I want to take my opportunity tonight to welcome all of you that are here and especially do I want to welcome those of the military that are here?
Now tonight, I want us to turn to the eighth chapter of Mark’s Gospel.
The eighth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, beginning with verse 31.
And Jesus began to teach them that the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected of the elders and of the chief priest and the scribes and be killed.
And after three days rise again and he spoke that saying openly and Peter took him and began to rebuke him.
And when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter saying, get thee behind me, Satan for thou Savior us, not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.
And when he had called the people under him with his disciples also, he said unto them, whoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
I notice when Jesus called his disciples, he never hid from them.
The fact that to follow him meant suffering persecution. And death.
We have a great deal of what someone has called cheap grace.
Easy to follow Christ, easy to follow. Get in the church in Jesus Day.
He called them to suffering. He didn’t call them to a playground. He called them to a battlefield.
He called them to wars, spiritual war.
And he said you’re going to suffer and you’re going to be wounded and you’re going to die in my cause because the world is going to reject me.
This world that’s dominated by evil and sin will reject me.
And if you follow me, you too may end up on a cross for whosoever will save his life, shall lose it.
But whoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospels the same shall save it for what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
Whoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him also, shall the son of man be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of his father and the holy angels.
Now, the Bible teaches that you have a body but living down inside of your body is your soul or your spirit.
I’m not going to try to distinguish tonight because that’s a technical theological discussion between soul and spirit.
I’m going to use them interchangeably your soul.
Is that part of you made in the image of God that lives inside of you.
And that’s the eternal part of you. That’s the important part of you. That’s the real you.
That’s the part of you that will be living 1000 years from now, either in heaven or hell.
The real you, your body will be in the grave until the resurrection.
Jesus said one soul is worth the whole world.
You may gain the whole world and awaken one morning to find that you’ve missed the most important thing in all of life.
Why is it so valuable? Why is your soul so valuable first? It’s valuable because it is eternal.
The body is a beautiful structure but it is matter, no matter how strong it will die.
It’s a point that a man wants to die, you’re going to die, your body is going to go to the grave unless you’re alive.
When Christ comes back, death is man’s greatest impersonal enemy.
According to first Corinthians, 15, so many of the great actors and actresses we’ve seen on television are already dead.
I think of Donna Reid.
My wife and I were friends of Donna Reid starring last year in Dallas.
Now she’s dead. A Rock Hudson acting on the screen.
So handsome, dead and you could name one after another dead fame.
Fortune cannot keep away death. Howard Hughes was the richest man possibly in the United States when he died.
But he died a horrible death, miserable life toward the end of his life.
So many people like that and somehow they think they’re gonna live forever.
You tell young people that life is short and they sort of smile and say yes, but I’ve got at least 30 or 40 years there.
Let me tell you, it goes just like that.
I can tell you, somebody asked me on one of my birthday.
I’m not going to tell you which one they said when you get, when you were 65 way back there, what was your greatest surprise in life?
I said the brevity of life. That’s the greatest surprise in my life is how brief it is.
It’s gone. I feel like a boy. Sometimes I feel like I’m eight tinging again.
I feel my real age but it passes.
So for last and then the soul just as this body has various members like hands, the nose and ears and eyes, the so the soul has its various faculties and attributes.
First, there’s understanding wisdom and knowledge. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
The Bible says to said man, by his knowledge has brought himself to total annihilation.
Yes, we can have knowledge, but we don’t have the wisdom to control our technology.
But wisdom and knowledge are a part of our soul and judgment which weighs and determines and makes judgments every day in our lives or your will, which chooses or rejects the things brought before it or your affections, which cause you to fear or to love memory, which is the mental capacity for storing up our knowledge of ideas and events.
Conscience, which is the monitor of the soul judges and pronounces verdicts upon all that we do or say all of that is a part of our soul that will live forever.
Now, science producing living cells, talks of protoplasm.
Protoplasm by themselves cannot smile in the midst of pain, nor can protoplasm love the unlovely, nor generate high hope in times of disaster.
They cannot contemplate God. There’s something beyond science and the scientists know it.
The Bible calls it. So what is it? When a person dies?
The body is there? The organs are there but something has gone out of the body, the soul, the spirit has gone out of the body.
Where has it gone? Job says, but there’s a spirit in man and in Ecclesiastes, it says, then shall the dust return to the earth as it was?
And the spirit shall return unto the God who gave it now? Which do you care for?
If you’re a parent, a child’s clothes or the channel, a servant says here are the clothes, they’re neat and clean but the child got lost.
What would you think of that? And that’s what we say.
We’ve taken care of our body. Lord, here’s my body. I didn’t neglect it.
I took exercises, all those exercises on TV.
That Jane Fonda has or somebody else has got, I did all those things. I jogged regularly.
I ate the proper foods and boy did I take my vitamins and the minerals and packages of them whole fistfuls a day.
And I went to see the doctor regularly. I went to see the dentist every six months.
My body is in good shape until it died.
And lord, I took care of it, but I neglected my soul.
I didn’t feed the snow. I didn’t give any vitamins to the.
So I never read the scriptures. Your word.
I never spend any time talking to you and developing myself spiritually. I didn’t obey you.
When you told me to love my neighbor, I didn’t obey you.
When you talked about that neighbor down the street that was hungry or that neighbor that was in need of a friend that was lonely.
I I just didn’t have time for things like that, but Lord, I really took care of the body.
Now, what do you think the Lord is going to do?
You see the body of the house and the soul is the tenant and it’s eternal.
You can’t be unborn.
You were born to live forever and you cannot be unborn.
You cannot stop the process. You can change the direction of your life.
Jesus said there are two roads in life. The broad road and a narrow road.
The broad road leads to destruction and the narrow road leads to eternal life and you’re on one or the other tonight.
Every person here tonight is on one of those roads.
You can change roads, but you cannot change the fact that you’re a living soul and that you’re going to live somewhere forever.
That’s a sobering thought.
And you’ve only got a few minutes or a few hours or a few days or a few weeks or months to make the decision which road you’re going to be on.
Currently in Fort Lauderdale, there’s a six ft alligator.
It said in the paper that has terrorized the neighborhood by eating pets, cats, dogs and one big gup.
And he’s big and he’s ugly. And state officials have hired a trapper to hunt him down.
Now, that was just in the paper last week and I haven’t read in the paper yet where they’ve got that alligator.
I remember we were riding many years ago along the Tamiami trail.
My wife and I, and I had gone to school in Florida for three or four years and preached my first sermon in Florida and did all my early preaching in Florida.
And I wanted to show her some of those things and we were along the Tamiami trail and I saw the Alligate over there and I had a 22 rifle in the car and I shot that alligator.
My wife took her weeks to forgive me for shooting that alligator.
I save some cat or some dog or some rabbit, but my wife has a very tender heart by all games.
Now, the Bible teaches that there is a devil and he’s a big ugly alligator.
The Apostle Peter said the devil is a roaring lion walking about seeking whom he may devour.
In recent polls, 70% of the American people said they believed in a personal devil.
Now, the scripture teaches that God is building a kingdom and you and I are working in his kingdom tonight.
I’m working tonight for the Kingdom of God.
When I go abroad, I don’t go as an ambassador of the United States.
I go as an ambassador of the king of kings and Lord of Lords.
I go as an ambassador of the Kingdom of God. I’m a clergyman.
I’m called of God to be an evangelist and the word evangelist means a giver of news in the old Greek city states.
They didn’t have newspapers and television and radio.
They had people that would go up and down the streets and announce the news and they took that word and put it over and called an evangelist in the New Testament.
And that word was a spreader of good news and the word evangelist is different than the word evangelical.
We get mixed up. Sometimes the press does sometimes on what is an evangelist, what is an evangelical and what is uh evangelization or evangelism?
An evangelist has a very narrow ministry.
His ministry is to declare the good news that God loves you, that God is interested in you and that you must repent of your sins and receive him.
That Christ died on the cross for your sins, that he rose again. That’s the message of the evangelist.
It’s called the now pastor or a teacher can go from Genesis to revolution in teaching.
But the evangelist has a rather narrow message.
His job is to win people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and then turn them over to the pastor and the teacher for training and discipleship.
Now, the evangelist can also be a teacher and a trainer as well.
And we try to do it all in these crusades in the preparation for months and in the follow up for months so that we try to do something, we try to help the churches.
That’s the reason wherever we go, we’re sponsored to the churches and we try to integrate all of our work in the churches.
So that after the meetings are over, you carry on in your heart in the church now.
But God is building his kingdom. But so is Satan building his, he’s got his emissaries.
And the scripture says in Matthew 13 Jesus said, and when anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, then come at the wicked one, the devil and catch it the way that which was sown in his car.
Now you see you can hear the word of God tonight and as you leave, the devil is trying to snatch it away so it won’t take root.
Now, the field is the world, the good seed of the Children of the kingdom.
But the tears of the Children of the wicked one, the enemy that sowed them is the devil said Jesus.
Yes, there is an enemy, the devil.
There was a sports writer who wrote the other day of a baseball superstar willing to sell his soul to the devil.
Many people have stole their souls to the devil very cheaply too.
Decided to reject Christ, reject God and just go out and have a good time.
The pleasures of this world have been too strong for you or maybe the pressures of life have been too strong and you’ve given in and then thirdly, your soul is valuable because of God’s concern.
The whole Bible is concerned with the saving and developing of the soul in many ways.
The Lord is long suffering to us for not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Notice that God is not willing that you should ever perish.
God doesn’t want you to be lost.
He wants you to be saved so much so that He has delayed judgment to give you time, so much so that He gave his son on the cross for your sins.
But God committed his love taught us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
The German poet Novalis was quoted in Time Magazine, April 14.
Love is the final purpose of world history. The amen of the universe.
Love is the greatest thing in the world.
Henry Drummond used to preach sermons on it and wrote a book on it.
But the scripture says here in his love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his son to be a propitiation or a covering for our sins.
In other words, when Christ died on the cross, he was expressing the love of God toward you and by his death, covering your sins, every sin you’ve ever committed, he covers so that He’ll never judge you.
I’ll never be at the great white throne. Judgment of God.
My judgment is passed because you see the cross itself was a judgment.
God judged His son in my place. So I don’t have to face the judgment.
I’ll have to face the judgment seat of Christ where believers go to give an account of the life they’ve lived after they’ve come to Christ and to give an account of their discipleship and the faithfulness of the life that they lived in, loving their brother or their sister, or I am doing good work, I’ll be judged.
But as far as my salvation is concerned, as far as going to heaven is concerned, that’s all passed because I did what God told me to do.
I repented of my sins. I received Christ as savior at the cross is where it was done for you.
And then fourthly, it’s valuable because of the nature of its loss.
When we were in New York.
A boy fell in a well and in one hour because of radio reports that they needed help, 3000 people offered their help.
In one hour, I remember in North Carolina, a child wandered in the woods and it seemed like the whole state almost stopped to look for that child.
But your soul is far more valuable. What have you done about your soul?
Well, you lose in this life, you can’t get it all.
I suppose you had the whole world but you can’t get the whole world.
You can’t even get, you just get a little slice of it. That’s all.
And you can’t take it with you.
Have you ever seen a hearse on the way to the cemetery?
And you haul it trailer behind you can’t take it with you.
I remember when John D Rockefeller Senior died many years ago. It was in the paper.
Somebody asked, how much did he leave? And the answer was he left it all.
We take nothing with us and yet we spend our lives trying to pile it up.
Even if you got it all. It doesn’t bring peace and happiness and joy.
It doesn’t help in time of trouble.
One of the message songs of folk singers in America is I’m not prepared for eternity are you prepared?
And then you lose in the life to come.
There’s a song that says the only hell there is is here and now it’s not true.
There’s one to come.
There’s a headline the other day that read in the Toronto Star Highway to hell on April 4th.
And the scripture has many descriptions of hell.
I’m not going to go to the middle ages where they had tremendous vivid imaginations and we saw the devil with his lone horns and his pitch fork and all that.
That’s the product of somebody’s imagination back in the middle ages.
But the Bible does say in Psalm 11 6 that it’s a horrible tempest.
Psalm 18 5, it calls it a place of sorrows.
In Matthew 13 Jesus called it a place of wailing. It’s called by Jesus, a place of weeping.
It’s called by Jesus, a place of filthiness. It’s called by Jesus, a place of out of darkness.
It’s called by Jesus. A place of unrest. Many descriptions of it.
What it really means is separation from God.
You are separated from God tonight because of sin and that separation continues right on after death.
And then fifthly, it’s valuable because of the price paid for the redemption for as much as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish.
And without one of the pictures of a teenager.
The last couple of weeks has been Olga Peters, the granddaughter of Joseph Stalin.
She’s returned to England to attend a Christian boarding school near Cambridge run by the Quakers.
She says she’s a Christian. Is she only God knows that. But what about your soul?
What have you lost it?
What if you’re losing it? What can you do about it tonight?
You can repent of your sin.
That word repent means to say, Lord, I have sinned and you are willing to turn from your sin.
God will have to help you to turn. You can’t turn by yourself.
You don’t have the strength to, but he’ll help you.
I heard the story years ago about a jug famous jug and he had made a big fortune and he put all the money he had into one diamond, one of the biggest diamonds in the world.
And he decided that he would retire back in his home in Italy.
And he was on board the ship going across the Atlantic.
And one day a boy came along with some oranges and he was throwing up up in the air.
And this juggler said, let me do that and he began to do it and a crowd gathered around and they thought he was an expert and it sort of went to his head and he went to his state room and he said, wait, I’m going to show you something.
And he got this diamond out and everybody said, oh, and he threw it in the air and record it.
He said, I’m gonna throw it even higher. And they said, oh, don’t do that.
That’s your life savings. That’s what you’re going to live on. When you get to Italy don’t do it.
You’ve worked all your life for it. He said, oh, my hands never missed.
And he threw it again and he came down and he caught it.
Now, he said, this time, I’m going to throw it out of sight.
And they said, don’t do it, don’t do it. But he threw it out of sight.
And sure enough, it came down sparkling in the sun.
And just as he reached out to catch it, the ship lurched and it went down into the Atlantic and he lost his whole life savings.
That’s what some of you are doing with your soul.
You’re juggling, you hope you’ll catch you think that someday somewhere you’ll make it right with God.
You know, you’ve got to, but you, you’re just not gonna do it now.
And so you put it on you procrastinate and once you lose it, there’s nothing you can do.
Professor James Packer from England said some time ago, this life’s decisions must be deemed to be in every case decisive.
A decisive decision is what I’m asking you to make tonight to say yes to Jesus Christ in the advertising column.
There’s an ad now and forever you decide for Christ now and you’ll be here forever and you’ll spend eternity with it.
I received a letter recently in September last year.
Other than my four years in the Marine Corps, I’ve spent my entire life in this city and it’s one of the largest cities in America.
After 23 years on the police force. I was appointed police chief of this city.
I attended church regularly but church attendance was more or less a ritual.
I always knew in my mind that there was something missing.
When you came to Cincinnati, I went to the crusade meeting.
You ask if we knew where we would be if we died that night, I didn’t know my wife and I went forward at the same time when you gave the invitation.
It was such a simple uncomplicated thing that I had the feeling that I was missing something.
I guess the problem was that in police work, it becomes ingrained in you that there’s never anything for nothing.
It’s difficult for a police officer to grasp what you can’t buy or earn salvation.
It is given to you by the grace of God. Then it’s a gift, an absolute gift.
After I received Christ, I discovered other police officers who are Christians. We have a monthly prayer breakfast.
Now, I have the assurance that if I drop dead, I know where I’m going.
And that’s a real assurance. The load of that uncertainty has been removed.
I now have God you can be the same tonight.
You can know God, you can have him in your heart and there are thousands of you here tonight that do go to church like he did.
But you’re not sure how you stand before God.
You’re not sure where your soul is right now and you want to be sure you want his peace and his joy and his forgiveness and eternal life.
I’m going to ask you to do something. We’ve seen hundreds of people do every night.
I’m going to ask you to get up out of your seat and come and stand in front of this platform and say by coming, I open my heart to Christ.
I repent of my sin. I receive them into my heart.
I want that assurance and that certainty and that joy.
I want to know that my soul is safe and secure in Christ.
You say, why do you ask us to come forward? Every person that Jesus called in the Bible?
He called publicly. You read the New Testament. Every one of them was public.
There was a reason for it. It settles it and sends it in your life.
And the Jesus said, if you’re ashamed of me here, I’ll be ashamed of you before my father, which is in heaven.
You come and take your stand tonight and say tonight, I want a new life.
I want a new direction. I want to be sure that my soul is safe with Ghana, you get up and come.
We’re going to wait right now.
Quickly as people come, the number you see on your screen is a number you can call for spiritual help and counselor make that call.
Now one more, there’s a little voice inside of you that says you ought to make that commitment.
You can make it right now where you are in your bedroom, in your living room, in a hotel room, you can say yes to Christ and have your soul sleep in heaven.
When you die, I’m going to pray that you’ll make it now.
And if you will call that telephone number, you see on the screen and there will be somebody there to talk to you and also write us a letter and tell us like this police chief did about his commitment and we sent him some literature of the same literature.
We’re going to give the people here to help them with their Christian life and be sure and go to church next Sunday.
God help you to do it.