nazareth whom thou persecutest.
And they that were with me saw indeed
the light, but they heard not the voice
of him that spake to me.
I will stop there friends.
Paul was blinded by the cross that day.
It literally turned him upside down and knocked
him off his horse that day.
He was stopped dead in his tracks and
he heard God's voice and he saw God's
son Jesus.
And he made an about face from the
direction he was going in to turn and
go in a different direction altogether and go
smack dab straight to Christ Jesus.
Listen to me friend, if God's going to
save you, it will be a work of
grace because if you really saved, it's because
God gave you saving faith.
You don't find salvation in a decision you
make.
You must find Christ.
You were saved when you receive a revealed
Christ and the spirit of God works regeneration
on the heart and you experience change.
All men come into this world with a
poison in their blood because of Adam's sin.
You were born with a rune nature and
a bent toward sin.
Men go through life in a pursuit of
this world and give little thought to where
they will spend eternity.
It's like they're in a boat, casually going
down the stream, tasting life's pleasures as they
come and go, carelessly drifting along, consumed with
the journey of this world and ignorant of
the fact that at the end of the
stream is a dangerous precipice with a vast
chasm that will plunge you into outer darkness.
Your trouble is you've never heard a preacher
warn you before of your great danger of
dying in your sins.
They just sugarcoated the gospel for you.
You've never had a God called preacher address
you and be honest with your soul and
cry at the top of his voice warning
to you, fire, fire, flee from the wrath
to come.
Don't go to hell friend.
Repent before it's too late because men are
failed to be warned.
It's because men are burnt up, but I
didn't come here today to make you happy
or to make you laugh, but to warn
you.
This is a solemn warning.
You must get your sins washed into blood
and you must be born from above or
you're just going to go on to hell.
Notice two things here in our text.
Paul was blinded by the cross.
It changed his life's direction and he heard
God's voice where his traveling companions did not.
If you get saved from this message today,
friend, it won't be because you heard my
pitiful crackling voice, but because you were blinded
by the cross and you heard his voice.
Let me tell you about Jesus.
Jesus came down here so we can go
up there.
I know you've heard about all the good
things Jesus did when he was here.
Jesus came into the world doing good.
Jesus healed the sick.
Jesus fed the hungry.
Jesus gave sight to the blind.
Jesus gave rest to the weary.
Jesus even raised the dead to life.
Yet what happened?
Men cried away with him and nailed him
to a cross.
They placed a crown of thorns on Jesus'
head and they crucified Jesus.
Between two criminals there up on Calvary's hill,
the son of man was crucified.
Roman soldiers drove nails into Jesus' hands and
feet.
There Jesus hung on that cross.
It's a bloody spectacle for all to see.
Look at that man on the cross, friend.
Look at that blessed man on the cross
hanging there with his arms outstretched, beckoning you
to come to him and believe on him.
Look at that bloodstained savior from sin as
he wrestles under the weight of sin.
Look unto me and be ye saved, all
the ends of the earth, for I am
God and there is none else.
Look at that blessed man on the cross,
friend, as he squirms in agony and pain.
I am the way, the truth, and the
life.
No man cometh unto the Father but by
me.
The cross is the place where wicked men
sought to get rid of him, but by
his death it becomes the place where his
saving power flows out to all who come
in repentance, confessing their sinners and own them
as their Savior and Lord.
Herein is love, not that we love God,
but that he loved us and sent his
Son to be a propitiation for our sins.
Don't go to hell, friend.
Hell is a region of demons, of outer
darkness.
It is a bottomless pit because it's a
prison that holds hundreds and hundreds of millions
of the souls of the damned where they
cry day and night in the smoke and
torments of burnings.
But the only way a sinner will get
into God's holy heaven is for that sinner
to be justified by Christ's blood.
Listen, friend, I know I am a sinner
and I need a substitute for sin, and
so do you, friend, so do you.
The only way this poor preacher will get
into God's holy heaven is when Christ's life
is laid down and applied to me.
Do you understand that?
Let me explain it to you this way.
There's a story I heard years ago, and
it helped me understand how to get to
Jesus.
And if you want to be saved, friend,
you must get to Jesus and believe on
him.
I'm almost done with my sermon, so sit
up and pay attention to the story about
how a person gets to go to heaven.
It's the story about a man traveling through
the city of St. Louis, and it is
a Sunday, and he is a Christian, so
he parks his car at a downtown church
and goes inside to worship.
Once he's in there, he realizes he's the
only white person in an all-black church,
so he takes his seat on the back
row.
Up on the platform is the well-dressed
elderly pastor who's speaking on a subject that
Sunday morning.
His subject is heaven.
He begins a sermon by saying, Some folks
call heaven paradise.
Other folks call it Abraham's bosom.
I like to think of heaven this way.
Here is Jesus, just returned from his earthly
ministry.
He stands there at the pearly gates, and
old Gabriel comes to greet him.
Hello, Jesus.
Sure is good to see you, Jesus.
We sure missed you up here, Jesus.
Sure is good to have you home, Jesus.
But wait, who's that with you?
Is that that thief from the cross?
Oh, no, sir.
We can't have no thieves up here.
He's not welcome here, Jesus replied.
Never you mind, Gabriel.
Never you mind.
And just then, Jesus put his arm around
the thief and declared, He's with me.
If you get saved, friend, it's because you
were blinded by the cross, and that man
on the cross was revealed to you as
the only remedy for sin.
But you must get to him and believe
on him, so that when you stand at
the judgment, even though your sins condemn you
as a guilty sinner, you will hear the
voice of the Savior say, He's with me.
She's with me.
Blessed are they which are called unto the
marriage supper of the Lamb.