Transforming grace fundamentally alters ten key relationships in a believer's life, beginning with our relationship to God the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. This grace shifts our perspective on the law, the power of sin, the present world, and our own good works, moving us from reliance on self to dependence on God. Furthermore, grace reorients our view of trials and afflictions, death, and even the final judgment, transforming them from sources of fear into opportunities for growth and reward. Ultimately, the sermon emphasizes that salvation is a gift received through faith, not earned by works, leading to a profound and lasting change in how Christians live and relate to the world around them.
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Now, until then, when you let me tell you how favorite, let me tell you that absolutely outstanding. Because what we'd like you to do, Ruth, is take our address. When you get home, because we're most of the interview, we're here. It's the strength of... Hey, darling, we'll sit on her radio, boy. We're getting the money for it. We cannot use plain words, you know. Ruth, it's the right person. Here's the real thing. Here's the real thing. I'm very much fortunate out of it, you know. Well, I'll be leaving for night. Well, I'll be leaving for night.
Well, I'll be leaving for night. Well, I'll be leaving for night. Well, I'll be leaving for night. Wow. Wow. Now, the beach, the water, you know. Grab your men are safe. Come around. Thank you. I went out. Look at me. Run. Where? Where? Where?
Where? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. give your impression of the world.
The sweet. Oh, hello. Is it right now? Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.
Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. him. You can make a war.
Oh, this is the one on you. Whoa. Whoa.
You have a kid. Read. Rip, rip, rip, rip.
I'm very old, but he's still living, and I'm sure he's still preaching. He'll be preaching long as he lives. I heard him speak probably thirty-odd years ago at the first missionary convention that Innavasta had in Coronto. And he gave his testimony a part of it in his message, one of his messages. He said, Before I was saved, there were two things I did not want to do.
When I became a man and I could choose what I was going to do, I did not want to live in a cold country. He was born, I believe, in Kansas. They had hard, cold winters. He lived back in the days before they had the kind of insulation that we have today in houses. And I did not want to be a preacher. And he said, the Lord saved me and called me to preach and sent me to the coldest spot in North America, Alberta. Because there was some laughter and so forth, but he went on to give his message. But this book, by the way, there are some publishers, whenever you see their name on a book, you can buy it.
This is not true of all publishers, but with Moody Press, That's true. Lozzo and Moody Press and Tyndall House and a few others. But I recommend this book very highly. Printed by Moody Press, it's only seventy-five cents. You take four, twenty-five percent off of that and you've got your real bite. And incidentally, in case you're not aware of it, the first man ever to print a book with a paperback was D. L. Moody. And he started his Bible cold-coated library, and you know how much those books sold for?
Ten cents. Ten cents. Inflation's really taken. This book, this is, excuse me, Born Crucified. There are two different editions of it back there. Born Crucified, the cross in the life of the believer, the early Matthew. I've never had a chance to go to Three Hills. If I ever get back up that way, I'm going to take a day off and run out there. That is, if the snow is low enough so that I can get out there. Now, you've heard me refer during the week, numbers of times, to the lives of great men. And this book, written by James C.
Heffley, is Heroes of the Faiths. Polly Cox, Justin Martyr, St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, Wickley, John Hus, Martin Luther, Calvin Simmons, Knox, Whitfield, Carrie, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley. To be quite frank, I'm going to buy that one myself. I hope you got more of those back Now this book, the last time I was here, I recommended it. And I'm still recommending it. But now I want to warn you about this book.
Don't start reading it late at night unless you had a good nap in the afternoon. It's going to be hard to put down. Now, the man that this book was written about, at least about he and his family, has spoken in our fellowship in Columbia several times. Mr. Arthur Matthews, he was a missionary in China. And they were run out of China by the communists, and I believe they went into Tibet, or one of those countries there. And I believe it was about maybe ten years the Lord sustained them without any contact whatsoever with the outside world. The name of it is Greenleaf and Drought.
And it's really exciting. you'll want to keep on reading and keep on reading and keep on reading. I missed two good night's sleep practices after I started looking at that book. By Isabel Kuhn, anything she writes, by the way, is very good. Then there was a young man who was kind of a fat middling preacher in London by the name of Charles H. Spurgeon. You heard of him? And this is called Faith's Checkbook. There's a picture of a bank there. It's a book on the front very appropriately. Being precious promises arranged for daily use with brief experimental comments by Charles H.
Spurgeon. And it is one reading apparently for every day in the year. And would you believe it's only a dollar and twenty-five cents? this is one of those books I'll get it and have it wild and I find somebody else and I'll give it away and I've even written on several of them do not give away personal coffee chocolate I'll meet somebody and give it to them and you know later we'll give us another one there's another little book I I kind of think it's out there I didn't see it but I didn't spend but about eighty five seconds in the store it's called scripture memorizing for successful personal work by Oscar Lowry it's also put out the Moody And it's been a great, great help to me.
It's one of those books that the Barbers gave me shortly after I found the Lord at Athens, Georgia, at the University of Georgia. And it'll assist you in how to memorize Scripture and then give you verses to memorize to answer certain excuses and objections that some people have for not coming to know Jesus Christ as their Savior. and their Lord. Shall we pray? Father, we thank you for this beautiful day. We thank you for the hymns that we've been singing. We thank you for the beautiful music that we have from these two instruments that stirs and challenges us in our souls.
And we look to the end the moments that are left to speak to our hearts from your word in a very practical way because We know that unless it's practical and unless it influences the way we walk and talk and live, that we might be wasting our time. And so we look to thee to make the time practical and allow us to redeem it today, because we know the days are evil. In Jesus' name, amen. You know, one of the reasons it's good sometimes to have a responsibility concerning speaking or leading devotions or something somewhere, is it because it makes you look for something new?
And the month of March, I was responsible in Columbia for a little Bible reading and prayer time and devotional at the local CBMC in Columbia. And the usual pattern there was a man just gets up and each man reads two verses through a portion and one of these people comment on it and that's it and I thought well how helpful it would be if we could find a portion of Scripture that really had a little meat in it here here here here and give them a little outline so one night I was studying and I was reading one of my favorite portions of Scripture in fact somebody gave one of my favorite verses last night Romans five one and so I was in Romans five And I came to the second verse, and I'm sure that many of you have had something like this to happen to you, it jumps out like it's in bold print and comes up right in front of you.
And you've read it a hundred times and you never saw it like that before. So I was reading along. Well, let me read in the King James because I've already found out that's what most of you people have. All right. Romans five. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, for whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." You say, well, now what's unusual about that? Well, I want to tell you what's unusual. I've probably read it hundreds and hundreds of times.
But now here's the word that jumped out and hit me. All these six words right here. In my Bible, it's the second line of the second verse. By whom also we have. Now here's the six words. Access by faith into this grace. And I thought about, my, what a change that truth makes. What a change comes over your life because of what grace has made possible. Through Jesus Christ of course. And so I got my concordance in the Thompson Bible and the Schofield Bible and I made a little study and I shared it with these men and they seem to deeply appreciate it.
And I call this transforming grace. And I was especially thinking of one man in that audience that morning who is less than two years old in the Lord. He's a very prominent realtor. But last June, or this coming June, two years ago, he was invited to CBMC to an outreach dinner by a Christian friend. who has been used of God, incidentally, to bring numbers of people to the Lord Jesus. In fact, he happens to be the man who drove Billy Graham's father's pickup truck to the meeting the night that Billy Graham came to know the Lord under the minister of Mordecai Ham.
His name is Albert MacMacon. And God had singularly used this man just to invite somebody and take them to a meeting and they found the Lord. Now, he's not the kind of fellow that'll stay around and spend a lot of time with them, getting them into the words. You have to trust the Lord to lead somebody else to do that. His gift is getting them there and getting them saved. So Albert MacMacon had brought my friend Bob Lindsay. Well, I'd never met him until that night. He's one of my best friends now. So he brought Bob Lindsay to the CBMC meeting. John Shute, Joe Coggsville, and Ted DeMoss were there. And they all spoke very briefly. And Bob Lindsay told us later, after he'd gotten established in the word, in fact he's already by now, he's the membership chairman of CBMC and the new committee in Columbia.
He said, that night that I was at that meeting, all I could think of was, where can I get me a six-pack of beer and go find a woman? That's the state that he was in. Also, his business was on the verge of bankruptcy. He bought a large plot of land, and he was about to lose it. He couldn't make payments on it. He made some unwise investments, and everything that he had was just about ready to cave in. And that was one of the reasons why when Albert MacMacon invited Bob Lindsay to come to a CBNC dinner, because he didn't tell him what kind of dinner it was, he said, I want you to go have dinner with me. He said, well, it's a free meal.
And maybe something that he can help me. He said, we're going to have businessmen that telling us about what enabled them to succeed in life. Well, he was about to be defeated in life and lose all he had. So he said, what do I have to lose? So he wasn't paying much attention to what they were saying. But he did show a little interest. And several of us were aware of this because he did raise his hand for prayer at the close. And we brought Joe Cox all over and introduced Joe to Bob Lindsay. Joe took him into a little room and got down to business with him. Bob and Bob Lindsay made a real genuine decision. His life has really been transformed since that day.
Less than two years ago. And Bob was in the room when I shared this with him and he was just blowing his beans and enjoying every minute of it. Now, say right now, there are ten things that happen I found. because of the grace of God, we found the Lord Jesus. I call it transforming grace, so we can't spend very much time on any of them. Number one, and now, ten relationships that we had previously changed when grace, the grace of God, came into our hearts and lives. Number one, our relationship to God the Father changed. Before we knew the Lord, And before the grace of God found place in our lives, we were enemies to God.
We could not speak to him. We could not call upon him unless we would call upon him to save us by grace. We are now sons. Instead of being under the wrath of God, now we are under his special care. And we have access into his presence. I heard the story, and I'm going to have to start writing these things down, because I've never ever written this one down. I just remember this when I thought of this passage here, this truth. On one occasion, the Queen of England, this is the President's Queen, was making one of her tours over different parts of the world, and her son, who is now the Prince, I suppose the Prince of Wales, you people, is that right?
All right. The Prince of Wales was away in school. And he was away in a school in an area where the Queen of England was going to be staying overnight. Well, I just see him, you know, he's dressed in his military uniform. Unless you knew him very, very well, you wouldn't necessarily know who he was. I suppose he had some identification on him, I'm sure. And he came to the gate where they were guarding the place where the Queen of England was saying. And he said, I'd like to see the Queen. And he said, oh, no, no, no, no. No way. Well, yeah, sure, there are plenty of people who like to see the Queen. He said, yes. Let's see this.
He said, I am the Prince of Wales. Oh, yes. Yes. Well, I certainly come on in and see the Queen. You see, he had immediate access in their presence. And you know, when we come to know the Lord Jesus Christ, we come to know the living God through His Son Jesus Christ, we have immediate access in this presence. And this is one relationship that certainly changed drastically when we came to know Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord. Now, I was going to read some scripture from portions in the Thompson Bible, but I don't have time. But in case you have a Thompson Bible, it's in sections thirty-eight and thirty-nine and forty.
But I didn't have time to get into that because I took some time up talking about the books. All right. Number two. Our relationship as believers changed in regard to Christ, the Son of God. Because at one time we were without him and without hope. But now by grace we've been made nice. United to him. Cleanse by his blood and kept by his power. Now, if you... going to make a study of this you could look up that truth about being made nigh about the rent veiled about the immediate access into the presence of his son Ephesians two tells us some truth about this but we'll just read the first verse of two in Ephesians two he says and you happy quickens are made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins where any time passed, ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.
So, if you were making a study of this, you could go deeper and make a study of our access that we have into the presence of God's Son, Jesus Christ, of course, in the presence of the Holy Spirit. And in coming into the presence of the living God, the Father, we come when we mention the name of the Lord Jesus. This young man, the Prince of Wales, all he had to do was to let them know who he was. And you see, his relationship to the Queen of England was quite different from some other guy just walking along on the street. You see, he happened to be her son. And because of this fact, he had immediate access into her presence.
And when you and I come to God, the Father, We can come immediately into His presence because we are His Son. Number three, our relationship to the Holy Spirit has changed. Of course, we didn't really have any relationship to the Holy Spirit before, but we do now. Before, He had no place in our hearts which was like a cage full of unclean birds. But now He abides within us as our guide and as our compasses. Let's turn for a moment to John's Gospel, chapter fourteen.
John fourteen, verses sixteen, seventeen and eighteen. Verse sixteen, John fourteen. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another comforter that he may abide with you forever. even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it seeth him not neither knoweth him but ye know him for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you I will not leave you comfortless I will come to you one of the things and I hate to use that word things but one of the truths and one of the realities that's what I'd rather say one of the realities that those of us who are Christians can thank God for every day is the person of the Holy Spirit.
If you remember, I believe perhaps the first day that I was here, I'll tell you about a lady in Columbia who was one of the deans of the University of South Carolina. And way back when I was a young Christian and working with Interlostic Christian Fellowship, she said, sharply, whenever you pray to the Lord, especially in your private devotions, always thank God for himself. thanking for His Holy Spirit that indwells you, and thanking for the Lord Jesus, and thanking for His Word. And you know what I did? I got in a habit, and I'm still doing it, and I'm glad. Thanking for Himself, thanking for His Holy Spirit, thanking for His Son, Jesus Christ, and thanking for His Word.
Alright, we must hurry on. Thank God for His Holy Spirit. We have a changed relationship with the Holy Spirit. indwells our hearts and our lives. And, of course, that's a whole new ballground. It's a whole new topic. You go on for a week talking about the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. All right. Now, our relationship with the law has changed drastically, completely. Before grace came, we were under the law and because of sin, under the curse. Now we are no longer under the law, but under grace. And the law is being fulfilled in us who walk in the Spirit.
We'll just turn to one verse. Look at Galatians, three, and I believe it's twenty-four. Galatians, three, twenty-four. We've just studied Galatians, and I had the privilege of teaching it, at least when I was in town, at our fellowship in Columbia. Galatians three, twenty-four. Therefore the law has become our tutor, to lead us to Christ that we may be justified by faith. We should thank God for the law. It was through the law that we became aware of the fact that we were lost and that we needed to come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I believe a verse that I probably meant to read also is right here in chapter two of Galatians. Verse sixteen, one of the greatest verses in the Bible, it's a long verse. Very meaningful. Nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law. Since by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. All right. The next thing. Our relationship to the power of sin. it's completely changed.
I'm sure that some of you have heard the program unshackled over the radio. We get unshackled. In fact, we can pick it up on three different stations in the Columbia area. We can pick it up on an AM station in Columbia. We can pick it up on a new Bible College FM educational station. And we have a station now forty miles away in a place called Orangeburg, which is program on shackled. And from time to time, especially when I'm driving in the car, I'm able to pick up on shackled. And on shackled is simply a program of what God has done in transforming people from derelicts in all kinds of walks of life into jewels of the grace of God.
And every one of them will tell again and again about at least many of them do how they try it again and again and again to have victory and dominion over sin. But you see, apart from the grace of God and apart from the power of the Holy Spirit and the life of an individual, there's no real hope of having victory over sin. Because the power of sin is tremendous. And it's not until the grace of God comes and the Holy Spirit of God indwells the life that can really have victory and power over sin. And so we hear the story of men like Mel Trotter, the man who stole shoes off of his dead baby's feet from the mortuary to go upon the shoes to get money to buy alcohol.
Yet that man was gloriously converted, and I believe I'm not mistaken, he was the man who started the Pacific God mission, didn't that right? And it's a real challenge and a real blessing to be reminded on God's word and from actual experience of what God has done to release men and women from the power of sin. Romans six, fourteen says sin shall not have dominion over you. Sin shall not have dominion over you. If you've taken notes, put this reference down because we don't have time to turn to it. Titus two, twelve to fourteen. All right. The sixth thing.
The sixth relationship that has been changed as a result of the grace of God is our relationship to the present world has changed. In times past, we walked according to the course of the world, but now we have been chosen out of the world and have been sent into the world to be witnesses to the world. We used to love the world, but now we love not the world, but I hate it. by the world. And your reference there, of course, is First John, two, fifteen, and seventeen. As to the world's standards and ideals, if we've really grown in the Lord at all, our relationship to the world has changed, and we are more concerned now by what pleases the Lord, what will honor him, what will bring glory to him, what will be the most good to the most people in the spiritual way from my life.
At one time, my ambitions, my goals, my hopes, my aspirations, were all built around what it could do for me. Whereas I would hope now, my ambitions, my goals, my aspirations, my ideals are definitely related to what can it do for the glory of God and for his body, the church. All right? We've been changed in relationships. Our relationship has been changed so far as good works is concerned. Until grace came, we trusted in our good works for salvation. You know, when you talk to people who don't know the Lord, you can almost tell before they start talking, what they're going to say because they all use the same script you know what I'm talking about you speak to somebody and and this is especially true I've been listening to a lot of people talk about the reform the church
the reformed background do you speak to some of these people see they've been trusting in the church and in ordinances and in ritual and in baptism and things like that for many, many years. And it almost breaks your heart sometimes when you speak to these dear people and you ask them what they're putting their hope for salvation in. And they've come out with this long list of things. This, this, this, this, this. And the tragedy of it is that the Word of God is so very, very simple in telling us that salvation is not by words. but it's by the grace of God.
It's a free guilt. Sometimes the Lord uses one verse to open our eyes and let us see. Sometimes it's several verses. Sometimes it's a whole study before we can find out what God really means by saving us by his grace. I'm sure that many of you Might have hurt me, and I don't know what I would have used this when I was here before. I might have, but it was better repeated. I was in Augusta, Georgia, and this was back when I was working with Innavasti.
I well remember now. I was visiting in the home of Brother Virgil Holland's word. I was going to speak at Bethany Chapel on Sunday night. This was on a Friday night. And Brother Osmos Havana, who some of you knew, who was there in heaven, had been driving from the Columbia area to Augusta. It was during World War II, and he picked up this young aviation cadet from Shaw Field. That's near Sonsa, out from Columbia. and he had been talking to him about what it meant to know the Lord and to be saved all the way. I remember he even told me where he picked him up.
He picked him up at what we call horseshoe pond in Columbus. Right over in West Columbia, U.S. number one came right by. It still does, but you use interstate now. But anyway, all the way to Augustine, he talked to him about the Lord. Well, the young fellow was from an entirely different background, from another culture practically. He was from Detroit. He'd never heard the gospel in his life, but the Lord had been working in his life and preparing him, but he just couldn't understand how you could be saved any way but by doing this and doing this and doing this and doing this. And so, Brother Tapness, we'll come on home and we'll have Edna to fix us a lunch and we'll continue to talk because the train didn't leave until about midnight of Atlanta and then for Detroit.
And along about eight o'clock the phone rang. and Brother Hollingworth, and Brother Tappner said, this is Osmond. I've got a young man here. I've been witnessing to him. I don't seem to be able to get through to him. Why don't you come and bring that young fellow shot with you of inner velocity, will you, and see if you can help it? So we were five minutes away, so we got in the car and went over there to where the Tappner's were living. And we talked and we read and we talked and we read and we talked and we read. But he couldn't understand it. And we said, well, maybe we ought to ask the Lord to give us a verse.
Well, that's the way we made our mistake. We should ask him to begin with. Now, Lord, Brother Captain, has been talking to this fellow through four hours. And we just need your wisdom of what verse to use. So we prayed and asked the Lord to lead us to a verse. And he led us to a verse we hadn't thought of. We should have thought of it right away. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that in our yourselves is to give to God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And that was the verse the Lord had used me to bring into himself. Because I'd been trusting in my works and my membership in the Methodist Church and how active I was in the Sunday school and all that I was doing, it was good. And so we turned to Ephesians two, eight, nine.
We read it and we said, now Mason, that was his name, Mason Metz. Do you understand that? No. Well, now Mason, I tell you what we're going to do. We're going to read it very, very slowly. And we're going to pray with every word that you'll understand what this means. In fact, Mason, you read it a verse at the time. You repeat after us a word at the time as we read it. Four, four, five. thy grace grace are are ye ye save save through through save and and that that not not are are yourselves yourselves it is it is The gift.
The gift. The gift. It's a gift. It's a gift. It's a gift. It's a gift. It's a gift. It's a gift. It's a gift. That's what it is. It's a gift. It's not a word. When words get most about it and brag about it, it's a gift. It's a gift. It's a gift. It's a gift. And I broke across his face and tears streaming down his cheeks because he'd realized salvation was a gift to God. Well, that's probably about then it's ten o'clock, about another hour or two before his train left.
And we did two hours a week. opened up the Augusta Bible Institute right there. He got on the train and we had tracks and booklets in his pockets. Away he went. He went to Detroit. He told his people over Christmas what had happened. They practically kicked him out of the house. In fact, he came back to Miami, Florida for his some of his flight training early because things were so hard at home on him. We got in touch with him in Florida and put him in touch with some of the Christians there and they had him into their home in Florida and they continued the follow-up in Miami, Florida that we started on Augusta, Georgia.
He went ahead to San Antonio, Texas and got his wings. Then he was transferred to Italy for combat. And over the Fluesta oil fields in Romania, I believe it was, he gave his life to his country. But when I get to heaven, mostly Mason met, do you remember that night in Osmo, Catherine's home, when you stopped and when you realized for the first time that salvation was a gift of God, that it works. Blessed be any man. And there are literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people today in this country, in this state, that are just hoping, just hoping that they're doing enough good to marry salvation.
Or they're just, they're trusted falsely in their words and in their church membership and in their baptism and in their catechism and all these things. And they're just as long as the heart and thoughts in Africa because they've been deceived and they do not realize that eternal life and forgiveness is by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. All right. We've got ten minutes and three other things. All right. We have changed in our relationship. Oh, by the way, there's a good verse. Oh, I've got to read this for you. It's one of my favorites. It's in Romans four, verse five. But to him that worketh not but believeth on him, that justifies the ungodly.
His faith is counted for what? Righteousness. One of the greatest verses in the Bible, right there. All right. The third of the eighth thing that changed as a result of the grace of God in our lives is the way we look at trials and afflictions. Now, you know, before you know the Lord and before you learn to trust in Him, when trials and afflictions and difficulties come, we think of them as our enemies. Terrible. Terrible. Just don't want to have anything to do with them. Hope I don't ever have any. But when the Lord Jesus becomes our Savior and our Lord, when we have problems and when we have trials and when we have difficulties and sometimes what we call afflictions, If we are really in touch with the Lord, we are aware of the fact that more than likely God is using whatever this is to teach us some wonderful lesson and to prepare us for a ministry that we could never have had we not had these trials and
these afflictions. Do you think that Fanny Crosby could have written those twenty-two hundred hymns the same way she wrote them if she had had eyesight? And I shall see him face to face and tell the story saved by grace. No. Do you think that Johnny Erickson could have been seated in a wheelchair paralyzed from her shoulders to the end of her toes with the glory of the Lord flowing out on that wonderful pretty place and told about the joy and the peace it was to know and love the Lord Jesus if she had been perfectly whole the way she was six years ago when she jumped into that shallow place into who?
No. One of the strongest testimonies I ever heard in my life is Jesus Christ. I'm reminded, I promised my daughter-in-law is going to read that book on this trip, and I took it for granted that Brother Bob would have it in a store, and you're out of it, and so I'm going to have to get a reassignment on it when I get back, and read it when I get back. But the people who have read the book, it's called Johnny, and it's been greatly used by the Lord to bless a lot of people. You see, the Christian is the one who can come and say, yes, I know that all things work together for good. And by the way, a lot of Christians, I think you maybe caught this, it's not right to take one half of a verse and use it and cut it off.
That's taking Scripture out of its context and you shouldn't do it because all things don't work together for good. Not like that? No. All things work together for good to those that love the Lord, to those who really know the Lord, who are the cause according to His purpose. You never know this apart from the grace of God. All right? Our relationship to death has changed. Before the grace of God was known, death was clothed in robes of dreadful terror. its fear was ever upon us.
Now we know that death, for the Christian, is a vanquished foe, a gateway in the glory. O death, where is thy seed? O grave, where is thy victory? About three weeks ago, one of Jim's friends, grandmother, died, and they used to live near us, and so Jim knew the grandmother and loved her. And so Jim and Dottie went to the funeral room out of appreciation for her and for the family. And when they came back, they brought me a very, very good report because the pastor of this church, which happens to be a real fine evangelical church, very outgoing church, is a very, very godly man, and he brought a note of victory to the people.
because he knew that Nanny was with the Lord. And he was reminding the people there that if you know the Lord Jesus, that death holds a far different outlook than if you didn't know the Lord. And I was reminded when Dottie and Jim came back and told me this of an illustration that I heard Donald Ray Bonhoeff give in person one day. He was one of the great preachers, as far as I'm concerned, of past generations. And I was honored to count him as one of my friends.
He said that when he was a little boy, one day a wasp stung him in the finger, just a wee little left. And he ran to his mother and said, mama, mama, mama, a wasp stung me. She said, just a minute, come here, come here. And she got me squeezed. pulled the finger out and he quit hurting. He said that's exactly what Jesus Christ did when he went to the cross and into the tomb. He came out. He removed this thing of death. I don't mind people knowing I'm fifty-six years old.
My wife gets after me if I say fifty-seven because I really won't be fifty-seven till seven o'clock in the morning June the fifth. Because she's thirty-nine and holy. But anyway, sometimes I get to thinking about all the friends that I have that love the Lord. They're gone. I get to thinking about them. And I sometimes figure, hey, you got more friends up there than you have down here. It's going to be wonderful to see them, but you know, the one that I really look forward to seeing is my Lord. But I think of Dawson Trotman and Dr.
Wright who led me to Christ and the Barbara's, the people that gave me the books. They're both in heaven now. Their daughters are still around, but they're in heaven. I think of my friend Paul Beckwith. And Homer Hammond Tree, who joked at me one time, I didn't put on any weight till after I got four years of age. And I was at the Ben Lippincott Conference once, and I was kind of kidding him about his weight. And he was always very robust, you know. He's kind of like Bill Carl. He could probably put his hand out on his stomach and say, I love that verse over in Leviticus. And all the fat is the Lord. But anyway, Homer Tree said to me one day, he said, Hugh, He says, you're so skinny.
I don't see how you can tell when you've got the backache and the stomachache. Well, anyway, I think about Hammond Tree and Paul Beckwith and a lot of wonderful friends. Brother Harold Harper, Alfred Gibbs, many others that are with the Lord. Heaven is the richer because we're there. But the one that I really would call to see him is my wonderful Lord. And the last thing, I said there are ten things. The last thing is a relationship and the attitude that we have toward the judgment has been changed completely. The judgment.
When we wondered in the darkness of doubt and sin, the prospect of judgment casts an awful shadow over the soul. Now the judgment seat for the faithful Christian means a place of reward. place of rewards. And I have in my notes sing a song about grace. Well, we don't have time because I've taken up all this. The time. But those are the ten things that changed because of the grace of God. Our relationship to God the Father. Our relationship to Christ the Son. Our relationship to the Holy Spirit. Our relationship to the law. Our relationship to the power of sin.
Our relationship to this present world. Our relationship to good works. Our relationship to trials and afflictions. our relationship to death, and last but not least, our relationship to the Jacob. Shall we pray? Father, thank you for reminding us of all that we have in our wonderful Lord. Bless us now, the remainder of the day, as some of us will be enjoying the sun and water and get some packing done and busy with friends and come back tonight. our final session of this conference. Again, we pray that your hand would be upon this place if it had in the past, and we thank you again by faith that you're going to work out some way the problems concerning the financial needs offered upon us because we know you're able.