John 3:16 | Billy Graham

You hear about “the Gospel,” but what does that mean, in a nutshell? Billy Graham explains in this 1991 message from New York City.
“Every area of our lives is to be under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And that means the searchlight of God’s Word must penetrate every corner of our lives.”
― Billy Graham, Billy graham in quotes

Now, I want to talk a little bit to people that are watching by television and say a word about New York City.
And it’s a joy and a privilege for me and my colleagues to be back here in New York.
And for some time, I’ve seen signs that says, I love New York and that’s true of me.
I developed a love of New York years ago, I told Mayor Dinkins week before last, when I visited him that he and the leaders of this city would always be in my prayers that God would be with them and help them to solve the problems of this city.
But they can’t solve it without your help and they can’t solve it without God’s help.
We’re going to have to turn to God. We’ve turned everywhere else and we’ve failed.
Now, let’s turn to God some churches and synagogues as they ponder the agonizing needs of the people have abandoned the proclamation of our relationship with God or with Christ.
And we’ve adopted instead a political and social agenda which is out of balance, can leave both souls and pews empty.
Everybody I talk to, it seems agrees that New York is the loneliest place in the world and people get increasingly irritable and pushy in their effort to guard their own turf.
There’s little space for others, let alone God to be without God in New York is to be terribly lonely and this leads to a feeling that life is futile.
A few weeks ago, the New York Times stated that the best seller of its class was Derek Humphrey’s final exit.
A manual on how to commit suicide. Is that the way to terminate your life suicide?
Many people want to turn their backs on New York. They see New York City’s problems as incurable.
I think we ought to stay in New York and let’s do something about it to change New York and I believe we can do it.
And if New York were changed, it would touch London and Paris and all the other great cities of the world.
I don’t see that way, that way about New York.
God loves New York and he has not given up on this city because he does not give up on people as big and grand as New York buildings are, they are not New York as wide and famous as New York City Avenues are, they are not New York as great as the plays and musicals and art and concerts are they are not New York.
New Yorkers are what make up New York.
New York is a place where people live and it’s the people that God is interested in and I’m going to speak on what I believe is the answer to the problems of your problems and the problems of New York.
There is a better way. I’m going to make my message today short and I know that will please you.
I never did like to hear long sermons and I still like to hear short ones.
I heard about a man one time that was introduced to speak for 20 minutes and he spoke for an hour and 10 minutes and he was still speaking and the man that introduced him through a gaveling, it missed him and hit a woman on the front row and she said, hit me again.
I can still hear him. And I don’t want that to happen to me today.
I want you to turn with me to the 16th verse of the third chapter of John John, the third chapter for God.
So love the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
How many of us can say it together? Let’s try all together for God.
So love the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Now that is the gospel in a nutshell, that’s a miniature Bible.
Everything you need to know about redemption and salvation is in that one verse of scripture.
25 wonderful words that my mother taught me when she was giving me a bath on a Saturday night, on a farm in North Carolina.
She said, I want you to learn this passage from the Bible.
And she, he taught me that passage for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believer in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Many people ask me well, if God loves the world, why does he allow so much suffering in the world war disease, poverty, hate, loneliness, boredom, emptiness, psychological problems, unemployment, violence, tension, all of these things.
Why doesn’t God just come and stop it all? That’s the question many people are asking.
Some people here in New York are saying I can’t take it anymore and they’re committing suicide.
The pressures of life are too great. They can’t take it.
Why if there is a God, why doesn’t he end it? Some people say, why has God abandoned us?
But God has not abandoned us. We’ve abandoned him.
Many of you young people here have heard the song on last year’s edge of the century album by sticks.
However, did you ever listen to the words? The lyrics here are the lyrics. Listen every night.
I say a prayer in the hopes that there’s a heaven.
But every day I’m more confused as the saints turn into sinners, all the heroes and legends.
I knew as a child have fallen as idols of clay. And I feel this empty place inside.
So afraid that I’ve lost my faith. Show me the way.
Show me the way, bring me tonight to the mountain and take my confusion away and show me the way.
And if I see a light should I believe? Tell me how I will know. Show me the way.
Show me the way. Take me tonight to the river and wash my illusions away. Show me the way.
Show me the way. Give me the strength and the courage to believe that I’ll get there someday and please show me the way.
And every night I say a prayer in the hopes that there’s a heaven.
And this passage says, for God, for God, do you believe in God?
Yes, I can’t prove God.
I can’t take you to a scientific laboratory and prove to you that there is a God.
But the Bible teaches us about Him.
He is the creator in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, all those stars at night that you see if you can see them in New York, God created them and starred them.
He is also a spirit.
The Bible says God is a spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth, he doesn’t have a body like you and die.
He could only be one place at one time. If he had a body like yours.
But God is a spirit. He can be everywhere. At the same time, he can be in Russia.
He can be in China, he can be in America, he can be in Africa.
He can be in Latin America. He can be everywhere. At the same time, God is also unchanging.
I am the Lord God I change not says the Bible in Him is no variables.
Neither shadow of turning says James, The Bible says that God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world think of it.
He’s appointed a day a moment in which he’s going to judge the world and you’ll be there God.
But God also is a God of love.
My mother loved me, but she didn’t love me near as much as God loves me.
And that seems impossible to believe my wife loves me. I love her. I have five Children. I love them.
I have 19 grandchildren. I love them and I hope they love me. I have three great grandchildren.
I think they love me and I love them.
And I know that they all love the Lord, but nothing is to be compared to the love of God.
They had to invent a whole new word in the Greek language to tell us something about the love of God.
God is a God of love. He loves you.
And if there’s one thing I want you to take from this Great Park, when you leave here today.
It’s this, God loves you. God loves you.
God loves you and God is interested in you and He has the hair of your head numbered.
He sees the par of all he knows all about you and he loves you no matter how many sins you’ve committed or whatever you’ve done.
You may have gone as low as nicked Cruz described a moment ago. His life was but God loves you.
And if God could change Nike Cruz and change Johnny cash, God can change you if you were let him and he can do it today, beginning right now.
Yes, God is a God of judgment.
He’ll bring every work into judgment and he’s appointed a day in which He will judge the world.
But God is also the God of love. Nothing compared to the love of God.
The Bible says God is love. Yeah, I have loved the, with the love that’s everlasting says Jeremiah.
And for this reason, God created man, if you ever wondered why you’re here, why God created the human race?
And what’s the purpose of the human race, God created you because He’s a God of love and he wanted some other creatures in the universe that could choose to love him in return.
And so he created man, Adam and Eve. He put them in a perfect paradise.
And we believe that that was located in the country that’s now called Iraq at the head of the Persian Gulf.
Much of the Bible was written in Iraq, Ninevah Babylon or of the Cal where Abraham came from.
And Abraham is the father of the Jews and the Christians and the Islamic people.
Abraham is the one we all look to at the beginning. He came from Iraq.
And that’s the reason there was so much interest in Iraq during the Gulf War.
That’s why so many books were written from the Bible about the Gulf and God created man and put him in that garden of Eden, that perfect environment, that perfect paradise.
And God gave man a choice.
And God said, I can, I want you to have all the fruit of the garden except one tree, you can’t eat of that one tree.
God was testing man and God said, if you eat at that tree, you are going to break my law, you are going to suffer and you’re going to die and man broke God’s law.
God gave him a free will to choose and man chose to rebel against God.
I heard a TV talk show the other day, you can listen to nearly all of them and they’re discussing what’s wrong with human nature.
Why do people do the things they do? Why do people commit the crimes they do?
Why do people tell the lies they tell? Why is there so much jealousy?
Why are there so many problems in the world? It’s because man has a disease and the disease is called.
What’s the basic cause of war and crime and deceit and fraud.
Why do we have to have hospitals and jails with bars and windows and police forces and military forces?
Our social problems are basically moral and spiritual problems and the moral problems require a religious solution.
All these problems indicate that something is wrong with human nature.
People have been looking to technology or political force to save us but God says your problem is in your hearts.
The first sin ever committed was committed in a paradise. It’s a heart problem.
Jesus said for out of the heart, proceed evil thoughts and adulteries and fornication and murders and thefts and blasphemy.
The Bible says in Romans six for the wages of sin is death.
The Bible says sin is a breaking of the law.
What law, the law of conscience, if you ever gone against your conscience, then you’ve committed a sin.
Have you ever broken one of the 10 commandments? Then you’re a sinner.
Have you ever failed to keep the requirements of the sermon on the mount? Then you’re a sinner.
We’ve come short of what God requires and we are sinners before God and sin comes between you and God and comes between you and peace between you and happiness between you and joy and between you and the assurance that if you died, you’re going to heaven.
Solomon, the great king of Israel once said, there is no man that sin, not, we are alienated from God.
Let’s remember that we are separated from God, but in spite of that, he still loves us.
Yes, there is a hell, there’s a hell in this life, but there’s also a hell in the life to come.
If we keep, if we are separated from God, the Bible teaches that death has three dimensions.
There’s natural death. When you die, you’re going to be buried or you’re going to be cremated or how they’re going to handle you.
We disappear from this earth, but there’s also spiritual death living inside of you is your soul or your spirit.
That’s the part of you that lives forever.
That’s the part of you that can have fellowship with God and you have broken God’s law.
And as a result of it, you are spiritually dead, you’re dead toward God and that death will continue throughout eternity after you’re dead.
And you’re not going to be out there with thousands of people having a good time.
As many people describe hell, you’re gonna be all alone.
You’re going to be, there will be a terrible loneliness to it all. And that’s what hell is.
And we can have hell in this life and hell in the life to come. And that’s called eternal death.
Words in the New Testament used by Christ to describe the penalty of sin as lost, perish, condemned punishment.
Hell, God saw all this confusion and saw us stumbling in darkness.
We didn’t know what to do with ourselves.
We were either bored on the one hand or we were physically dying on the other.
So God decided to do something about it because of his love.
God couldn’t just forgive us or he would break his own word. He wouldn’t be God.
He had said that if you sin, you’re going to die.
If you sin, you’re going to suffer, we had to suffer, we had to die.
So God’s word could be kept.
One day, I was walking with one of my sons along a road in North Carolina.
We stepped on an ant hill and we looked down and we saw those ants dying and suffering and saw their little house destroyed.
And my son said to me, dad, wouldn’t it be great if we could uh help those aunts rebuild our house, take them to their hospitals.
I said yes, but we’re too big and they’re too little. Then. I thought what a wonderful illustration.
God looked down from heaven and saw us with all of our darkness, with all of our stumbling and all of our problems and fightings and bickering and difficulties and wars, but God was too big.
We were too small. We looked like little ants crawling on this planet. What could God do?
God decided to do something about it. God became a man.
God became a man and that man was the Lord Jesus Christ.
He was born of the virgin Mary and he came for one purpose.
He came to save you and to save me and to save the world and he came to die.
He’s the only man that was ever born just for the purpose of dying.
He took our sins on the cross. They took him outside of Jerusalem and nailed him.
The Romans did not. The Jews, the Romans took him outside the walls of Jerusalem and nailed him on a cross and he shed his blood.
And in that terrible moment when he was hanging there, he said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And in that terrible moment, he made seven agonizing expressions and in those expressions, he was telling us that he had taken our sins.
He was made to be sin for us, think of it. He was made to be sin.
He became guilty of your adultery. He became guilty of all the sex sins that you’ve committed.
He became guilty of all the envy and the jealousy and the fighting and the killing and the murders that you read about in the newspapers almost every day.
He has made him to be sin for us.
The Lord has laid on him, the iniquity of us all think of it.
He took our sins. Now, what do we have to do?
We have to repent of our sins all through the Old Testament. The Old Testament prophets said, repent.
The first sermon Jesus ever preached was repent and all through the New Testament, they wrote, repent, repent, repent, repent.
What does the word repentance mean? It means that you confess to God. I have sinned against you.
Lord, I’ll admit it. It means that you turn from your sins.
You’re willing to let God have his way in your life and you’re ready to follow him and serve him from now on.
That’s repentance a few days ago in our daily bread entitled Take me to the cross cliff Barrows gave me this wonderful little story.
A policeman, an officer was patrolling on night duty in a town in Northern Great Britain.
When he heard a quivering sob, he saw a little boy in the shadows sitting on a doorstep, tears rolling down his cheeks.
The child said, I’m lost. Please take me home.
The policeman began naming street after street trying to help the boy remember where he lived?
He named the shops and the hotels in the area. But all without success.
Then he remembered in the center of the town was a church with a large white cross towering high above the surrounding city.
He pointed to it and said, do you live anywhere near that? The boy’s face immediately brightened. Yes, sir.
Take me to the cross. I can find my way home from there.
And if you come to the cross today, there is a way, if you come by the way of the cross, if you’re lost, the only way home is to come to the cross.
The cross of Christ directs lost people to their eternal home. But Jesus didn’t stay on the cross.
He rose from the dead. God raised him from the dead.
And I’m not speaking to you about a dead Christ. I’m speaking to you about a living Christ.
And this living Christ is going to can come into your heart today by the Holy Spirit and make you a new person.
Give you a new outlook on life.
Take away that loneliness, take away all those sins that you’ve committed and wipe them away.
So that when God sees you, he never sees your sins.
You are justified in his sight as though you’d never sinned.
And then the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is coming back again someday.
I was in Jerusalem and I was talking one day to the chief rabbi.
And I asked him, I said, sir, do you believe that Messiah is coming back?
He said, oh, yes, I said, I do too.
But I said, I believe when he comes, you’re going to notice that he’s Jesus Christ.
He laughed for a moment over his cup of coffee and he said, he didn’t laugh. He just smiled.
He said, of course, that’s our difference.
We’re both looking for Messiah, but we believe that it’s going to be Jesus Christ and they shall see the son of man coming in the clouds of glory with power and great glory.
He’s coming back and he’s going to set up his kingdom. Yes, communism did not win.
No. Is, is going to win.
Only that Christ is going to win and Sunday, Sunday, he’s going to rule the world.
But tonight he wants to rule your heart.
He wants to come into your home, into your family, into your neighborhood.
He wants to come into our country and he wants to be king of kings and Lord of Lords.
Now, what does God require of you? I’ve already told you about one thing repentance.
During this past week, we’ve been celebrating the holiest days of the Jewish year.
Yom Kippur, which is celebrated on Wednesday is intensely personal. The Jewish holidays ask three questions.
What have we done? What have we done with our life during the past year?
Where are we now in our life? What do we plan to do with our life in the coming year?
And one reason that Yom Kippah exercises such an enormous grip upon the Jewish people is because the holiday theme is so personal and contemporary.
There’s not a person among the people that can say my life is complete and spiritually filled.
We all fall short and we have to say with everyone else. I too am a sinner.
I’m separated from God. I’m lost. I need to find my way home. It’s not an option.
It’s a command in acts 17, the apostle in his sermon says, God commands all men everywhere to repent.
Think of it. God commands it. It’s a command for you to repent. Have you repented?
Are you sure of it? If you haven’t repented of your sins, you’ll never see the inside of the Kingdom of Heaven.
And then you come by faith for by grace.
Are you say through faith and not have works less, any man should boast.
You’ll never be able to work your way to heaven.
You have to come by faith in Christ and you come by the grace of God.
Grace means it’s something you don’t deserve. You can’t work for you. Come by faith in him.
That’s how I came by simple child like faith.
You say Billy, those are such simple things that Jesus spoke with such simplicity about spiritual things that the Children hurt him gladly.
And we’re, we’re to make it simple.
It’s a profound truth, but it’s to be proclaimed in simplicity and all of you today that are willing to say I will repent of my sins.
I receive Christ as savior. I want to follow him and serve him. Well, I want to rededicate myself.
You might want to renew your vows that you took at confirmation or at baptism or whatever it was.
And you want to say, Lord, I want to come back to you.
I’ve wandered away from you and I’ve gotten confused and lost.
And I want Christ to be first in my life. I want him to forgive my sins.
I want to come to the cross and I want to follow him from now on.
Hold up your hand. Yes, there are many people with hands up and there are so many people standing.
I can’t ask you to stand because you wouldn’t stand out.
And there are four things from now on that are very important.
First read the Bible every day, the Bible is food for your soul.
Secondly, pray, perhaps you cannot pray like a clergyman.
But you can say, Lord help me, I’m in need of help.
He’ll come and help you. He’ll answer your prayer. Pray it in Christ’s name.
Say Lord Jesus, I, I need you.
And then the third thing witness for Christ, you ought to tell some people when you go home tonight or tell people tomorrow, you know, at that great lawn meeting, I made a commitment to Christ and I mean to keep it with God’s help that will help you to win other people to Christ.
And then the fourth thing is get into the church into a church where Christ is proclaimed and follow him and serve him as best you can.
Because you see when you leave here, you won’t leave alone. The spirit of God goes with you.
And I want you to pray this prayer out loud after me. Pray it out loud.
Oh God, I am a sinner. I’m sorry for my sin.
I’m willing to turn from my sin.
I receive Christ as savior, I confess him as Lord.
From this moment on, I want to follow him and serving in the fellowship of his church in Christ’s name.
Oh man, you can make that same commitment, right?
Where you are just pick up the phone and call the number you see on your screen.
Special friends are waiting to talk with you and pray with you about this most important decision.
If you just prayed that prayer with my father or if you have any questions about a relationship with Jesus Christ, I would just call that number that is on the screen.
There’ll be someone there to talk with you, pray with you and answer those questions and remember God loves you.
If you would like to commit your life to Jesus Christ, please call us right now.
Toll free at 18777724559. That’s 1877772 45 59.
Or you can write to us at Billy Graham one, Billy Graham Parkway Department C Charlotte, North Carolina 28201.
Or you can contact us on the web 24 7 at peace with God dot TV.
We’ll get the same helps to you that we give to everyone who responds at the invitation on behalf of Franklin Graham and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
Thank you for watching and thank you for your prayers.