He Is Able (2 of 2) - 1955 — Leonard Ravenhill

Jesus was living, and from that day until he died, every Sunday morning they sang a resurrection hymn. They sang up from the grave, he arose. My dear friend, even when they put him on a cross, when hell began to jubilate for a moment, only for a moment, for as they took him off the cross, as they laid him in a tomb, he wasn't there.

They put his body on a cold slab. They put a knife shroud on him. They put a napkin around his head. And angels were looking on, and demons were looking on, and all Palestine was looking on. And they said, that's where he is.

That's him that said he was the Lord of life. That's him that said he would bear the sin of the nation. That's him that once stood one day and sure that he was able to save, because he was able to save a dead man and raise him up.

He was able to save a blind man and give him sight. He was able to save a deaf man and give him hearing. He was able to save a leper and give him cleansing. He was able to save a woman with an issue of blood and give her new life.

But he'll do nothing. Now there he is. And they laid him on a slab. And they put a stone over the grave. And they put wax over the stone. And they put seals over the wax. And they put soldiers over the wax and over the seals and over the stone and over the grave.

And they put them all there. But do you think that's all that was there? Surely not. So here they've got the prized prisoner of all time. Here, if they can break this, it's the end of the religion that you and I call the Christian religion.

If Jesus dies, you and I are dead, not for time, but for an endless hell. If Jesus is finished, there's no hope for us. And so there's a stone and there's a wax and there's a seal on the wax and there are soldiers there.

And every demon in hell was recruited. And every demon put his shoulder against that stone. There wasn't a demon in the world. There wasn't a demon in hell. They were all holding that stone there, until that third day.

Christ's Authority Over His Own Death

You remember that Jesus said, when Herod said, you better be polite and answer properly, I've power to take your life. Oh no, Jesus said you don't. No man taketh my life from me. I've power to lay it down and I've power to take it up.

It seems to me that he believed more than the, that Herod believed and Pilate believed more than even the disciples of Jesus. And I say, there he is, wrapped up, tied up, tied up with grave clothes about him.

They're going to come and embalm him. And they say, Jesus is there. He isn't there at all. The devil said, we've got him. In a few minutes, Jesus is going down the avenues of the bottomless pit, declaring his triumph.

In a few minutes, Jesus was slipping down what we call the bosom of Abraham, where Abraham and all the other righteous dead were, whispering into their ears his triumph and telling of his resurrection.

And on that morning, as the hymn writer says so gloriously, death could not keep its praise. His life was for my life. His death was for my death. His resurrection is the pledge of my resurrection. And I'm saved tonight, not merely by the death of Jesus Christ, but if he dies, he must rise.

Resurrection as the Pledge of Believers' Salvation

And they said, vainly they watched his bed. Those demons with their big hungry eyes were looking on there, is this the end? And angels were wondering why he came to the womb of the virgin down there. Is this the end?

And God was looking on, he knew the answer. And the devil's cringing there in the last cavern of hell. And there, against that tomb, there's not only that the stone you and I ever committed is laid on that stone.

He's going to show that he's the Lord of life. He's going to show his resurrection power. And vainly they watched his bed. Jesus my Savior. He tore the bars away. Jesus my Lord. Up from the grave he arose and heaven broke into a doxology and hell went into despair.

When he rose again inside his garments, he carried there, as it were, the birth certificate of my soul. He carried the emancipation. So because he brought the power of death, he breaks the power of cancelled sin.

He sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the violets clean. His blood avails for me. I'm saved not only by his resurrection, but I'm saved by his life. If we are saved by his death, how much more, says this very official epistle, are we saved by his life?

And Jesus Christ is able to save to the uttermost tonight, because he ever led us to make intercession. Because when you come to the altar and confess sin that you wouldn't confess, when he drags it out of your guilty heart, when he comes and smites that guilty conscience, when he stirs that impure memory, when you're able to say, as Pop Lady said, vile and full of sin I am, but thou art full of truth and grace.

When you're able to say with power alive to that fountain fly, wash me, Savior, or I die. Man, if you don't believe it, I believe it tonight, that if you won't say yes to Jesus Christ, you'll sign your own death certificate.

God won't send you to hell. That your own sin will send you to hell. Your own willfulness will send you to hell. Your own rebellion will send you to hell tonight. He's able to say, by virtue of the fact that he made a complete offering to sin.

Christ's Once-for-All Sacrifice

That's why it's not easy for me, with my temperament anyhow, to pass any church, whether it's Roman Catholic or any other, and see all the vain oblations. Once, he's not a recurring Christ, it's not an annual trip to a certain place, it's not bringing lighting winking candles, it's not making pilgrimages, it's not giving offerings, it's not paying for masses.

But once in the end of the age, what nobody else could do, once in the end of the age, he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. So you and I may no longer be the servants of sin. Man, I don't care if you've sinned enough to damn a million people, most of us have anyhow.

I don't care tonight if you're the worst man living in Minneapolis or wherever you live, I don't care. It's not my business to care. It's my business to tell you that however black your sin may be, as black as that Bible, your sin may be as high as Mount Everest.

Your sin, my dear friend, may be as deep as the ocean. I don't care tonight. I only want you to do one thing, and that is believe that Jesus Christ died on that cross, that cruel death, that horrible death.

The death that no man even has been able to put into words. The unimaginable agony of the impurity of the world on his spotless soul. The grief of knowing that while he'd said that he'd done the will of the Father, that there was a moment when his Father forsook him.

He's able to save, to the uttermost, all. All men, in all circumstances, in all sin. You may be with the dumb and out, you may be with the up and out. You may be a rich sinner or a poor sinner. You may be a defiant rebellious sinner, you may be a church-going sinner.

But he's able to save to the uttermost. He's not only able to save from the uttermost, as regards anybody, anywhere, at any time. But he can reach to the circumference of time, wherever the Holy Ghost is on the earth anyhow.

He's not only able to save to the uttermost in saving individuals. He's able to save from the uttermost sin. The devil can't keep one sin. I don't know much about Martin Luther. Mrs. Angry knows a lot.

She'll tell you about him. She's always telling me I say a lot about Wesley and not much about Luther. So I'm plugging for Luther right here. You Lutherans sit up just now. Remember that occasion when he said that, was it, I forget where he was, Wittenberg, and he was in distress.

Martin Luther, Condemnation, and the Blood of Christ

Darkness came to his soul. He said, I sat there. It seemed as though Lucifer came himself, carrying a big book. He said from that book he began to write my sins. Sins of youth, sins of manhood, open sins, secret sins, sins I remember, sins I forgot.

He wrote them. He wrote them. He went round the other wall and wrote them. He went round the other wall and wrote them. He went round the other wall and wrote them. And then he stopped and he said, have you any more?

And the devil said, I've got a few more yet. And he said he got another book, black, the book of condemnation. And he wrote the sins of Martin Luther on four walls and then over the roof. Oh, he said, I looked at my sin, my sin, my sin.

The hymn writer must have looked at that when he said, my sin, all the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin must impart but the whole. But Luther didn't know that, unfortunately. He'd been a Wesleyan, he would, but anyhow, he didn't know it.

And so poor old Martin Luther looked at all his sins round the wall and sins over the roof and he said, when I saw them, oh God, are those my sins? He said, the devil said, yes. All your, born of your evil heart, born of your perverted will, born of your corrupt nature, they're all your sins.

Luther said, I'd asked him once if he had any more. And he said, I said to him again, are there any more things you can write? No, he said, that's the whole sum total. There's nothing else to write. Yes, there is, says Luther.

No, there isn't, says the devil. Yes, there is, says Luther. Just write one more thing. Don't put that pen down yet. Write one more thing. What shall I write? He says, start there and go right round the wall, and when they've gone right round, go over the roof, and write over them all the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleansed of us from all sin.

I don't care what your sin is tonight, he's able to save you to the uttermost. He's not only able to save you from past sin, he's able to save you from indwelling sin. He's able to save to the uttermost.

He's able to take that slime pit out of your nature. He's able to deal with that erratic will. He's able to deal with that vile temper. He's able to deal with that impure desire that's mastering your life as a Christian, maybe.

The secret besetting sin. The sin which doth so easily beset us. It isn't in me, because I don't think it's in the Word of God to preach the limited atonement. He is able to save to the uttermost. Tell me the violence, if you will, of corrupt human nature, and as low as you go, grace goes lower than that.

Tell me how twisted it is, and I'll tell you God can untwist it. Tell me how perverted, and I'll say in answer to that perversion, there's purging. But again, I say triumphantly in the words of Romans, in the next chapter, or next chapter but one, in the ninth chapter, if the blood of bulls and dogs were at one time at least, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctify us for the purifying of the flesh.

For the man who had sinned had blood on his ear, and on his thumb, and on his toe. The ashes of an heifer were sprinkled, and there was absolution granted, and he could go back into the sanctuary, and he could go and meet and worship, and he could see the altar, and hear the absolution of the priest, and his blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctify us for the purifying of the flesh.

The Better Covenant and the Superior Sacrifice

How much more? Read the epistle to the Hebrews, and underline how often it says, how much more? Read the epistle to the Hebrews, and read how it says, a better covenant, a better, a better, a better, a better than Aaron is here, a better than the Levitical priesthood is here, a better offering than the blood of bulls and goats is here.

The eternal offering, to the first altar in the world, there's an everlasting offering, a lamb slain, in the midst of the altar. He's able to say to the uttermost, my, if you're a missionary, you better get that well written in your heart.

When you get to a mission field and it rocks you with its rottenness and impurity, with its superstition. When you're going maybe to some place where for a millennium the devil has helped sway, and he's corrupted man, and fear and superstition hold him in bondage.

Go and say deep down in your heart, he's still able to say to the uttermost, even these people. If you go to an intellectual group, say he's still able to say to the uttermost. If you work on Skid Row, say he's still able to say to the uttermost, for it's all within the comfort of his mighty redemption.

He's able to do it, because he made a perfect offering, there's a perfect salvation. Some years ago in the town of Northampton, I finish with this, in the town of Northampton, England, there's a very famous writer called Philip Doddridge.

He wrote a majestic book, The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul of Man. And Philip Doddridge became acquainted at that time with the great murder case that was on in the country. It was an Irishman by the name of Connell.

Philip Doddridge and the Limits of Human Effort

And Connell eventually was found guilty, and he was sentenced to death. There was an alibi, the alibi was that he was 120 miles away at the time of the crime. But somehow they got the rope around his neck, and in those days they hung men out in the public place, in the grass market, in Edinburgh and in the marketplace in any other town.

They came and said to the criminal, we're sorry but it looks as though you're going to have to die. You know the preacher up the road there, Philip Doddridge? He tried to get you off. He tried to produce an alibi.

He tried to get a petition whereby mercy would be granted and you'd be free. But he didn't obtain it. He almost saved you but he didn't quite make it. On a certain day they're going to drag you out and hang you there in the marketplace.

It was a day of carnival and sport. Just like the great Roman hung 5 ,000 Jews on the Appian Way leading into Rome. He was going to hang there and be the scorn, he knew what it meant. And the night before the morning when he was to go out and die, they came along and they said to this man Connell, is there anything you would like?

We'll give you one request before you go to the scaffold. Is there anything you like? The young man was pale, obviously and nervous. Grant me one thing. We'll grant you that one thing. When you take me from prison down to the place where I'm going to be hung on that jivot, will you take me past the house of Philip Doddridge, the preacher?

I'd like to kneel on his doorstep. I'd like to thank him for all that he's done in trying to save me. Very well. The next morning as the hangman went down the road and the police and others, they went down that road crowded with people watching the poor helpless victim and they came to the house of Philip Doddridge.

The criminal turned out of the death path. He went up the steps and he knocked at the door. Philip Doddridge came, kneeling there with his hands up. Young Connell said, sir, every hair of my head says thank you for what you did.

Every beat of my heart, every throb of my heart says thank you for trying to save me. Every thought of my mind says thank you for trying to save me. I thank you for what you did. He turned away and went and died.

And Philip Doddridge spoke on this very thing. And he said, I did everything within my power to try and save Connell, but I couldn't do it. I used all my money. I used all my Pepsi. I used all my time.

I used all my energies. I used all my wit. I tried in every way to get him out of the grip of death, the condemnation of death. But I wasn't able to do it. Philip said, Doddridge, he is able to save Sir Theotokos.

The Cross, Substitution, and Salvation

My friend, you're not a headache to God, you may be a headache to others. Your problem isn't too big, it may have mastered you for many a year. You may have hit the altar many times. The trouble is, my friend, you've never been to the cross, and you've never got on the cross, and you've never believed that as you surveyed that wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, that there, two thousand years ago, that every sinful propensity that you have, that every corrupt thing, that as you've written your own death certificate by your iniquity and rebellion, that there, Jesus Christ, a thousand years ago, potentially, he took your sin in his body.

He made his soul an offering for sin. He presented his blood to the Father. He broke the gates of death. He rose triumphant. He lives, and we're saved by his life tonight. He's able to save you to the uttermost.

You're not too old, get saved while you're young, and you'll miss a thousand hells that other people have gone through. Let Jesus be the commander of your tripartite being, spirit, soul, and body, and he'll bless the day for a million, million years that you've found redemption tonight.

Come, as I say in the last word of this hymn, come as you are, and waiting not to rid your soul of one dark blood. Come to him whose blood, for my dear friend, if Jesus Christ has only shed one drop of his precious blood, and he died that moment, there's more in that one crimson drop of blood to purge every black sin, sin in every black human heart, though they're more than the stars of heaven for multitude.

The Invitation to Come to Christ

For the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanseth from all sin, and he's able to save to the uttermost all who come. Will you come tonight? Will you come? Will you come, church member, in your pride? Will you come, backslider, breaking the heart of Jesus Christ tonight?

Will you come, defeated Christian? Will you? Will you come and get something from God that will send you out to a corrupt world tomorrow, to bear the reproach of being his? Something will take you to the uttermost parts of the earth, and saying that love, so amazing, so divine, demands.

I don't like the thing shall have. I like the original, it demands it. We think shall have, and he doesn't get it. But my dear friend, that love demands my soul, and my life, and my all. He's able to save to the uttermost the person that lives inside of your coat or your dress tonight.

Will you come? He's able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by him, because Jesus isn't dead tonight, he's alive forevermore. Jesus in the right hand of God, pleading his own precious spotless blood as an offering to your sin.

Will you come tonight? Come on, you've been sidestepping the issue before this week. Ah, you go preach to others, and you know in your heart you're just mastered by a secret sin. Some of you have a closed bible, and every day you bypass it, you put a new wound in the heart of Jesus.

Some of you once spent time in prayer, you spend more with TV, and now you press the thorns in his brow, friend. Some of you won't testify for him, and the heart of Jesus is broken afresh tonight. He's wounded in the house of his friend, but he's able to save to the uttermost.

Come on, start all over tonight. Come and get a heart that is whiter, even than that page, it's whiter than the driven sock. Come and say to God, I take that blood, and God will take the black book of condemnation of your life, and he'll hurl it into the sea of his forgetfulness.

Come tonight, and he'll write your name in the Lamb's book of life, and if you're a believer, friend, he'll come and break the power of cancelled sin, and he'll emancipate your spirit. He'll come and englobe you by the Holy Ghost.

The Call to Surrender and Consecration

A saviour like that, friend, if I had a thousand lives, I'd give every one of them to him tonight. If Jesus didn't mean that to me, I wouldn't hawk this poor old body of mine that's in pain. Every moment I'm awake, I wouldn't hawk it around different parts of the world anyhow, but for anything less than a saviour like that, I wouldn't give my blood and my energy and my strength to preach a gospel that's limited.

Friend, from the very centre of the circumference of your nature, he can purify you, and he can empower you. You can go out of that building, that door tonight, freer than any evil that's ever soared in the sky, if you let him put that blood there, the cleansing blood, the vicarious blood, the victorious blood, the emancipating blood.

Will you come? He saves those who come. Listen, even God Almighty can't save you tonight unless you operate your will and say, I'll come. Will you come? Come on, will you end your failure? Will you end your sinning?

Will you end your backsliding? Will you end your rebellion? Will you end your unregenerate state? Will you end your unsanctified state? Will you? This is the last meeting for this time. The next few seconds will be a big book opening, heaven, the book of remembrance.

And friend, you may not say a word, the very act of your will will score something by the angels in that book of remembrance. Will it be for God or against him? Will it be for your soul or against it?

He's able to save all who come. Will you come? Will you say, I'm coming Lord, coming now to thee. Not coming to Rachel, or Hegria, Bethany. I'm coming to that cross. I'm poor and weak and blind, but I'm coming.

The angels are looking, make no mistake about it. I'm free from your blood tonight, sure as that's my hand. When I stand at the judgment bar, there'll not be a secret sin you have or any other sin that a God will hold me for.

I'm free of your soul now. It's up to you. Will you move in and take it? Shall we pray? We'll sing quietly while our heads are bowed and our eyes are closed, very quietly, thoughtfully, prayerfully. Sing it for yourself.

Forget your husband or your wife. Get clear tonight. Get straightened up tonight. Sing it for yourself.