You’re Important to God

“We are the Bibles the world is reading; We are the creeds the world is needing; We are the sermons the world is heeding.”
― Billy Graham

The scripture says he went about doing good.
He made the blind to see and the cripple to walk and the depth to hear.
He took the immoral and cleansed them, cleansed. The leper still the storms at sea.
Jesus was never asked for help without responding.
And we’re a world filled with problems, searching for purpose and meaning in your life.
What is life all about? Why are you here?
What’s the purpose of where did you come from? Where are you going?
Do you ever ask yourself those questions? The Bible says, God created you for a purpose? Why?
Because God loves God wanted other people in the universe to respond with love to Him.
We are created in God’s image.
In other words, we are little Gods in the image of God and He loves you.
You are important to God. And if you forget everything else that is said this week, remember two things you are important to God and God loves you and God wants you to love your neighbor as yourself.
Remember those things and then there is fear.
The Philippine jailer was afraid when the earthquake came and the walls of the jail came tumbling down and he thought the Roman authorities would kill him for allowing the prisoners to escape.
But the Apostle Paul who was one of the prisoners said, don’t harm yourself. We’re still here.
And this jailer fell down, trembling and said, what must I do to be saved?
H G Wells said before he died at Oxford, he said, that’s the greatest question of the 20th century.
What must we do to be saved?
Because he said, I have very little hope that we’ll live out the 20th century as a human race.
What must we do to be saved? Paul gave a very simple answer.
He didn’t give a very complicated scientific mathematical formula.
He simply said, and he was one of the most brilliant men of his day.
He said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. That word believe means commitment.
I commit everything. I’ve got to him just as I stood on this platform, I committed my weight to it.
I’d never stood on it before in my life, but I believed that the people that built it were committed to building a platform that would hold a man.
And so I commit myself to Christ for my forgiveness, for my salvation, to fill my empty heart, to give me purpose and meaning to my life.
Then they’re spiritual diseases that people have. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night.
And Jesus said to Nicodemus, one of the most religious men of his time, you must be born again.
If you were to see the kingdom of Heaven. He said, you must.
He didn’t say, I think you ought to. He said you must.
And then the third thing about Jesus, he was not only the creative Christ and the compassion of Christ, but he was also the crucified Christ.
I remember being in Ireland and we walked down the street on Sunday morning at 10 30 where the bombs were going off and where they were shooting.
And then we saw a church, a protestant church on this side and a block away, a Catholic church.
And we knelt down in the middle of the street between the Protestants and the Catholics.
And we said, oh God, bring peace to Ireland.
And that’s still my prayer because on top of the Protestant church and on top of the Catholic church was a cross and that’s one thing we have in common.
We believe that the cross is the central fact of Christianity that Jesus Christ died for our sins.
Let me tell you, Jesus did it all on the cross when he bowed his head and said, it’s finished.
It’s finished. And you, you cannot buy your way to heaven.
You could have all the money in all the world and you couldn’t even get a glimpse of heaven.
You could do all the good works.
You could have yourself nailed to 1000 crosses that wouldn’t get you to heaven.
The thing that gets you to heaven is what Jesus did on that cross, shedding his blood for us on that day at Calvary.
Why did he die? Not because he had sinned. He died in our place.
The scripture says for he made him to be sin for us.
Who knew no sin that we might be made. The righteousness of God in him, think of it.
He was made sin. He became guilty of your sins.
He became guilty of adultery, of murder, of lying, of envy of jealousy.
He became guilty, took all the guilt on Him.
And because He did that, God says I can forgive you now. Why couldn’t God forgive everybody anyway?
If God had forgiven everybody anyway, he would not have been God because God had said to Adam and Eve in the day that you break my law, you’re going to suffer and die.
They broke God’s law deliberately and they passed it to Kane and Abel and Kane became a murderer.
They passed it from generation to generation to generation down to you and me and we’re all guilty.
The Bible says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
And that sin is going to keep us out of heaven.
It’s going to cause us to endure the pangs of hell.
What can we do?
Nothing it’s done for us by Christ and God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son on that cross for us.
He was crucified in our place so that we might be made.
The righteousness of God think of it that you can be as righteous as God in the sight of God because of Christ, how glorious that is.
The Bible says He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all because of the cross.
God offers you today forgiveness, justification just as if you had never sinned, peace, joy, a new nature, eternal life, the Holy Spirit, eternal glory is all yours.
Because of Christ. Jesus Christ didn’t just risk his life in a treacherous sea to save you.
He died on the cross and you must come to the cross and confess that you have sinned and say to God, I’m sorry, I’m willing to change my way of life.
Are you willing to do that?
You can’t do it by yourself, but God will help you.
If you say that you are willing.
He was not only the creative Christ, the compassionate Christ, the CRE the crucified Christ.
He’s the conquering Christ Paul wrote We are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
Yes, Jesus Rose from the dead. He’s alive.
I do not preach a dead Christ. He is alive.
Now in Time magazine on April 14th of this year, they quote John Pope John Paul in his newly released pronouncement entitled Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation.
He says this that the basis of liberation is the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, which have freed us from the most radical evil, nameless sin and the power of death.
Everybody in Jerusalem that day said he’s dead.
But the scripture says he was buried, but he rose again on the third day.
And Jesus said in revelation one, I’m he that liveth and was dead and behold, I’m alive forever more and have the keys of hell and death.
Think of it. I’ve got the keys of hell and death.
You don’t ever have to see eternal death and eternal hell because I have the keys.
I’ve come to deliver you. Let me, I’ve come to pardon you.
I remember one time I was in Tennessee and the governor of Tennessee at that time was named Frank Clement.
I never forget that. And he took me out to the prison to speak to 21 people on death row and I spoke to them and he spoke to them and I asked him and I said, Governor, I said, if you pardoned one of those men and he rejected it, would it still be a pardon?
And he said, no, he said we had an example of that.
That was before the court some years ago in this state.
He said, if you offer a pardon to a man who is condemned and he refuses it.
The courts have ruled that the sentence must be carried out.
God offers you a pardon today, but you must receive it.
I’m going to ask you to do that today to receive it.
And then he is also the contemporary Christ.
The most recent Gallup polling of Americans indicate that 68% of Americans profess to having been born again.
I don’t know how many of them are genuine, but I do know that whoever is born of God is someone who is repetitive sin and confess Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord have you, you can today before you leave here.
And that’s what this crusade is all about.
And the last point I would like to make is that he’s the coming Christ.
Jesus said I will come again.
Do you know anybody that can solve the problems of the world?
I’m going to be praying the whole time those men are meeting in Tokyo.
But I want to tell you something.
No summit meeting has ever solved all the problems of the world.
I read today in the paper that there are now 40 wars going on in the world.
And then I read a little bit further and they said that does not take into account many more that they don’t talk about.
So maybe there are 50 or 60 wars going on in the world today.
And in one sense, this new terrorism is a new kind of warfare. It’s war.
And do you know anybody that’s going to settle it?
All the greatest brains are working on it.
The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is the prince of peace and he’s coming back and bringing peace someday.
He’s coming back to save us from bombing ourselves off this planet and set up his kingdom of peace and prosperity.
When Martin Luther King gave that dream speech over here on the mall, that dream of his, he quoted so many scriptures and all those scriptures really have to do with the kingdom age when Christ will be the ruler as king of kings and Lord of Lords.
Someone said the other day quoted in the press that America needs desperately a philosophy of hope.
Well, our hope is in Christ and you can do.
You know Christ, you say, well, Billy, what would I have to do to know Him?
What does God require of me? Christ died for you.
He rose again. He loves you. He wants to help you.
He has arms outstretched toward you to take you in his arms and love you and help you and forgive you.
But you must do something, you must repent of your sins.
And the word repentance means to change, to change your mind about Him, to change your mind about yourself.
It means that you are willing to start living a new life.
You’re going in this direction and you start going in a new direction.
Now, God has to help you even in the repenting because you can’t do it alone.
And then the second thing you must receive Him by faith by faith, you’ll never understand it all intellectually.
If you wait till you can understand it all intellectually, you’ll never come.
The scripture says by wisdom, men cannot know God.
You come with your mind, but you also come with your heart. But primarily it’s your will.
I remember when I got married, we stood in front of the clergyman in the little Presbyterian Church in North Carolina and the minister asked, will you have this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?
I didn’t say, I hope so. I think so. She’s a lovely girl.
I’m in love with. I didn’t say any of that.
That had all been settled and assumed by the clergyman.
I said, I will not that loud, but I said it and she became my wedded wife.
Yeah. In the same way you say to Christ, I look at the cross where he died for me and I could love him.
That’s your emotion.
And then you listen a little bit further and you say, well, it’s logical.
I don’t see any other philosophy in the world comparable to it.
I don’t see any other religion that could do more. I believe that is the right way.
But you really don’t come to Christ until you say I will, I’ll follow him, I’ll serve him.
I’ll surrender to him.
I will with his help, turn from my sins and receive him into my heart by faith.