The cost of not following Jesus – San Diego CA

It will cost you to follow Jesus. But it will cost you more not to. It will cost you either way. What are those costs?

“God never takes away something from your life without replacing it with something better.”
― Billy Graham

Admirals and generals and offices uh here uh that I heard one of my associates a moment ago call an admiral, a lieutenant.
And uh of course, he, he was from the army and he didn’t know quite what the emblems are uh for the, for the navy.
But I heard about uh one fellow that was in the military and he was in the mess hall and uh the colonel had come in and put some flowers on the tables and the mess sergeant came in a little bit later, not knowing the colonel had done it.
And he said, who put those Blankety blank flowers on those tables and a very frightened private said the colonel, sir.
And the sergeant looked a moment and he said, my, ain’t it pretty?
And so that’s what rank can do.
I heard about uh, a fellow in the Air force.
And uh he was uh uh had been taken in, he didn’t want to be in the paratroopers, but they put him in the paratroopers.
He was scared to fly to start with and he was certainly scared to be in the paratroopers.
And so finally they had to push him out of the plane for his first jump.
And they said, because you’re so frightened, we’re gonna put two parachutes on you.
And if one doesn’t work, the other one’s bound to work and we’ll have a Jeep down there to pick you up.
So you won’t have to walk.
So they pushed him out of the plane and he started down and he pulled one cord and it didn’t work.
Uh-huh. He said, I thought so and he pulled an extra and it didn’t work.
He said, uh-huh, I thought so. And he said, I bet that Jeep’s not down there either.
I’m sure that some of you in the military have had experiences similar to that.
But, you know, Lieutenant Randy of Cunningham is on the platform tonight and I got to know him a little bit the other day, the most decorated fighter pilot in the Vietnam War, the only navy mig ace that we had come out of the Vietnam War and he was shot down and he was telling me that up until that time he was ignored.
God, he didn’t think about God.
He was somewhat of an agnostic and he said that this missile hit his plane and he was trying to get it straightened out so he could get to the coast and probably be picked up.
But he didn’t think he could make it.
And he said, Lord, he said, if I make this and you get me out of this I’m going to sure look into your existence and what you mean to me when I get out.
And he said all of a sudden the plane seemed to settle down and he thought to himself, well, God had nothing to do with that and I don’t need to think about God anymore.
I’m gonna make it and all of a sudden the plane began to tear apart again and he said, he made it about one mile off the beach and, uh, they came and picked him up while the Vietnamese were shooting at him and he made it and he came back here to San Diego and he ran into our chairman, Dan mckinnon and Dan and some other friends led him to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
And Randy is on the platform tonight, General Hoffman, who led the prayer a moment ago, commanded Camp Pendleton.
I’m sure would agree that the standards have to remain high to have a ready combat force, whether it’s Marine Air Force or army and it’s for the good of the men.
And it’s not only for the protection of the country and that’s what I want to talk about tonight.
As Christians, we’ve been having some testimony in the Congress and I was interested in reading about one congressman testifying who had been a very strong dove during the Vietnam War.
But he had also been in the Marines and he said, I believe in being tough.
He said even if it means death for some.
He said, I believe they need to be trained tough because that will protect them when they get into combat.
And that is true in the Christian life as well.
And I want to read a couple of passages from what our Lord Jesus Christ said, Luke, the 12th chapter, the 49th verse beginning.
I’m come to send fire on the earth. And what will I if it be already kindled?
But I have a baptism to be baptized with and how am I straightened till it be accomplished?
Jesus said, I’m going into the baptism of fire. I’m going to the cross. I’m going to be executed.
Suppose ye that I have come to give peace on the earth, I tell you no, but rather division for from henceforth, there shall be five in one house divided three against two and two against three.
The father shall be divided against the son and the son against the father and the mother, against the daughter and the daughter, against the mother and the mother in law against her daughter in law and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
In other words, when Jesus Christ comes into the heart, it brings about a certain unity and it brings peace, but it also brings division.
How many families are divided? Some in the family believe and some do not.
And then Jesus said in the 14th chapter of Luke’s Gospel, these words beginning with verse 25.
And there went great multitudes with him and he turned and said unto them, if any man come to me and hate not his father and his mother and his wife and his Children and his brethren and sisters, yay in his own life.
Also, he cannot be my disciple, he cannot be my follower.
He said in what and who do not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
In other words, Jesus said as I said the other evening to follow him is going to be very, very costly.
Now, I want to speak tonight on this subject.
What it cost you not to follow Jesus Christ.
If you decide tonight not to follow Christ, not to accept Christ, what’s it going to cost you?
Because you’re going to have to pay a price either way.
If you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, there’s a price to be paid.
It may even mean debt.
It may mean that your family turns against you. It may mean that you lose some friends.
It may mean that you’ll have to even give up some of the things that you’re doing because you know, they’re ethically and morally wrong.
The whole pattern of your life has to change because that’s what repentance means.
It means change and you have to repent or you’re going to perish said, Jesus.
So if you follow Christ, it’s going to cost you something but if you don’t follow Christ and don’t receive Christ, it’s going to cost you something too and going to cost you far more.
What’s it going to cost not to follow Christ?
How many of us really sit down and count the cost even when we go to get married.
That’s one of the reasons that one out of every two marriages in America is breaking up.
We don’t sit down and count the cost. A young woman.
I read about the other day married a boy because of his handsome face and his athletic figure.
She didn’t sit down and think about his mental and his spiritual and his moral qualifications.
She just married him six months later, they win the divorce court.
The same is true in education. We don’t think it through many times or business or athletics.
And you know, in the, in the Olympics, I was interested in how much time those fellow have to spend in training.
I heard some of them say that they would spend eight and 10 hours a day in training for their special event.
No wonder they were so good and thrilled audiences all over the world.
Now, if you don’t follow Christ and you don’t pay the price of serving him, it’ll cost you.
First of all, the sacrifice of peace, of conscience and heart, you will not have peace with God.
You will not be reconciled to God. You will be considered an enemy of God.
You don’t consider yourself an enemy of God, but he considers you an enemy because you have rejected his love.
You’ve rejected his offer of reconciliation, you’ve rejected his offer of peace.
And so you sacrifice that, that being therefore justified by faith.
We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
But the scripture says there is no peace sayeth my God to the wicked.
Now that word wicked is used there in Isaiah 57 doesn’t mean that you are a criminal.
It doesn’t mean that you’re vicious.
But anyone who is not conforming to the will of God and conforming to the image of Christ is considered in the sight of God wicked.
That’s what that word wicked is translated from the Hebrew.
There means now you may have pleasure and fun and merriment and gait in good times and delightful times.
You may succeed in drowning the voice of your conscience in excitement, pleasure, money getting and something else.
But way down in the bottom of your heart, you don’t have peace with God.
You give that up. I was interested in reading just a short time ago.
One of the great intellectuals of Canada, he’s a professor at one of Canada’s great universities.
I’m not going to call his name. I wouldn’t want to embarrass him even though it was in the newspaper.
But here’s what he said. Listen to what he said in the, in the press quote.
There are so many nights that I go to bed and really think it would be so much better if I did not wake up in the morning.
Peace. Yes. Peace. If nothing else, there would be peace.
I often think that if there could only be peace when I’m dead, I would like that to come soon.
Just peace. Peace. I never go to bed without feeling that it would be nice if I did not wake up again.
The first thing I say to myself in the morning is why I get into my car and say it would be nice if someone were to run into me and I went through the windshield.
Yes. Peace. If nothing else, death would bring peace.
And how many thousands of people privately feel that way? Searching for peace.
Jesus Christ, the prince of peace, ready to come into your heart tonight and give you the peace that you’re longing for you.
Remember when the hurricane Bell was pounding its way up the Atlantic and it hit parts of Pennsylvania and New York and Connecticut and Vermont.
And they had all those floods in Vermont, the national weather map.
If you remember showed a 25 mile swath of complete calm precisely in the center of that hurricane.
And that’s exactly what Jesus said.
He said in the midst of the hurricane of life, in the midst of the storms of life, I can give you peace.
He said, in the world, ye shall have tribulation but I’ve spoken unto you that in me, ye might have peace in the center of the hurricane is a place of calm.
And that’s what Christ brings in the middle of your life.
He doesn’t remove the hurricane, but he gives peace in the middle of it.
And if you don’t come to Christ, you sacrifice that you give it up and you go all through life with the hurricane turning and turning and the tornado twisting in your own life.
And you like that deep inward peace that the believer has.
And then the second thing you sacrifice, you sacrifice true joy for several months, one of the three or four best sellers was jury’s the promise of joy.
And then there was that other best seller they that you would see in counters and even in grocery stores.
The Joy of Sex. And Maribel Morgan is writing a book called Total Joy.
But overall with suicide among the young people in the last decade climbing so rapidly.
Joy is in short supply. David said after he had sinned against God and his joy was gone and he was miserable.
He said, restore under me, the joy of my salvation.
And how many Christians here tonight you believe in Christ?
But you’ve lost the joy of your salvation because of sin.
You know, worry in this country is at an all time high.
And a AAA doctor at the Mayo clinic said a few weeks ago, quote, worry affects the circulation, the heart and the glands and the whole nervous system and profoundly affects the health.
And Jesus is promising all the time to replace the worry with joy. His joy.
He said that your joy may be full. Whom, having not seen ye love in whom though?
Now you see him, not yet believing ye rejoice with joy, unspeakable and full of glory.
That’s the joy that he provides. Now you’re going to miss that.
If you don’t come to Christ, you’ll miss that.
And some of you have just enough religion to make you miserable.
I don’t know anybody in the world any more miserable than a person trying to be a Christian who really isn’t like when these sailors go to the far east or I go to the far east.
I remember I’ve been to the far east many times and I was on my way to Vietnam to speak to the troops on one occasion and I stopped in Honolulu and, uh, they said you need to get, um, oh, I forgot what shot it was now, but it was 10 ccs in those days to, uh, keep you from getting something or other.
And, uh, this, uh navy fella, I think it was about the second shot he had given and because I was a preacher, he either wanted it to hurt real bad or he was, he pushed it in real slow.
Uh, and, uh, I’ll never forget I limped out of there like this because of that shot.
Some of you have had that experience and you know, you can get AAA shot, let’s say for against Kra.
And you know, every time I get cholera shots, I get sick because I get a little bit of cholera and that little bit of cholera that I get, keeps me from getting the real thing when I get out there if they have a cholera epidemic.
My father-in-law was an expert in handling cholera epidemics and you know, you can get just a little bit of religion and get a little bit sick and that keeps you from getting the real thing.
And the hardest people in the world to win to Christ are people that have been reared in a Christian home that have gone to church and have enough religion to know the language.
But they’ve never known the real joy and the real peace and the real Christ and they are inoculated against getting the real thing.
Those are the miserable people. And then thirdly you sacrifice.
Hope, hope I heard about a fellow that was riding in a propeller airplane and the passengers saw first one motor went out.
I’ve been on airplanes where motors went out and blew up. As a matter of fact.
And finally three of the four engines were gone.
The passengers were scared to death and the cabin door opened and the pilot appeared with a parachute on his back and he said, calm down.
Everybody don’t panic. He said I’m going for help.
Now, that’s about as far as the world can go.
They’re saying don’t panic, don’t panic. Everybody’s arming to the teeth, don’t panic, don’t panic.
Somehow we’ll muddle through, we’ll get through somehow.
And there’s the philosophy, as I said last evening, a philosophy of despair and discouragement and researchers claim that between 150,000 young people, between the ages of 15 and 20 attempt suicide every year.
Why? Because they have no hope in hope of eternal life, which God who cannot lie has promised hope of the future is more important than anything else happy as he whose hope is in the Lord, his God said, the psalmist, Paul said, we’re saved by hope.
Paul also said, if in this life only we have hope, we’re of all men most miserable.
My hope is in the world to come as well as in this world.
The coming again of Christ, the kingdom that he’s going to set up the time when there will be peace on the world, on the earth.
I’ll talk about that tomorrow.
Every man that had this hope in him purified himself says the scripture, which would you rather be a millionaire tonight and tomorrow found to be an embezzler and put into prison for the rest of your life or would you rather be penniless tonight?
And certain of being a millionaire in eternity, I’ll take being the millionaire in eternity.
The hope of tomorrow is more important than the possessions of today.
Our hope is in Christ. Our citizenship is in heaven.
I would rather be the poorest child of God tonight and have that wealth that God is preparing for us.
There, not material wealth necessary. We think of wealth in terms. Did you read that marvelous story on Mother Teresa?
That was in the paper the other day.
She was at the Eucharist conference in uh Philadelphia and one of the great women of our time.
I remember I was in Calcutta about a year ago, maybe 18 months ago.
And one of the first questions I ask is, how could I see Mother Teresa and the man from the American Council there said, well, I think I can take you to where she is.
I don’t know whether we’ll get to see her or not.
And we went back some dark alleys and back into one of the dirtiest slummiest places I’d ever been.
In fact, I was a little bit nervous and there we went into this place, the house of the dying where Mother Teresa holds in her arms, dying people so they can die with dignity.
And some of the nuns came and uh when they found out that I was there, they said, well, mother is holding a dying man right now, but we’ll go see says she doesn’t see many people right now.
About 30 minutes later in came mother Teresa and we sat down and talked and I had just been told that she had received the Nehru award and that when Mrs Gandhi presented it to her, that for the first time, people saw Mrs Gandhi cry.
Yes, I’d rather be mother Teresa living in that slum in Calcutta than to be the richest man in all the world when I get to heaven, laying up treasures in heaven.
And she said the most, the poorest people in all the world are in the affluent West.
She said, you Americans are very poor. I’m going back to some rich people.
They’re rich in God, rich in Christ.
And you know, we strive for material things and we try to get all we can get and so forth and we can’t take it with us.
You don’t see any, you haul its following a curse on the way to the graveyard.
Can’t take any of it with us.
Jesus said, what should it profit a man if he gained the whole world and lost his own soul, what if you did gain the whole world and lost your soul?
And you know what else you lose by not coming to Christ, you lose the knowledge of the purpose and meaning of your life on this planet.
You lose that Doctor Mallory, the great psychiatrist in Atlanta said the other day, unhappiness is common today because people have lost their sense of purpose and he blamed it impartial partially on the loss of religious faith.
Hear the word of the Lord ye rulers of sodom give here under the law of our God.
Ye people of Kamara. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices?
He said all your religious sacrifices and all of your churches is not enough.
What’s the purpose of it? If you don’t have true faith?
The scripture says Daniel purposed in his heart. Paul purposed in his spirit.
Do you have a purpose? And is that purpose centered in God? God has a plan for your life?
Are you living according to God’s plan?
And then the last thing that you lose, you lose eternal life.
Carlisle, the great philosopher once said one life, a little gleam of time between eternities.
I don’t know all that’s involved in eternal life. There’s a mystery to it.
I only know that when you receive Jesus Christ as your savior.
Here tonight, you become a possessor of eternal life, not the day you die.
But tonight right now, God performs a miracle in your heart.
Christ comes to live inside and both of the men that testified tonight testified that they’ve been in the church, one of a clergyman’s son, but they didn’t really know Christ.
There’s a vast difference. Time magazine said, I think it was a couple of weeks ago that 69% of Americans are sure that there’s life after death.
You know, that’s what we’re on Mars for. We’re up there.
Looking for life. We spent a billion dollars to send those vehicles up that vehicle up there and it’s reaching out, searching around trying to find something that would tell us that there’s life like we know it on the planet Mars, but we can have eternal life and live forever with Christ.
That’s what he offers. You can’t push death away.
You’ll never live this evening over again.
The hour that you spent here, the two hours you spent here, you’ll never live again.
It’s gone forever and death is approaching to all of us because it is appointed and man wants to die.
And after that, the judgment, but eternal life can begin right here.
And now, you know, we spend $25 billion a year in America to get rid of pain.
The Bible says that there’s a heaven and there’s a hell, heaven forever, hell forever and you must make the choice, whatever is meant by hell, whatever Jesus meant by it.
He was the one that did the talking about it.
And you can draw your own conclusions when you read the passages.
But you can take the deepest and the greatest and the most thrilling experience you’ve ever had in your whole life and, and double it and redouble it 10 million times and you have heaven and take the worst moment of your life and double it 10 million times and you’ll have just a little bit of what hell must be think a moment.
Do you know Christ? Are you sure your sins are forgiven?
Do you know that you’re going to heaven?
If not you say, what do I have to do first?
You have to repent of your sins and repentance means to change your way of living.
I’m against this so called easy conversion where you just say a few mumble, a few words and that’s supposed to be it.
You’ve got to really mean it, that I’m coming to Jesus Christ in repentance of my sins.
And I come by simple childlike faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and him alone.
I’m not trusting myself. I’m not trusting my works. I’m not trusting my money. I’m not trusting my parents’ religion.
I’m trusting in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I’m asking you to do that tonight.
And I’m going to ask hundreds of you like we’ve seen every night.
I’m going to ask you to get up out of your seat right now and come and stand in front of the platform and say, I want eternal life.
I want Christ. I want what these two men have found in Panama.
I want to find it in San Diego tonight. I want to receive Christ into my heart.
You may be Catholic or Protestant or Jewish or you may not have any religion at all.
But you want to come and surrender your life and your heart to Jesus Christ as your Lord.
And your master and your savior, you come and after you’ve all come, I’m going to say a word to you and have a prayer with you and give you some literature and you can go back and join your friends.
If you’re with friends or relatives, they’ll wait.
And if you come from that top balcony up there, it’ll take you several minutes to come.
So start right now, there’s plenty of time God has spoken to your heart.
You may never be this close to the kingdom of God again. You get up and come right now quickly.
We’re going to wait hundreds of you from everywhere and come and stand out on the field quietly and reverently you have been watching by television can see what is happening here in San Diego, California at this great and beautiful stadium.
Hundreds of people are coming from the stands to make their commitment to Jesus Christ.
You can make that commitment right now where you are God help you to make that decision and go to church next Sunday.
Thank you for joining us for this television series from San Diego.