I haven't forgotten my headgear, don't worry. Luke chapter 19, Luke's Gospel chapter 19. And this morning my desire is to give a message regarding the Gospel, or, let me try to put this another way, I want to teach the Gospel, or I want to, I'm thinking about young men that take their place up here. And in the old days I guess there was sort of a more of a discipleship program where an older brother would take a younger man with them preaching.
And sometimes they would sit down and they would talk about a passage, they would break it up into sections. It's like when you're reading the Luke's Gospel chapter 15 you will see three parables there. And you have the parable of the lost sheep, you have the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the lost son. So everybody recognizes those divisions.
Sometimes when we get a passage like this people, the story of Zacchaeus, people will just read through the story, they won't think anything about it, and then they sort of try to pull a lesson out of the end. And I want to sort of break it down for you. I'll tell you what we're going to do. Verse one is we would call it the setting.
It describes where the story takes place. And then verses two to four introduces the main character in the story or the characters in the story. And then in verses five to six we see the seeker. So in verses two to four we see the sinner, and then in verses five to six we see the seeker.
We find out that Zacchaeus was looking for Jesus. And then in verse seven we find the scoreners. People that are mocking him, people that are making fun of him. And then in verses eight and nine we see the savior.
He's introduced in all his glory. And then finally in verse 10 you will have the summary. Have you ever had a friend of yours or maybe a workmate and they start to tell you a story and they go on and on and on and you say, cut to the chase, just get to the main point. And sometimes this is what happens with, sometimes with preachers, especially young preachers that get up and they don't really have a clear plan ahead of them and they're all over the place and you sort of wish they would just cut to the chase.
So we want to help you with some of these things. We'll read through the portion first of all the setting. And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. Well, if we would read the story back up a little bit we would read about a man by the name of blind Bartimaeus.
He was on the other side of Jericho. Now Jesus enters Jericho and he passes through and as he's leaving there's a man by the name of Zacchaeus will notice him. In verse two to four we see the sinner. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus which was the chief among the publicans or the word publican means tax collector.
And he was rich and he sought to see Jesus who he was. And he could not for the press, he could not for the crowd because he was of little stature. I'm reading from the King James Version and it's good to read different versions so you get different ideas. Someone could say he was a short man.
Okay, so that's gonna play into the story also. And then verse four he ran before and he climbed into a Sycamore tree to see him for he was the past that way. So that's what we have the introduction to Zacchaeus. And then we'll find a little bit more information about Zacchaeus we'll find out that he's a seeker.
And when Jesus came to the place he looked up and he saw him and he said Zacchaeus may case and come down for today. I must abide at your house or I must stay at your house. And Zacchaeus made haste and came down and received him joyfully. Now verse seven we see the scourners.
And when they saw that was the crowd that was around, when they saw it they all murmured saying that he was gone to be guessed with a man that is a sinner. And then verses eight and nine we see the savior and Zacchaeus stood and said unto the Lord. Behold Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor if I've taken anything from any man by false accusation I restore him for fold. And Jesus said unto him this day a salvation come to this house for as much as he also is the son of Abraham.
And then the summary the son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. I'm encouraged this morning. I look in my audience and I see some evangelists. Okay because I just spent the last couple of weeks down in Belize.
I was a co-leader of one of the E-teams. I've been down in Belize twice. I was down there in February and was down there again. And part of the mission that we do going down was an assembly down in Southern Florida in Miami.
And they had a desire to do a mission trip. They've been praying about this and praying about this. And this might be something that you might consider in the future. There was an elder and his wife.
There was another brother. There was a leader in the assembly, him and his wife. And then there was another couple of were from Belize but they had immigrated to Florida. And then they went back down, go home and tell life friends how great things the Lord has done for you.
There was a young girl at the age of 20 years of age. Sometimes you see well there's older people and you say well I'm old, I can't do anything. Actually the Lord can use people at any age. Last year we had a guy by the name of Don DeBermaker.
I think Don is about 80 years old. And he was down there and he was involved in everything. Part of the other job also is as leaders we want to train other people. I can imagine if Kirk was down there, Kirk would have his sketchboard up and he would be doing a sketchboard.
But he wouldn't say listen, you guys are my support team. Kirk would be saying no. Okay I'm doing this here. And this is how you do it.
He would be taking young men or young women and showing them how I'd have no problem with women doing open-air evangelism. I have no problem if they want to get out there and shout the gospel, go for it. Okay, so anyway this is what we're doing. I was doing some street corner preaching.
We had some big gospel texts up. There was a young man by Jonathan Lee from Toronto from the one of the gospel halls in Toronto. He came down also and Sean of Byrne was preaching in the open air. And then he took the microphone.
Okay, Jonathan you're up next. No, no, no, he was like this here. So I understand that but it wasn't much longer. Well it wasn't much later.
Jonathan takes the microphone and with pure confidence he gets up because why does he have confidence in himself? He has confidence in the word of God because the gospel is a power of God and the salvation to everyone that believes. So it's important we get a hold of this. This gospel is for all.
It's not just for inside the building. That's why John goes down in the street corner. That's why people are doing this all across the country. I remember going down in Vancouver.
I know John when he was a little boy running around. He was a rascal rabbit back in those days. You know, if you think he's wild now. And out in Vancouver I learned to preach the gospel in the open air.
I got saved at the age of 22 years of age. I was saved in March, probably in the summer and the fall. I was in the street corner down in Vancouver. And I remember going down there and there's a group of brethren that are gathered around in a circle.
And one guy would get out in the middle and he would preach the gospel. And then he would go in. And then one of the other brothers would take the mic and they would get out and preach. And I remember finally, they said, when are you going to get up and give your testimony?
Just get out there. I know I can't do that. My knees were shaken just standing there with them. So finally I said, OK, well I'm going to do it.
And I get out there. And I started preaching. And it went great. And I went in.
And I took my place in with the other brothers. I'm happy to be back on the skirts. And then brother come over and said, that was great. He says, now that you broke the ice, don't let it freeze over.
What do you mean by that? Well, next week come back down again and get out into the circle and give a word. And I remember a few times later, I get out there preaching away. And I was starting to enjoy it because there you have all the people passing by.
And it was a challenge to take that microphone and see how long you could keep them. So you had to raise your voice. You had to say interesting things. You had to try to capture their attention.
And this guy gets up and he comes over right in the middle circle where I'm shaking his fist at me. Now normally, I was scared to be down there the first time. And now what happens? I just reached out and put my hand out.
How you doing, brother? And I didn't say, brother, how you doing? And I shook his hand and walked back over to the edge of the circle and one of the other brothers got out in the middle. And he became my best friend that night.
So it's interesting. The Lord gave me the courage and the wisdom how to handle that situation. If you come to Belize, wow, you'll be really encouraged because down there, we're passing out tracks on the street corner. For example, you have this intersection over here.
And Sean O'Bern, he's running up and he's passing out tracks to the people. And the people are stopping. They're trucks. And they're rolling down their window.
And those truck divers are reaching across the other side to get. People are hungry to hear the word of God. I'm not saying millions are getting saved. It was very few got saved.
We went into the prison, the central prison in Belize. And it's interesting. I lived in El Salvador for 10 years. So I speak Spanish.
We went there. We asked the lady that was the director, how many people are going to be English? And how many people? In Spanish, well, there'll be half and half.
When we got there, there was 104 people. And I think 101 were Spanish speaking only. So we were able to speak in Spanish. And then this time, I got one brother to preach.
I said, you can translate for yourself because he was born in Cuba. And he spoke perfect Spanish. So I said, you just give it. And he just carried on pure Spanish the whole time.
So when the second brother get up by translated in English for him, I'll translate in Spanish for him because he was speaking in English. So like I said, there's always room, the young girl, that came. She was very, very shy. And she really didn't want to sort of get too involved either.
But by the end of the time, at the end of the two weeks there, even she was opening up and she was talking to people. So I want to encourage you, if the Lord lays on your heart, there's these e-teams coming up, e-teams evangelize and courage equip in English. And that's why they have it in English speaking countries. Tim Hood brought a group of people over to Ireland down to Bermuda, down to Trinidad and Jamaica, and over to Ghana in Africa.
So there's lots of opportunities. These trips come up on a regular basis. Now we'll get back to the text again. The setting.
Here's another, an outline that somebody has written. And maybe it was your father, John. It was a great opportunity. He was a great sinner.
He had great obstacles. And there was a great savior. And there was great opposition. So there's another outline for the passage that you could work your way through the passage.
I want to think about some of the other things. When it talks about Nicodemas as a sinner, we see his designation. He was a publican. His desire.
He sought to see Jesus. His difficulty. He was short. His determination.
He ran. His discovery. He found out what it means. He found Jesus.
And then, in six, his decision, he came down. His delight. He received him joyfully in his demonstration. He showed that he was a new creature.
Some of the little things. Sometimes when I lived in El Salvador, I would read a verse. And I'd say, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, verse 2, which was the chief among the publicans. And he was rich.
I said, what can you tell me about that verse? There's a lot in that verse. What can you tell me about that verse? And a hand would go up.
He's rich. Well, what happened to all the other things that happened before you got to the rich? Didn't you see any of them? And that seems to be our method of reading the Bible.
So I want to go through this story a little bit about him. I found 10 different things about Zacchaeus. How many did you see when you were reading through the passage? How many can you name right now off the top of your head?
How many things can you think about Zacchaeus? Well, he was rich. What else? He was short, OK?
That's two, eight more. His name was Zacchaeus. Good point. See, a lot of people missed the main point.
His name was Zacchaeus. You got three. You got only missing seven. OK, good.
See, see, see, see, that's something that I've been reading that passage for years, and I never really sort of zoned in on that. OK, so we have named a bunch of things about him. How can we work that into the gospel? We have a bunch of facts.
How can we apply those things to the gospel? Do you ever think about taking the text and working? We're preaching the gospel. We're trying to reach sinners.
What does the verse 10 say? The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. That's what this message is about, in case you missed it. The Lord Jesus Christ come into the world to seek and to save that which was lost.
So how are we going to apply this message? I want to think about a few things. First of all, he was a man. I didn't hear anybody say he was a man.
That was pretty sad. That was right there. He was a man. There was a man named Zacchaeus.
OK, well, how does that apply? Well, here's the way it applies to me. The first thing I was thinking about, do you remember the prayer of the Pharisees? You've probably heard people talk about this.
Their prayer was, I thank God I am not a Gentile. They were Jews, OK? So anybody, so probably 99%, 99.9% of us here this morning are Gentiles, OK? So they're happy they're not like you and me, because we're the scum of the earth, as far as the Jews were concerned, OK?
He said, I thank God I'm not a Gentile, and I thank God I'm not a woman. I know. Did you ever hear that before? I thank God I'm not a woman.
So there's some men have that attitude. I thank God I am not a woman. Now how does that apply to the gospel? Well, this is a pretty mixed audience today.
But if you would go into most churches in the city of Dartmauther Halifax, you would find that at least 75% of the congregation were women. And why do I say that? Well, why do I say that? Well, why do I significant about that?
Men do not need God. Only women, old ladies and little kids need God. Men do not need God. So this is a heart of man.
Men is deceitfully wicked. He's proud. He's arrogant. He doesn't need God.
I'm a self-made man. This is the way men present themselves. And then he was from Jericho. We heard that Jericho was the city of the curse.
We go back to the story back in Joshua, chapter 6. You remember the story? But Jericho, they marched every day. They went around the city once.
And then the seventh day, how many times they go around the city? Seven times. And then what happened? The walls came tumbling down.
That's what we sing. Round and round and round and round. OK, was that only a lot named David? That was his song, OK?
Round and round. OK, but anyway, the walls came tumbling down. And then there was a curse in the last verse, or the second last verse of that chapter, Joshua, chapter 6. And it says, the man that builds that city, he will lose his firstborn in the foundation of that city.
And if you would go over to 2 Kings, chapter 18, and verse 4, it is, I believe it is, when he was laying the foundation, his son was killed in the building of that city. Yes, he said, I rebuilt Jericho. He had that to his glory, but he lost his firstborn son. So how does that apply to us?
Well, we're all under the curse. When the Bible says whereby one man sin entered into the world, and death has passed upon all men, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. So we have to bring the gospel. We have to include our audience when we're speaking about this.
Number three, last night we spent some time with Gabriel and Sam, and they have this precious little baby over there. And they're so proud of their baby. And I'm not going to say anything bad about your baby. Don't worry, OK?
They're getting their defenses up, OK? But you know what Zacchaeus' name was? Zacchaeus, how can you answer me? OK, but his name meant pure.
And I see Gabrielle, and she's got her little baby, and this baby is so perfect now. OK? And it won't be very long before sin starts raising its ugly head. They say, if you want to see that that baby is born a sinner, OK?
You take two one-year-old babies, you put them two feet apart, and you put one toy in the middle. And then you'll find out that they're both little sinners. Because both of them, it's mine. It's mine.
They don't say, well, I'll play with it for a little bit, and then I'll share with you. Kids don't do that. You know that. We have to train them to do things like that.
So there's the sinful heart of pure little Zacchaeus. He started out really good, but he got worse and worse and worse. And then he was a tax collector. He was hated by the Jews.
Why? He would go around and he would extortion people. That was the reputation. And he would go up to you, and he would look at your farm and your business.
He'd say, well, I think you owe $500 in Canadian terms. And the guy would say, no, no, no, look. We're very poor. And he would try to justify.
And he'd try to whittle Zacchaeus down. And Zacchaeus would be trying to open. And you know what that's like. And not only was the tax collector, but the tax collectors were hated by the Jews.
So Zacchaeus says, well, I might be a tax collector, but I'm the chief of the tax collectors. I have a title. I have some prestige. Even though everybody else hates me, my friends, they say, look, I'd like Zacchaeus' job one day.
I'd like to climb the ladder to success and be like him. And then we think he was rich. Well, how does that apply to the gospel? You must remember some of those verses.
The Bible says it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Why do riches prohibit men from getting into heaven? Now, some people have this idea, well, all the poor people are going to heaven, and all the rich people are going down to hell. Some people have that idea, especially when you're living in poor countries, and the people I lived in all Salvador for 10 years, and the people, one of the most common words in the Salvadorian vocabulary is those curupdos.
And you know what that is. You don't even speak Spanish, and you know what that is. Those curupdos, the corrupt ones. OK?
So people have this idea that the rich, the only way they get their money is by stealing from other people. And then sometimes you have this idea in El Salvador when people are very, very poor, they'll say they're lozumildes. They're very humble. They're not humble.
They're poor. There's a big difference between being poor and being humble. When I was in our assembly, I was commanded from Ladner British Columbia to the Lord's Word. And when I was in my assembly in Ladner British Columbia, I was the poorest person in my assembly.
And then when I went to El Salvador, I was the richest person in my assembly. Now, so riches are relative, right? And when I drove down there, I had a 1983 Toyota Camry that I paid $500 for. And I was lucky I made it, right?
So I didn't have very much. And all my worldy goods were in the back of that little car. So I didn't have very much of this world goods. And everything I had in the back of that car was boxes of books, preaching books.
Anyway, and then I had to learn Spanish books to learn the language. And then another thing we find out he was short. OK? So there was obstacles placed before him.
The Bible says, what shall a prophet a man if he shall gain the whole world but loses his own soul? What are the obstacles that you have to get into heaven? Some people say, I'll give my own testimony. Before I became a Christian, my philosophy was wine, women, and song.
And I wasn't a very good singer. And I wasn't very successful with the women. So I spent most of my time with the drinking. So that was an obstacle for me.
And so other people have other things that are obstacles. Some people say, no, no, no. My whole family were all Catholics. If I become a Christian, I'm going to have to leave that behind.
My whole family are Mormons. Or my whole family are Jehovah Witness. Or my whole family are Buddhists. Or my whole family are Muslims.
Or whatever religion you want to place yourself in. It doesn't matter. People are thinking about this here. Well, this is our clocked family.
And this is the way we believe. And if I leave them, listen, the Lord Jesus is calling you to him. The Lord Jesus says, come unto me. He didn't say, come to the Charlton Bible chapel or Northrop Bible chapel.
He doesn't say that. He says, come unto me. All you did, labor, and are heavy laden. And I will give you rest.
Well, it says, he has gone to the house of, they said about Jesus, he's gone to the house of one that is a sinner. So this guy had a bad reputation. If I went around here, and I went up and down the rows here, and this is one thing when you're doing it, when you're a gospel preacher too, you have to concentrate. We're not talking about pointing this lady here in the blue sweater.
I'm going to be pointing. The old gospel preachers used to do that. I'd be pointing to her. And she said, I think you were speaking right to me.
He was speaking right to you. But the thing is, when we're speaking, we have to get across the message that this message is for everyone over in this site. Say we get down four rows, down, and then two rows in. The message is for you.
Down the middle. Each one here, one day you will stand before God. I can guarantee you, based on the word of God, I saw the small and great stand before God. And the books were opened.
I'm sure this book is going to be opened. Have you ever been driving down the road, and you see a policeman? What's the first thing you do? You look in your speedometer.
Why do you do that? Because you have a conscience. There is a law that says 60 miles an hour, 70 miles an hour, 30 miles an hour, whatever, kilometers. And you are trying to justify yourself.
And then if he did pull you over, then all of a sudden you're trying to think of all excuses you could use to try to get you off the hook. So these are things that we have to bring to people's minds when we're speaking about the gospel. Here was somebody that said that he ran. Well, he was in good shape.
Remember, he had blind vertomias. He couldn't run anywhere. He'd run into something. And then there was the paralyzed guys who were on the stretcher and somebody outside of help.
Here was a guy that was able to be active. He was searching for God. He was looking. I want to ask you, are you looking?
Are you one of these guys that are laying on the stretcher and you want somebody to bring it to you on a silver platter? Another thing is he was up in the tree. No one gets saved looking down at Jesus. You have to humble yourself.
You have to come down. You have to realize that he's greater than you. You have to realize that you're the guilty sinner for whom God sent his son to the cross. Another thing I didn't hear anybody say, he was a homeowner.
He says, I must abide at your house. So we see his opportunity. Jesus was passing by. He was on his way to the cross.
Some people, this is their last opportunity this morning. They do not know what's going to happen to them. If you read the obituary column, yes, you're going to read about the old people that died. You're going to read about the people that had cancer that died.
But sometimes you'll have workplace accidents and people die. I was reading in the paper. I was looking at the headlines. And I saw one guy.
He went. And he killed his wife. While his kids were in the car. He just shot her.
She was sitting in the driver's seat. We do not know. David was telling us a story about a guy that carried a suitcase in an airplane for his friend. He said, would you take the suitcase on the airplane?
And the man says, what's in the suitcase? I don't know. Well, who's suitcase? It's my friend.
You don't know him. You know, one of my best friends in PEI when I was growing up, he was murdered. That murder has never been solved. 30 years later, it has never been solved.
I did not know what was going on in this man's life. He ended up dying because of the lifestyle he was living. He died. I did not know him.
When I found out that he was murdered, I was very surprised under the circumstances. So you do not know the person that's sitting next to you, what they're involved in. But I tell you one thing, God knows what everyone if you were involved in. He sees into your very heart.
So his designation we talked about, he was a sinner, he was a tax collector, he was hated. His desire, he sought to see Jesus to you. Who is Jesus? We're gonna be celebrating Christmas.
We're gonna be singing this Christmas carols. His name shall be called Emmanuel God with us. You shall call his name Jesus. He shall save his people from their sins.
And then I wanna think about some discoveries that Zacchaeus had. Okay? He was up in the tree, he was hiding. Remember Adam and Eve were hiding?
Zacchaeus was up in the tree amongst the leaves. And he said, Jesus sees me. Jesus sees me. You know what?
He saw you last night at nine o'clock. He saw who you were with last night. You know, we have a teenage son, he's 21 years of age. And sometimes we have to have this discussion.
What time did you get home last night? And we'll have this, there's always like this sort of a pause, you know, and a sort of recalculation, recalibration of the clock, you know, and so on. Well, what were you doing? Well, I was up my friends playing video games.
What time did you get home? Three o'clock. Well, we're just playing video games that. And there's no problem with playing video games.
But you know the problem when you get home at three o'clock, when you're driving home at three o'clock in the morning? Who's on the road at three o'clock in the morning? All the people are playing video games? No, the people are getting home from bars.
And there's lots of drunks on the highway. And you could be getting home at three o'clock in the morning, living an innocent life and dying because of some drunk, took your life. And then where is your soul? So these are things that you have to contemplate, and you have to, when you're talking to people, because people think they're invincible.
They think, I'm never gonna die. Listen, my grandfather died when he was 96. And I became a Christian when I was 22. So I didn't drink or do drugs since that time.
I did my fair share before that. But since that time, I haven't done any. So I'm probably gonna live to 96, just like my granddad. When I was 52, I had three strokes in five months.
When I lived in Vancouver, working as an insurance agent, I had a gun pressed on the back of my head. Six months apart. I moved down to El Salvador, the safest country in the world, not. It's the most dangerous, highest murder rate in the world.
More than double all the rest of the country's Honduras is trying for that position every now and then. They sneak up there. When I was now, El Salvador, I had a shotgun in my head. Okay?
The week later, they're back again. So I have confronted death. You do not know what lies ahead of you. Being an insurance agent, the most boring job in the world, people say, how are you gonna have a gun at your head?
You do not know what lies ahead of you. And then Jesus says, Zacchaeus, he knew his name. He knew his thoughts. He knew his deeds.
He knew his words. He knew his actions. Yes, he knows all about you. We have that verse in Psalm 139.
David says, where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend up to heaven, you were there. If I make my bed in hell, you were there. No matter where, there's no escape.
You know, there's these guys that just escaped from that from this morning. There was two guys in Tennessee that escaped from a youth detention center. It says, four guys escaped. Two of them were murders.
So there's two guys that commit a murder. They're running around on the streets. That's why we have locks on your doors. Why?
Because people are sinners. People are violent. And then another discovery that Zacchaeus has, not only does Jesus see me, not only does Jesus know me, Jesus loves me. We like to sing that with you folks on them.
That's one of their favorite songs. 80 years old, 85 years old, Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me. So it never gets old to be loved.
Everybody else hated Zacchaeus. But Jesus loved him. The Bible says, but God demonstrates his love for us while we're yet sinners. Christ died for us.
And not only did Jesus love him, he discovered that Jesus wanted him. He's Zacchaeus. Come down. I must abide at your house.
Nobody else wanted to be in. They wouldn't touch him with a 16-foot pole, as they say. But he wanted to come and stay with him. We stayed with Dave and Esther.
We had some fellowship. We enjoyed company to spend time with friends. I don't spend time with people I don't like. So Jesus went to Zacchaeus's house.
We have to remind people that God loves him. And then he discovered that Jesus wants me. So if Jesus wants me, he says, well, I want him too. And that's what it is.
Like I said, when I was a young man of 22 years of age, from the time I was probably 12 years of age, the time I was 22, I wanted nothing to do with God. I went to church with my mom as long as she could drag me. When I got to that age where I didn't have to go anymore, I said, I'm not going. I wasn't a Christian and she wasn't a Christian.
And dad wouldn't go to church. My older brother wouldn't go to church. But when God started speaking to me, when God started showing me that I was a sinner and that I was under the wrath of God, I wanted to get right with God. I wanted to make sure I didn't end up in hell for all eternity.
So I started seeking God. I started asking questions. I started reading the Word of God. I started reading my Bible.
And I found out that, yes, Jesus even wanted me. Someone said that Zacchaeus was the best fruit to ever come out of a Sycamore tree. And then it says, he received him joyfully. There's a saying goes that heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people.
Have you ever heard that, haven't you? He says, I go to prepare a place for you. If we're not so, I would have told you. Where I go, you may be also.
But I want to tell you something else. Hell is a prepared place for an unprepared people. Have you thought about that? It was prepared for the devil and his angels.
You read about the great white throne. You read the gospel by Matthew. Time and time again, there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. The book of Revelation, chapter 19, the smoke of their torments ascends day and night forever and ever.
It's a place of torment. It's a place of utter darkness. When I was a young man, I figured I would spend time with my friends, parting. But that's not what it's like.
That's a lie of the devil. And then you have the scourners that want to dissuade him, the ones who want to turn him away. I want to just close with this thought. That the Bible says, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.
When we get down to verse eight, it says, that he has stood and said, behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. If I've taken anything from any man by false accusation, I will restore him for a fold. There was a change in his attitude. There was a change in my attitude.
I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ on March 19, 1976, 43 years ago. And remember, before I was such a blasphemer, my unsaved friends would say, Wayne, stop your swearing. Imagine unbelievers telling another friend to stop swearing. That was my vocabulary.
And the night I got saved, that vocabulary, 100% went out the door. I remember about two months later, I was driving down the road. I was in British Columbia. I was working at a packing house, a meat cutter down in Langley.
And I was ready to pull out onto the highway. And all of a sudden, the car come up over the crest of the hill, just as I was getting ready to pull out. And I said, Jesus, it wasn't a prayer. It was shock.
It was scare. And I felt like I had stabbed my Lord and Savior. I had used His name in vain, hundreds and thousands and thousands of times. But for the first time in my life, as a Christian, and it wasn't like I was mad.
It just, it came out like that. And that was the last time, 43 years ago. I don't talk like that. The Lord changed.
My desire was to drink. My desire was to smoke marijuana. Now it's legal. Now I can go and do it.
Not. I don't want to do that. I have no desire. Be filled with the Spirit.
Do not be filled with one, but be filled with the Spirit. And it's funny how Christians are sliding back into that. I have friends in Vancouver. They were good, strong brothers.
I love them. I still love them with all my heart. But I would see them. And they would be discussing, well, this is a really good year.
This is wine here. And if you try this, and you know what? It's just like where your treasure is. There your heart is also.
I have a wonderful treasure, the gift of God without measure. We will travel together. My Bible. I love this book.
I love the saints. I love the brothers. I love singing hymns. I hated gospel music.
Now all of a sudden, these words mean something to me. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Just in closing verse 10, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. Isaiah 55 says, seek the Lord while he may be found.
Call upon him while he is near. Don't put it off another day. The Lord is waiting for you to come to him. He wants you in heaven.
He wants you so much that he sent his son to die in the cross for your sins. And if his son was here, the Lord Jesus Christ was here in body. He's coming back. But if he was here in body and he would stretch out his hands.
That's what he did to his disciples. He showed them his hands and his feet. If he would pull back the robe, you'd see a scar in his side where the sword went in. Do you know how big that sword was?
He said to Thomas, thrust in your hand. I used to think it was like a small little sword. Thrust in your hand. So you can see that soldier down there, thrusting in that spear and that big gaping hole in his side.
There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from a manuous veins and sinners plunged beneath that blood lose all their guilty stains. Father, we're thankful this morning. For the word of God, we're thankful that it is powerful. We're thankful that you're saving sinners.
And Father, this morning, we pray if we have those in the audience, that they're wrestling with this thought. They're saying, momma saved and dad is saved and still, I'm not saved. Think of that old song, the harvest is passed, the summer is ended and still we are not saved. Father, what shall it be when the Lord Jesus Christ comes back and that young man will be sitting there?
And his mom and dad will ascend with a shout with the voice of the Archangel. That we caught up together with him in the clouds and that young boy, that young girl, those kids will be screaming, mom and dad, come back. But there's that great goal fixed. They're forever with the Lord.
And that young man, that young woman, they'll be spending time in that great tribulation. When horrors shall come upon this earth, the climatologists and the climate change people are saying horrible things are coming upon this earth. They can't imagine what's coming upon the earth because the Bible deniers, Father, open the eyes of the lost here this morning. We ask in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.