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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/norman-crawford/christ-died-for-the-ungodly/
I would like to read just one verse. It's Romans 5 and it is verse 6. Romans 5 and verse 6. For when we were yet without strength, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. I have to confess that I really wanted to read about five verses in Romans 5.
But then I thought if I can explain just verse 6. If verse 6 doesn't contain enough gospel to preach for a meeting, then I'm making a terrible mistake. This is a grand gospel text. You know, I often think of the many expressions in the Bible that contain five words.
And I'm thinking of expressions like Christ must needs have suffered. What blessed words they are from the book of Acts. The precious blood of Christ. First Peter chapter 1. Mr. Paisley often says those are the five greatest words in the English language.
The precious blood. Think of what we so often say when we're preaching from John 3. The words of the Lord Jesus and Eccehdemon. Like, ye must be born again. Just five words. And yet those five words contain an eternity of truth.
You, personally, must be born again or you'll never be in heaven. Christ died for our sins. 1 Timothy 1 and 15. Blessed words. Five glorious words that are the central theme of the Bible. Christ died for our sins.
I think these five words in Romans 5 and 6, to me personally, are the five grandest words in Scripture. Christ died for the ungodly. And as you've already heard tonight, the Bible has a theme. The Bible has a message.
And that message is about a person. The Lord Jesus Christ. And what that person did that lost souls might be saved. That sinners who have no strength to save themselves might be saved alone by what He has done.
It touched me to sing that hymn at the beginning of the meeting tonight. It was alone. The Savior prayed in dark Gethsemane. If you were to go out Spring Harbor Road and you were to turn left on Warren Avenue and go about five houses down Warren Avenue on your left, there's a little house there.
The number on the house is 1321. And in that little house, that beautiful hymn was written. One of the most beautiful hymns we sing. Not only did the Savior suffer alone, but He alone can save. It isn't Christ and.
It isn't Christ plus. It is Christ alone. You must have Him, or you'll never be in heaven. Now, I have such a simple message tonight. I don't know whether I can call this any kind of a sermon or not. Let me tell you what I have before me.
I've been thinking of the cross. The cross of the Savior. The cross of Christ. Because a Christless cross no refuge were for me. And a crossless Christ my Savior could not be. But this is Christ crucified.
It's the Christ who suffered on the cross. That is the theme of the Bible. In fact, in the gospel records, you have the facts of the cross. I'm sure you know that. And I'm often amazed as many years as I've been reading those gospel records, I'm amazed how the facts of the cross are told, I was going to say, without embellishment.
Do you know what is totally missing in the gospel records that is almost always in human writings? And I have been a reader all my life. And I have often been impressed with the fact that it's almost impossible for an author to write a story without some way or other putting into it something of his own reaction, something of his own feelings, some subjective thing from himself.
Have you ever noticed that in the gospel records there's none of that? The only place where you even come close to it is in John 19. John is describing the soldier with that short spear that was plunged into the side of the Savior when he hung on the cross.
And John said he that saw it bears record. And he knows that his record is true. Do you know that there's scarcely another statement like that in all the gospel records? What are they doing? They're just giving us the facts of the cross.
The book of Acts that follows the gospels is the preaching of the cross. And if you were to go through the book of Acts you would find statements like I've already used. Christ must needs have suffered.
How that Christ must suffer. When they had fulfilled all things that were written of Him they took Him down from the cross. The book of Acts is the preaching of the cross. But this epistle to the Romans, I love it.
Every true Christian loves it. Because this is the meaning of the cross. Romans actually tells us of the truth in the Savior's death. If I could only impress that on you tonight. Why did Christ die? I hardly ask that question that my mind doesn't flash back many years.
I was preaching with a man by the name of Mr. Louis Brandt. He got on a train one day. We don't travel on trains nowadays but we did then. He got on the train and there was only a couple of single seats left and he sat down beside a gentleman on the train and they quickly engaged in conversation.
I thought Mr. Brandt must be speaking to this man about how to get to heaven. Truly he was. But after the conversation Mr. Brandt said to me, you know, that man is a very religious man. He's engaged in all kinds of church work.
He has a young people's class. He does all kinds of extra things for those young people in that class. And he said after he had told me all the things he was doing, I said to him, I would like to ask you a question.
Why did Christ die? And this religious man who was so anxious to help all these young people, he said, that's something that has always puzzled me. Why did Christ die? I want to tell you tonight why Christ died and I'm going to do it in the simplest way I know.
Can I make it very personal? Because I can hardly do anything else tonight. Tomorrow is April the 1st. It's usually called April Fool's Day. Well I don't mind even being a fool for Christ. Because on April the 1st, many, many years ago now, this poor sinner was saved.
And I learned the meaning that night of five blessed words. And I'm going to heaven because of the truth of those five words. And if I did not have one other thing, I need no more. Christ died for the ungodly.
Most of the people here tonight have often heard me tell how I was saved. Of course I had Christian parents. If my father were living today, he would have been saved for 103 years. Saved in 1897 in the city of Belfast in Northern Ireland.
My mother was saved just about two years after that. So I was brought up under the Gospel. I was the youngest in a large family. And it was a home where the Bible was read every day. It was a home where the family bowed their knees as my father prayed.
I don't remember my father ever praying with the family that he didn't name each of us and pray for our salvation. I always believed that someday I would get saved. I always thought the time would come when I could say, well now I truly believe.
And now I can say I'm saved. I always thought that would come. Not the way it came at all. I had a brother. His name was Harry.
Harry wasn't really interested in salvation. He went to meetings when he had to. He missed as many as.
He possibly could miss. He was the quarterback. If I tell you boys and girls that the game was not called football, that it was a different game slightly, it was rugby. Maybe you will understand. He was the quarterback on the rugby team in high school.
He loved the sports. He loved the game. He lived for it. One day.
On a practice field Harry was injured. He thought that it was something quite minor. In fact,.
He never said a word about it. He was picked up off the field and carried to the side and gradually got so that he could walk on his leg again and he walked home. Never said a word. He wanted to keep on playing.
He played to the end of the season. But that leg was so severely injured that it cost him his life. The bone was bruised. Staphylococcus infection, which is still very difficult for the medical profession to fight.
Staphylococcus infection set in that hip bone. When it was discovered how serious it was, it's called osteomyelitis. And when it was discovered that he had that disease, he was taken to the hospital. They immediately decided surgery was necessary.
It was the first of seven such surgeries each time the infection spread. One day, they found Harry reading the Bible. Harry hadn't expected the preacher to come in and so he looked up surprised. The preacher said, Oh, I see you're reading the Bible.
He said, Do you do that very much? He said, Harry said, hardly ever. Well, he said, You must have some reason for reading it now. Are you thinking about salvation? Harry confessed that he was. He didn't know he was dying by the way.
Not at that time. The preacher went over the Scripture with him that he had been reading. It was John 5 and 24. And very wisely, he explained simply, Verily, verily means it's true. It's true. I say unto you, that's a personal message.
That's the Lord Jesus speaking to you. He that hears my word, the person who hears him, that this is his word, that he is God's Son, that his word is eternal, that it can never fail, he that hears my word and believes God that sent me, sent me to the cross, sent me to bleed and die, should not perish, should never be in hell, but have everlasting life.
And that wise preacher got up and left. He prayed and he went out of the hospital room. Harry thought, well, he was going to do something more, explain something more to him. He didn't. He left him. And Harry thought, well, he probably doesn't think there's any hope for me.
And he didn't have any hope for himself. And then he looked down at the verse. Verily, verily, I say unto you, it dawned on him, the Lord Jesus is speaking to me. And suddenly the truth of the gospel opened up to him that Christ had died for his sins and he trusted the Savior.
He lived for about four months, maybe a little more than that, maybe five. I was in that hospital room the day he died. It left an impression on me that very few things in life have ever left. You see, in the city of Detroit a number of years ago they had a sign on the street corners that said, an accident is only a word.
Accident is only a word until you have one. I think that was a very powerful message. It was at busy intersections where people might carelessly have stepped off the curb into the path of a car. An accident is only a word until you have one.
You know, death is only a word until it comes that close. The funeral was in our home, actually. I don't know why exactly, but the people filled not only the home, but they overflowed into the front and back and side yards around the home.
And when everybody had gone that had come to view the body before the service, the night before the funeral service, everyone had left. And I stood beside the casket of my brother. He was 19 years and 2 months old.
He had gone to heaven. I got awakened at that casket that night because of the truth that came home with such power to me was if that were me, I would be in the flames of hell. I must confess that I wasn't always troubled to that degree, but that trouble scarcely left me.
Mr. Sam McEwan. And some here in the meeting, not very many, but a few, heard Mr. Sam McEwan preach. If you heard him preach, you'll never forget it. He came to preach in the city of Toronto. He preached for six weeks.
He had been there just a year before and he had preached for maybe that length of time and he had seen many, many souls get saved. Some of the men that I have known all my life got saved in that series of meetings that Mr. McEwan had.
He came back a year later. He preached for six weeks. As far as I know and as far as anyone knew at the time, not a single person was saved in all that six weeks. It was the last night. It was a Friday night.
And when I went to that meeting that night, I must confess all hope that I should be saved had been taken away. I tried so hard to believe. I tried to feel saved. I had tried to make it true that Christ was on the cross and suffered to save me.
I tried to make it true by believing it. Somehow you get saved. That isn't the way it happens at all. That night, Mr. McEwan got up and read Revelation chapter 20. Verse 11, I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them.
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God. And the books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works.
And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. See, I could quote those words then. They were very familiar to me. But he got to verse 15. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
That was me. There may have been 350 people in the meeting that night. Many of those young men who sat around me. I was in the third row from the back on the left hand side of a big building. And a number of young men who sat around me are gone to eternity long ago.
They didn't live to be very old. They were casualties of a war. And I sat there, a lost sinner, hopeless and helpless. I was going to hell. I could do nothing about it. Mr. McEwan was still preaching about judgment.
He was still telling sinners of God's terrible day of wrath. And suddenly, more quickly than I can say the words, it dawned on me when Christ hung on that cross and suffered there. He suffered for my sins.
At that very moment, the truth dawned on me. Because Christ has already suffered for me. I will not have to suffer in hell. I didn't know much else. I wonder what I would have said if you had asked me at that moment, do you believe in Christ?
I wasn't even thinking about believing in Him. I wonder if you had said to me, are you born again? I don't know what I would have answered. But you know, I didn't even speak to the preacher at the door.
I get out of the building as quickly as I could. I started for home. We could walk. We had to walk. Good reasons for it, too. We had to walk. I walked through a big dark park and I stood out in the middle of the park.
I looked up at a clear sky studded with stars. I think for the first time in my life I knew what it was to give God thanks. The God who made all that gave His only Son to die for me. Oh, my friend, that's a wonderful salvation.
It has not dimmed. It has not faded as the years have passed. Well over 60 years have gone by. Thank God. Christ died for the ungodly. You know, I have to tell you something else. I didn't intend to do this, but let me tell you this.
There are people here who have had this same experience, so they may get some help from it. I began to wonder in the weeks and months that followed, is that it? I mean, I don't even remember even thinking about believing in Christ.
I just thought He died for me and that's all I have. And I just have to trust Him. And I was so simple in my mind, I wasn't sure whether trusting and believing were the same thing. I was just a boy and I get into real distress.
I wondered, am I really saved at all? Do I really have Christ? You see, that moment about a quarter to nine, sitting on that third row from the back in that building, there wasn't a single verse from the Bible came to me at that moment.
And I heard people tell about how they had this verse and that verse and wonderful texts and they had God had used those texts to open their eyes to the truth of the cross and I didn't have a verse. That bothered me.
I was at a Toronto conference. Mr. Fred Watson was preaching. He told how he got saved. And it was such a clear, plain, simple story of salvation. He got saved at 21. And it will surprise you where he got saved.
He got saved in a Sunday school class when he was 21 years old. So he was still going to Sunday school. But then he turned to a number of older men who were sitting down here on his left in that big conference auditorium and he said, well, do you think I'm saved?
And then he said, well, wait a moment. I know I'm saved. How do I know what he said? How do I know I'm saved right now? He said, Christ died for the ungodly. And that's me. And if I never believed it before in my life, I believe it right now.
I was sitting behind him. I was a young man sitting behind him on the platform where the young men were sitting because there were no other seats. He didn't know until afterward, but those very words were exactly what I needed.
I have the word of God. I don't need feelings. I don't need something inside me to tell me. I've got God's holy word to tell me. It's a fact. I'm glad it didn't say Christ died for Norman Crawford. I've often told this, but I got on a plane one day in Hartford, Connecticut and a man by the name of Norman Crawford had my seat.
And I'm afraid if it said Christ died for Norman Crawford, it might be a Norman Crawford who lives out at Bundy Hill about ten miles from here. Not me at all. It doesn't say Christ died for Norman Crawford.
It says Christ died for the ungodly one. My friend, that's me. When I was yet without strength. When I could do absolutely nothing. Christ died for in the place of, in the stead of the ungodly one. Have you believed Him?
Have you trusted Him? Are you depending on His work? God grant your will. Shall we pray? Father, bless Thy word. We thank Thee for the great provision made. We thank Thee, Lord, for the all-searching eye of the Lord.
We thank Thee that all things are naked and open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. And, O God, we pray tonight that each heart might be searched, that there might be honest hearts here tonight, made honest by the Spirit of God, by the Word of God, to recognize their helplessness, their lost condition, that they might come and trust the Savior.
Bless, we pray, this message tonight from the Gospel of Luke and use it mightily and honor Thy Son this night, we pray, in His precious name. Amen.