09-11-80 10a Part I — Bertha Smith

Don't get back tonight. We usually have some in the morning services. I just thank you for inviting me to the church, and I sure thank you for your offerings. I assure you that I'll not buy any T-bone steaks or oysters with them or movie tickets.

I'll use it as the Lord directs, and I will just pray that not a one of you will stop until you know you're in that position of death and that the Holy Spirit is filling you up. Now, some of you didn't get one of these little leaflets, What is the Flesh?

Now, we just have a few more today, and we put them down here, and those who didn't get one of these, come and get one. And if there should be any here who are new, who didn't get one of these on this big eye, this athlete standing up here, we have plenty of these.

The pastor had some printed down in the basement of the church. So everybody come and get one of these who do not have one. If you give me your name, when I get some more of those on the difference in the gift and the fullness of the Holy Spirit, I think you give the pastor your name or somebody, some of the church staff, and I'll have, when I get some more, I'll send a bunch to her, and then if she has your name, she can give you one.

That was written by a man in New Zealand. It's no ordinary leaflet. I don't care around ordinary leaflets, and I sure hope that everybody can have one. Now, a few people over here would just move over a little.

There's some seats right in here that are vacant. If you all would move up those on the end. I want you to see this poster, and I don't think you can see it way over there. Those right on the end of the benches can, but what about, do you people back there have to leave early?

You won't disturb me leaving when I'm half through. You see, in China, we have to get used to people coming and going, and I've preached a great deal at chapels, where people just going along the street, and they'll stay as long as they can and get up and go.

So just come on. Oh, you have the baby. The baby won't disturb me. It's asleep. Just come on down where you can hear and where I can see your faces. If the baby cries, why, we'll just give you time to take it out, but it may not cry.

It may just sleep right on if I don't put on rousements too loud. Glad you could come and bring it. Now, this is a lot better. Can you see over here? You're on this side where the poster is. Well, let's just thank the Lord for His presence.

Christ’s Final Week and the Visit to Bethany

Dear Lord, we do thank you. You've been here with us every morning. You couldn't do otherwise, because we're your redeemed children, and this is a place where you, in a special way, love to meet your children, because this building's been dedicated to you.

And now we thank you that you're here with us this morning, here because we're here, and we won't end throwing you down this last morning, and just ask you to reveal the truth that these people especially need, or that most of them need, and if it's not what most of some need that haven't been here all the time and haven't a foundation, it'll still be good for them.

And you can use it to create hunger in their hearts, and so they'll go on with you and get every sin covered by the blood of Jesus. And this big I .D. throne, which is sin, and don't let them stop. Don't let anybody here stop going on with you until they know that in your sight they have become holy.

And your Holy Spirit can dwell in them unhindered and ungrieved and just fill them up all the time and magnify Christ through their personalities. Now, Lord, we can't ask for any less for your children, and this is what you want us to pray.

And now take over as we end throwing you here and use your word to control this. We pray in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. The last of the minister of our Lord may have been the last week of his life.

He went to Bethany. You remember that last week? He went on into Jerusalem on our Sunday morning, and the people proclaimed him king, king of peace, not a military king. He didn't go in riding a military horse like the generals rode.

He went in riding a donkey, king of peace. But the rulers, the more they saw him praised, the more they wanted to get rid of him. And they decided early in his ministry to put him to death, but they weren't going to put him to death themselves because they would lose their position as the religious leaders.

And as the men with authority to explain the Bible and teach the Old Testament, which was all the Bible they had, of course, and then even they had the authority to punish people who broke the law. Moses never broke the Old Testament law, and neither did Jesus.

I mean Paul. Neither did Jesus, but Paul was beaten, he says, five times with thirty-nine stripes. That meant beating the Jews, not the Romans. That was the number the Jews were allowed by the Roman government to give people whom they condemned for breaking the law, but Moses didn't break God's law any more than Jesus did.

I mean Paul didn't any more than Jesus did. Well, of course, they stirred up the people then, and Jesus at night left the city where he knew that Jewish court had stirred up Jewish leaders, so he asked him, and went out to Bethany and spent the nights where he had friends.

Got out of that terrible atmosphere, and the next day he would go back, teaching the temple, giving people a chance, and at one time he was out in Bethany, and he went to call on some dear friends, Mary and Martha, and you remember they had a brother named Lazarus.

We don't know whether Lazarus was home at the time or not. He's not brought into the conversation, into the story, but evidently Martha was the older. In fact, we know she is because the word used, her sister was used for a younger sister.

They have a word for a younger sister and then a word for an older sister. And they both loved Jesus, and Jesus had brought their brother to life, and oh how they did love him, both of them, with all their hearts.

Well now, they just expressed that love in a very, very different way. Martha expressed her love cooking a big meal for Jesus, and she was downstairs just a fussing over the cooking, and you know they don't have kitchens like we have over there, and they don't have cook stoves like we have over there, and they have a charcoal stove that looks like a mud flower pot, except a little taller, and an iron rack in it, and a little hole down below the rack, and they have to put wood on the rack to catch the charcoal when they put the, they burn it, and the first light's the wood, and it smokes, of course, and then they light the, put the charcoal on it, and they have to pick it up and set it out in the yard until it quits smoking, and it's a heavy thing, and after the wood is burned up and it quits smoking, and the charcoal has caught our red coals, they bring it in, and they may not even have a table to set it on, they may have it, they may have to set it on the floor and just bend over, and if they're cooking very much, they have to have two of these stoves, or two or three, and they'll have pots with racks so they can boil something in the bottom and steam something else down in the top, but it's just an ordeal to cook, and that smoke just fills your eyes, and oh, it's just awful.

Well, Martha was downstairs showing her love for Jesus, cooking a big meal for him, and what about her sister Mary? Now, Jesus had gone there with some very important news to share with them, and Mary sat at his feet and listened, and lo, after a while, Martha comes up with the first course.

I mean, did we not get that big sister out this morning? Well, sir, what a blunder. Couldn't get along without her. Here she is. Oh, she comes up with the fruit cocktail, the first course. Just look at that woman's face.

Now, if you were fortunate enough to get here, to get on the front seats, I know you would never have been sitting back if you could have gotten here in time to get up at the front. You could see her face, and she looks perfectly horrid.

Oh, she just looks so horrid. You know what word describes her? She was frustrated, and I claim that no Christian should ever have that word in their vocabulary. No Christian should ever let themselves get frustrated.

They surely don't show Jesus when they get frustrated. They only show that old devil nature, and it ought to be in the place, position of death, and there it's just rising up, controlling you when you get frustrated.

The Causes and Consequences of Frustration

You know what makes people get frustrated? Just one thing. Things did not go as they wanted them to, and as they expected, and half of the time, they attempt more than they can do in the time they have to do it, and the rest of the time, when people get frustrated, it's because they start too late to get ready to go, or get ready to do what they have to do, and then the other reason for getting frustrated is that they're in the habit of telling their children two or three times to do something, and the children don't do it until another storm's at them, and then they rush off and do it when they see they have to.

I wonder if anybody puts things like that on their list this week. If you don't, go add that. You don't have to write it down. Go put it over on the clothes. Children have disobeyed when they do not do the first time what you tell them, and children just love to do things and help their parents, and feel important, and feel needed, and feel a part of the house.

If they are not absorbed in something they want to do right then, and if they're taught right, you ask them to do something, oh yes, mother, and they just run off so pleased that they can do something, and if they're taught right, they'll come and ask the mother what they can do.

Now their minds can be on their own affairs, and you sometimes have to call them, and of course sometimes just like grown folks, they want to do at that time what they want to do, but if they're trained right to put their mother's wishes first, and then to fill in what they want to do later, they'll just be as happy as they can be, just to go and do gladly what the mother, and feel important to do what the mother wants them to do.

Well, she can get frustrated when she tells them a half a dozen times, and they're going to be multiplied in teenage what you let them be when they're in primaries. You start them off wrong and it's going to be multiplied when they get up to teenagers, and you'll get frustrated over the children.

The Language Barrier and Misunderstanding

I called on a missionary that I knew in South Carolina, from a very prominent family that I knew well, and I went over for a vacation, was passing through Tokyo, and I made it a point to go call on that man, his wife.

Well, they'd gone to China after they had a few children, and the woman was giving the little child some water, the Japanese servant, and the mother, of course, wanted to know if the water was boiling.

Well, the Japanese servant couldn't understand English. I know she understood a little bit, and this woman kept yelling at her and asking if that water was boiling, and this woman didn't understand, so she thought the louder she yelled, the better the woman would understand it, and she kept yelling louder and louder and louder, and the child got excited and was crying for the water, and she was thirsting, and the mother was stopping the woman from giving it to her.

She just put on a scene, of course, and she got so frustrated, and her husband was upstairs studying with his teacher, studying the language, and she yelled, and she said, come down. Miss Bertha Smith is here, and the children are perfectly horrid.

Well, what was wrong with the children? The mother was the horrid one. She was the horrid one. She was in a bad situation. She couldn't speak Japanese, and that woman couldn't speak English, and here I came along.

I could speak Chinese, but I couldn't help being the one up there, so she had a situation, and she was frustrated. Well, of course, I just waited until the husband came down, and we just greeted just a little bit, and I had to go on, and of course, glad I did, but we create a lot of situations and get frustrated, and we've just got no business ever getting frustrated.

Learning from Martha and Mary’s Priorities

Well, you know the Lord doesn't want us to get frustrated, because we're not showing Him. Well, here she is, her horrid face is surely frustrated, and she's rude even to Jesus, or she even scolds Him, because He hasn't commanded Mary to come down and help her cook a big meal for Him.

Now, just what about such a lack of politeness? Is that to a guess? And just look at the face of Mary, taking in what Jesus is saying. Do you know what Jesus went there to tell them? Martha missed it all together.

She missed it all together. Jesus went there to tell them that He was going to die. He was going to die. He was going to be nailed to a cross, and He was going to settle their sin proper. He was going to take their sins in His own body, and Mary took it in, and Martha didn't.

This is recorded by Luke. Now, Luke doesn't put anything in time when he writes it. You can't follow one event after another that's recorded in Luke. He just picks out something here and something here in Jesus' life.

You know, he never knew Jesus. He got his gospel from other people, but he gets in what the Holy Spirit led him to write, I'm sure. And in the 10th chapter of Luke, in verse 38, is the record of this.

Now, it came to pass, as they went, He was going to Jerusalem. And He stopped there as He went in. It may have been the last time. No doubt it was. As they went, that He entered into a certain village, and we know that it was Bethany, and a certain woman named Martha received Him into her house.

And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving. Now, too much, too much. And she came to Him and said, Lord, now He's her Lord.

She loves Him. He's her Lord, too, just like He's Mary's Lord, but look how she's expressing her affection. Does thou not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Bid her, therefore, that she help me.

And Jesus said unto her, Martha, Martha, calls the tribes, come down over your house. Get out of your frustration. Come down. Martha, Martha, what on earth are you acting like this for? That's what He meant.

Thou art careful and troubled about much serving. She was many things. She was serving too many dishes. And Dr. A .T. Robinson, that great Greek scholar, the world's third Greek scholar, used to teach English at Southern Seminary in Louisville, and I sat under him.

He said in the New Testament, and he said this meant, but one thing is needful. You're preparing too many dishes. Only one dish of food is enough. Only one dish of food is enough. And this is no time for a feast.

I didn't come here for a feast. But one thing is needful. Thou art troubled about many things. Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her. He was glad enough to get the ear of one of them.

And he got Mary's ear and he got Mary's heart. Now, here are two women who love Jesus. One sat at His feet and listened to what He had to tell her. The other was dedicated to doing her job. Doing her job for Him.

Doing her job for Him. Doing her thing for Him. Doing her thing for the Lord. Dedicated to doing her thing. Do you think we have two classes of women in our churches today? Oh, how many dedicated women so busy for the Lord.

And you'll hear them say, I'm going to serve my Lord. And if you don't give them a Sunday school class, I don't know why they're just cut up, just as miserable as they can be. They've got to teach. They've got to be, they're dedicated, they've got to do a job for God.

Which would be more important, teaching a Sunday school class or coming to the prayer room and getting on your knees and praying for the elders to teach while they're teaching? Which would be the most important?

Which do you think? Well, we'll not say. They're both important, however. They're both important. Well, the Lord was glad enough to get the air in the heart of one of them, the mind of one of them. He was going to die up in Jerusalem.

And He wanted Mary and Martha to know it ahead of time and to know why He was going to die. Now, how do we know this? Well, turn to the twelfth chapter of John and we'll see how we know this. Twelfth chapter of John.

And this is during that time, the last week that He lived, when He was going out to Jerusalem. I mean, going out from Jerusalem to Bethany, wherever He is. And Jesus, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was.

Oh, you see, He'd been in Jerusalem. This would have been about Monday. He went in on Sunday. This would have been about Monday. The Passover was our Friday. Jesus took Mary. Wait a minute. He came. I'll have to start again.

Then Jesus, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom He raised from the dead. There they made Him a supper. And Martha served. But Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with Him.

Now, the men sat in a separate room from the women. Mary and Martha wouldn't have been at the table. At least, Mary wouldn't. Martha was a busy servant. She wouldn't have been at the table anyway. She was consecrated still showing her ability to serve Jesus.

She was helping Mrs. Simon. If this was Simon and the leper, another tells us it made the supper. She was helping her neighbor serve. Then took Mary a pound of ointment, of spikement, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.

Then saith one of the disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which had betrayed him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor? Now, we see here Mary didn't go out and buy.

She had it already, and she took what she had. Judas didn't say, Why didn't you put that money in the treasure? Why didn't you go out and spend that money like that? He said, Why didn't you sell this and bring the money?

You see, he was a thief, and he stole out of the bag. And he could have stolen some of it if it had been put in the bag. He was not interested in the poor, interested in Judas. This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and had the bag and bare what was put therein.

Then said Jesus, Let her alone. Against the day of my burial hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with me, but me ye have not always. Now, we know the burial customs in the Holy Land. They didn't use caskets as we do.

They anointed the body with a very fragrant ointment which had some power to preserve flesh, and it was very highly perfumed, so the perfume would help to counteract the stench of the decaying flesh. And they wrapped that linen all around their bodies, but they left the hands and feet and face exposed, and then they laid them in a cave.

And those hills all over the Holy Land are what they call limestone, and you can chisel them out with a shovel, and they chiseled out caves. And then when the air is exposed to that limestone, it hardens like granite.

And they not only chisel out, they do not usually chisel out an individual grave. They would choose a little tunnel, and then they'd make graves on each side where our Lord is buried, supposedly. They had one grave finished and two other places to lay the body.

And sometimes they chiseled out a tunnel, and then with the cells on each side. And they called that the tombs. You remember, a man demon-possessed must have had 2 ,000 demons lived in those graves, in that tunnel.

And they still have them over there, the old tunnels, with the graves on each side, places to lay the body. And then they rolled a stone on the outside at the mouth of the grave, and they lay those bodies inside, and they'd go back in just as long as they could, and rub more ointment on the face and on the hands and on the feet of their dear ones, just trying to preserve that body just as long as they could.

Mary’s Anointing and Preparation for Christ’s Burial

Now that ointment was very expensive, and it would evaporate if it was put in an ordinary container. But they put it in little stone jars and sealed it. And then when the jar had to be broken to get it open, and when they broke it open, of course, it just filled the place with ointment, and as I said, evaporated very rapidly.

But it was very expensive. And families didn't have any way to, where they lived in towns and didn't have land to leave to their families, that was one way that they could leave something for their families to live on after they'd gone.

They could just buy this ointment and set it up on the shelf, and people were always dying. There would always be a sale for it. And when they needed money, they could take it out. And especially unmarried women.

Mary and Martha couldn't do a thing to make money. Women didn't go out and work. And there was absolutely no way for a person to make a living, for a woman to make a living. And that was why it was so terrible for a widow, when her only son died, and to leave a widow in the world with absolutely no way to live.

Of course, older women, a widow, couldn't go out. If she had a grown son, she could go out, and she'd be old enough to go out on the streets and buy something to eat or something, but there was no work she could do.

The only thing they could do was to act like a servant in people's homes. And people who could afford to have servants, most of the time had slaves that they bought, had a servant for good. So they were in a very difficult situation.

That's why those two women were in such straits when their brother died. They were going to be left absolutely hopeless. But evidently, their father had left that as a legacy for Mary to live on, and she took that out and broke it.

And why? Why? She knew her Lord was going to die. She knew he was going to die. He told her he was going to die. She couldn't have known it otherwise. And so she anointed him, showing him her love for him, and think what that must have been to our Lord.

When he was being rejected by everybody, he knew the disciples were going to flee. He knew that Peter was going to deny him, curse and swear that he didn't even know it. And think what that deed of Mary, just showing him her love, must have been.

And Martha didn't even know he was going to die. She didn't have time to sit down and hear what he wanted to say. She was so busy doing something for him. She loved him, but just dedicated self, dedicated self.

Which one did the Lord appreciate? Well, he appreciated the one who would sit at his feet, who would sit at his feet and learn of him. Friends, with all of our American home conveniences, Americans are the most blessed women in all the world.

We don't realize. You don't have to go boil every drop of water your family drinks before they take it. You don't have to have your bath water heated in a bathtub, a wash tub out in the yard, and then carry it in, dip it in, and pour it in a tub to bathe your children or yourself either.

And you know a few years ago, when the princess, the daughter of the King of England, the princess was married, and her father built a new home for her. He asked her what he wanted her, what kind of presents he wanted her to give her.

He said, put in an American bathtub in my home. Now to you and me, that sounds pathetic. But that's what she had to ask for. But she was wise, wasn't she? And I guess she got the first one that was ever known in England.

Time at the Lord’s Feet and the Disciplines of Prayer

Well, we just don't know our blessings. But I used to say, the Lord had given all Americans, all these American women, all of these conveniences, push a button and turn on your heat, cook. Why? Because he wanted American women to have time to sit at his feet and read his word and pray for people, and the men folks who were out at work and out facing the world, facing the world, making a living, in the midst often of unsaved people, sometimes working under unsaved people.

And the women folks, with all their conveniences, could have time at home all day long. They could sit in the presence of the Lord and work in the presence of the Lord and keep in tune and keep fellowshipping with the Lord and keep in a spirit of prayer, shielded at home from all the conversation that people have to hear or at their daily work from somebody who's not saved.

And the words that are expressed pass their lips. And then American women will just go out and work and put themselves in that kind of an atmosphere just to have a few more things, a few more things, and spoil the children by having a few more things, giving them things.

Isn't it sad? Isn't it sad? Well, now I just want to tell you that there's no such thing as living a glorious, victorious life without having some time, some time of the day, to sit at the feet of the Lord.

You've either got to get up very early in the morning and do it. It's worth doing very early in the morning or it's worth doing very late at night. Since I got grown and started work, I've had to be rung out, rung awake with an alarm clock.

Dr. R .G. Lee married. No, not when he married, not when he became a preacher. I don't know where the marriage came in. He was from my state and pastored there in his early days. I don't know at what stage he married in preparing for the ministry.

But from the time he began preaching, that man started getting up at four o 'clock. Now, you know preachers don't always get to bed early. They can't. But that man just learned to live on a little bit of sleep.

And I hope at noontime at home, when he was at home at noontime, he was able to take a little nap. I don't know. But when that man was 90 years old, I heard him say, he was talking to young preachers, well, preachers of all ages.

I got up at, I'd been getting up at four o 'clock all of my preacher life. And I still do. And he was retired and 90 years old. Well, he knew how busy he was going to be all day. And he knew he had to be ready for everybody else that came to him and telephoned him.

And he had to get up and have his quiet time with the Lord at four o 'clock in the morning. And he did his Bible study, prepared his sermons, and did his praying. Do you think you don't have time to pray?

Well, I want to tell you something. I haven't walked with the Lord 80 years for nothing. No, 75. 75 for nothing. If you don't have your quiet time alone with the Lord, you'll not be in the spirit of prayer the rest of the day.

Your mind will just be on this and that and the other. But if you get alone with the Lord in the mornings or late the night before, whichever suits you best, and you have that time alone with the Lord in the early morning or late at night, you'll be in tune all day.

And you can pray when your hands are busy. And it just must be done, or else you're going to live a glorious, happy, victorious life. And you just can't get by without it. I still have to set my alarm.

I'm a good sleeper. And I have to be rung awake by that alarm clock. I don't have time to sleep till 6 o 'clock or 7 o 'clock. And I don't always get to bed at 10 either. It's unusual when I do. I'd like to.

I'd like to get to bed at 10. But I don't. I'd like it every day after dinner. And when I'm at home and can get it, I try. One of my co-workers had my telephone. They asked the telephone man how to turn my bedside telephone in the room off so somebody else could answer.

He went up and turned it off for me. Well, I left it on a few days. And lo and behold, people were calling, long-distance calls from all over the United States. And there I was in bed asleep. And they'd wasted that money because somebody else would answer.

There'd been nobody in the house, you see. It'd been all right. Well, I stopped that. Well, I said now when somebody local calls, I don't have to answer. But when long-distance calls me, I've got to answer.

I can't make them call twice. And they don't call unless they've got something that's important to talk to me about. And that's the way I'm going to be as long as I live. I'm going to let people call me when they can.

Their time may be two, three hours different, and they're not thinking about the old lady needing a little rest. Well, the Lord just helps me to get along without it. Not as well as I would, I guess, if I had it.

But I get along the best I can without it, and that's the way I've got to live. A young man worked with me two years, and he just did his best to do everything for me to keep me from doing anything in the world that he could do.

And he was just, as I said, he just came to me two years before he went into his own evangelistic work. He was going to be an evangelist to live with me two years, and he said, I just can't be an evangelist and get people in the church.

I've got to get the people in the church ready to receive new people. What if they come in and come into a cold atmosphere? I've got to have a prayer retreat, and I've got to have Bible conferences to get church members ready to receive the people that are saved in an evangelistic meeting.

But when he left, I said, well, now you've been here two years, and he took his meals with me. I said, have you seen the kind of disorganized life I live? Have you any suggestions? Well, at the table, he'd say, Miss Bertha, go take your nap.

Maybe to be telling something I thought was very interesting, but if we were through eating, he wanted me to get up immediately. He'd say, you nap. He'd just tell me to nap. And he told the next person when he left, see that Miss Bertha doesn't waste too much time at the table, that she hurries up and gets out to her room to get a nap where she can.

Well, I said, you've seen my life here, and have you any suggestions, any way that I could have a more organized life? He said, oh, Miss Bertha, you don't know how much I've prayed about that these two years, and said, I don't see a thing for you to do but just go on like you're going, answer every telephone call that wants you, and receive everybody that comes.

So that's the way I do. Well, anyway, he does give me good co-workers. I have another one now. Well, we just have to sit at the Lord's feet. We'll be worth nothing to people in a little while. Now, there's some things that are just absolutely essential.

Holiness, Confession, and Putting Sin on Christ

And, you know, my subject here is God's holiness and man's sin. And we talked at the first few morning meetings about being holy. Now, when is a person holy? When are you holy? When all the sins that you know about have been brought to the cross and placed on the cross of Christ.

Now, I think I've said before here, there are just two places for your sins. They're on you or they're on Christ. And they're on you until you, by a definite act of your will, place those sins on Christ.

Now, that's what it means to confess. Now, I found that some people in the South are going around asking people to make sin lists. One professor at one seminary, evangelism, teaching the students to have people make lists of sin lists.

And he's quoting me on it. He said, that's what Miss Bertha uses. And you know what he tells them to do when they get that list all finished? Right across at John 1, 9. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Well, what does confess mean? You can't take one verse of Scripture out of its context. You've got to link it up with other verses, other passages, and the other teaching of the Bible. Miss Bertha never told them that.

What does confess mean? Well, what does John, what does Romans 10, 10 say? If we confess with our mouths that God raised his Son from the dead, I quoted this, I think, here yesterday. Some of you were not here.

I see your faces are new. I've got to quote this again. This is being holy. That, oh, you confess that Jesus had to die for your sin. He had to die for that sin. God rose Jesus from the dead. Jesus had to die for that sin.

That's included in your confession. And God raised him from the dead so he's alive. Therefore, he was God and his death was for your sins. You've got to put those sins on his cross. You know, this ease of believism that we've preached has just been tragic.

What does it mean to believe? Don't you ever quote John 3 .16 by itself? Don't you ever take John 3 .16 out of its context? Don't you ever begin that way to get somebody saved? God so loved the world.

Why, that brings the biggest problem to people's minds. If God is holy, how could he love me, this sinner, when he's got to face holy nature demands that he punish sin? Why, that was the result. That was the result of Jesus telling Nicodemus how to be saved.