Encounter With Christ (1957)
Message from Urbana 57by Billy Graham
“We today, you students who know Christ, need to catch fire. The Nazi young people had fire, the Fascist young people had fire, and the Communist youth today have fire. We Christians have lost the fire that characterized the early church. Where is that fire? Where is that enthusiasm, where is that dedication, where is that sense of consecration even to the death?”
I have been looking forward with great anticipation to this period of soul refreshment for myself. I notice in the audience a number of ministers and missionaries Whom I'm sure have come here to fill up, and to learn during these days, as I have. I only wish I could have come earlier, but we are expecting an addition in our home momentarily, and it's a very, very difficult time on the father especially. But to have this privilege of fellowshiping with those of you who are engaged in Inter-Varsity work, and those of you who are students, especially on the campus today, is indeed a great privilege.
I want to take this opportunity to thank Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship for the support and the prayers and the interest accorded me on the various campuses that I have had the privilege of going to in the last few years. And what a wonderful joy it is to go to a city and hold a crusade in which there are university students engaged in Inter-Varsity, who are winning people to Christ, and who believe in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I said this afternoon and I repeat now, I'm convinced that when eternal history is written, that in 1957 this may be a more significant and crucial conference than that which took place in Paris a few weeks ago or that which is taking place in Cairo tonight.
Many of the great movements of history have begun on the campus. Many of the secular movements, many of the religious movements have begun among students. The time has come; it seems to me, for students to take a place of leadership in a spiritual awakening in a world that so desperately needs Christ. You cannot wait upon the faculty; you cannot wait upon older leaders.
It is time for students to exert their leadership with all of their enthusiasm and the tremendous power that they have. Give it all to Christ, until we shall see a flame of fire that will sweep from one end of the student world to the other, making its impact on the nations of the world. It could begin here.
Tonight I want you to turn with me for our text to the 17th chapter of Acts; the book of Acts, the 17th chapter, beginning with the 22nd verse.
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill, and said, "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring.
"For as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance - God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead."
And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, "We will hear thee again of this matter." So Paul departed from among them. Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed."
I want you to get the picture if you can. The apostle Paul had been traveling through Asia Minor preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We all remember that he had had a conversion experience on the road to Damascus. He had been dramatically and wonderfully converted to Christ.
A British psychiatrist recently said, "Unless the church gets back to converting the people we psychiatrists are going to have to do it." A psychologist at Yale recently said that man is so psychologically constituted that he needs converting.
The apostle Paul had a conversion experience because the word conversion means turn around. He was going to persecute the young church, but he turned around; turned around in his thinking. The whole moral direction of his life was changed and transformed when he had an encounter with the living Christ. And the question I should like to ask you in passing is this: have you had an encounter with Christ? I'm not asking are you a member of the church. I'm not asking are you a good person? I ask have you had an encounter with the living Christ. Have you met Him? Is He real to you in your daily walk and in your daily life?
Paul had met Christ, and now he was witnessing for Christ. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you. And we are to be witnesses. You go to a court room. What is a witness? A witness is a person who tells what he has seen and heard. So many of us haven't seen and heard anything. We have nothing to witness to; we haven't had that daily experience with the Lord Jesus that makes us a dynamic witness.
And if you haven't met the Savior don't you dare allow the benediction on this conference to be said until you have met the Savior. Don't you dare miss this opportunity, because you may never have a moment like this again as long as you live.
Paul had come to Athens and was waiting for Silas and Timothy to catch up with him. Athens was the cultural center of the ancient world. It was the city of Aristotle and Plato and Epicurus. You could take all the universities in America and roll them into one, and you still would not have what Athens was to the intellectual world of that day. As in this day, in the midst of intellectual achievement, there existed doubt and confusion and frustration. Greece at that time was under the iron heel of Rome. The whole world was beginning to long and seethe for freedom. They were searching for answers.
Things haven't changed in two thousand years, because two thousand years later, with all of our vaunted progress we are still wrestling with the age old problems that they wrestled with in that day.
The world tonight is crying for help, crying for an answer. It's searching and trusting and longing for an answer. The philosophical world is crying for an answer. Jean Sartre, the great existentialist of Paris, said sometime ago, "I don't believe in God, but every person needs some cause to commit his life to."
I say to you students, commit your life to something. Why couldn't that something be Jesus Christ? And let me tell you this. It has been my privilege to speak on the campus in many countries and to talk to students of many races, and I tell you this: the youth of the world are going to commit themselves to something. I pray to God it will be Christ.
The economic world is crying for help. There are the "have- not" nations and the "have" nations in a world in which there is little social justice at the moment. Population increases around the world are making their pressures so that economists are crying for help. India is increasing in population at the rate of five million a year, and the five year program of economic extension cannot keep up with the rate of population increase. Japan on a land area of the size of the State of California is increasing at the rate of one million a year.
The brother to the Emperor of Japan says, "We will fight a war of expansion in ten years, unless we can find an answer to our overpopulation problem." But that's nothing comparable to China. One out of every three babies born this day will be a Chinese. By 1980 there will be one billion people in China. By 2000 A.D. one out of every two people in the world will be a Chinese, at the present rate of population increase. Pressures are created all over the world by the tremendous expansion of population. The same is true in Latin America.
The scientific world is crying for help. We never dreamed they would ever be crying for help twenty years ago. LIFE magazine in a recent editorial said, "There is a crisis in science, the faster the universe expands the faster the areas of ignorance that seem to open." Science has created Frankenstein monsters and now it begins to doubt the moral ability to control them. Science is saying to the church, we want an answer. We need help.
A great atomic scientist in challenging a group of ministers in New York city the other day said, "The church must breach the gap between man's morals and cleverness." Then he ended up his address by saying, "For God's sake help us!"
What could one say about the political world? A European leader said sometime ago in surveying the political problems of Europe, "If the devil should come and offer a panacea for Europe, I would gladly follow the devil."
In the social world racial problems are not limited to a certain part of the United States. Racial problems are all over the world, wherever you have people who look different and act different. Wherever there are different shoes and the color of skin, different pigmentation, you have racial problems. The problem in the Middle East primarily is a racial problem. The social world which is exploding in many parts of the world is crying for help.
In the moral world mental problems in this country are especially arising. People have inner tensions. A new word has entered our vocabulary called escapism. We Americans are trying to escape from reality with dope and drink, and tranquilizing pills and entertainment. We are intent upon self-forgetfulness. People are fleeing from themselves to become lost in the crowd. Even the heroes of modern fiction, in our films and television, are spiritually homeless.
Many of our television programs are dealing with psychopathic problems. I read the other day that even psychiatrists are going to each other for help. No wonder Edward Arlington Robinson said, "I cannot find my way, there is no star." No wonder Sir Winston Churchill said two years ago When he surveyed the problems of the world, "Our problems are beyond us."
In the last two years it has been my privilege to talk to presidents and prime ministers. I have not found one optimist in the whole lot of them. Publicly I read where they make great, beautiful optimistic statements, but when you talk to them in private, off the record, they are pessimistic. Some of them are almost to the point of desperation and despair. When the commentators got through reviewing 1957, if you didn't believe in Christ and didn't believe in God, you'd almost feel like the mouse I heard about on the Empire State Building some time ago. It looked down from the hundredth floor, surveyed the whole city, and then jumped out and committed suicide.
The Scripture says the apostle Paul looked at Athens -the confusion, the Babel of tongues, all the philosophies, all the ideas, and all the philosophies that they had in they day - and the Scripture says he was stirred. He was stirred by what he saw and he was stirred by what he felt - And I tell you tonight, we should be stirred as we stand on the threshold of 1958.
I do not see how this can be just another Inter-Varsity conference. I do not see how this can be a normal missionary conference. This is an abnormal period; this is an emergency hour. This may be one of the closing chapters of the church era. This may be the climactic moment of history. If science and the political world all agree that this is an emergency hour, then to those of us who name the name of Christ it is even more of an emergency hour to witness to the saving grace and power of Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul was stirred, and if you leave this convention without being stirred to the depth of your soul, may God help you!
We today, you students who know Christ, need to catch fire. The Nazi young people had fire, the Fascist young people had fire, and the Communist youth today have fire. We Christians have lost the fire that characterized the early church. Where is that fire? Where is that enthusiasm, where is that dedication, where is that sense of consecration even to the death?
Paul was stirred, so he decided to do something about it. He began to witness for Christ everywhere. They began to gather around him, little groups here and there were divided about him. They finally took him to Mars Hill and said, "Tell us about this God you're talking about that can give hope to the world." So they took him to Mars Hill.
From Mars Hill he had a magnificent view. Behind him was the beautiful Doric temple and he could see the temple of Athens. To the northeast were the mountains which looked on Marathon. There he stood to proclaim his witness to the true and the living God. Now the average Athenian that was in his audience was religious, and the average person here tonight is religious.
I dare say that every person in this room tonight believes in God. But that's not enough. The whole world believes in God. Why even Mr. Khrushchev forgot himself in London recently and said, "May God have mercy on you." Everybody laughed and he caught himself. They said it was the first time they ever saw him blush.
Innately we all believe in God. You'll find more religion all over the world. Everybody is religious and we have our religion in America today. I think we are having a religious revival in America. I'm not sure it's a Christian revival, but we're having a religious revival. Everybody's religious. Religion has become popular.
The Athenian was religious. There were hundreds of statues and altars to prove he was religious. The Athenian religion had given him physical prowess and intellectual achievement, but had left his soul empty. Paul looked at his audience.
The Epicureans were there. Three hundred years before Epicurus had taught his followers that happiness is the great purpose and pursuit of life. Their idea was to live for today, eat, drink and be merry. The idea of many students today and many people today is to eat, and drink and be merry. Have all the pleasure you can, tomorrow you may die in an atomic bomb.
The Stoics were there. They taught a system of ethics and legalism. They were filled with self righteous pride. They thought they didn't need God. They were too intellectual to believe in God. I have a friend who is an atomic scientist. The first time we ever exploded an atomic bomb he was an atheist. He was standing beside Professor Urey, who said to him, "If there is not a God, there must be. We have to have God!" This man, at that moment, not only believed in God but received Christ as his Savior.
There are some of you, Oh, you believe in God, but you have no time for God. You're too busy. You spend more time with the television set than you do with your Bible. You spend more time reading a newspaper than you do in prayer. You say you believe in God, but actually you've never committed your life to Christ. You have no time for God. Self is the center of your universe and pleasure seems to be the great end of life. And we live as though we have no souls.
I want to ask those of us who claim to know Christ as Savior, do we have an answer? If we don't have an answer to the bewilderments and frustrations of the world in which we live, may God have mercy upon the church a generation from now, because the backlash will be tremendous. Unless we show a firm faith and a dynamic belief, and unless we can have a dynamic witness in this generation, the church will be in retreat in the next generation.
And so Paul begins his sermon, and the first thing he talked about was God, the one true God. He said, "There is one God, not many gods like the statues you have around here." You say, but Billy, we don't have any gods in this country except one. Yes we do! We have gods of materialism and secularism just as much as the Athenians. We worship our stocks and bonds; we worship our TV sets, we worship our radio, we worship all of these other things. Anything that comes between you and God, anything that takes up more time than God, soon becomes your God. "Who is this God?" asked Paul. Paul said He is the Creator of the universe.
The number one news story of 1957 according to CBS was "Beep, beep, beep." After Sputnik the whole world bowed at the shrine of science and said, "Isn't it fantastic what Russian scientists got?" They claim they are going to go to the moon and dye it red. They say that within five years they will be at Mars. Well, suppose they get to Mars. Suppose we establish an Inter-Varsity Fellowship on Mars. They still haven't left the earth.
Write the figure one down and put 23 zeros after it and that will make one hundred sextillion. That's how many stars we can now see through the telescope. The nearest sun to us is 25 trillion miles; there are one billion suns in our Milky Way. The average distance between those suns is seven trillion miles. There are 900 billion planets in our Milky Way, and there are one billion more Milky Ways! And Job said, "Lo, these are but the outskirts of His ways." Now the astronomers tell us the universe may be infinite, it may not have any end or any beginning.
It goes on and on and on and on beyond our imagination to comprehend. Back of all the precision by which we set our watches is GOD! And this little planet on which we live is a little speck of dust, floating out into space and we're nothing! We little human beings come, like little ants crawling on this speck of dust. We live a few short years and we say look how great we are. Look what we've done; we are going to go to the moon!
The Bible tells us that God in the person of His Son Jesus Christ made all these things, and by Him was not anything made that was made, and He is the cohesive force that holds it all together. He is the Creator. One world united by one Supreme Being, Almighty God. The Bible tells us something else about God; the Bible tells us that God is a Spirit. Have you ever wondered why the Bible says God is a Spirit? If God had flesh and blood like you and me He couldn't be everywhere at the same time. He might be off at Mars or Jupiter or Saturn. And He'd leave us alone. He is a Spirit, and because He is not bound by a body He can be everywhere at the same time. The same God that is the God of the American Christian is also the God of the Russian, the God of the Chinese, and the God of the Indian.
The Bible tells us something else about God. The Bible tells us that He's an unchanging God. We have an idea that God is changed, that He's different today than He was 2000 years ago. The Bible tells us that He hasn't changed even a shadow of turning. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. You and I may change our ideas about God. We may change our fashions and languages and philosophies. There may be new theologies rolling off the press with every generation, but God hasn't changed. The same God who said, "The wages of sin is death," means it today. The same God who said, "I am the way, the truth and the life," is the same God tonight. The same God who said, "Except you repent ye shall likewise perish," is the same tonight.
The way to heaven hasn't changed. The way of salvation hasn't changed. The way of entrance into the Kingdom is not changed. The Bible also tells us that He is a God of holiness and righteousness. Let me give you a tip. You'll never understand the Old Testament till you understand that God is a holy God. You'll never understand some of the stories of the Old Testament till you understand that God is teaching His people that He is holy and righteous and His eyes are too pure to look upon iniquity.
The Bible also tells us that He is a God of judgment. We have an idea sometimes that God is like a Santa Claus sitting up on a cloud somewhere, a kindly old man patting everybody on the back, forgiving everybody of everything. That is not the picture of Revelation. God is a God of judgment. God is going to judge the secret thoughts and intents of men when we stand before Him.
But the Bible also tells us that God is a God of love. "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" (John 3:16). And "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8).
Have you ever wondered why God ever created man in the first place? (We're asking a lot of philosophical questions today.) Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? Have you ever thought about that? God is love. The reason God created you and me is because He is love. In order for God to love He must have an object to love. He created other intelligences in His image, so He could love and they could voluntarily return that love. God created you in His image.
You say, well what is man? The Psalmist said, "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" What are we? I had a man say some time ago that we are only chemical elements. Is that all we are? Do you know how much territory it would take for all 2.5 billion people in the world to stand? We could all stand giving each one of us six feet, in twenty-five square miles. We could all be buried, giving each one six square feet to be buried in, in two Illinois counties. If you turned us to water we could go over Niagara Falls in six hours. Our bodies are made of chemical elements: enough fat to make seven bars of soap, enough sugar to sweeten ten cups of tea, enough lime to whitewash a chicken-coop, enough phosphorus to make 2000 matches, enough potassium to explode a firecracker, enough sulphur to rid a dog of fleas, and enough water to take a bath. In these days of inflation you are worth about two dollars. That's all. Two Dollars! And so, Mr. Two Dollars goes down the street.
Is that all we are worth, two dollars? No. The thing that makes you important to this God of this ocean of immensity, this mighty God, this splendid, glorious God, this magnificent God; the thing that makes us important to Him is that He created us in His moral image. You are created in the image of God, and living inside of this body of yours, made up of chemical elements, is a soul. You are a living soul, living in a body. It is that part of you that has intelligence, that part of you that has conscience, that part of you that has memory, that part of you that is spirit, which means you are destined to live forever.
What happens when a man dies? His body goes to the grave, but YOU - the real you - lives on forever. I have a watch. Inside the watch are the works. When I look at that watch, I only see the case. I don't really see the watch. When I look at you I don't see you, I see the house you live in. You live inside of this case. That you that lives inside is created in the image of God. You're not created in the physical image of God. That God, He doesn't look like some of us.
God gave us something else when He created us. He gave you and me the ability to choose between right and wrong. He gave us the ability to choose whether we would follow Him and serve Him or not. You don't have to serve God if you don't want to. You don't have to follow God if you don't want to. And I want to say this reverently, there's nothing God can do about it, if you don't want to. If you set your will against God and you rebel against God, there's nothing He can do about it, because He created you in His image with the ability to choose. Why? Because God was hungry for love. That ability to love your girl friend or your boy friend is innate. Sometimes they laugh at puppy love, but it's real to the puppy. That ability you have to love is only a small picture of God's desire for love.
God wants love. He created us in His image so we would love Him, not because He pushed a button and made us love Him, but because we wanted to love Him. In order for man to have a choice, God gave him something to choose. God put a tree in the garden. Whether you accept it literally or symbolically doesn't change the meaning of the story. God said in effect to man, "If you eat it you shall die." And that death means separation from God. That's what hell is, separation from God. "Man, if you eat of that tree, you will be saying to Me: 'I don't need You. I don't want Your love, God. I will not return your love. I'll build my world and my life without You. I don't need You, God."
Man has that right. He had that ability. He had that choice. So man stood before the tree, God watching. Man was tempted to take of that tree. And man decided that he did not need God. He decided he would rebel against the commandment of God and break God's law. Man deliberately disobeyed God and took of the fruit. At that moment all the troubles and problems of the world began. And for thousands of years now man has been trying to build his world without God, and what a mess he's made of it.
A movie star in Hollywood said to me the other day, a tear coming down her cheek, "Mr. Graham, I've got everything to make a woman happy, but I'm the most miserable woman in Hollywood." Why? I'll tell you why. This sin that all of us have - this moral disease, this rebellion against God that all of us are infected with - built a wall and a barrier between God and man. Our soul made for God, made for fellowship with God, is now separated from God - You can give it a million dollars, you can give it a million dollar figure, you can give it the most beautiful face, and down deep inside it will be miserable because it is restless until it knows God.
I know a man in Texas who is said to be the world's wealthiest man. Do you know what he said to me? He said, "Billy, I could buy anything in the world to make a man happy, but I'm as miserable as hell." And he couldn't understand it. Why? Because he's separated from the source of light. He is separated from God. He was made in the image of God, and now he's separated from God, by sin.
Now, you say, Billy, you've just come from New York and we know people are sinners back there, but this is Urbana. We're a little better. Do you know what sin is? Sin is coming short of God. Sin is failing to meet God's moral standard. You may be the worst person or you may be the best person, but all of it is short of God's highest standard which is Christ. Any person who comes short of Christ is called a come-shorter or a sinner. We have missed the mark. Every person in this room tonight, outside of Christ, is a sinner. You've come short and you are separated from God. You may have religion, you may go to church, you may have your name on a church roll. You might even go to Inter-Varsity, you might be at this conference, but you have never really experienced Christ. You are separated from God by sin.
Now, there is one God, one world, one creation. There is no such thing as racial superiority. I come from the part of the country where some people think that there is racial superiority. But when you come to the Word of God you cannot find one line to substantiate it. Paul said, God "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." We are all of the same blood; we come from the same parents. Whether the pigmentation of our skin is one color or not, it makes no difference in the sight of Almighty God. We are one in creation, but ladies and gentlemen, we are one in sin. I don't care what the color of your skin may be, it makes no difference. We are all sinners in the sight of God tonight. We have broken His laws and we have sinned against Him. God said, "The wages of sin is death." Death! The soul that sinneth shall die - eternal separation from God. What is hell? Separation from God!
Tonight there are hundreds in this audience who are separated from God. You say, what can we do about it? The apostle said in his great message at Mars Hill, "God is not far away." In spite of our rebellion and sin, in spite of the fact that we turned on God and failed Him and chose against Him, the Scripture tells us God still loved us. How could He love us? All the grace and the mercy and the love of God I shall never understand.
Where I see this ocean of immensity, why didn't God kick this planet out of the universe? Why didn't God destroy this little piece of dust and these little ants crawling around with all of their pride, viciousness, sin, immorality, lying, cheating and hypocrisy! Why didn't God cast us all away?
Oh, but you don't know the mercy of God and the love of God and the grace of God. You say, how can we get back to God? God looked over the battlements of heaven and saw this little planet twisting and turning in its orbit, confused and lost and separated. And God said, "I love man. I love him. I created him in My image, and I love him. I love him and I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to save man."
And so God did something that astounded the universe. God did something that caused the morning stars to sing together. God did something that caused the angels to bow in amazement and wonderment. GOD in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ, came to this little planet.
On that first Christmas night while the angels chanted and the star hung over Bethlehem, and the shepherds watched, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came to bring man back to Himself. But we rejected Him. We said, "We will not have Him." We tried to stone Him. At last we took up long leather whips with steel pellets on the end and cut Him across the back. We spat in His face and we pulled His beard till His face bled. GOD!
One snap of his finger and we would have been wiped out. One call from His finger and 72,000 angels would have come to His rescue. But He didn't do it, because God so loved! He so loved you and me on this planet that He was willing to die. They put nails in His hands and spikes in His feet. He hung between heaven and earth. Then He said something that none of us will ever completely understand. He said, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" In that moment, Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, in a unique way was separated from God the Father, the first Person, for the first time in eternity. All of our sins were upon His holy soul. Jesus in that moment literally went to hell in my place and your place. Oh, the love and the mercy of God!
I say tonight with G. Campbell Morgan, when I look at that scene the Light is so blinding that I cannot comprehend it. But He didn't stay on the cross. On the third day He rose again. I do not offer you a dead Christ. I do not offer you a Christ in a Syrian grave. I offer to you a LIVING CHRIST tonight. If we young people could realize that our Savior's ALIVE, HE IS LIVING! Those of us who have received Him are members of His body! We're not Episcopalians, and Presbyterians, and Methodists and Baptists. We're not Indian and American. We are Christians! We are members of the Body of Christ, of which He is the head, and which He purchased with His own blood. We may be a minority here, but I tell you there is coming a glorious day of triumph yonder.
If there had been any other way to save your soul and to get you to heaven and to forgive your sin, Jesus would have never gone to that cross. He said on the night He was betrayed, "If it be possible let this cup pass from me." If it's possible to save mankind in any other way, dear Father, please find it." But there was no other way. He endured the cross. He suffered the agony in order to pay for your sins and mine.
I was in Florida one day, traveling down the road ten miles too fast, and a policeman arrested me. He took me to a barber shop to the justice of Peace. The justice of Peace was shaving a man, and he said, "I'll be with you in a minute." We sat down and waited. The Justice of Peace came over and said, "What's the charge?" The man said, "Going ten miles over the speed limit." "Guilty or not guilty?" I said, "Guilty." He said, "That will be ten dollars, please."
I reached for my pocketbook. Then he looked up and he said, "Don't I know you?" I said, "I hope not, Sir." He said, "Aren't you Billy Graham, the minister?" I said, "I regret, Sir that I am."
He stood up, shook my hands and said, "I listen to you on the radio and I read your newspaper column." Before he was half way through I had put my pocketbook back and thought I had saved ten dollars. Just as I was excusing myself, he said, "That will be ten dollars, please." Then he said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute."
He said, "You know, I think a lot of you and I've got to report this. I've already made out the ticket. There's got to be a ten dollar bill or a check or a bond attached to that. I'm going to pay it for you and I'm going to take you out and give you a steak dinner. Can you stay in town that long?" I said, "Yes, Sir!"
I had broken God's law. The penalty: Separation from God! Hell! Outer darkness, where there is the absence of divine Light and Life. God said, 'Wait a minute, I'll pay the price." He took the hell I deserved. He took the judgment I deserved on the cross. He made Jesus to be sin for us who knew no sin. Then God said, "Wait a minute, I'm not only going to pay the price, I'm going to adopt you into My family and you shall become My child and My son."
Now, wait a minute God; wait a minute, Lord, I'm happy and satisfied just to be saved from hell. How can You do any more? You'll never understand those verses in Ephesians until you understand that principalities and powers are some day going to look in amazement at the grace of God that could take you and me, these little ants crawling on this little speck of dust, and lift us up, up above the stars and the planets and the principalities and the powers and the angels and make us SONS OF GOD! Children of God, joint-heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ, to reign with Him in glory forever!
Oh, the grace and mercy of God! It's only a stubborn will that would keep a man from RUNNING to give his life to the Savior.
But God said, 'Wait just a minute. There are three things you must do. I gave My son. I paid the price in My blood on that cross. I am willing to adopt you in My family. But there are three things that I require of you." What are they? First, you must repent. Jesus said, "Except you repent, you shall likewise perish."
Paul said in the magnificent sermon, "But God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent." He didn't say I HOPE you repent, I think you ought to repent, it would be good to repent. He says, I COMMAND YOU to repent!
Have you repented? Has there ever come a moment in your life that you repented? If you haven't, do it tonight before you leave here. What is repentance? Repentance means that you come to the cross and acknowledge that you've sinned and broken God's laws. But it means more than that. It means that you're willing to turn from your sins. There's not a person here who has the power or the ability to turn from sin. You cannot do it. God has to give you the strength and the power to turn from sin, but you must be willing. Are you willing to turn from your sin?
A man in the middle ages was dying and he called his servant to him, who was a Christian, and he said, "They tell me that I'm going to die and I want to go to heaven. What do I have to do to go to heaven?" The wise old servant said, "You'll have to go to the pig-pen, get down on your knees in the mud, and say, 'God have mercy upon me, a sinner'." The proud old lord-of-the-manor said, "I can't do that."
Two weeks later he was worse. He called his servant back and said, "What did you say I had to do?" And the servant said, "You'll have to go to the pig-pen and get on your knees in the mud, and say, 'God have mercy upon me a sinner'." The old lord-of-the-manor said, "Let's go, I'm willing." The wise old servant said, "No, you don't really have to go, my lord, you just must be willing."
God wants you to be willing to turn from sin, to renounce sin, and He'll give you the strength. You look at those things in your life and you say I cannot give them, I cannot turn from them; these things bind me and hold me. But if you're willing, He'll give you the strength.
And then the second thing, you must receive Christ. We have a lot of people who go around and say, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." Oh, no, don't ever say that, unless you stop and analyze that passage in Acts 16:31. BELIEVE, RECEIVE THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name"(John 1:12). You can believe intellectually and be lost. There are thousands of people that call themselves fundamentalists who I do not believe have ever been born again of the Spirit of God. Their life does not testify that they've met the Savior. They have an intellectual belief, but they have never met Christ. They've never received Him. There are thousands of people that have theological systems who I do not think have ever met Christ.
I ask you, have you received Him? You say, well how do I receive Him? I offer you this book and I say, "Here take this book, it's Yours NOW." But unless you come up here and receive it it's never Yours. God can say, I forgive you, I offer you salvation, I offer you forgiveness, I offer you a new life; but unless you come and receive it's never yours.
Third, you must be willing to obey Christ. When we receive Christ, we enter one family, one body, one bride and one church. We've been created by the same Lord. We've been bought with one price. We share a common light. We have a common helper, the Holy Spirit. We have a common object of worship, the Lord Jesus Christ. We have one message to proclaim, the gospel of the grace and the forgiveness of God in Christ. We have a common destiny. We must be willing to follow Him and serve Him in obedience in a disciplined life that I want to talk about tomorrow evening.
Some day mankind shall stand before God (and that day may not be far distant) and give an account, even the thoughts and intents and secrets of our hearts will be brought out; the hypocrisies and the coverings-up of our lives will be brought forth. Are you ready to meet God? Is your sin forgiven? Do you KNOW that Christ is yours?
If there is a shadow of a doubt that you've committed your life to Christ I'm going to ask you to do it tonight. Right now! Do you know why I'm going to ask you? Some of the people in Paul's audience mocked him, and laughed, as some of you may do tonight. You may sneer and say what's that for me? Others in that audience said, "Well, we will hear of this matter again." And like Felix, the governor, they will say, "Go thy way for this time, when I have a convenient season I will call for you."
One of the most dangerous things you can do is to put off the receiving of Christ, because you may never hear anyone give a gospel message like this again. It's dangerous because even if you hear the gospel again, the soil of your heart may be different. You may have hardened your heart and the Bible says, "my Spirit shall not always strive with men." You cannot come to Christ except when the Spirit of God draws you. If the Spirit of God is even whispering to you tonight, you'd better come, because your heart may never be that tender toward Christ again.
Give your life to Him. Commit your soul to Him and say, "Lord Jesus I want to be a member of Thy family, I want to be in Thy body, I want to be in that true church of the living God that shall live and reign forever with Thee. I want my past forgiven, I want to know that if I died I'd go to heaven. I give myself to Thee unreservedly tonight."
There are scores of people who have come in from the outside tonight. I am going to ask you to give your life to Christ. There are scores of you over here who need Christ. There are scores of you back there who need Christ. There are many of you students who have really never taken that step of faith.
You say, "But Billy, I don't understand it all." You don't have to understand it all. You can't put God in a test tube. You can't put Him in a mathematical formula. You must come by FAITH, and receive even that which you cannot understand. By faith you receive Christ.
You may be a Christian, but you're not sure. You're not certain that you're really committed to Christ as Savior and Lord. Receive Him and trust Him so you can mark this down as the day you met the Savior.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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