Believers, regardless of age, are called to be active witnesses for Christ, drawing on the analogy of a watchman from Ezekiel 33. The examples emphasize that retirement from secular work does not mean retirement from spiritual work, as opportunities to share the gospel are ever-present. The core lesson is that a genuine relationship with Jesus compels believers to share their faith, and that consistent Christian living is crucial for effective witness. The message concludes by urging listeners to be concerned about the lost, make deliberate contact, and gain confidence through their faithful walk with God, reminding them that even small efforts contribute to God's larger plan of salvation.
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When I'm finished, I'll let you go home. I don't expect it to be forty five minutes, maybe forty four. Let's turn to Ezekiel chapter thirty three, and while you're finding it, I'm so glad the rain came when it did, because it sorted out the people that I wanted to talk to tonight. Those who are afraid of the weather have stayed home. The rest of us are here for a challenge. I asked the song leader and embarrassed him by asking him that we sing Seeking the Lost and uh, Intriguing.
He did very well with it, though I don't think he really knew it. But it was that theme that was laid upon my heart. Ezekiel chapter thirty three, and I want the preacher and every member of the congregation, uh, to take to heart the message of these verses, and especially the end of the reading. Again, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, speak to the children of thy people and say unto them, when I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts and set him for their watchman, if when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet and warn the people.
Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet and taketh not warning, if the sword come and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet and took not warning, his blood shall be upon him, but he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul. But if the watchman see the sword come and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned, if the sword come and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand.
So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel. Therefore, thou shalt hear the word at my mouth and warn them from me. Very solemn verse, if the watchman doesn't sound the warning, and one is taken away who should have heard it and didn't, his blood will I require at the watchman's hand. Soul winning. I'm an old man, and getting older every day and feeling it every hour.
And you are older people, not as old as I am, of course. It may seem to be a little beyond the pale to talk to older people about going out and winning souls for Christ. Isn't that the challenge that we bring to young people? Many of the time I've occupied a platform in these many years and challenged young men and young women to get out and to seek the lust for the Lord Jesus. But although some of us retired from work, we didn't stop working.
As believers, we never can. There's always a job at hand, and the most important one is raising the warning to those that are lost, so that while they have time, they will prepare to meet their God. So I thought tonight I would like to challenge you with regard to your witness for the Lord Jesus. Now I'm looking into the faces of people who have known the Lord Jesus for a long time, and who for that long time have been witnesses for him.
I'm sure your la- your neighbors learned from your lips about their need of the Lord Jesus. I'm sure that down through the years you have been active in this meeting and that meeting, open-air meetings, indoor meetings. I know your experiences of the past, at least I can guess what they were. So many of you have been active for the Lord. But, you know, the fact is that we never retire from the work of God, because we never get too old to do it. Now, we may become somewhat limited, we may become greatly limited, so that the man, the only man we ever see, is the doctor we go to to get some more pills.
But there he is. You have a wonderful opportunity to try to lead him to the Lord Jesus. Your opportunities are not gone. So this is just a reminder. I'm treating you as young people tonight and gonna talk to you about witnessing for the Lord Jesus. I heard about a little boy who was asked one day, and I suppose he was patted on the head first by the man who asked the question. Well, sonny, what are you going to be when you grow up? The little boy looked up brightly at, uh, the the gentleman who asked him the question, and he said, it all depends who gets me.
The man was taken aback, and he said, what do you mean it all depends who gets you? He said, well, they tell me if Jesus gets me, I'll be a missionary, but if Satan gets me, I'll be a burglar. So there was a boy with his open future ahead of him. It all depends who gets me. Now that's where we start. Who or what has gotten us at this point? Has the Lord gotten such a hold of us, and do we love Him so much that we cannot help but witness for Him?
There are souls all around us that need to be won for the Lord Jesus. At least they need to be witnessed to, and nobody here can say, well, I never meet anybody who's not a Christian. Maybe it's because you don't go out of your way. You never walk down a mall that's teeming with people who need the Lord Jesus. Oh, but in the mall, how can I? Well, you can drop something and somebody will kindly pick it up. That's your opportunity. Thank you for picking up my book or whatever it is. Now let me give you something in my gratitude. It's news about the Lord Jesus who died on the cross to save you, and you can be saved today.
There are many, many ways of witnessing for the Lord Jesus, and believe me, I was a pilgrim preacher for eleven long years. They don't seem long looking back, but all those years I think of the remarkable ways we went about the business of getting the gospel out. We had lots of devious, that's in the good sense, ways of bringing the gospel to people. It all depends who gets me. So we have to start with that. Has Jesus got you? Are you really and truly a born again? Do you really know the Lord Jesus as your savior?
Because if Jesus has got you, then, and we talked about this a little last Thursday, then you've got to talk about him to those who need him. You know, the need for soul winners today is desperate. We're living in a day and an age when it's, it's out of fashion to go to church, it's out of fashion to own a Bible, it's out of fashion to sing hymns. You know, some places have given up choruses because they've gone out of fashion and they are not in vogue anymore. The need is as desperate as ever it was, and the ranks we still belong in.
Somebody wrote, life is mostly froth and bubble. Two things stand like stone, Comfort in another's trouble and courage in your own. You see, people have always mattered. When the little boy said, it all depends who gets me, obviously he was waiting to be influenced. You know, that's the reason why we love to talk to the boys and girls before anybody's gotten to them and spoiled them. Uh, this old world is very, very good, or shall I say bad?
It's good at doing it, but bad that they do it. Lord Beaverbrook, how many of, to how many of you is that name? familiar? One, two, three. any advance on three? Going at three, four. any more than four? Lord Beaverbrook was a great man in England. He owned a string of newspapers, but that was a sideline. This man once made a statement or a suggestion. He said, and I'm quoting him here, choose rather to be an evangelist than a cabinet minister and a millionaire or a millionaire.
He was both, and he said, choose evangelism rather than either of those. He was a believer and a man who witnessed for God very openly, and uh, he didn't say until you get old, or older, I mean. We are never to be off duty. Someone has said this, that the destiny of a nation can be determined anytime by the opinions of its youth. I think that's a cop-out.
I really think that's a cop-out. Older people have as much i- uh, influence if they look for the places to use it as any kid on the block. And I believe that if our lives are not making im- an impression upon other people for the Lord Jesus, then somewhere along the line we've got to pull our socks up and we've got to see where the opportunities are all the way around us. You know, the devil is a great, I'm thinking a name for the, for of a name for this, but I don't know one, lulling us to sleep. This is what he tries to do, so that because we don't have constant contact with sinners in our lives, uh, here at Park of the Palms, that, well, somebody else can do it, and you've done enough.
Your life's been this long, and, uh, you've been faithful to the Lord. Now's the time to just take it easy. No, I don't think witnessing to the Lord Jesus is ever easy. I was struck with this warning that if the watchman doesn't sound the warning, then someone dies for lack of warning, his blood will I require at the watchman's hand. You know what that means? It means that if you and I miss an opportunity that God gives to us of witnessing openly and joyfully for him, and telling someone that God deliberately brought us into contact with about Jesus' death on the cross and the salvation that he's proffering, and the opportunity to be saved and have your sins washed away.
His blood will I require at the watchman's hand. You know, that makes me tremble. And it does mean that we are answerable for lost opportunities. And it is meant, I believe, to make us tremble and to stir us up and to wake us, waken us up to see that our work is not done, our opportunities have not gone. If we will, we can deliberately put ourselves in places where we can witness for the Lord Jesus.
Now, it's only a congregation like this that I can talk to in this fashion, but you know where the people are. I know it's not easy for you to do. You don't have a car. Well, then find somebody who does and say, I'm going to the mall to witness for the Lord. See, I've got a bundle of tracts, all those wonderful things called tracts. I wonder how many of you ladies have tracts in your purse. I wonder how many of you men have tracts in your pockets. I was saved when I was thirteen And you know, early one morning, I wakened up before the house had stirred, and I began to think about what had happened to me in the past months.
And God gave to me a verse. It, I didn't read it anywhere, and nobody quoted it to me. It was a little verse that came to me. And if I can remember what it is, give me a moment while I get to my notes. I wrote this little verse, and I can't remember it. You know, that's an awful condition to be in, but it's here somewhere. Goes like this, and it was God's challenge to me, deliberate. God has no hands but your hands.
God has no feet but yours. God has no life or heart to reach men dying at your door. Nobody said that to me. I didn't read it anywhere. God spoke to me, and I never did forget that. My verse? No. It was something God gave to me to challenge my heart. I was just about fourteen. I'd been saved a year, and yet the Spirit of God was concerning me about souls dying at my door.
I gave my, my life to the Lord Jesus. He took me at his word when I was seventeen, He brought me out into the ministry. A great privilege, a great joy, and I look back over those wonderful years when I could be active. Now I sort of feel kind of on the shelf. I think that there are three essentials to winning the lost, and the first is growing concerned about them. The second is getting in contact with them, and the third is gaining the confidence of them.
Now, the first is an appeal to the heart. God speaks to our hearts that way. The second is an appeal to the intellect. The third is an a challenge to the life. Concern, contact, and confidence. Now let me take the first one first, I mean the last one first, just to emphasize what I'm saying here.
Confidence. It is a matter of our walk for God. I've told you about the man whom a fellow he worked with witnessed to, and that man knew his life when he said, I can't hear the things you say, the things you do speak too loudly. I've reminded you of that before. Now here is the thought. We cannot will a s- win a soul for Christ if that soul doesn't see in us a constancy toward God. If he does not see in our lives the life that we are trying to introduce him to, and this particularly applies to people we know well and people who know us well or know us too well, maybe.
They have no confidence in what we say. A growing concern about the unsaved. The scripture says, he that goeth forth and weepeth. There's concern, bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Now I take that as a promise from God. It surely is. He that goeth forth and weepeth. Now that's the condition. He that goeth forth and weepeth.
I heard a story, and it really touched my heart when I, when I was younger, many years ago, about a youth who was born into a Christian family, and his parents were very concerned, uh, about his life and his need of the Lord Jesus. And he was a sort of rebellious teenager, and one day his father decided he had to challenge him with regard to the Lord Jesus. And although he knew that he wouldn't take it very well, as kindly and as gentle as he could, as he could, as gently as he could, he said, son, I want to talk to you.
Now the boy immediately stiffened. He said, dad, I know what you're going to say. Listen to me, son, he said, once more I want to remind you. And he told him the story that he told him from a little dot, and he got so angry, in the end he shouted his at his father, and he stormed out of the house. His father went into his bedroom. Before the son closed the door, he saw that bedroom door close. And he went out into the street, and he walked around for a little while, and then he came back.
His father was in another part of the house, so he, he went to the bedroom, the father's bedroom, and he stood looking at the door. Then he pushed open the door and stepped into the room, and he looked at the bed, and his worst fears were confirmed. There were two heavy dents where the elbows of his father had rested as he prayed for him. The fellow went to the bed, this teenager, this rebellious teenager, and he felt the coverlet between the dents, and it was wet.
And he knew that his father's tears had flowed over him. And suddenly he drew in his breath with a big sob, and he dropped on his knees and deliberately put one elbow in that dent, one elbow in that dent, and then mingled his tears with the tears that had fallen on the bed. And it was in that position that his rebellion left, and he accepted the Lord Jesus as his savior. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.
I wonder, when was the last time that in a quiet place, with concern for the soul of some, some, someone among them, you knelt down and wept at their rejection of the Lord Jesus. God means it when he says, he that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed. That's carrying the message with a broken heart. Broken heart for the lust. Knowing that, uh, you're going out to brush shoulders with somebody who's actually on his way to hell.
With someone before whom the cabins of the damned are yearn- are yawning, and, uh, you have the answer. It was the love of that father's heart, that broken heart, that broke the stubbornness of the son and brought him to Christ. He that goeth forth and weepeth. God expects us to be so deeply concerned about the needs of others who do not know him, that the tears should come to our eyes, or smart behind them, be- because we have so great a concern.
That's the first ingredient of the soul winning, growing concerned. Why should you be concerned? I can give you three reasons. First of all, because of the longing at the heart of your master. When the Lord Jesus died upon the cross, he died for sinners, period. And it, it, it brings great joy to his heart when the sinner comes and confesses him and receives the savior that the, that paid so great a price for him.
But it grieves the heart of God when a man turns away. But what a thrill it is to him when you go out and you witness successfully and you lead a soul to Christ. I know in these days your opportunities are much, much reduced. I don't really believe that your concern is reduced any. I believe you love the Lord Jesus so much that you do have a concern for the lost, but perhaps it's been a long time since you shed a tear about it.
I repeat the scripture again, he that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seeds, you'll doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Here's another reason. Because of the doom that dogs the sinner's steps. This is why you should have a concern. There are lost ones that, uh, you know, maybe within your, your family circle, maybe, I was going to say among your neighbors, but here in Park of the Palms, well, who knows? But the fact is you're living in a town where there are lots of sinners, and our means of meeting these people, and you should have a concern because if you look at them and they're unsaved, you can say to yourself, if that man goes on like that and dies like it, he'll go to hell.
Hell is very real. Sometimes I think to us it is far away. We don't understand, we cannot imagine the, the horrors of hell. This should make us as believers, on our toes to witness while we can, because the opportunities are slipping away. So, because of the longing at the heart of the master toward the lost, and because of the doom that lies at the end of a Christless life, there's something else, and that is the potential that lies in the life of a sinner.
If he gets, uh, saved, my, all that p- p- potential will be put at God's disposal. If after being saved, he follows in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus. You know, any patient man who has learned to count can count the apples on a tree. May take him a fortnight. What's a fortnight? Two weeks. But not the wisest mathematician can see the trees in an apple.
Now, if you lead a soul to Christ, that soul may go out and lead a lot of other people to Christ. I remember the man who met me, who, uh, led me to the Lord. He was courting one of my sisters, and I had four. I saw him night after night in the house. I remember he used to pray with the family. My mother had become a Christian after I got saved, after my sis- sister that he was wooing got saved. My mother was the third in the house, and uh, she would always say to him, please commend us to the Lord before you go home.
They didn't marry, and he didn't court her for very long, and I never knew what happened between them, but long enough for him to meet the family and lead us one by one to the Lord Jesus. His name was Ted. Ted Reynolds. I forget, I so often forget to to give thanks to God for Ted Reynolds. He preached the night I was saved, and I sat in my seat with a lump in my throat that was getting bigger and bigger and bigger. My heart was breaking, and then he made an appeal. If you really feel that you need Christ, it may be hard to do it.
Just leave your seat and come down the aisle. And I struggled. I was trying to sing, Sinner, how thy heart is troubled, God is coming very near. Do not hide thy deep emotion, do not shed, do not stay the falling tear, all be saved. And I sat there gripping the, the pew and trying hard to, I was saying to myself, I've got to get out of here, I've got to get out of here. I had sat at the back deliberately, right at the end of the row, that I might slip out, but somehow my feet were stuck to the floor. And in the end, I rose from my seat, and weeping, I went forward.
That was the night that I trusted the Lord Jesus. And behind me came another of my sisters, and she trusted the Lord that night also. What a wonderful night it was for us, but it made the other two of my sisters sit up and take notice. One of them was my twin. She got saved too later on. In fact, all of my sisters except one were saved. I had five, five sisters, four sisters. I'll have to figure that one out. Not quite sure. My memory is not the thing it the, it used to be. But my older sister went to South Africa to get away from the gospel that was sweeping through our home.
And as far as I know, she never trusted the Lord. I got a telegram from her husband telling me that she had a tumor on the brain and was in the hospital. I prayed about it. I was so far away. She was in South Africa, I was over here in the United States, and I was down in South Florida, and I found that there was a bridge operator down there who had a CD, and uh, I think that's what you call them, one of these radios that you can get all over the country. And I told him what was happening, and I gave him an address.
I said, would you try to find somebody in South Africa, a minister maybe, that can go and see her? Believe it or not, he got hold of one, and that minister went to see her, but she couldn't respond, and she died. And he buried her and sent me a picture of her grave. He said to me over the phone, I, I gave her John three sixteen. I talked to her about how God loved her. I told her how Jesus died for her and would have died for her if she'd been the only sinner in the world.
He said she was in a coma, but I understand that sometimes patients can hear, so let's keep praying. The Lord is in command, and so we prayed. Growing concerned. The second is getting into contact. Do you know what C. H. Spurgeon said? He said, no fool ever won a soul to Christ. Wow. No fool ever won a soul for, for Christ.
It was his way of saying, soul winning is an art. To be concerned is not enough. Praying is not enough. You've got to make contact with the people that you're praying for, if you possibly can. Earnest prayer must be followed by deliberate effort on our part. And, uh, I'm looking for our one hundred-year-old brother. Oh, I see one there, and he hasn't quit telling others about the Lord. We're never too old to be spreading the gospel to individuals.
You know, there are two kinds of contact. One is incidental, and the other is engineered. Now, I said incidental, not coincidental. There aren't any coincidences in our lives. Our contacts happen sometimes. Maybe we're on a train. Maybe we're on a bus. I can remember my wife and I getting in, in conversation with a woman on a train one day in our car. She was sitting across from us, and before we were through, she was showing me, showing us her arm where she had the tattoo, uh, where she had been in the concentration camp.
Gave us an opportunity to talk to her about another who suffered. On a train, on the street. Can you think of any other? In the store. The mall's a great place, especially if you have a few tracts. And if you don't, the track track is out there, and it's very regularly restocked. So don't feel you can't take anything without paying for it. The tracts are there, and you know that track track should be emptied. So many people of us here, if we only took a half, uh, ha- half a dozen every time that we were at a meeting, after the meeting, and made sure we gave them out before the next meeting, why, our good brother who looks after the track track, he would just wonder what in the world was happening.
Encourage him. Take the tracts and give them out with a little word of, uh, of testimony yourself. But you got to make contact. You got to be concerned about the lost, then you got to make contact with the lost. Not so much so easy with us, but there are ways and there are means. Now, because we're older, and some of us, like me, are old, downright old, we land up in the doctor's, and there's a waiting room of people.
Opportunity, ready-made. We land in the hospital, and this nurse comes and that nurse comes, and uh... we're not unconscious. The doctor comes in. Our visitors come in. You know, we say, I don't have the opportunity. Sometimes the Lord lays us on our back for that very reason, and then he sends the person to see us and visit with us that he wants us to witness to because that person needs the Lord or who is in a little bit of trouble and the heart's aching. Speak a word for the master.
That's what we're meant to do. I told you last Thursday night about Alf Gibbs' advice. Open your beak and Twitter. You got to make contact. You know, young people do this. They engineer it. Sometimes they're incidental, sometimes these opportunities are engineered. You see a couple and they kind of like each other. They'll know how to engineer contacts. If they can do it, you can do it with the souls that need the Lord. And you know, I think that people who want to borrow money, they can engineer contacts.
And I'm thinking too, uh, people who want to curry favor. They can make contacts. We can make contacts if we want to, if we, we really want to, if we're scared of it. Let's get down and ask the Lord about it, and to take away our fears. You can, you do have opportunities. You can make contacts. You do have a concern. But make sure that if the person that you're trying to witness to knows you at all, that your life is right down the line. Don't let anybody ever be able to say, I cannot hear the words that you speak because the things that you do speak too loudly.
Growing concerned about the lost, making contact with the lost, lost, and then making sure that we gain their confidence because they see in us a man or a woman whose life measured up to the things that they are talking about. One word of encouragement, and I'm through. No man is ever given a whole soul. Now think about that. I'm talking about the soul of another man.
You may not feel you got anywhere by witnessing for the Lord Jesus. There may have been some resentment. There may have been even a rebuke, or you may have been scolded by that person. Don't think that that's the end. The Spirit of God has a wonderful way of taking up a little word and sort of burning it into the brain. They like to get away from it, but when you talk about the Lord Jesus, this is hot stuff, and I say that reverently, and it has a way of burning itself into the conscience. And then what does God do? You may not see that person again, but he brings somebody else along.
No man, a woman, a whole soul. It- it's there was an influence here, an influence there, and this is going on among people that you come into contact with, and you haven't even en- engineered those contacts. But you, if you add your part to winning that soul, you'll get the reward for that. Not only so, you'll have a part in bringing them to Christ and into a life that they could scarcely imagine they could ever live. It pays to serve Jesus. Now, you may not see the soul you witnessed to, one for the Lord Jesus.
They might move outside your orbit, but God has promised his word is not going to fall to the ground. So let's tell it, and let's leave the results with the Lord. A soul winner doesn't win the whole soul, he just enters into the process of winning the soul. Are we doing it? Are we seeking them out? Are we putting ourselves in their path? Are we really alert to the opportunities as they come? You see, God will hold us responsible for every one of them.
Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that ever you gave to us the privilege of witnessing for the Lord Jesus. We thank you for your word. We thank you for your guidance. We thank you for the, the tenderness with which you urge us in this direction or that direction. Make us very sensitive to your leading and your prodding. And Lord, give to us to know something of your mind with regard to people we come into contact.
There is a time to speak, there's a time to be silent, but Lord, we pray that you will make us willing to tell as your opportunities come to us, and we stand to be tested whether or not we are faithful in seeking to be