May I greet you in the name of
our Lord Jesus Christ and welcome you once
again to our service here and to those
of you who are listening over radio land.
I want us to look together at some
verses from Romans chapter 3.
Romans chapter 3 has a background to a
lot of what I'm going to say tonight.
Romans 3 and it's verse 10.
The Apostle Paul is here penning the picture
of the world as it appears before God.
He has divided the world up into three
divisions and now he groups them as one
in the presence of God, shut up to
God's judgment, guilty before him.
And here is the verdict as he quotes
from the Old Testament, verse 10.
There is none righteous, no, not one.
There is none that understandeth.
There is none that seeketh after God.
They're all gone out of the way.
They are together become unprofitable.
There is none that doeth good, no, not
one.
Their throat is an open sepulcher.
With their tongue they have used deceit.
The poison of ass is under their lips,
whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood.
Destruction and misery are in their ways, and
the way of peace have they not known.
There is no fear of God before their
eyes.
Now we know that what thing soever the
law saith, it saith to them who are
under the law, that every mouth may be
stopped and all the world may become guilty
before God.
Therefore by the deeds of the law shall
no flesh be justified in his sight, for
by the law is the knowledge of sin.
But now the righteousness of God without the
law is manifested, being witnessed by the law
and the prophets, even the righteousness of God
which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto
all and upon all them that believe.
For there is no difference, for all have
sinned and come short of the glory of
God.
We stop on that semicolon and return to
verse 23 for emphasis.
For all have sinned and are coming short,
and are coming short of the glory of
God.
May God write that solemn passage upon our
hearts.
And then I want us just to turn
for one moment to a verse in Numbers
32-23.
And I'm using that as my text, and
bringing it into the context of this passage
in Romans.
Be sure your sin will find you out.
Now if God may enable me throughout this
week, starting tonight and right through until Friday,
I want to answer a question that I've
been asked in my time in the course
of my evangelistic work.
And under the general theme of, I want
an answer, I want an answer, I'm going
to try to bring the positive, the positive
answer to the questions that you have seen
already in the press.
Tonight, will I ever be found out?
Will I ever be found out?
And I have upon me a tremendous burden,
and I, you know, ask Christian people over
the radio and here before me to pray
right the way through my preaching tonight.
Because I haven't a message which is popular,
nor a message which is easy to deliver.
But nevertheless, a message which I must preach,
if I'm not going to shun to declare
the whole counsel of God.
Will I ever be found out?
I want to speak tonight on God's infallible
detective, or the infallible detective.
Be sure your sin will find you out.
Now it's amazing how many people imagine that
they can avoid, resist, or camouflage this infallible
detective.
It's amazing how many religious people hide behind
the religion.
How many churchgoing people hide behind their churchgoing.
How many so-called moral people hide behind
their morality.
How many educated people hide behind their education,
and explain away such things as sin as
being just a relic of the past, or
some form of behaviorism which one day will
be eliminated and eradicated by the process of
evolution in which we find ourselves now.
How many people try to rationalize away this,
this factor of life, this issue of life,
which cannot be evaded or escaped in the
last analysis, the Bible calls sin.
But my friends, tonight I want to demonstrate
from the scriptures, and from experience, and from
history, how sin is bound to find every
one of you out.
Every one of you out.
For be sure your sin will find you
out.
And I want you to consider, first of
all, how sin finds men and women out
by its inward experience.
By its inward experience.
Be sure your sin will find you out.
Now the Apostle Paul, in verse 23 of
Romans 3, says this, For all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God.
And that can be well translated, for all
have consciously sinned.
For all have consciously sinned.
Not only have we sinned in Adam, our
first parent, but we consciously sin today.
For all have consciously sinned and come short
of the glory of God.
As I look back into history, as I
look into my own heart, I can find
eloquent testimony to the voice of inward experience.
And I want to just call one of
those voices from the Old Testament, a few
from the New, and a few from history,
to give evidence here tonight that sin finds
men and women out by inward experience.
Will you go into the early chapters of
the Old Testament for a moment, and into
the early periods of history?
And I want you to see a man
called Job.
He's been called upon to suffer in a
very amazing way.
He's been called to visualize God in all
his glory.
And he's been called to face up to
the fact of his own sinnership before God.
And I want you to hear the word
that groans from his soul as he realizes
just what he is before the Holy God.
Listen to him.
Behold, he says, behold, behold, I am vile.
Behold, I am vile.
When Charles Wesley wrote his hymn, Jesu, Lover
of My Soul, he used that word, vile
and full of sin I am.
Thou art full of truth and grace.
It's been interesting to see how that hymn
has gone through various changes, particularly when it's
suffered at the hands of modernists and men
who don't hold the true condition of man
in his depravity before God.
But listen to the voice of Job.
Behold, he says, I am vile.
I come through the pages of the Old
Testament, and I hear another man.
He has seen the glory of God in
the temple.
In the previous chapters and early chapters of
Isaiah, we hear him challenging men and women
right, left, and center of him.
Six woes have been delivered.
Woe unto you!
He's condemning men right, left, and center.
But presently he catches a vision of God
in his temple.
The glory of the Lord has filled the
temple, and he quakes as he trembles before
the brilliant whiteness of that light that beams
from the throne.
And his language has changed.
He's no longer calling men, Woe!
Woe!
He now looks into his own life, and
he cries the cry of a leper.
Clapping his hand over his mouth, he cries,
Woe is me!
For I am undone.
I am a man of unclean lips.
It's the cry of a man who's seen
himself in the light of the holiness of
God.
The voice of inward experience.
I come into the New Testament, and I
just cite one instance of an individual named
Peter.
Peter has come to know his Lord in
some way, but not in a deep way.
And at the memorable occasion, Jesus had been
out preaching in his boat, and as the
sermon had concluded to reward Peter, he had
pushed the boat out to catch some fish
to reward his disciple Peter.
Peter, who was doubting whether or not this
miracle could ever happen, held the word of
the Master, cast the net on the right
side of the ship, and immediately a great,
great multitude of fishes was encompassed in that
net.
This miracle revealed to Peter that Jesus was
not just the Jesus he knew.
There was something more than that.
For one moment, the flash of deity seemed
to burst forth from the humanity of Christ,
and as they neared that beach, you remember,
Peter threw himself prostrate before the Master and
cried, Depart from me, for I am a
sinful man.
Oh Lord.
Suddenly he became aware of his sinfulness, his
unbelief, his defilement, his depravity, and he says,
Woe, woe is me like Isaiah.
Woe is me like Job.
Depart from me, Lord, for I am a
sinful man.
I go into the epistles, and I'm quoting
from the brilliant intellect of the first century.
His name is the Apostle Paul.
A tremendous intellect, a man of great learning,
a man who graduated from the school of
Gamaliel, a man who was a religious velot,
a man who was, as touching the law,
he said, blameless.
But presently he sees a vision of himself
in the glory and whiteness of the throne
of God.
He sees his inner depravity and defilement and
sinfulness, and I want you to hear a
cry that rings from his soul as he
dictates that letter to Gaius, that great acropolis
of the Christian faith, the Roman epistle.
Listen to him.
O wretched man that I am, who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?
O wretched man that I am.
Paul's discovered that he's a sinner.
Paul's discovered that he's depraved.
Paul's discovered that he is full of defilement
before the holiness of God.
And if that weren't enough, I can go
right outside the compass of the Bible, and
I can begin to quote from history.
Take only the Roman empire and take only
the Roman period for a while, and listen
first of all to the language of Horace,
the Roman poet.
He says, I see and approve what is
good, but I follow the worse.
There's a perversity within me.
There's a dent.
There's a tendency to sin.
Listen to Cicero.
That great statement, listen to him, nature has
given us of knowledge, but we corrupt it
by our many immoralities.
I turn from Cicero and I call upon
Seneca, the great philosopher, and he says what?
He says this, we are all wicked.
We are all wicked.
What we blame, what we blame in others,
each will find in his own bosom.
I come to a philosopher of our own
age, who just before his death, some years
before his death, two or three years before
his death, was so shaken by C.S.
Lewis, Professor C.S. Lewis of our own
country, that he came to a knowledge of
sin and then to a knowledge of the
Savior, and he wrote that book.
He wrote that book in which he just
undid all the harm he had ever done
in his philosophical writings.
I refer to the late Professor Job.
He says, I've come to a sense of
sin.
I've come to a sense of sin.
No man had rationalized away sin in popular
philosophy and psychology like Professor C.E.M.
Jode in our generation.
I've read his books.
There were some of the books that used
to send me right away from the church
at one time, as I shared last Monday
evening.
But he says, now I've come to a
sense of sin and I deduce from my
many omissions and commissions that I'm a most
miserable sinner.
Men and women here tonight, I want to
tell you something from my own heart, and
I want to tell you it in terms
of personal experience.
There is a verse in the Old Testament
that runs something like this, As faith answereth
to faith in the water, so the heart
of man to man.
As I look into a puddle of water
and see there reflected the likeness of my
own faith, so as I look into my
heart tonight, I see reflected there the likeness
of your heart.
And I don't care who you are, where
you come from, what your name is, what
your upbringing is, what your religion is, what
your morality is, what your decent laws of
living are.
I know this, that if my heart, if
my heart is so full of sin, so
is yours.
For as heart as faith answereth to faith
in the water, so the heart of man
to man.
And I know that outside of the grace
of God and the cleansing of the precious
blood and the wonderful work of the Holy
Spirit, I am actually and hopelessly undone.
I'm a man of sin and defilement and
depravity.
And what is true of my life is
true of every other life bowed in God's
presence here this evening.
It's the voice of inward experience.
But not only does the voice of inward
experience teach us that we sin consciously, it
teaches us that we sin continually.
For the text says, for all have sinned
and are coming short, coming short, continuing to
come short of the glory of God.
And I look back into the early chapters
of Genesis, and I hear that word that
comes down through the centuries as God looked
down upon Noah's day, and God saw the
wickedness on the earth, and behold, it was
very great.
And that the imagination of a thought of
man's heart was only evil continually.
And I want to say, men and women,
the reason why I've got this message upon
my heart tonight is just this, that sin
is going to find you out, and is
finding you out.
It isn't because you sin intermittently and spasmodically.
It's because you continue to sin.
You've sinned today.
You've sinned in words.
You've sinned in thought.
You've sinned in, listen, you've sinned in action.
You've sinned by your very influence amongst men
and women upon whom you're exacting an impact
all the time.
Man sins consciously.
Man sins continually.
But what is most solemn is that man
sins culpably.
He has for all sinned and comes to
know that he is sinning against God, against
God, his Creator.
Professor M.
O.
Brunner says the conception of radical evil is
that it's radical sin.
That man, when confronted with a law, is
not confronted with an impersonal law of good.
Man is confronted with the will of his
Creator.
And every time you sin, my friend, you
sin however much you harm other people in
your sin as we shall see in a
moment, you sin finally, in the last analysis,
against God.
And it's David who puts it in these
words after his great sin with Bathsheba, "'Against
thee, against thee, O God, have I sinned
and done this evil in thy sight.'" And
I want to tell you young people, Jer,
and I want to tell you older ones,
however serious or not serious you consider sin
to be tonight, I want to tell you
that sin is going to find you out
not only because you sin consciously and continually,
but because you sin culpably.
And tonight, tonight, all sins ever committed have
been against God.
Every sin you have committed has been a
clenched fist in the face of God.
Sin finds men and women out by inward
experience.
But I want to go deeper, and I
want to point out that sin finds men
and women out by its irresistible effects.
Sin finds men and women out by its
irresistible effects.
Be sure your sin will find you out.
And I've learned from experience that it's not
very difficult to detect the deceitful boy.
It's not very difficult to find out, listen,
the impure girl, the fallen woman, the drunken
man.
Jesus put it this way, whosoever committed sin
is the slave of sin.
Let me repeat that.
Whosoever committed sin is the slave of sin.
And it doesn't matter how much you try
to hide it.
If you're a sinner, my friend, if you're
a sinner tonight, then you're a slave to
sin.
And all slaves carry marks.
There is the mark of the so-called
moralist sinner.
There is the mark of the so-called
religionist sinner.
There is the so-called profligate sinner, and
he's got his mark.
C.
H.
Spurgeon once put it this way, that sin
is as great a rebel in satin as
it is in rags.
And one of the greatest sins that any
man can ever commit is the sin which
is done in the name of religion.
The damning sin is the religious sin so
often.
I'll never forget, I'll never forget in all
my life hearing parts of the testimony of
that great man of God who holds one
of the most popular and yet deep pulpits
from a spiritual point of view in the
city of London.
I refer to Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones.
Some of you've heard his name from this
pulpit again and again this past week.
Some of you've heard his name from the
lips of your own pastor here, Dr. Paul
Reeves.
Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones is not a doctor
of theology, nor is he a doctor of
divinity.
He is a doctor of medicine, and his
mind was disciplined to read not only medicine
but to study especially the heart, and he
was a Harley Street heart specialist, which is
the very top ranking, top ranking category of
doctors in our country.
I understand that in his younger days he
attended royalty at Buckingham Palace, and he was
set for one of the highest positions, I
suppose, in heart troubles and ailments in our
land.
I don't know just when that man was
converted, but I do know this, that as
he practiced as a Harley Street specialist in
one of the posh studios of Harley Street
in our country, a tremendous vision was given
to him and a burden as he attended
to the nobility and the high society of
our great metropolis life.
Again and again he put his stethoscope against
the chests of men and women who were
called the elite of our British life, who
were living immoral, sinful, defiled lives of debauchery.
Time and time again he had diagnosed heart
trouble and had given the cure and had
seen them stand on their feet again, only
to see them come back in due course
to the same studio to be consulted, to
be consulted concerning their heart trouble.
Do you know that man, and I can
hear him saying it now, came to the
conclusion that it was no good to be
a heart specialist?
He was only mending people's physical hearts to
send them back to sin just as badly
as they had before.
There was only one solution, only one solution
to this business of getting people right, and
that was to preach the gospel of Jesus
Christ.
And he left Harley Street with a tremendous
financial screw to go down to a little
inconspicuous church in South Wales to begin to
preach the gospel, and God so honored him
that he's become one of the greatest preachers
of our country today.
But I can hear him saying, I can
hear him saying to young ministers, I can
hear him saying, listen men, listen men, preach
a radical message.
Preach sin until people quake.
Preach sin until they can't sit in their
seats.
For until people know how big sin goes,
they'll never believe that Jesus Christ ever had
to go to the cross.
We have no conception of what the atonement
is until we realize the depths of depravity
in the human heart, the irresistible effects of
sin in spoiled characters, spoiled characters.
And I'm talking to men and women here
who've got wonderful clothes on, who've come out
on this lovely, lovely summer night looking so
charming and beautiful, that if only I could
x-ray your crime sheet, if only I
could expose tonight the sins of your life,
if only I could give you a revelation
by the power of the Holy Ghost of
the depravity of your nature, not one of
you would sit here a moment longer.
You'd be chasing down the street with scorching
tears down your faces, crying, crying to the
mountains to cover you because of the sinfulness
of your life.
The irresistible effects are seen not only in
spoiled characters and ruined lives, but listen, in
seared consciences.
And this is one of the most solemn
things I've got to say tonight, seared consciences.
The Apostle Paul speaks of consciences that are
cauterized as with a hot iron, rendered insensitive,
just like a poker, red-hot poker placed
upon the flesh, sears the flesh until it
becomes insensitive, dead to pain.
So men and women become insensitive, insensitive to
sin.
And listen, when I talk about sin, if
there's no sense of shame in your heart
tonight, if I talk about sin tonight and
there's no sense of guiltiness in your heart,
then God have mercy upon you, young person.
God have mercy upon you, older person, because
it may be that you have already been
cauterized, you've been seared as with a hot
iron, and that's why, that's why, that's why
you're not alive to the seriousness of the
subject with which I'm dealing here now.
But I want to tell you, my friends,
one thing that concerns me more than anything
else amongst young people today is that where
twenty-five or fifty years ago there would
have been a blush of shame, there would
have been a streak of red rising from
the throat to the face of young people
when certain stories were spoken in public, when
certain things were said today, it just shrugged
off as if it were the dumb thing
with the spirit of, I couldn't care less.
I want to remind you, my friends, what
Solomon says in one of his writings, fools,
he says, fools make a market sin.
And I want to tell you that when
the conscience dies, when the conscience is seared,
when the conscience is dead, the whole personality
is open to the inroads of all manner
of evil.
Don't ever forget the story of the man
who lived with his one dog in a
little garret away in the city of London.
He climbed up to his garret night by
night, and his dog, faithful dog, would meet
him there.
But the man took to drink and began
to drink away his money and his health
and his honor.
And one night, the worst for drink, he
climbed up into that little garret.
The dog leapt to welcome him, but there
was no response from this inebriated man.
He flung himself down on a bed and
snored away, and at midnight an intruder called.
When the intruder opened the door, it wasn't
locked.
The dog began to bark and bark and
bark, but there was no response from the
sleeping man.
Presently out of the depths of his inebriated
sleep, he arose, and with a temper, with
a temper, he picked up a chair and
threw it at his dog, striking the dog
at a vital point in the head, and
the poor beast rolled over dead.
Next morning, next morning, bleary-eyed and thick
-headed, he climbed out of his bed to
see his dead dog, and alongside of his
dead dog he saw the open safe of
the only money he had in the world,
and everything gone.
The dog had barked, had barked, had barked,
but he had slain his dog.
The conscience in your life has barked and
barked and barked, and you've allowed that conscience
of yours to be stuck again and again
and again with this hot iron until tonight
it's insensitive.
And the reason why you're not scared, the
reason why you're not moved, the reason why
you're not concerned about your sin, my friend,
is because of your feared conscience.
Once that conscience is dead, once that conscience
is dead, even in the name of religion,
even with a chorus on your lips, even
with the precious blood being mentioned by some
of you, all manner of evils can just
torment that personality of yours and bring it
eventually to doom.
God have mercy upon anyone here with a
feared conscience.
But I want to go a step further,
and I want to say this, the irresistible
effects of sin are only manifest themselves in
spoiled characters and sealed consciences.
But the irresistible effects of sin demonstrate themselves
in social context.
For the Bible tells me that no man
liveth unto himself, listen, no man liveth unto
himself.
And I said I was talking about a
solemn point a moment or two ago.
I don't know that there can be anything
more solemn than this.
Listen, no man liveth unto himself.
No man liveth unto himself.
There isn't a single fellow, man or woman
in this audience or over the radio listening
to me today who isn't influencing people right,
left, and center every time you breathe, every
time you live, every time you move amongst
us.
Whether you want to or not, whether you
want to or not, no man liveth unto
himself.
We are essentially social creatures, and you're either
leading men to heaven or you're leading them
to hell.
There's no neutrality.
Big brother leads little brother astray.
Big sister teaches little sister to swear.
Older woman tempts younger woman to take her
first drink.
Older man shows young man how to gamble.
And I want to tell you, my friend,
it doesn't matter how you live or how
decently you live, there are impulses leading your
life which either help men heavenward or hellward.
And as I told you last Monday night,
one of the things that God brought me
to my knees about before I gave myself
to the ministry was just this, oh God,
oh God, even as a worldly Christian, I've
been leading people to hell, to hell.
Take me back to my university.
Take me back to my college.
And there were five fellows who were headlong
for hell that I had to rescue before
I came into the ministry.
And thank God every one of them was
converted.
But I want to tell you this, my
friend, there are fellows in your office, in
your university, in your college, in your home
that you're either leading to heaven or to
hell because every single time you live, every
time you speak, every time you think, you're
influencing other people.
You show me your friends and I'll tell
you your character.
You show me the people with whom you
mix and that'll give me an index of
your type of life.
And I want to say here tonight, my
friend, that social context is one of the
irresistible effects of sin because you're making an
impact upon society every day you live.
Some of you may be playing with sin
in the quiet of your life.
I want to warn you.
Listen, whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he
also reap.
Social context, social context.
Have a habit of showing up.
Some men's sins go beforehand to judgment.
Other men's sins follow after, says the apostle.
Some men's sins are open, going beforehand to
judgment.
Other men's sins follow after.
He was a young university man at Cambridge.
He was reading medicine.
One night, in spite of the warnings of
some of his better-thinking pals, he said,
I couldn't care less.
I'm going to go to town tonight.
I'm painting the town red.
I'm going on the spree.
I'm going to have a good time tonight
and who's going to stop me?
And he did, and he did.
The early hours of that morning, he climbed
back somehow or other without the proctor of
the university or of his particular college knowing
anything about it, and he got back into
his bed, bleary-eyed and thick-headed.
Next day, the lectures didn't go too well,
but it was all forgotten.
It was the excitement of one night.
Now years have gone by.
He has qualified, and he's taken over the
practice of his father in London, and he's
about to step into faith, for he's done
well at medicine, and he's in his consulting
room, and in comes a patient, and he
begins to examine that patient.
But for some reason or other, he just
can't see the patient properly.
A curious sort of dimness has come over
his eyes.
He brushes his eyes again and again, but
somehow he can't penetrate this curious haziness that's
come over his vision.
He excuses himself and goes out and washes
his face.
He examines his eyes.
There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with
them, and back he comes.
He has to dismiss his patient.
This persists.
Day after day, he decides to go and
see a specialist.
That young man whose story is true went
to see one of our top-ranking specialists
in London, and the young doctor sat before
him, and this old man studied him, studied
him, diagnosed him, examined him, searched him, probed
him, and then he bent over him, and
he said, young man, I want to ask
you a very serious and personal question.
Tell me.
In your student days, was there ever a
night or a day when you sold, when
you sold your wild oats?
Was there a night or a day in
your experience when you said you couldn't care
less?
You'd do what you wanted to.
Who was going to stop you?
His face burned.
He admitted that he was guilty.
Said the specialist looking down at him, I'm
sorry, young man.
You're reaping the harvest of that night.
You're incurable.
You'll go stone blind.
Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap.
Be sure your sin will find you out
by its inward experience, consciously, continually, culpably, by
its irresistible effects, spoiled characters, feared consciences, social
contacts.
But if somebody isn't shaken and desperately moved
in the presence of God by such teaching
from the word of God and proof from
history, I want to add just one other
thing that makes me quake to even speak
of it, but I've got to.
Sin will find you out, my friend, either
one or another.
If it's not by its inward experience and
irresistible effects, it'll find you out one day
by the inevitable exposure of eternity.
The inevitable exposure of eternity.
For God requires that which is past.
Be sure your sin will find you out.
You may try to hide it under indifference
tonight and carelessness tonight.
You may try to hide it under resistance
tonight.
You may try to hide it under a
religious cloak of many years in the Christian
faith, so-called.
You may try to hide it in a
thousand ways, but be sure your sin will
find you out.
Be sure of it.
Be sure of it more than the fact
that you're in this place tonight.
It'll find you out.
For the Bible says that there is no
thing covered which shall not be revealed.
There is no thing hidden which shall not
be made known.
There is no creature that shall not be
made manifest in his presence, for all things
are open and naked unto the eyes of
him with whom we have to do.
Be sure your sin will find you out.
You say, how's it going to find me
out in eternity?
I'll tell you in three ways.
It's going to find you out, first of
all, by your words.
Yes, your words.
Your words.
Listen to this.
Every idle word that men shall speak, every
idle word that men shall speak, they shall
give an account thereof at the day of
judgment, for by thy word thou shalt be
justified, and by thy word thou shalt be
condemned.
If I preached that fifty or sixty years
ago, some of you would stand up and
say, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense.
How can words ever be stored?
How can words ever be repeated?
How can words ever be recalled?
Tonight, however, I can tell you that scientists
tell us that the very walls of this
church are recording every single sermon I've preached.
We don't need tape recorders.
One day it'll be possible to bring back
off these very walls every single intonation, every
inflection of my voice, every word.
But if that weren't convincing enough, what about
our tape recorders?
What about the way we can record everything
that's ever said?
I was at a place a little while
ago in our own country where a trick
was played on myself and the family and
a number of others.
We were sitting around the table merrily having
a meal and speaking away when all of
a sudden attention was called to the fact
that the radio was on, and we listened
because an important announcement was about to be
said.
And we listened.
The knob was turned, and instead of the
British announcer coming over BBC, I heard my
own voice.
I heard my wife.
I heard my child.
I heard everybody at that table say some
foolish things, some important things, some completely indifferent
things, and there the whole procedure of the
whole evening was played back to us, and
not one of us knew it.
We laughed.
We looked at one another.
But I tell you, it stuck home to
my heart.
Every idle word that men shall speak, they
shall give an account thereof at the day
of judgment, for by thy word thou shalt
be justified.
By thy word thou shalt be condemned.
You know, my friend, there is never a
word you've ever said that isn't recorded.
There is no word that you've ever said,
not even an idle word, that isn't recorded
in heaven, and one day is going to
be played back before you, and you've got
to stand or fall to what you've said.
Taken in evidence against you.
Not only is there an exposure of our
words, but there will be an exposure of
our, listen, of our works.
For I hear that word coming down through
the centuries from the book of the Revelation,
and they stood great and small before that
great judgment throne that we were hearing about
in song just now, and every man was
judged.
Every man was judged according to his works.
As a tree falls, so it lies.
As a man lives, so he dies.
And you know, my friend, as you're living
now, you sow a thought, you reap an
action.
You sow a thought, you reap a word.
You sow a word, you reap an action.
You sow an action, you reap a habit.
You sow a habit, you reap a character.
You sow a character, you reap a destiny.
And your character, your very character, is determined
by the way you're living every day.
And that's going to go right through with
you into eternity.
You think that you're going to escape from
this life somehow or other, but you're not.
You're going to carry it with you.
I know the story of a hunter in
the jungles of Central Africa who roused one
of the great big African snakes, and he
saw that it was hopeless to try and
fight it, and he began to escape.
And he plunged through the jungles where the
snake was right after him.
He thought, how can I escape?
I can't climb a tree.
It can climb.
I must run.
And he made for the river.
This was his only hope.
He came to the brink of the river.
He plunged into the depths.
He said, now I'm safe, now I'm safe.
As he emerged on the other side of
the bank to his utter horror and consternation,
the snake was behind him.
The snake had gone clean through the river.
It was after him.
There are men and women in this place
tonight who say, all right, I'll live as
I like, and then I'm going to dive
into the river of death, and it's all
forgotten.
It's all forgotten.
Listen, my friend, on resurrection shore, that life
of yours of sin will follow you right
to the great white throne of God, and
your day's work of today, your day's work
will come before the God who tonight's your
Savior, but then will be your judge.
And if that weren't enough, there's something else
that's going to be exposed and revealed in
that day, not only your words, not only
your works, but your omissions to that which
is lacking in your life, your wants.
For the word that comes to me down
through the word of God in the Old
Testament tonight is this, that in that day
men will be weighed in the balances and
found wanting, found wanting.
Jesus looked into the face of a young
man and said, one thing thou lacketh, because
he lacked a relationship to God, and his
name was wanting in the Lamb's book of
life.
For whosoever's name was not written in the
Lamb's book of life was cast into the
lake of fire.
And my friend tonight, there's not only your
words that are going to be exposed, not
only your works, but your wants, the things
that are lacking in your life to make
you right with God.
And I would be in the shoes of
any man, woman, and child in the sound
of my voice throughout radio land or in
this place tonight who hasn't got right with
God.
I've proved, I've proved to you tonight so
simply and perhaps so inadequately that the sin,
the sin which you commit day by day
is going to find you out.
Be sure your sin will find you out.
How?
By its inward experience.
How?
By its irresistible effects.
How?
By its inevitable exposure.
And I want to ask you, my friend,
will you get right with God if touching
that matter of sin in your life?
Will you get right with God tonight?
Will you come to Him in brokenness and
repentance?
Will you come to Him for cleansing?
Will you come to Him for forgiveness and
pardon?
My Bible tells me this, and I want
you to listen very carefully to these words.
He that covereth his sin shall not prosper,
but he that confesseth and forsaketh his sin
shall find mercy.
Blessed be the man whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
But, oh, I beg of you, I beg
of you as you come in confession tonight,
don't bring the confession of Pharaoh.
Pharaoh cried, I have sinned, I have sinned,
I have sinned.
But it was a confession of fear, a
confession of fear.
And when he had made that confession, he
waited until the judgments of God upon his
land were halted, and then he hardened his
heart again.
He hardened his heart, and he returned to
the vomit as the dog, and to the
wallowing in the mud as the fowl.
And he went on living as if nothing
had ever happened.
A woman in Richmond, London, my own church,
came to me in a frightened state of
mind, an unconverted woman, a little while ago.
She said, Mr. Olson, what shall I do,
what shall I do?
I said, what is it, woman?
She said, in a wicked fit of temper,
because I'd been drinking, I beat my little
boy.
And he ran upstairs, and he threw himself
out of a top window, and he's just
dropped and cracked his head, and he's dead.
And I got his blood upon my hands.
I tried to calm that woman.
I tried to lead her to a saving
knowledge of Jesus Christ.
I tried to show her that the blood
of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses from all
sin.
But you know, as soon as that little
life had been buried, as soon as that
little life had been forgotten, that woman, who
was just frightened because of what she'd done,
returned to her same drink, returned to her
same life.
And tonight she's in a worse state, as
far as I know, than when I met
her.
She wouldn't repent.
She merely said, I have sinned, but it
was a cry of fear.
It wasn't a cry of repentance.
Don't you cry like Judas.
Judas is scared.
He said, I have sinned, I have sinned,
but it was a cry of remorse.
When he had flung the money down in
the high priest's court, he went and hanged
himself and went to hell.
It was too late.
He never, never knew salvation.
He went to his own place, the Bible
says.
He was the son of perdition.
Don't you cry like Saul.
I have sinned.
But his heart wasn't broken, and God had
to reject him categorically, and he never became
king, and he never came into the blessing
of God.
Oh, if you cry tonight, I have sinned,
will you use the language of the prodigal
son?
He said, I have sinned.
He has said, I have sinned.
But it wasn't a cry of fear to
be regretted.
It wasn't a cry of remorse to be
lamented.
It was a cry of real brokenness, and
repentance was demonstrated in that he retraced his
steps right to the very one against whom
he had sinned, and he said, Father, Father,
Father, I have sinned before thee and before
God.
I have sinned before God and before thee.
I am not worthy to be called thy
son.
And because of the brokenness of his spirit,
because of the depth of his repentance and
confession, he received the embrace of love.
He received the kiss of forgiveness.
I ask you here tonight, my friend, listen
to me.
Will you come to him?
Will you come to him in brokenness?
Will you cry from the depths of your
soul, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
And will you believe in that wonderful verse,
the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth
from all sin?
And will you look away to Calvary, and
will you say, Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, believing
that thou hast died for me, believing thou
hast shed thy precious blood for me, in
humility, in repentance, in brokenness, I come, I
am coming, Lord, coming now to me.
Wash me, cleanse me in the blood that
flowed from Calvary.
Will you pray that?
Will you make that your response to the
challenge of tonight's message?
Will you bow lowly at the cross in
penitence and true humility?
Will you receive the cleansing that the precious
blood of Christ affords?
Will you enter into forgiveness tonight, into peace
tonight, into justification by faith tonight?
Will you do so right now, whether over
radio land or right here in this audience
as we bow together in prayer?
Will you bow your head right now in
prayer?
Will you mean business with God?
Will you let the Holy Spirit fall upon
you?
Will you get right with God and do
it now?
Will you get right with God?
He tells you how.
O come to Christ, who shed his blood,
and at the cross get right with God.