Excuses | Special Strength is Coming from Billy Graham

Will you miss out on eternity because you made excuses? In this 1986 message from Tallahassee, Florida, Billy Graham talks about the danger of waiting to make a decision for Christ.

“Being a Christian is more than just an instantaneous conversion; it is like a daily process whereby you grow to be more and more like Christ.”
― Billy Graham

Today, I want you to turn with me to the 14th chapter of Luke’s Gospel, the 14th chapter of Luke’s Gospel and turn to the 15th verse Jesus is telling a story.
And when one of them sat at meet with him, heard these things.
He said unto him, blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.
Then said, he unto him, a certain man made a great supper.
And he asked many people to come and sent his servant at supper time to tell them that they were bidden come for all things and our ready and they all with one consent began to make excuses.
The first said to him, I bought a piece of ground and I must go and see it.
I pray thee have me excused.
And another said, I bought five yoke of oxen and I go to prove them, I pray they have me excused.
And another said, I’ve married a wife and therefore I cannot come.
So that servant came and showed his Lord these things.
Then the master of the house being angry, said to his servants, go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in hither the poor and the maim and the halt and the blind.
And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thys commanded and yet there’s room and the Lord said unto the servant go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in.
That my house may be filled for I say unto you that none of those men which were bitten shall taste of my supper.
Here he tells the story of Christ eating at the home of the chief pharisee.
And while eating, he used two stories to illustrate spiritual truths. Jesus always did that.
He always told stories common everyday stories to illustrate spiritual truths.
Jesus always knew how to adapt himself to every surrounding and his use of common everyday happenings as illustrations made him the great preacher of all time.
But this is the story of a supper invitation. He said come for all things already.
And there are three things that stand out, come immediately and it’s personal.
No greater invitation has ever been given than this invitation that Jesus illustrates in this little story.
It includes everyone, the rich, the poor, the beggars, the lame, the halt, the blind, everybody, all colors, all races are invited because he’s telling us the story that we’re invited to the cross for salvation.
Everybody is Bidden to come because it was there that he spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all.
And he said, how shall we not with him? Also freely give us all things.
The Apostle Paul wrote for when we were yet without strength.
In due time, Christ died for the ungodly, but they all began to make excuse here.
They were invited by the king of kings and the Lord of Lords to a gospel feast to have their sins forgiven, to have eternal life, to have their name written on the Book of Life.
And they begin to make excuses.
And one of them said, well, I bought a piece of ground and had to go see it.
Now, this man was either a liar or a fool.
This man was more interested in the things of the world.
He was interested in wealth and materialism and in his business.
And Jesus said, how hard it is for them to trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God.
Notice he said, trust in riches, it’s not wrong to be a rich man. It’s not wrong to have money.
The wrong is when you put your trust in it and make it first because you can be the richest man in the world and die and go to hell and you won’t have one penny to take with you.
You leave it behind for people to fight over.
I read the other day about a robber who shot a man dead for $2 and sometimes wealthy people feel that they don’t have any need.
Now, you people in Leon County and all around here are wealthy.
Did you know that you have one of the highest per capita incomes in the United States and by the world’s standard, you’re wealthy.
So Jesus is talking to you. He’s talking to me.
The people of Bangladesh and the people in some parts of India and Africa live in absolute poverty compared to even our poor people in this country.
And we today give preference to the body over the soul and to the things of time above those of eternity.
Jesus said, what shall it profit a man if he gave the whole world and lose his own soul, then there was a second guy who had been invited and he said, I bought five yoke of oxen and I go to prove them, please excuse me.
He had been invited to eat bread in the kingdom of God to eat with the Lord Jesus Christ.
He too was either a liar or a fool who goes to prove oxen at night.
He didn’t have any flashlights. He was just making an excuse like buying a used car without trying it out.
And then the third man said, I’ve married a wife and therefore I cannot come.
Now, he might have had a little bit of an excuse, but most married men, if they’re marrying a the right kind of a girl wanna show her off, she would have been invited.
I’m sure Jesus, but Jesus had earlier said that if any man come to me and hate, not his father and his mother and his wife and his Children, his brothers and sisters and his own life.
Also, he cannot be my follower.
He didn’t mean to use the word hate in the sense you and I do.
He said the priority is Christ, the priority is God. Everything else is second even your family.
And the scripture says they were without excuse Romans 120 so that they are without excuse several things Christ is teaching these men were naive or they were an insult to intelligence or they simply were a cover up of unwillingness to come.
Now, what are some of the excuses that people make today?
One of them that I hear is I cannot understand the Bible. Jesus never said only understand.
He said, only believe Augustin was a great scholar before he became a Christian.
And looking back, he said, I always had to understand Socrates and Plato and Aristotle before I could believe them with Jesus Christ.
I believed in him first. Then I began to understand who understands gravity, who understands electricity?
Who understands how you can eat a meal and that food becomes blood and hair and bone and muscle and fingers and nerves and brains and teeth and skin, who understands a black cow that you can milk and get white milk and yellow butter.
Who understands all that? No one can explain all of it.
So when you eat, we’re strengthened.
You have to start with the ABC S.
When you come to Christ, come in simple child like fate.
I’ve met some of the greatest scientists in the world who are believers and they came just like you have to come by simple child like faith.
The Bible does not say you have to think your way. The Bible says by wisdom, man knows not God.
Now, that’s hard on a professor here at the university.
That’s hard on a student sometimes because we want to understand everything.
But when you come to Christ and you come to spiritual things, there’s some things you don’t understand you accept by faith.
I don’t understand how God never had a beginning.
God never has an end that he’s the same yesterday today.
And for, I don’t understand that I quit trying to understand that a long time ago.
I accepted by faith that God is and that God is the creator of the universe and he’s my creator and he’s my savior as well.
The wonderful things about the Bible are the simple things.
The things that are peripheral though important are the most difficult things to understand.
Everybody can understand John 316, for God’s soul of the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
25 words a minute to a Bible.
You can understand that that God loves you, that Christ died for you.
Bet you’re a sinner that you’ve broken God’s laws.
And in order to know God, in order to be sure you’re going to heaven, you must believe and trust in His son.
All you need to know to be a believer is that you’re a sinner and that God is looking for sinners.
Mark Twain once said it’s not the things in the Bible. I don’t understand that bothers me.
It’s the things I do understand that give me trouble.
You see, our problem many times are the things we do understand.
The disciples were not educated at the great universities, but they went out and turned the world upside down and thousands of universities and colleges and all kinds of things are named for them today.
2000 years later, these ignorant and unlearned men, but they knew one thing they knew Jesus and that’s all you have to know to get to heaven and to have eternal life.
And that’s more than a great many of our great men knew or know.
And second, excuse that I hear sometimes is I want to make a commitment to Christ, but I’m too sinful.
I’ll wait till I do better.
I read in the press the other day of an actress who said, I’ve ruined my life.
No, she hadn’t ruined it. If she had come to Christ at the cross, there’s power in the blood of Christ to cleanse her from all the mistakes and all the sins that she’d made.
Paul said, this is a fateful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ.
Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of which I’m chief notice Paul said, he’s the chiefest of sinners.
Don’t you feel like saying that? Sometimes I do.
I feel like saying I am the chief of sinners, not Paul, it’s Billy Graham and I come to the cross and I recommit my life to Christ.
And I find cleansing and forgiveness.
There, Jesus Christ came to save sinners and you cannot justify yourself.
All our own righteousness is filthy rags.
The Bible said all the good works that we do will not save us. We are to do good works.
We are to give to the poor and the hungry and we’re to help build hospitals and we’re to help them to work for peace and to help better race relations and all these other things.
But that is not going to save our souls.
Our souls are saved by the grace and the mercy of God as we come in simple faith to the cross.
Have you done that?
I told last night about the preacher that came here for our school of evangelism this week.
And he was a highly educated clergyman and he came forward one night and the, and the counselor was talking to him and said, I suppose you’ve come to rededicate your life.
He said, no, I’ve come to accept Christ. I’ve been to school.
I’ve been to seminary, I’ve been to all of that, but I don’t really know Christ as my savior.
And there are many of you like that.
You may be an elder in the church or a deacon or a Sunday school teacher.
And we’ve had many of them this past week that have come and said I need to recommit my life to Christ.
And you’re one of those. And then there’s some people that say, well, I’m self sufficient.
I don’t really need Christ. There are people right here in Tallahassee.
I took a tour out here these beautiful homes that are being built and I looked at those homes and beautiful golf courses and all of that.
And I just wanted to grab one of them and say, I’d like to just stay here for about a year and not have to go anywhere and see anything and just play golf every day and just relax.
But I thought to myself, I imagine there are a lot of people like they are in my hometown, self sufficient.
We don’t really need, we have everything. What do we need Christ for?
Well, one day they’re going to wake up and they’re going to realize that they’ve waited too late.
They need him, they need him now to prepare for the future because whether they like it or not, they’re going to die and they’re going to face the judgment.
It’s a point that the man wants to die.
And after that, the judgment and everybody that you see on the streets of Tallahassee, they’re walking dead people, they’re on their way to the grave, they’re on their way to their own funeral.
There was a man here the other night you read it in the paper, he accepted Christ.
He was an alcoholic, but he really came to know Christ.
And when the police found him the next morning dead on the street here in Tallahassee, all they could find was was uh the identification of the counselor that had spoken to him the night before.
And the little card that he had filled out, that’s how they were able to trace him down.
He didn’t know that within the next few hours he would be in eternity, but he went into eternity with Christ and he’s going to be in heaven, not because he lived a good life or deserved it.
He’s going because of what Christ did for him on the cross.
There are four words, I want you to remember fact, faith feeling fruit.
The first thing is fact, what is the fact insofar as your salvation is concerned.
First Corinthians 15 that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.
That’s the fact Christ died, he rose again for you. Second faith.
In that fact, the second word is faith.
Faith in that fact, he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life and he that believeth not the sun shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on Him.
Now, the wrath of God is on you right now.
If you haven’t come to Christ, John 338, you see faith is the fact, faith in the fact, fact, feeling now feeling what kind of feeling, feeling of peace, forgiveness, assurance, a living hope, feeling of deliverance now that my sins have been forgiven and then the fruit follows by their fruits.
You shall know them said Jesus.
If someone professes to be a follower of Christ and they are so and they are no different than before.
We have ever a reason to question whether they have had a genuine experience with Christ because the Bible says therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.
Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.
Because when you come to Christ, a change takes place a change in direction, a change in attitudes.
You begin to love, love begins to dominate your life.
You’re a different person in the home, you’re a different person in the community, you’re a different person at school or at work.
And then there are other people that say, well, there are too many hypocrites in the church.
I think that’s the most foolish of all excuses. There are quacks among doctors.
Does that mean you’ll never go to a doctor because there’s a false one somewhere.
The church is not a perfect organization. The family isn’t perfect. You’re not perfect.
We live in an imperfect world and we are not going to be perfect till we get to heaven.
But when you come to Christ, you’re on your way, that’s called sanctification.
You start being sanctified and you are sanctified progressively and you’re fully and totally sanctified.
When you stand in the presence of Christ. I don’t expect perfection till I get to heaven.
And then there are people that say, well, I would come to Christ, but I’d have to give up too much.
You give up a great thing, great deal for other things.
You give up a great deal to get an education or to give your Children an education.
Some of you will give up almost anything for power.
Look at what we’ve heard during the past few days of all the politics, people going for offices, that’s fine.
We need them. But all the claims that were made in the counter claims and negative type of politicking.
In some instances, people will give up almost anything for money, whether it’s money or power, social prestige, you’ll do most anything.
But what about coming to Christ?
The scripture says that will show me the path of life in thy presence.
There is fullness of joy at thy right hand. There are pleasures forevermore in Christ.
There’s pleasure in Christ, there’s joy in Christ is fulfillment, this purpose and meaning to life in Christ Moses gave up a home in the palace of Pharaoh for the prospect of wearing the crown of an empire.
He gave the whole thing up for Christ.
He gave up all the pleasures of Egypt to become a leader for God.
You never give up anything that is worthwhile to become a believer.
Everything you now have that is wholesome and worthwhile.
You can keep and everything that is unwholesome and unhealthy and destructive.
God will take away from you as you turn from sin and put your trust in Christ.
God gave everything he had for you. The scripture says, he spared not his own son.
And when they were driving those nails in the hands of Jesus, and they were pulling his beard when they were pulling out his hair, when he was bleeding and they put the spirit his side and the spikes through his feet.
How do you think God felt God?
The Father 7-2000 angels pull their swords ready to come and rescue him.
But Jesus said I love them too much because if I come down from this cross, there’ll be no salvation for any human being.
I have come to do the will of my father to reconcile man to God and only through the cross, can it be done?
And he stayed on that cross because He loved you and you’re important to him.
And then there are others that say, I’ve tried before to live a Christian life and made a failure of what do I do.
I’m just, I’ve just given up, you get up and confess your sins and he’s faithful and just to forgive you your sins.
And then there are people that said, well, I’m afraid of being misunderstood.
And the Bible teaches that the world is an invented with God.
Ya and all that will live Godly in Christ shall suffer persecution.
There’s going to be a certain amount of persecution and misunderstanding.
If you start living for the Lord, you start carrying a Bible and reading a Bible and praying and witnessing for Christ if you’re a student here at the university, and then there are others that say, well, I’m afraid I can’t hold out.
Do you say that about the university? All about being married?
I’m afraid I can’t hold out. I don’t do that anyway. About to take a job.
I don’t think I can hold out.
God can keep you now unto him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.
We are kept by the power of God. No, Billy Graham cannot hold out.
God holds me once I surrender to him, I can only hold out as Christ holds me up.
And then there are other people that say, well, I intend to make my decision for Christ sometime.
But not now, that’s dangerous.
The scripture says in Proverbs 27 boast not thyself of tomorrow for thou knows not what a day may bring forth.
The Bible says, behold, now is the accepted time and behold now is the day of salvation.
There’s a best seller last year in England that was called.
If tomorrow comes, there’s always a big if about tomorrow, we don’t know whether tomorrow will come for us or not.
What is your excuse? What’s keeping you from making your commitment to Christ? I mean, your total commitment.
Notice that the host here in this story gets angry.
He said, none of these which forbidden shall taste of my supper. God says, you’re without excuse.
He said, cast them out and go out and get some others.
Now, there’s other interpretations to this passage that I’m not going to go into.
But this is a story for us to take to our own hearts and our own lives because you see the Bible teaches that there’s a dark line in God’s face and that dark line is the line of judgment.
God can become angry with you.
When you refuse Christ, you refuse God’s offer of mercy and love and He’s done everything He can for you and you reject Him and turn Him down and say no, what else can God do?
There’s nothing He’s offered you salvation. He’s offered you everything that He can offer you.
Now, what do you have to do?
All you have to do is receive, I offer you this book.
It’s not yours till you receive it. He’s offering you forgiveness of your sins.
He’s offering you a new life. And some of you here today need to recommit your life to Christ.
You belong to the church. You’ve been baptized.
You may have been confirmed in your church if it’s a liturgical church, but you have not yet really come to know Christ in your own heart.
He doesn’t really live in you.
And this is the next to the last day of this crusade.
And you may never have another moment like this when you’re as close to the Kingdom of God because you cannot count on tomorrow.
Now is the time right now.
I’m going to ask you to do something that we’ve seen hundreds of people do this past week in the arena.
I’m going to ask you to get up out of your seat right now.
Quickly hundreds of you and come and stand here on the grass right in front of the platform.
And as you come, you’re saying in your heart, I really want my sins forgiven.
I want to know I’m going to heaven.
I want my name on the Book of Life and I want to know it.
I want to be sure of it.
And by coming, you were saying yes, well, you say Billy, why do I have to come publicly?
Because every person Jesus called in the New Testament. He called publicly every person he called publicly.
Why Jesus hung on the cross publicly for you. Now, he asked you to come.
He said, if you’re not willing to confess me before men, I will not confess you before my father, which is in heaven, the ushers will show you the way I’m going to.
I said, no one leave the stadium.
I know they temptation is going to be to get up and go out and be the first away.
But you stay where you are and pray, pray for the person to the right of you and left of you in front of you and back of you.
You can bring somebody today as people come, we’re going to wait.
You may be in the choir and God has spoken to you.
You may be an officer in the church and God has spoken to you.
You come right now quickly while you come, the choir is going to sing as these many hundreds make their personal decision for Christ here in Tallahassee, Florida.
You too can make that decision. Call the number on the screen right now.
You that have been watching by television can see here in Tallahassee, Florida, the capital of this great state that many people have come to make their commitment to Christ today or to recommit their lives.
You can do the same where you are.
And if you will pick up the phone and call the number that’s on the screen.
May God help you to make that commitment today and be sure and go to church next weekend.
God bless you.