You bought me to set me free.
Listen, the Lord Jesus Christ bought you to
set you free.
And when you understand that, then it's the
joy of your life to come and stand
against the door of grace and let it
bore through the ear of your heart that
you can be a born slave forever.
He bought you.
He bought you to set you free, not
only from hell, but from the world and
the flesh and the devil.
He bought you to set you free.
Welcome to Him.
What will the church of today do when
the job and the Baptist arise and say,
it's all a facade.
I don't believe in anything you do.
Do you think they might say that kind
of thing?
I think they might.
I think they might say, most of the
people in the church are wearing masks.
Most of them are pretend Christians.
They fell away from Jesus being utterly alive
in the depths of their being years ago.
They don't live that way, but they'll clap
their hands and raise their hands.
What if the John the Baptist come preaching
that?
What on earth is the church going to
do to the John the Baptist?
You know, he lasted six months.
You know, the religious authorities, they hated his
guts.
And finally here it had him beheaded six
months into his ministry.
Jesus lasted three and a half years.
He would have crowds trying to throw him
off a cliff.
And it says he walked through their midst
and was not harmed by them because they
hated his guts because of what he spoke
to them.
It challenged everything about themselves, every high and
lofty thought that they thought about themselves.
He would bring it to the dirt and
say, you're not sons of Abraham at all.
You're the children of your father, the devil.
Look at your behavior.
Look at the way you act.
Look at the way you speak.
Everything in the hidden place shows that you're
false.
When you confront people with sin, they want
to kill you or they want to repent.
What's the church going to do to the
John the Baptist that God sends for the
next great awakening?
Hey, I believe it could be in 2004.
I believe if it is, you know what?
It'll shake us first.
It'll shake us so terribly.
We're so complacent.
When I started witnessing to people, I was
18 years old.
I was at university in New Zealand and
I'd go up to people and I had
this little pamphlet called The Four Spiritual Laws,
which I think came from Campus Crusade for
Christ.
And this was a little procedure, of course.
You'd get people to ask Jesus into their
heart.
Though something I noticed was strange.
I would be getting people to pray this
prayer and they would be totally unchanged.
I would say, pray this prayer after me.
And they'd repeat it word for word.
And you know, I've been taught, this is
what we were told to do.
As soon as they pray that prayer, you
say to them, right, you're saved now.
You just asked Jesus in.
So Jesus is inside you.
You're a Christian.
You know what I believe that is now?
It's false assurance.
Who's supposed to assure us if we're truly
a Christian?
It actually says the Holy Spirit will cry
out, Abba, Father, from inside of us.
There ain't no record of anybody saying, having
to say to somebody, oh, you've just prayed
a little prayer.
Now you're in.
You don't have to worry.
You've got your little ticket for paradise and
you're OK.
For instance, when John the Baptist was preaching,
he never taught in any such way at
all.
For you'll find him saying, repent, for there's
one coming after me who's preferred before me,
the latchet of whose shoes I'm unworthy to
lose.
He it is that baptizeth you with the
Holy Ghost and with fire.
In other words, John said to his generation,
repent, because repentance is the means whereby the
barrier between you and God is removed, and
the end of God's grace is to bring
you into fellowship with God, not simply to
take you to heaven.
Now here's a misconception that carries along with
what we've been discussing.
Too many people have felt that God's great
purpose in grace was to take us to
heaven when we die.
Oh, how many things can grow out of
the wrong emphasis.
God's great purpose in grace is not just
to take us to heaven when we die.
It is to save us from sin.
People are literally loaded with sin, iniquity and
vice.
Their conscience is screaming at them out of
shame, and the psychologists are trying to stop
the cry, flip the switch.
Amazingly, the church is doing the same.
Here we are in a time when people
are more evil than they've ever been in
the history of our nation, celebrating their evil.
Instead of the church confronting sin, the church
is trying to defend the people.
It is to make us like Jesus Christ.
It is to bring us into vital, living,
warm, experiential fellowship with him now during the
days of our pilgrimage.
And then, because he's already brought heaven to
us, it'll be a simple matter for him
to take us to heaven.
How are you going to escape the heartache
and the grief that comes from realizing you
have robbed the Lord Jesus of the glory
he could have gotten out of your life?
You know, God woke me up about six
months ago at four o'clock in the
morning, and he showed me something that I've
never seen in all my studies of revival.
He showed me what these guys honed in
on when they preached, and I suddenly saw
it.
You know what they honed in on?
Assurance of salvation.
Sounds like a weird thing to, you know,
they used to preach that?
Okay, assurance of salvation.
Uh-huh.
But I suddenly realized what they're doing.
We're going to go down.
We're going to go down that path tonight.
2 Corinthians 13 verse 5.
Examine yourselves to see whether you are in
the faith.
Test yourselves.
Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is
in you unless, of course, you fail the
test.
So it's actually telling you, Paul here is
telling you, test yourselves.
Examine yourselves.
Are you really in the faith or not?
Are you doing what Jesus, who speaks the
words of the Father, are you doing what
he says?
Seek first the kingdom of God.
Jesus said in this simple contrast, not those
who simply say, Lord, Lord, who by one
means or another have claimed an attachment to
Jesus Christ in faith and love, but those
whose claim is expressed in doing the will
of the Father who is in heaven, and
the beginning place of doing the will of
the Father is coming as a helpless, hell
-deserving, undone, who owns himself, throws
himself into the arms of an almighty Savior,
who alone can do sin.
Clearly, as the Bible stops
there, it will expand into the Father's call
given through obedience.
Not everyone who says has
made it abundantly clear that if our attack
four times in the cross and follow me,
except a man, if any man take up
not his cross and come follow me.
The only four times, the very outset he
said this is the, his
people couldn't understand that
this great salvation does not only include salvation
from sin, salvation from hell, but it also
includes salvation from the world in which we've
lived, that's governed us and controlled us, whose
attitudes, whose maxims, whose rewards we've sought and
whose interests we've served.
It not only includes salvation from the world,
but includes salvation from the flesh, from our
own personality and nature, traits and interests.
It includes salvation from those habits and attitudes
that we've developed and acquired, but it not
only includes salvation from the world and the
flesh, but it also includes salvation from the
devil.
We were his bondslaves, we'd given him control
of our life, it had been done for
us by the father of the race, but
it had been confirmed by us, by our
own choice at the age of accountability, and
we were then the children of the devil.
His father, he was our father, we were
his children, his nature we exhibited, and his
acts we performed and his government we accepted.
But we come to Jesus Christ and his
purpose is not only to save us from
hell and save us from sin, but it's
to save us from the world and its
government and its interests and its control.
It's to save us from the flesh, with
its pull and its hold and its ensnaring
and meshing pulls around us.
And it's to save us from the devil,
with all of his power and all of
his cunning and all of his craftiness.
The Lord Jesus died, therefore, to set his
people free.
For whom the Son makes free is free
indeed, free from the fear of death, free
from the fear of hell, but free from
the power of the world, free from the
power of the flesh, and free from the
power of the devil.
This was all part of his great salvation.
Now, can you see the folly of a
person saying, well, I don't want to go
to hell when I die, but I'm quite
content to be in bondage to the world,
to its aims, to its goals, to its
interests, to its rewards, and to engage in
its service.
Well, can you see how silly, how foolish,
how ridiculous it is for a person to
say, I don't want to go to hell,
I want to go to heaven, but I'm
quite content to go on being in bondage
to my own personality.
I've got a mean, ugly disposition, you say.
Oh, I lose my temper, I get terribly
mad, but I'm quite content to go on
shaming Christ and and caricaturizing Christ, you see,
because really all I wanted out of Christ
was to escape from hell.
Can't you see what a total contradiction this
is?
Can't you see how foolish it is for
a person to say, well, you see, I'm
quite willing to go on doing the business
of the devil.
I'm willing to be a fifth columnist for
hell, because I've already been secured against subverting.
I won't have to go to hell when
I die, and so I don't care if
I do serve the devil a little bit,
it's all right.
Can't you see what a total contradiction of
terms this is?
How unthinkable it is?
And no wonder the writer of Hebrews says,
how can we escape if we neglect to
break salvation?
And God's salvation intended deliverance not only from
the penalty of our sin and from the
certainty of hell, but it included deliverance from
the power of the Lord, its grip and
its hold upon us.
It included deliverance from the power of the
flesh, the personality, the nature, the traits of
the individual.
It included deliverance from the power and control
of Satan himself and the demons of darkness.
And for a person to say, well, I'm
all, all I really want from Christ is
just to go to heaven anyway.
Well, it's unthinkable, it's incomprehensible.
But anyone who's heard the grace of God
and the mercy of God and the love
of God manifest in the essence of his
body, to set his people free and go
out in bondage.
Most revivals have literally started this way, with
people of God falling on their faces and
repenting with great crying and tears for their
sins.
And yet we dance around the topic and
we have our lovely games and most of
our meetings are games and their parades and
their hype and their garbage.
I'm tired of it, man.
I've seen it for, I've seen it for
over 30 years.
I'm just so sick of playing this garbage,
you know, really.
I see more of it here in this
nation than anywhere else.
People, when are we going to stop that
game and start getting real with God?
There's people in this room now who have
secret sin in their heart.
You've been living with it for years.
Some of you have recurring sins.
They're there because you don't fear God.
If you feared God, you would repent.
Most of the church is sick because we
never preach the gospel.
Charles Finney, if he saw our gospel, wouldn't
know whether to laugh or cry.
It ain't no gospel to him.
Come to Jesus.
He'll give you a more adventurous life.
Come to Jesus.
He'll make you happy.
Come to Jesus.
You'll get another fake Colgate smile like me.
It's a Santa Claus load of garbage and
it's not going to save us when it
most counts.
Did you know that nothing else matters in
the world but this, that on the day
of judgment He says these words to you,
well done, good and faithful servant.
How shall we escape if we neglect so
great salvation?
Obviously, our temptation would be here to say,
oh, salvation, that means pardon from sin.
But you know the word salvation is an
immense word, far greater than we generally associate
with it.
If you will take that word and trace
it through the New Testament, you will find
that there are actually four tenses of salvation.
Tense, in this sense, I use the word.
There's the past perfect tense, the past tense,
the present tense, and the future tense.
Now, let me explain the past perfect tense.
I have been saved from the pleasure of
sin, repentance.
The past tense, I was saved from the
penalty of sin, justification.
I am being saved from the power of
sin, sanctification.
I shall be saved from the presence of
sin, glorification.
Now, if somebody comes to you and says,
are you saved brother, sister?
You would be quite in order to say,
how do you mean?
I have been, I was, I am being,
and I shall be.
Now, let's talk about the one you're interested
in.
The word saved has been generally compressed by
us to be equivalent to forgiveness.
But the word in its use in the
Bible is far larger, far more inclusive than
just pardon.
We have one remedy.
In the Christian faith, we have one remedy.
It's simply this, put on Christ.
The only thing God respects, the only thing
God can look at and say, yes, there
is purity.
Yes, there is absolute righteousness, is Jesus.
You either put on Him, that white robe,
you're either wearing that on that day, or
you are an absolute goner.
You will regret every day that you spend
living.
Because there's no important thing in the world
than this, well done, good and faithful servant.
Nothing else matters, nothing in the world.
It's all garbage.
So I appeal to those people in this
room who've been playing games with God.
I appeal to the people in the room
who are kind of pretend Christians, who have
sin in their heart, and they behold it,
and God beholds it, and everybody knows it,
except the people around you, because you're faking
it, really good.
I appeal to all of you to repent.
Because you get few chances in this life
to repent before God, and if you leave
it, it will kill you.
It will kill you.
You know what happened at your conversion?
Your evil conscience got washed.
Salvation cleansed your conscience.
You have a new conscience, cleansed, pure.
It's not going to damn you, it's not
going to bring its shaming accusations out of
the dregs of your life from before your
conversion.
You're a new creation, old things have passed
away and new things have come, right?
But now you have a tremendous responsibility to
keep that conscience good and clear and pure
and affirming and excusing, not accusing.
Becoming concerned about other things and interested in
tasks which are more appealing to us, truth
which was in the eternal mind and heart
of God and purchased at the tremendous price
of the blood of Christ, just slips through
our fingers and slides away with the common
cares of the day.
And so we have a warning here, we
ought to give the earnest heed to the
things which we have heard, lest in our
preoccupation with many things, this truth, just like
sand in our hands, slip through, slide away,
and we be left with nothing but regrets.
Again we see it here, how shall we
escape if we neglect?
It isn't refusal, it isn't rejection, it isn't
a matter of taking one's stand against, it's
just a little matter of saying well another
day, another time, there are other things more
important, other things more challenging, other things more
demanding of my time and thought.
And the question isn't whether or not we
will neglect it, the question is this, what
are we going to do?
How are we going to explain it?
How are we going to face him who
purchased these priceless privileges with his precious blood,
included them in his word, and had them
expounded to our hearts, and then we in
our indolence and in our carelessness were prepared
to just neglect the things which God purchased
by the poured out blood of his only
begotten son?
How are we going to escape it?
This is the question.
Well what are the consequences?
You understand of course that if a person
neglects repentance and neglects faith in Jesus Christ
that they'll be forever in hell.
I am confident that in hell tonight there
are multitudes of people that intended someday to
repent.
I can't for the world believe that everyone
there made up his mind at some point
of crisis that he was determined to be
lost.
Years ago down in Richmond, Virginia, I was
talking to a young man and said, well,
religion is all right for the old.
Christianity and salvation is good for people when
they're on their last legs, but anybody as
young as I am doesn't want to be
saddled with a lot of do's and don'ts
and a lot of religion.
And when I get old enough to take
my social security, I'll also take my heaven
security, and I'll get along with his head.
But right now, sir, don't bother me.
And so I said, well, what else?
What about that?
Well, he said, well, frankly, I don't even
know that then I'm too interested.
I said, all right, I'm going to draw
up a contract and sign it.
So I took a piece of paper that
his mother handed me, and I drew up
such a contract as this.
Because I do not know that I'll live
to be old enough to take my social
security, and because I have no certainty of
tomorrow, and because I made up my mind
that I am not going to do anything
with Jesus Christ until I get to be
at least 65, I hereby relinquish now and
forever all interest in the death of Christ.
And I declare to one and sundry to
whom this paper may come, that I refuse
hereafter to consider myself a candidate for salvation.
I am determined, therefore, to go to hell.
I have made up my mind that I
should be lost, if lostness there is as
a consequence of my actions, because I am
simply not interested in Jesus Christ.
I said, would you sign that?
He read it over, his face blank, blood
drained from it.
He said, no, I wouldn't sign that.
You think I'm a fool?
I said, yes, I do.
I actually do.
Because you have essentially signed it by telling
us, your mother, your wife, all of us
here, that it is your intention to do
nothing with Jesus Christ until some point in
the indefinite future, and there's no reason to
suppose that when you reach 65 that you
won't postpone it again.
And so I said, you might as well
get the thing off your mind so that
when people trouble you in the future, you
can say, no, I've settled that.
One Sunday afternoon in my mother-in-law's
house, I just made up my mind that
I wasn't going to be bothered about it
anymore.
I said, I think that would be the
wiser course, rather than just somehow going to
do it in the meanwhile, case-hardening your
heart against any work of the Spirit of
God.
He said, mister, you put it to me
in a hard way.
I don't know what I'm going to do
about it, but I assure you this, I'm
going to faint more than I have in
the past.
Well, it's my conviction, I don't know what
happened to him, I wasn't able to follow
it up, but it's my conviction that hell
is filled with people that have said, well,
some day, some day, some day.
And we know that it is fatal to
neglect repentance and faith.
And they never heard that Jesus Christ died
to set them free.
And oh, to think that when they turn,
they'll go right on to the bottom.
That's unthinkable.
And so if I speak to you and
you have bondage to the world that's been
gripping and pulling the Lord Jesus died to
set you free, he carried you with him
to the cross, so that if you went
down in death, the world would have to
relinquish its hold and couldn't follow you into
death.
He carried you with him to the cross
so that if you went with him into
death, the flesh couldn't hold to govern you
anymore.
He carried you with him so that the
devil couldn't hold you anymore.
And then he brought you up on the
other side of the grave with him in
newness of life so that you could walk
in free for he that is dead is
free from sin.
Can you go on neglecting to bring salvation?
You can't.
You've got to admit your bondage, admit your
need, admit that you've been serving when you
didn't have to serve.
And come and throw yourself at his feet
and gladly take from his military hand the
deliverance that he purchased with his blood.
Because you've heard about it.
You've heard about it.
And you know the desire to set you
free.
Set you free.
So this is dictating thinking to a whole
culture of young people.