The profound question of how humanity can be made right with God, drawing heavily from Job chapter 14. It highlights humanity's inherent sinfulness and the impossibility of self-cleansing, posing three critical questions: Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? When man dies, where is he? And if a man dies, shall he live again? The message emphasizes that human efforts and advancements, however impressive, cannot solve the problem of sin. The ultimate solution lies in God's provision through Jesus Christ, whose atoning sacrifice offers cleansing, forgiveness, and the possibility of a new, eternal life. The sermon concludes by urging listeners to accept this divine solution, contrasting the eternal destiny of believers with that of the unrepentant.
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Now we are going to turn again to the oldest book in the Bible. As I told you last night, our studies are going to be in the book of Job this week. The book of Job. And I'm asking you to turn to chapter fourteen for our scripture reading. Job fourteen verse one. Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down.
He fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not. And dost thou open thine eyes upon such a one and bringest me into judgment with thee? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one. In his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee. Thou hast appointed his bounds, that he cannot pass. Turn from him that he may rest, till he shall accomplish the higherling his day. For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, that the tender branch thereof will not cease.
Through the roots thereof wax, though the roots thereof wax old in the earth and the stock thereof die in the ground, yet through the scent of water it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dies and waste it away, yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the water sails from the sea and the floods decayeth and dryeth up, So man lies down and rises not till the heavens be no more. They shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep. All that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret until thy wrath be passed, that thou wouldest appoint me a check time and remember me.
If a man dies shall he live again, all the days of my appointed time will I wait. Till my change come. Now with the Bible open in front of you, I want you to pinpoint the three question marks that we are going to face tonight. In verse four, who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Question mark. Thus ten, but man dies and waste it away, ye man give it up the ghost, and where is he? Question mark. Verse fourteen, if a man dies, shall he live again?
Question mark. Now I want you to face the fact that men were talking about these great things three thousand five hundred years ago, deeply concerned about these great questions. I can see Job and his three friends gathered around him in that amazing story that develops in this book. If you count the question marks in the book of Job, you'll find that over three hundred And I'm going to dare to suggest that most of them can be clearly answered from Scripture in the New Testament, the great revelation in Christ Jesus.
If I talk to you about Job, I know that most of you would say, well, I've heard of him all right. We always talk about the patience of Job. But I wonder if you know anything about his book. It's a long book. It's a difficult book to read through. After the opening two chapters, the trial of Job, the tremendous battle that raged around him, we get long and sometimes weary chapters of his three friends around him with their discourses, and then Job answering, and the gracious Lord God who took an interest in these conversations, kept him in to speak his message.
And in this wonderful, inspired record of the happenings of those days, there's a great deal of proofs that's tremendously up to date. Now, I remember I was speaking in an open-air meeting once, and the man in the crowd shouted out, He said, Doesn't it say in your Bible that if all the things were written about Jesus, the world would be filled with the books that was written? I said, You're quite right. John's Gospel closes like that. Well, he says, you say you've got a revelation of truth. You can't have it all. You've only got a little Bible that you hold in your head.
Now I say, listen, sir. If you'll turn back one chapter from the verse that you're quoting in John's Gospel right at the end to the last verse of the last chapter that one, John says, these things are written. that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life through his name. I said, I want to tell you that enough in this little book I hold in my hand, the precious revealed word of God to meet every need in your life and answer every question. Do you believe it? He looked up at me and he says, well, I don't think so.
Well, we left it there. But I am convinced that this grand old book of ours has given us God's truth to meet our need. You know, sometimes people say, you know, I don't want to be a Christian. I wouldn't gain much by it, wouldn't you? Now you think that statement out. When I was a boy, an English bishop, a man of God in the Anglican Church, was challenged by an infidel to a debate. And in one of the big city auditoriums, these two men, one representing the Church of Jesus Christ and the other, an infidel blatantly infidel.
They debated for a long time before the crowd that came. And it so happened that the last words were given to the bishop, the man of God. And with a serene face, with the peace of God written on his face, he looked at the audience and he looked at his opponent and he said, well, he said, you've heard our different arguments. He said, I close by saying this. If my friend the infidel is writing his thinking, I as a Christian have nothing to lose. That he said, if he is wrong in his thinking, I have everything to gain.
Now if you think of those words, weigh them up, let them stay in your mind. You know, I might be glad I'm a Christian. I'm glad I gave my heart to Jesus Christ as a boy at school. I'm glad I looked into the face of the Lord Jesus as a young fellow about seventeen and a half and said, Lord Jesus, if you can make any use of this life, here it is. You know why? Because somehow He's given me a most satisfying life. I've tasted of His love and grace and peace and power. And I look round upon the world today that doesn't believe, and I see them with all their peculiar stresses, their habits, their ways of life.
And I say, if there's no heaven to gain, if there's no hell to serve, if there's nothing but this life I've gained by being a Christian, But if he's wrong, I've everything to gain, because these are only the school days of faith, and what I'm handling by faith soon will give way to sight. And I'm going to enter his eternal kingdom. I'm going to see and touch and taste and share the great eternal things through never-ending ages. So if you're not a Christian, let me very lovingly tell you, young fellow, you're not on the winning side.
You're not on the right pathway. And I tell you, I would think that lots of boys and girls growing up in America are downright dunces and fools for not being a Christian if I didn't know that there was a great deceiver in the world today, someone who was blinding their minds, someone who was fooling them, someone who was leading them captive like this at his will. No, don't you be proud of not being a Christian. Don't you boast and sneer at those who've tasted of a great salvation. You are not on the winning side if you haven't a living Christ as your Saviour.
Now here's the first question that comes from the lips of these men in Job fourteen. And Job is speaking. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Now men are pretty clever today. Only three days ago at Yosemite, a gentleman who might be in the audience tonight was telling me of a new method that they've got of taking sea water and turning it into clean, pure drinking water. Of course I couldn't understand it. It's quite a process, but the great pressure of water is pushed through mass.
And these mass will not let the phthaline go through. and the saline is deflected in this great pressure of water through these mass, and it's only the pure water that channels out finally, and they believe they have found out a process of actually under pressure putting water through these mass to produce pure drinking water from the seawater that's abundant in the oceans. You're not clever today. But the great burning problem is this. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? These men are talking about men's hearts and lives and ways and thoughts.
You see, they were talking to each other, but they were brave enough to say, man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart, and he knows the secrets of the heart. And God has passed his judgment that man is unclean, unclean thinking, unclean ways, unclean roots in his heart. And you know but for the mercy of God that you lived in and loved America. But for the mercy of God, the Christian standards of all around you that restrain you, there are the roots down here in your life that could produce any disgusting fruit. Sometimes you think you are better than the heathen.
Out in parts of Africa, when twins are born, the mother will take the little twin babies and throw them into the river for the crocodiles to eat, because she thinks it's a shame to have twins. Down in Ecuador, the Hebrew Indians will go hunting to cut off heads, to remove certain bones and shrink the heads to a little tiny head, as big as that, because they can get a good price for it. Oh, you say we wouldn't do that? No, you wouldn't. You've had the standards long of Christian law and order in your land. But listen. The Lord says, I don't look at the act.
I look at the heart. That man looks at that woman and he goes after some time into sin and commits adultery. God said, I saw that heart and the root of that sin. Long before there was any act, that man in my sight was an adulterer. Oh, but that boy told a lie. Ah, yes, he told a lie, but long before the lie slipped out, the mind that fought the lie and wanted to tell it and willed to tell it was known by God, and everything is open and naked to the eyes of him with whom we have to do, and these men were brave men.
And they said, we are living amongst sinners. They're all around us. And who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Men are born in sin. They've got a sinful nature, Adam's nature. Who can do this? Now, you know, there's so much that men can do. Let's be frank about this. We are living in a wonderful twentieth century. In science and findings we are leaping ahead. Men are on the fringe of exploring certain areas that will revolutionize even our world in the years to come if the Lord doesn't return.
And yet midst it all, there's one dispatching thing, the selfish heart of men that spoils it. There's been what men have done. Here they are finding out the secrets of God's creation and handiwork. For instance, they used to look up at the birds and say, I wonder how a bird that's heavier than the air can fly. And now the great big jets are going off into the sky and flying from city to city and land to land. They used to look down at the fish for a long time and say, my, we can't live under the water, but today they can snorkel around under the sea for hours.
And they can go down in submarines for weeks and months. They used to wonder how the bat, who was supposed to be blind, could come along and turn aside instead of hitting it. But now they've understood the impulses of radar. And so we could move forward and today we are on the edge of men being spacemen. I don't know if you booked in for that first flight to the moon. I don't know if you want to go when they make constant landings on the little cinder that reflects the sun and gives us the control of our nightlife. I'm not too keen to go, but there we are.
Space men. Oh, clever little man. He's trying to get out of the world where God put him in. He's trying to explore the solar system. He hopes someday he'll get beyond the solar system into the great big galaxy of the Milky Way. And then out, perhaps, into those great, big outer spaces where there are millions more of these star cities. I wonder how far God will let him go. But you know, here's a strange thing. They're improving constantly. They're finding things out. For instance, if I went back through history, it was dear old Stevenson who saw that lid of the kettle going up and down like this, and he thought there's power in steam, and he invented the steam engine.
It was a man like Newton who just watched an apple fall off the tree and he thought, I wonder why it came down and didn't go up and propounded the law of gravity. It was a man like Galileo who was looking at the eye of an ox and as he studied the eye of an ox, He invented for the first time the wonderful possibility of making a lens, and we owe our glasses and telescopes and microscopes and all the wonders of the lens world to that beginning. I don't suppose here tonight you would know the name Sandow, but you can't go through Europe or Britain without the word Sandow, always as strong as Sandow.
Now Sandow was a weak boy, little flabby fellow, the sort of boy that couldn't say boo to a goose. And do you know he looked at the big strong fellows and he says, I am going to be strong and he started his exercises with dumbbells twisting and turning until Sandow had one of the most magnificent bodies a human man can have. And they speak today of the strength of Sandow. Vandable was one of the poorest boys, but by hard work and a head screwed on, he increased his riches till he became one of the richest men in the world. And we often use his name.
We say he's of richest Vandable. And so one could go on. And yet, with it all, we are not making the advances really that we boast in. Do you know when they go back a thousand, two thousand, three thousand years and they dig into some tomb? I wonder how many of you would remember how they broke into the tomb of Tutankhamen in the valley of the kings in Egypt. And when they found this king cut all wrapped up in linen with all his gold and all the rest of it around him, They unwrapped the linen and when they examined that linen and sent it to the north of Ireland, the north of Ireland people who claim that they are the best producers of flax linen in the world found that the handmade linen of Egypt was two counts finer than the finest linen produced in us.
And you know, with all our post-it manufacturing of today, you've only got a magnifying glass, a great big, you know, microscope to have a look at things, and you will find that your mass production stuff doesn't bear inspection. The more you magnify and have a look at it, the more there seems to be the faults upon him. But I tell you, you pick any flower from God's garden, take any snowdrop that falls from the sky, anything that comes from the great designer's hand in his handiwork of nature, and you will see the perfection of God's handiwork.
Now these men have all believed in God. They knew there was a God. They were not agnostics. They were no infidels. And they looked up and said, We've learned to know God in His holiness and greatness, and we've learned to know ourselves and the human race around us. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Mother and Father can only produce a child who is a child of Adam's race sinful by nature. And they faced this problem bravely. Now here it is in all its simplicity. How can you make a boy who loves sin hate it?
How can you make a precious young woman whose whole trend is towards selfishness and maybe pride, hate it? It's a problem, let me tell you. Our educators are struggling with this in the educational world, and they are finding that it's awfully hard to face this problem. And yet, strangely enough, this old and burning question is one that has its wonderful answer. Now, do you know long ago, in Mark's Gospel, chapter seven and verse twenty, our Lord said some tremendous words. I'm going to read them to you.
She says, Are you so without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatsoever seen from without interest into a man it cannot defile him? Not what you pour in through eye gate and ear gate and mouth that defiles the boy, the girl, the man or woman. It may give them a headache or a tummy ache, but it doesn't defile them. It may add to the fuel of the fire that's already burning inside and make it burn a little brighter.
What's our Lord driving at? Read on verse nineteen, because it enters not into his heart, but into his stomach and goeth out into the brow, purging all meat. And he says, that which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man, For from within out of the heart of man proceeds evil thoughts, adultery, fornication, murders, theft, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile the man.
Now brave men have found out that this is true. Shadow boys and girls who don't want to think, big tough men who want to live selfishly and don't care about God or eternity would say it isn't true. But thinking brave people have found out bitterly in their own experience that these words are true. Through this, Isaiah looked round his world, and he saw that the world was full of covetousness, drunkenness, lying, pride, injustice, and men were filling with a carp rope, and he said, God will have to judge them.
Woe to these men around me! And then all of a sudden, he says, I stopped looking at these men and women around me. And he said, I was standing in the temple, and he said, in the divine presence of God, it was in the year our king died, just like the president died last year, just like great kings die and the throne is empty. He said, I saw a throne that's never empty, the throne of God. And he said, I saw the holy angels Crying holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty as they veiled their faces.
And he said, all of a sudden he said, a cry came from within me. Woe is me, for I am a man undone. I am a man of sinful lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of sinful lips. And he acknowledged his need of cleansing. And you know this is the experience of everyone who comes honestly into the presence of God. And when God sent his son and God was manifest in flesh, when Peter looked into his face for the light lakeside that day, all he could say was, Depart from me. I'm a sinful man, O Lord, and the rugged fisherman who was perhaps the best of his bunch down by Galilee in the presence of Jesus knew he was unfit for God's presence.
You found that out. Oh, if you will sit on that seat and bravely look into a sinful messenger's face and say, well, Mr. Wildish, I know it's true. I live in a sinful dying world. And I found that sin is in my heart, and I found out that if I was to measure my life by God's standards, I'm just a guilty sinner, as he says. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Who can do it? The proud religious leader Saul of Tarsus confessed, he said, in me that is in my flesh, but it's no good thing to stand before God. Looking for the face of a religious leader, Jesus said, except a man be born again.
He cannot enter the kingdom of God, cannot see and touch and taste those eternal things. And Paul said, yes, there's got to be a new creation work. All things in Adam must pass away. There must be a new work, the coming of God's divine life, as the Savior takes possession, changing the life. And with newness of life, we walk in newness of life. This is the glorious message that rings from the New Testament. I wonder if you found a solution to that question. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing?
No man can do it. No educator, no person or preacher, no form or ceremony. None of us can handle this situation. We turn and say, oh God, you can do it, and you sent forth Jesus into our world. And the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleansed it from all sin. There is a remedy. There is a way of cleansing. There's lives can be made absolutely new. You know, one day they were having a meeting and a dear man got up. He was an elderly man. And he said, Dear friends, I want to tell you something.
He said, it took fifty-six years of my life to learn three things. And he said, in the next five minutes I want to tell you what those three things are. And you know, when a person has taken fifty-six years to learn three things, and he's going to tell it in five minutes, everyone sat on their seat edges and their ears were wide open to hear what it was. And what do you think the three things were? He said, well friends, it took me fifty-six years to learn that I was a guilty sinner before God. Number one. It took me fifty-six years to find out that I cannot save myself.
Number two. And it took me fifty-six years to find out that God doesn't expect me to save myself. Number three. And do you know, I believe those are the three simple things that boys and girls and men and women in loved America need to learn more perhaps than anything else today. First, they are guilty of sinners before God, the fact that they can never save themselves, and thirdly, most surprising, God doesn't expect you to. Well, you see, how can I be saved? Well, here's the wonder of it.
Jesus died for you, and he was God, manifest in flesh. God sent forth his Son to take your place. And on that cross the wages of sin is death, and that's why he died. But before he died, he bore your punishment. Yes, the awful transgressions, the awful sin of your life must be punished, and that punishment was poured out upon the Son of God. And in those hours of darkness, he cried at last after shedding his blood and bearing your punishment. It's finished.
Now, if it's finished, it's finished. In other words, if you will come with a great big thank you, and you will trust him, and you will say, Lord, Jesus, just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bid me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come. If you come, as he bids you, he receives you. And if you open your life to his coming, the coming of that living Savior, it's not only pardon from the cross, but it's a new life from the throne. Power to live day by day. A new life because Christ lives in you that new life. This is God's solution.
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Now these men move on to their second question in verse ten of Job fourteen. Man dieth and waste it away, yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? Now what's the answer to this question? We all know that we live in a dying world. We all know that around us the wages of sin is working itself out. But what about the future? I hate to look into the face of boys and girls.
I hate to look into the face of young men and women and remind them that one day, if Jesus doesn't come back, you've got to die. I remember looking for the first time on the face of debt as a little boy when my granny died. And I crept into the room without my parents knowing it, and I stood by the bed looking at the lovely old face of granny, over eighty years of age, with peace written on it. And a sort of dread gripped my boyish heart, and I thought, will one day I be lying on a bed and... no longer looking out of these eyes and talking through these lips and listening through these ears, no longer smelling, no longer feeling, unable to touch the world around and they will say, Harold's dead.
And it sullenized me. I tell you, they're picking up thousands on the roads of America today and they're picking up little babies and children from the wreckage of the awful smashes. It's a strange thing that in the midst of life, death is always lurking around us. It's like a well-trained wrestler. It tries to get a grip on you and bring you love. And there's no guarantee, you know, that you are going to live for three-score years and ten, and if by reason of strength, four-score. But you know, there's a serious thought. Physical death, the separation of my inner soul, my inner life, with the body in which it expresses itself toward the seen world, my inner soul is linked with a spirit that links me with the unseen world of God, who is a spirit.
Do you know that inner life, different to the animals, because its spirit and soul will leave the body and go out, out into eternity, which is God's home? And if a man dies and wastes away and we say dust to dust or he's cremated to ashes, where is he? The thinking, feeling, looking, tasting, inner past. Three thousand five hundred years ago this group of men were pondering this. You know, death's an enemy.
We try to keep it away. I've never met a man or a woman, a Christian or otherwise that didn't try to push it away. We don't like it. It will always be an enemy. It's the last enemy that Christ will put under his feet. Thank God for the Christian, the sting of death that's been removed. Thank God death can become for the child of God a falling asleep in Jesus. Thank God it can be a gateway for the redeemed soul to pass into the presence of the Lord. The wonder of being a Christian, the restfulness to know that all is well with my soul when the call comes.
But do you know there's such a thing as spiritual death? For instance, I think that lots of the people who walk the streets of Oakland are spiritually dead. They have no life toward God. Their souls living in bodies, physically, mentally, for seventy, eighty years may be, but their life in the realm of the spirit deaths there. Dead in trespasses and in sins. And as long as they go on like that, they're in increasing danger. That's why Jesus said there must be a new birth.
There must come life in the Spirit. A soul must be born again. And with spiritual life there comes salvation to the soul. And then the lovely Savior by the Holy Spirit begins to think and look and talk and love and will and work and walk in and through his blood-bought child. And you meet some Christians and as you meet them, you know that Christ is living in their hearts. They used to curse and swear, but now they speak beautiful words about Jesus. They used to think uncountingly and truly and selfishly, but now they're thinking of others. They used to love only self and the little circle, but now the love of Christ is sustaining them.
This is the amazing new creation work. This is eternal life. Oh, listen, if you're afraid of physical death, you ought to be far more afraid of spiritual death. And then there's something called eternal death. It's dreadful. Just as that everlasting life, there's everlasting punishment. And as the word of God says, whosoever's names were not found written in the book of life, were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. I tell you, it doesn't need vivid words of mine.
The Spirit of God alone can portray the meaning of a soul going out into eternal darkness, separated from God. And so, physical death is the separation of my body from my inner life of the soul. Spiritual death is the separation of my body and soul from the spiritual life of God. But eternal death is to be put out of God's presence into a lost eternity. And God does not want this. He says, I don't want anyone to perish. And he's gone as far as he can in the gospel. He so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.
Oh, I'm glad I'm going to heaven. I'll tell you a little story if you like it or not. Before I ever came to California, down there in Jamaica, I went into the library to see if I could find anything about Los Angeles. Wicked city. If I could find anything about Frisco, you don't like to be calling it that, but San Francisco, the city of the earthquake and all the rest of it. And I sat there reading all about Fisherman's Wharf, and I sat there reading about the National Parks long before I ever went to Yosemite four years ago. Why? Just because I knew I was going there, I was interested in it. And I tell you, when I pick up my Bible, and I hear my Lord Jesus saying, Harold Wildish, listen.
I came to die for you on the cross, but I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also. I just wonder what it's going to be like if Jesus has been nineteen hundred years preparing a place for his blood-bought children. It's going to be worth going to... Oh, I tell you, if you've ever seen anything in this old world, the things up there are going to be much better to see. If you've heard anything in this world, they're going to be better. I tell you, I have not seen, ear has not heard, the heart of man has not conceived the wonders of all that he is preparing for those that love Jesus.
And that loved Lord is coming back again for his own. But do you know the Lord Jesus said, These shall go away into everlasting punishment reserved for the devil and his angels? Now boys, boys, be brave about this. You hear big, strong, tough men talking about hell. Hell this and hell that. Now listen, as sure as there are prison out there on that island, or San Francisco, where men spend years and years and years away from their wife and their children and their loved ones and their neighbors, human justice puts them there in prison.
God's got a prison. But God doesn't want men and women and boys and girls to go to that prison. He said, I made that prison house for the devil and his rebellious angels. And it's only if you share in that rebellion, it's only if you turn your back on Jesus that you will be condemned. This is the condemnation, that light came shining for every man, but men turned away from it. That's the condemnation. They loved their sin rather than God's light. They loved the kingdom of darkness more than the kingdom of God's dear son. They kept a stranger out of their lives.
No, I'm not going to get saved. And they went the broad road. But God doesn't want you to go that way. Man dies and waste it away and where is he? I suppose Adam's body died after nine hundred and thirty years. He lived those pre-flood days. They lived tremendous ages after the flood. Man's life was shortened. And today it's more shortened to priests for four years and ten. But Adam lived after he sinned in the Garden of Eden nine hundred and thirty years before he died.
before his spirit and soul passed into eternity, into the presence of God. But listen carefully. From Adam right down to every one of us today, we have got to face eternity. Eternity! God inhabits it. It's his home. It's his lifetime. And we creatures of time are journeying to eternity. We are either going to heaven or to hell. Man dies and wastes away and where is he?
All bless God. Harold Wildish, the grace of God you've tasted has brought you to a place where you can say, if I got dead on this platform, this very moment, and was absent from the body, you would shift the old body into a siren. Why are my wife in Jamaica? Get rid of the body in a matter of so many hours. But let's be absent from the body, present with the Lord, which is far better. with my loved Lord who died for me, who I trusted as a boy twelve years of age, who I've known as my friend and master through the years, to sing him, to be with him, the great future of a God.
You see, if at all, oh no, no, he's coming back with my redeemed spirit to close me with a resurrection and glorified body. I'm going to begin the great future to be co-heirs with Christ in His eternal glory. I'm glad I'm a Christian. Wish you well. We're on the winning side. There's no doubt about it. The rich man died and Jesus said it. The rich man died and in hell. He lifted up his eyes, being in torment. Concerned about his state, he cried for release.
When he couldn't find release, concerned for his loved ones, send some messengers to my loved ones, lest they come to this place of torment. These are dread realities. The world mocks at it. People rub shoulders new in school and college and hospital and workshop, and they say, oh, way with that stuff. And they don't realize that all the time the God of this world, Satan is blinding their minds to these great eternal verities. And they think more of their ice cream Sunday and their motor car trip and the things of this world. No harm in those things. But the moment you mention eternity, they try to push it away.
Take care. Be a brave and thinking man, if man dies and waste it away, where is he? Well, you see, it doesn't matter very much what you think as long as you are so steer. Now take care of that. If my little child was dying dreadfully ill and my wife said to me, well now I can get a doctor. And I ran out and I said to the first passerby, excuse me, can you tell me where a doctor is? My child's dying. And they said, well, go down any one of these roads. It doesn't matter which one.
And you'll come stumbling across a doctor somehow, as long as you're sincere, that's all. I say, listen, my child's dying. Don't play with me. There are excuses at stake. Do you know what I've got to live? I want a helping hand. When you deal with eternal things, don't be so foolish as to talk of sincerity. You can be sincerely wrong. You can be sidetracked. There is one gospel, and Jesus came to win it on the cross, and he offers it to you tonight. Eternal life. He that believes it shall not be condemned. He that believes shall have eternal life.
Oh, friend, why don't you come to those arms of love? Why don't you look into his face for the great big thank you and make the surrender of your soul to him? Dear old Richard Weaver, the converted boxer who used to do such outstanding work in the boxing ring, became an evangelist. After his conversion he preached the gospel. And one of the stories he used to love to tell was the story of a woman who was dying on an arm's house bed. The story goes something like this, that this woman was dying, she hadn't a penny, she was a pauper, and in his dream he saw her lying on the bed, he describes the dream.
And he said, he saw the soul leave the body, and the body grew cold in death. No one to hold her hand, no one to comfort her. He said, the soul took flight and went to heaven's gate and knocked. I heard a voice saying, who are you? He said, I heard the answer, I'm a sinner, trusting in the precious blood of Jesus. Thy shall he live again?