Gooding, David: Weakness and Ungodliness

Thank you for your kindly welcome. It is certainly a privilege to be back among you. I read to you now from the Epistle to the Romans, chapter five. The Epistle to the Romans, chapter five. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. We not only so, but we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Let us also rejoice in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience probation, and probation hope, and hope putteth not to shame, because the love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Ghost which was given unto us. For while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die. For peradventure for the good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. And may God be pleased to help us understand his holy word. The verses that we have just read from the Bible tell us clearly two important things about our personal salvation. They indicate that sin, that common ailment from which we all suffer, takes many different forms. It can be described as weakness. It can be described as ungodliness. Those who practice it are described as sinners, or again, they may be regarded as the very enemies of God. Sin takes many different forms. Sometimes one form is more prominent in a man than in another. The other thing these verses tell us so clearly is that whatever form sin takes in each man or woman, the key to our deliverance and our salvation from sin is in this fact that God loves us even when we are yet sinners. Let us consider together this evening briefly how this works out in actual human experience. I begin with that form of sin which is weakness. I suppose if we wanted to illustrate our to ourselves the weakness of sin, we could do no better than to think of two men of whom we read in the Bible, of Peter the Apostle and of Pontius Pilate, who crucified our Lord. Peter was a big man, a big brawny fellow, a man that you would have thought had endless courage at his resource. Peter was the man who was prepared in the dark, with only one sword to face a whole gang of soldiers. A man that would have been prepared to rush into a battle and go down fighting. A man of tremendous physical courage. And yet, sin had worked in Peter, like a worm gnawing at a beam of wood all unsuspectingly, to a strong beam that looks heavy enough to keep up a roof is rattled through and breaks. And sin had worked in Peter's heart and had left him weak. A man that would have dared face a tank of soldiers, standing unarmed in front of a little maid, was afraid of his life to confess the same. Deep down in his heart, he believed Jesus was the Son of God. But defenseless, without any arms to face the laughter of a barrack room. Just to stand there and take it. More than Peter could do. To cover up his confusion, he swore all the words he knew. Try and prove he wasn't a Christian. I wonder if you have any fellow feeling for Peter? Ever felt like that yourself? I wonder if I speak to a man here, young or old, in your heart of hearts you believe that Jesus is the Christ, you've never yet confessed him. The real reason, if it were probed, is this, that sin has left you weak. I don't speak as being superior to you. There's never a bigger card than the man who stands before you. But there have been many men. Men that would have died valiantly in battle and have faced the cannon's mouth unflinching. But would be scared stiff to enter a room and confess that Jesus was their savior. Weak. It isn't, it isn't true to think that if somehow we were bigger men and more influential men, then we wouldn't care what people said. Remember Pilate, don't you? Man that was responsible for the crucifixion of our Lord. He was a public figure. He wasn't some unknown, uneducated fisherman like Peter was. Here was a man in charge of all the troops in Jerusalem, general officer commanding. With all that power under his thumb, he was a man that at heart was weak. While he was with the crowd, the crowd moved him. As he listened to their booing and their cheering, he was chilled to the heart. He dared go against them. So to try and make up his mind, he left them and went into the Savior and talked to the Savior. And there, in the presence of the Savior, he was convinced that he was right, and he trembled as he listened to him speak. Surely this was the Son of God here. He must, he must deliver him. So he felt when he was with the Savior. But five minutes after, when he was outside in the crowd, then once more the crowd got him scared. He was torn this way and torn that way and couldn't make up his own mind. A weak man. Oh, how many a man has been like that since, and woman. Inside a gospel meeting, as God's word is read, and God speaks to them of reality, of truth, of judgment to come, of heaven and hell, they say, yes, that's right, I know that's right, I ought to be saved. For a while, they feel all convinced. Five minutes outside the door with ungodly companions, and those impressions are gone, and now they're going in with their fling with their ungodly companion. At the end of the week may be to think again, and so they vacillate from one to another, weak men, weak men. I wonder if I touch a secret court here, I say again, I'm not here to boast that I'm any better than you. I'm tarred with this same brush. But sin has done a dreadful thing to the human heart. It's left it weak, perilously weak. With eternity at stake, as many a man can't make up his mind because he's blown here and there, afraid of what other men will say or think or do. The key to that situation? Oh, thank God there is a way out of that impasse. There's always a way of being saved from the weakness of sin and the awful consequence to which it could lead a man or a woman. That way is found in the love of God, who, when we were yet weak, commended his love towards us in the Christ died for us. You say to yourself, I could never be a Christian. I could never face the music. I could never prevail upon myself to make up my mind and stick to it. If I said I was saved tonight, then tomorrow I don't face my companions. You certainly would be lost if it weren't for the love of God, who doesn't wait until you become strong, doesn't wait until your willpower is so strong that you wouldn't care what anybody says. But he loves you right now, and is prepared to receive you right now, and before you are any better, is prepared to have you and count you his son right now. The key is found in the love of God, who has done his very greatest thing for us all, while we were all of us still weak through the results of sin. For when we were yet weak, in due time Christ died for us. You see, it was a desperate situation. If God had waited until we could somehow become strong, then we never would have been saved, for we should never have been strong enough. Therefore, in due time, in the very nick of time, Christ died for weak men and weak women. It means, sir, it means, madam, that this very night here, without any beginnings of improvement, this very night, God is prepared to save us. He is prepared to forgive the past. He is prepared to take us and make us his sons, his children, right now, without first asking that we've got to improve. He won't leave us as we are. For the God that is prepared tonight in his infinite love to forgive us because Christ died for. Prepared to receive us just as we are without improvement now, is a God that will work mightily in us by his Holy Spirit. That same Peter who quaked in his shoes before a girl on the door, was afraid of a barrack room of soldiers. That same Peter, a few weeks later, stood up in front of three thousand people in a public square. An uneducated man that he was, and unused to speaking in publicly, had the moral courage to face the rulers of the state who had put our Lord to death and publicly charged them with the murder of Christ. What had happened to Peter? Peter had known the forgiveness of a Lord who, in the very moment that Peter denied him, loved him still and went to the cross to die for Peter, that Peter might be forgiven. And the Christ who loved him and kept him, though he was a weak man, and took him on those terms, but of a Christ who came into that man's life and gave him a new power, gave him his Holy Spirit. That he will do for us all. I'm not saying that if we are, were to trust Christ tonight and be saved, we should find that we were never weak again. I should be going against the Bible itself if I told you that. That same Bible that tells me that Peter, who stood up on the day of Pentecost and preached that wonderful sermon to three thousand people and more, that same Peter, when he was at Antioch once, got scared of certain of his fellow Christians. And instead of standing boldly for his rights as a Christian, he pretended. He pretended to what virtually was a lie. Same old trouble. In himself, still Peter was a weak man. But oh, thank God, his salvation didn't depend on his being strong. Peter, with all his weakness that followed him to some extent to the grave, Peter rested on a savior who loved him and died for him while he was still weak, and guaranteed to save him eternally. But with all that, the savior did work a work in that man's heart, and that man who was afraid to start with of a girl at the door, a man who during his life now and again slipped back under that old weakness, that man, so we are told, ended his life crucified upside down, defenseless, in the end crucified upside down, and went out victoriously, confessing his Lord. Oh, what a wonderful thing the love of God is, that can save a man and strengthen him and make him victorious, because it loves him, even when he's weak. Let us, let us get this thing clear. The weak man, the weak woman that turns to Christ is received and welcomed and saved eternally. But the weak man and the weak woman that doesn't turn to Christ, listen, this is what weakness does. Says the Bible, the fearful and the unbelieving shall have their part in the lake of fire. That's what sin does. It makes a man get scared of receiving the Savior and confessing him before men, so scared of men that in the end he topples into hell Itself. itself. It's a cruel thing. Can I not urge upon anybody here that's not yet saved, that you stop this thing before it ruins, ruins you eternally. And not asking the impossible. God doesn't ask the impossible. He doesn't ask you to try and be better. He asks you to come to a savior right here and now, and dare to trust him, weak as you are. And he'll take you now. And he'll not only forgive you, not only receive you eternally, but he is able to make you stand in all the circumstances of life. But with other men, it's not so much apparent that sin has made them weak. Sin with them has been one everlasting and continuous coming short. That's what sin is, in one of the ways of looking at it. It is forever to be aiming at a goal and forever to be missing it. Sometimes to come a long way off, an evident miss. Sometimes almost to get it, a near miss, but as miss is as good as a lie. To come short. You'll know what that means, surely. To have determined with your s- yourself that now you're going to live according to better standards. You've aimed high, you are tended to be a decent woman. You determined you would not lose your temper the next time the child overtipped a cup of tea. You determined to be a sweet-tempered woman, and kindly, and not to let that tongue run away with you and scathingly slander Mrs. Jones up the street. And you aimed high. And come short. Come short. And you have known the bitterness of frustration. You've known what it is to kick yourself with disappointment, and as you look back over it, to feel a sense of shame rise in your bosom. Coming short. Sin has done that for all of us. For all have sinned and do come short. Albeit there have been some fine men. The man that the, the Bible holds out to us as the very chief of sinners is not perhaps the type of man that you would have thought. He was a man who, beyond many his equals, had aimed high. A man that took the Ten Commandments seriously and aimed to live up to them. In fact, he did it so well, he thought for many years that he'd done it completely. And then one day, as he was reading his Bible, or perhaps it was he was thinking, and a verse that he had read many times but never really thought of came home convictingly. Thou shalt not covet. And at once all his dreams were shattered. He knew in his heart of hearts was here was one commandment that he had broken. He tried desperately to repair the damage and and keep the commandment, but he couldn't stop himself coveting. And all his proud empire fell. You see, God's law is not like some people imagine it to be. So many think that God's law is a kindly thing, a benevolent institution, a system of advice that comes alongside of us in life and says, now I should do that if I were you, and I should do that if I were you. Now this is the way it ought to be done. Have a go at that. And then when we aim at the mark and we try to keep God's law, people think, uh, it comes alongside and pats us gently on the shoulder and says, you made a very good effort to keep the law. Of course, you didn't reach it a hundred percent. No, you just missed it by a few fractions, but it was a, it was a very good effort. You did very well. Ninety percent. you kept it nine times out of ten. Very, very good. Ninety percent is a distinction mark. They think it's like that. God's law is nothing of the sort. God's law says you will keep all the law, you will keep it always, and you will keep it a hundred percent. And so long as you keep it perfectly and a hundred percent, you will be well. But let a man break it once, just once. Instead of coming along and saying, yes, nine out of ten, that's very good. The law comes along, and with all its thunder, it curses that man or that woman to the face. Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things to do them. Cursed. That's God's standard. Says God, you see, if you keep all the law and you break one point, you're guilty of all. How easy then it is to come short. You say that isn't fair, a man would do, a man would do his very best, and he would keep it nine times out of ten. and sir, do you say that if he did one mistake at the end, then it's all gone for nothing? That isn't fair. But then it's a, it is the fact. Here's a man, and he has set his self, himself to climb a mountain. He has climbed well the earlier slopes, but then anybody can climb the early slopes, they're they're child's play. He's done extraordinarily well. He's done the middle bit, and that was difficult. But now supremely difficult is the last climb, and it's almost a sheer face going up straight. And he begins the last wall to the top, and carefully he goes hand over hand, and the crowd below watch him through them, through their field glasses. Will he make it? He's got to within an inch of the top, and it's the last hold, and he goes to get the last hold, and he misses his mark, and he smashes himself to death on the rocks below. He missed it once. I tell you, you may aim at heaven by doing your very level best to keep God's law. Miss the last handhold, you'll smash. That's what God's law is like. Missing the mark. It's no good pretending, you know, that we'll do better next time. We know ourselves too well, don't we? We've missed the mark too many times to think that we could ever promise that we'd never miss it again. Suppose we could hit it every time now for the rest of our lives. What about the times when we've missed it before? It's like playing a piece of music, isn't it? You play it so well so far, you make a mistake. You can't rub it out though, can you? You can't take a mistake out. We've already missed the mark, and the law is against us. The key out, the key out of that prison. Oh, how wonderful in the love of God. For while we were yet sinners, God loved us, and Christ died for us, says his word. While we were yet sinners, while we were still missing the mark, God loved us. While we were still sinning, Christ died for us. Oh, God is a realist. My dear sir, if he asked me that I should forever be good before he would save me, I should never be saved. God shows his realism here when he takes a man like me who couldn't honestly promise that he would never sin again and loves me as I am. He sends his son to die for me while I was still a sinner, and takes me on those terms, just as I am. Oh, it doesn't mean that God winks at my sin. Many times I've tried to hit the mark and miss it, merely make me marvel at his son Jesus Christ, who always hit the mark and never sinned. They make me marvel at a God who was not prepared to wink at my sin and my shortcoming. There, in the person of his son Jesus Christ, God, the lawgiver, paid the penalty of his own law to uphold its sanctions, that I might go free and yet know that God had been honest and upright and absolutely just. The law has been honored, and yet I, the sinner, can go free. There's the key. You have said to yourself, madam, have you? I couldn't profess to be saved because, you know, I couldn't be a hypocrite. And you have wondered about these other people that say they're saved. You say, I don't know about that Mrs. Jones, you know, she says she's saved, but... saw her do that the other week, and that, and that. Now, I, I, I, I admit that I know better than her, and I do those things, but I wouldn't like to say I was saved. You think being saved is the same as claiming to be perfect. It isn't, you know. Being saved is only that you're a sinner and that you can't save yourself from trusting to a God who loves you while you're yet a sinner. And curiously enough, this is the way out of sinning. It begins here when we can fall back on a God who loves us while we're yet sinners, and because Christ has died, can assure us that there is no condemnation. And when we trust him, is therefore free to give us his Holy Spirit to begin the battle with sin on new terms and on a new ground. Do you not find the love of a God like that tugging at your heart? Dare you come and cast yourself on God like that, just as you are. This is the only way out. But let me remind you that if we do not find refuge in a God who's given his son for our salvation, if we never find forgiveness and therefore never find the gift of God's Holy Spirit, and we go on missing the mark. To miss the mark at last is to miss heaven and fall into hell. With other folks, it is not so much weakness. It is not so much that they've honestly tried to hit the mark and they've missed it. It's something sadder. These people are called ungodly, and we naturally recoil from the term. It means, it means literally someone that has no respect, someone that has no ref- reverence, that is no reverence for God, no reverence for his fellow men. A man to whom nothing is sacred. There are men and women like that. To them, God himself is not sacred, nor our Lord Jesus Christ. The times they mention him are times in their vile temper where they swear and curse. His name even is not sacred to them. To these people, truth is not sacred. They would tell you a lie to get themselves out of a difficult situation. They have no reverence for truth. The only thing they reverence is their own skin, their own selves. And to get self on the better side, they wouldn't hesitate to tell a lie. No reverence. Or they have no reverence for human rights. To make a bit of money, they wouldn't mind cheating a widow. No respect for human rights. And human feelings have no weight with them. So be itself is gratified. To them, their own bodies are not sacred. Sex is not sacred. Health itself is not sacred. They'll drink themselves blind drunk constantly. And in the end, the man that doesn't hold God in reverence, in the end, he doesn't reverence himself. And comes to despise himself is nothing sacred in life at all. Ah, it's an ugly and a nasty and a dirty thing. And more or less, the whole lot of us are tarred with that brush, are we not? We won't point a finger of scorn to the harlot on the street. If we've ever told one lie, if ever once we've been selfish. The way out of that, is there any way out? Ah, it is. It is to find a new standard, a new standard of values. Where shall we find a new standard of values for a man like that? Ah, we find it here in the love of a God who loves him while he's still ungodly. If I were to try and think of the most ungodly man I ever knew, the man that lacked reverence to the last degree, I think I would choose Judas Iscariot. Oh, what a horrible man he was. What a robber. Friendship was not sacred to the man. He had been admitted to the very friendship of Christ himself, and it wasn't a sacred thing. He was prepared to betray a friendship for thirty pieces of silver. Trust wasn't the sacred thing to him. They trusted him. He was treasurer and held the bag. What did he care about the faith they reposed in him? If he got the chance to pull a fast one, he pulled it. In the end, God wasn't sacred to him, for God sat on the other side of the table. What did he care? Sold him for thirty pieces of silver. A man that would have sold God out of his universe. Where shall we find a new standard of values for men like that? I say in the love of God, that loved even a Judas. On the very night in which he went out to betray him, our Lord handed Judas that sop of friendship and pressed it upon him, if only Judas would repent. So, madam, these, in the last analysis, are the only same standard of values for life, for life, and for eternity. A God that loves the like of you and me. Why does he love us? I can't tell you that. Save only that that's what God is like. This is the most precious thing in the universe, the love of God. He loves us because he will love us. He loves us not because there's some good or attractiveness in us, there is none. He loves us still. A thing that gives, the thing that gives a diamond its value, you know, is not its inherent property. It's a bit of glass. The thing that gives it its value is that some people admire it. Why they admire diamonds is difficult to say. Colorful pieces of glass, how they admire them. And because men and women admire them, the thing takes on its value. Why are you valuable? Why am I valuable? For the simple reason that God, for some reason, loves us. And his standard of values are this, that rather than you and I should perish, his own son will die for us. That's God's standard of values. Oh, how a sacred thing you are to God. God's standards of values are so big that his own son would suffer the very pains of hell rather than you perish. So sacred are you to God. My dear good man, my dear good woman, if you pass by the love of God like that, you shall go out into an awful jungle of a hell. Blessed are they that have right to go in at the gates of that eternal city. Why blessed? Because outside, how outside is every possible desecration you could think of. Fornicators and adulterers and liars and abomination and poisonous and murderous and suicides, the whole lot. An absolute jungle of desecration. It's no mere platitude that the love of God is the biggest and most valuable thing in the universe, and it's open tonight to every man and woman, however bad. It's the secret of our way out. Doesn't ask you to be better to start with. He asks you to change your mind and repent, and to come and receive his love in Christ, and he'll begin to clean up the life and give you standards of man. Saddest thing that can be said about sin and what it does in a human heart is it makes a man an enemy of God. The very God that made him and gave him his breath, gave him his brain to think with, and his breath to breathe with, and his hands to act. In the end, sin will take that man, that very creature of God, and make him an enemy of God. And it's not a rare thing. Men that don't intend to get saved, no time for God. Why are they his enemies? What's he done to them? I speak softly and tenderly, if I speak to any heart here that feels bitter against God, you have some tragedy in your life, maybe. You are plagued with a major illness or a terrible bereavement, and your heart feels so sore that you could call God your enemy. I speak tenderly to you. I don't suggest that there is a simple explanation to your trouble. But come now. We shouldn't have had a body at all to be ill, should we? Unless God had given us the body. If I were to give you a car today, a bright, shining, brand new car, and five years from now it went wrong, irretrievably wrong, would you feel bitter against me? Because the thing went wrong? You'd say, well, I got five years out of it anyway. Our wisdom is limited. Listen to what God said to Job when Job was feeling sore. Job, said he, all right, you know better than me. You get up and run in the morning one of these days. You make the sun get up, didn't you? What do you know about it anyway? What do you know about running the universe? Could you control the sea? Have a go at arranging the stars now. You do it. You do it better than I? We'd have to shut our mouths, shouldn't we? If God's done it wrong, we couldn't do it better. Ah, but we needn't fret our souls over much. I tell you of a God, it's like this. That while we were yet enemies, his son died for us. I'll tell you why men are enemies of God. It happened. It happened because our great first father, Adam, in all the delights of Eden, he rebelled against God. He insisted on having his own way. He transgressed and he fell, and ever since his race have been cursed by a nature that's an enemy of God. Put a command of God in front of me, and I kick, simply because I was born a sinner. You say, then that isn't fair. If I'm a sinner, if I'm an enemy of God because I've got an old wicked nature that I couldn't help, I just got it when I was born, then it isn't fair I should be condemned for it. Oh, listen. You're never going to be condemned because you've got an old nature that kicks against God. But God says, look here, I love you, and even though you've got a nature that's right bang up against me and my very enemy, I love you still, and I'm prepared to save you. I'm prepared to give you a new heart. And I'm prepared to take that enmity away if you'll let me. I loved you so much that while you were still an enemy, Christ died for you. Men and women will be condemned at last, if they are condemned because they refused the love of a God that loved them while they were still enemies. It's open to us. It's open to us this very night to lay down our rebellion and our hard thoughts against God and come and receive the love of a God that not only gives us forgiveness here, but assures us of present eternal life, assures us of his heaven and home at last, and all that God can give, or else. We may choose to keep away, we may kick, we may fight, but we're doomed to failure. Khrushchev has let off his bomb. My, it was a big bomb. For the first little tornado that comes across the world would leave it, leave it as another meteor. Fancy tiny men and women fighting against an infinite God. That's insanity. That is suicide. It's fiery indignation will consume his adversaries. What shall we do? As our hearts are touched, and we must confess ourselves full of this disease, what can we do this very night but to fall back upon a God who loves us, never before come repentingly and believe his love and receive his son as our sacrifice and savior. So we pray. Father, we bow to praise thee at the end of our thinking together for the wonder and the realism of thy love. We thank thee that it has not escaped thee what we are really like. We thank thee that thou art not deceived. Thou readest our hearts and knowest us better than we know ourselves. We praise thee that knowing the very worst about us, thou dost love us just the same. We praise thee for thy Son, our Lord, who while we were yet sinners, died for us. For those of us who have found in him our need answered. For those of us who already rejoice in thy love and its great salvation, we do praise thee and give thanks. Warmly and earnestly we pray that if any yet here are outside, have never come to thee, never confessed their need, never received the Savior. O God, open their hearts tonight, we pray, that they may come running to him, to find him as good as his word, find someone who will take them as they are and not cast them out. O forbid our God, we beseech thee, that any who tonight here have heard thine invitation should slip away out through weakness or sin or ungodliness or enmity, and end at last beyond thy love and beyond all hope forever. To this end, bless thy word, we pray, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.