Jesus Came to Save That Which Was Lost - Part 1 — Joshua Daniel

Welcome to the Lord's Challenge with Joshua Daniel. The Layman's Evangelical Fellowship International is a ministry reaching people from all walks of life since 1935. After a life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ at the age of 16, Joshua Daniel has been declaring the marvellous deliverance from sin, which is freely given to all those who turn to the loving Saviour.

Wherever this message has gone out, broken relationships have been restored, sickness healed, ill-gotten money returned, and thieves turned into givers. We now invite you to watch and receive the invaluable blessing that God has for you.

Sin, Dishonesty, and Dependence on Government

You know, we have been speaking last about the sinfulness of sin. You know, if everybody takes to robbing and stealing and cheating. As one young man told me at one of these retreats, he said, I picked up a girl and we went to the registry and I paid her the high fee which she demanded, a girl from the streets.

And there we both signed and went through the wedding requirements and she went her way and I went mine. Why? Just to beat the immigration. Now, I don't know how much cheating and lying is going on. You know, once upon a time, if we called anybody a liar, it would be a serious insult.

But today, you know, political campaigns are run on the basis of lies and promises that are never kept. Oh, we will balance the budget. It's never done and countries get deeper and deeper into the hole.

My dear friends, and nobody seems to worry and everybody says, oh, the handouts are not enough. That mentality that is developed today, you know, dependence on the government. My help cometh from the Lord who made the heavens.

You know, it kind of gives you a different consciousness. And so, in the matter of money, countries are in such deep debt that I don't see how they are going to recover or even service their debts. My dear people, oh, no man anything is my rule.

Repentance, Restitution, and Faith in Christ

The rule that the scripture gives us for our comfort and the exercise of faith. You see, that needs a foundation of repentance with Jesus preached, repentance towards God and faith towards the Lord Jesus.

When my father-in-law died, he was a kind of professor who kept his property here, there, and so many bits and pieces. So, and turned it over to one of his brothers to take care of it or whatever. With the result that the brother's sons became drunkards and their lives were very short.

And when he died and I said to my wife, I don't want a penny of your father's. You handle the matter. You divide it between your sisters and yourself for whatever you do is up to you. But as for me, I don't want a penny of this money.

Christ Came to Save the Lost

So, my dear friends, we see, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. You know, this my son was lost and he is found. So, we see in the 18th chapter of Matthew and the 11th verse, I believe, for the son of man is come to save that which was lost.

You see, when Whitefield was preaching one day and was describing the lost condition of a person without Christ falling off a high cliff, one of the lords, you know, the aristocracy of England, he rose up and said, oh, he's falling, he's falling.

You see, the gospel was made so real. And today, it is a question of very cheap grace. Grace itself is a very costly thing. Who needs grace? It's only when you are lost and you're a zero, then you need grace.

Restitution and a Clean Conscience

Grace is misapplied by our preachers with the result that there are any number of people in our churches who have never even restituted. When I started preaching first in England back in the 50s, half a century ago, much more than that, you know, there were a lot of people who had never repented or restituted.

I said, look, you need to put your conscience right. The end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart and a clean conscience and faith unfeigned. You see, and the conscience is not touched. How sad this is.

A man said to me in one of the retreats which we had in Ireland, he said to me, I was carrying armaments to the insurgents, IRA. And of course, insurgents are rulers today in some quarters. You see, insurgents can never have the mindset of a ruler.

Ruler needs a lot of administrative justice, fairness, honesty. And this young man said to me, I was running armaments supporting the IRA. You know, how many British soldiers were killed? How many innocent people were killed in the marketplaces?

I was searched going into a Woolworths or some such super market. Oh, kind of apologetically, a man came forward and said, do you mind if I searched you? I said, go ahead. And sometimes I tell them I'm in the same business, you know, of catching the insurgents and terrorists.

And terrorists get converted in my meetings. And then they begin to look up and listen. Now, my dear friends, that last condition, if we can't get people to recognize it, there is basically no Christianity beyond that point.

That's that's it. Grace applies to the miserable failure. Then grace steps in. Now, the son of man is come to save that which is lost. And of course, the classic 15th chapter of Luke tells us of a woman who had lost her silver coin.

Heavenly Treasure and Missionary Generosity

You see, gold, gold, invest in gold. That's one of the big advertisements today on the television. Invest, but the gold prices have been going down. And so they have gotten hold of silver now. Silver, invest in silver and so on and so forth.

But the Lord Jesus Christ said. Gather for yourselves riches in heaven. What is this riches in heaven? You know. This welfare mentality. Which has gone abroad into the world. It's the very opposite of the missionary mind that Christ brings.

Just the opposite. So what are the governments trying to do? Well, we'll give you this. We'll give you that. We'll give you that. And we will make you pay for the condoms we give out in the high schools and the middle schools.

What? My tax money going to produce a bunch of immoral rakes? Coming to this welfare mentality. It's the opposite of what shall I give? What shall I invest in heaven? You know, I'm so glad that my father invested everything he had in the kingdom of God.

I had a squeaky old bicycle and I wouldn't have money to repair the pedals. And sometimes I would ride my bicycle without the pedals, with just the rod sticking out. And at monsoon times, it was a perilous thing to do because your shoe slips on those rods, which are quite tiny.

So what does the Lord say? The eighth verse of Luke 15. Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle and sweep the house and seek diligently till she find it.

You see folks, finding men for Christ. You know, we produced one or two books of George Dempster because George Dempster would go out and take people from near the bridges of London, sheltering even at winter time and lead them to Jesus.

You know, professional men, great musicians who had been reduced to that condition by drinking, their alcoholism. And today it is so sad that drugs are freely being made available. You know, in some states of America, the states have a voice, a very strong voice.

And they say, we will not have any drug use here or alcohol sold in our county. Now the federal government has a struggle and the federal government makes a law by which these products must be readily available to people, of course.

And there comes a serious conflict between the state law and the federal law. You know, you see folks, we have got today medical uses of marijuana, where this is going to take people. So in the backyard, a man is growing the drug.

And if the enforcement discover that he is doing that, he says, well, I have got the law on my side. And what does this mean? A heavy burden on the overburdened medical services. So all over the world, this has become a problem.

We have become, you know, take a family, a normal family does not want sickness, but they deal with various sicknesses on the cheap. They don't want to spend a lot of money. But today, the taxation is ever climbing, hidden taxes, and so on.

Spiritual Warfare and Christ's Power to Deliver

But will money and medical services take hold of this problem? And solve it? You see, the government hasn't got the honesty to say this realm is beyond us, the field of the psychiatrist. You know, you can't be a preacher of the word of God today unless you have power to cast out evil spirits.

Evil spirits. And what did the Lord Jesus Christ do? He called his disciples and said, I give you power over all the power of the enemy. You see? And often, people come to me and bring cases where doctors and psychiatrists could not help.

And it grieves me, I tell you, it grieves me to the depth of my soul if I'm not able to deal with such cases, you know. And as black magic and the occult practices increase, people are getting lost, you know, in one mission, you know, working amongst an aboriginal people who worship the spirits of the forest.

One preacher who had volunteered to serve, he was a teacher, in fact, he would suddenly discover himself walking through some strange region and say, what brought me here? And why did I come here? He was unaware that an evil spirit had suddenly taken over all his faculties and carried him away to a distant place.

Prayer for Deliverance and a Legacy of Faith

Now listen, friends, there is no end to some of these manifestations. Really, the preacher of the gospel, wherever he looks, there is such great need where only Jesus can deliver. Let us pray. Let us tell God, I don't want to leave a generational curse to my children.

Lord, let faith be the heirloom which I leave to my family. Faith in the living Savior, faith in the blood of Christ. Please, Lord, deliver us and save us in Jesus' holy name. Amen.

This program is brought to you by the Layman's Evangelical Fellowship International, an interdenominational missionary and prayer group working for revival around the globe. We invite every lay person to become God's ally in changing his or her corner of the world.

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Until we meet again next week, may God bless you.