Now here's a proposition that I invite your attention to, everybody believes something about Jesus, the Mohammedans will tell you that he's as great a prophet as Mohammed, the liberals, the modernists of our day say he's the highest product of mankind that's ever graced this earth, that he had more of God in him than any human being that ever lived, the fundamentalists, that he was here and he died and he's still dead, the liberals make much of his passion and deny his cross and savior but rebel against his rule, it's not that men do not believe some things about Jesus, as to who he is, it's that their faith is defective, their belief won't get the job done, you do not face that in your witnesses, you go out and try to get somebody to take Jesus, honey, they've done taken him a dozen times, and it hasn't transformed their life because the Jesus they accepted and the Jesus of the Bible are two different people, you try and get somebody to believe in Jesus, they already do, they believe something about him and they're perfectly satisfied with their relation or lack of it with Jesus Christ, you go to the hospital and find anybody that won't talk to you about the good Lord, you go to the jails, everybody in jail is a great believer in Jesus, people in our churches have some sort of faith, some sort of belief translated into action which is faith, they've committed themselves some way or another to this one called Jesus, Mr. Moody when he lay dying did it rightly, when he said all he'd had to do was to go up and down this country where people read their Bibles and people knew something about biblical truth then, in the church and out, and he said all I had to do was go up and down the land and exhort men to believe in Jesus, but the preachers who follow me, I wish they'd listened to him, they didn't, the preachers who follow me will be foolish to exhort anybody to believe in Jesus, for their first task will be to fight through the battle of who he is, that's the issue of this hour, who is Jesus Christ, I make the sad statement and I've spent my life saying it and I believe it, whether it's so or not, and I'll live by it and die by it and take abuse if I have to and be exiled if that's the cost, I face that, this generation of people in churches and out, is to the Jesus of the Bible, that we're having a right Christ and that's where the rebellion comes in, absolute Lord of life and unless he controls your thought life and your whole life, you're a stranger to faith and the Lord Jesus Christ, the biggest question you'll ever face is who is, I love that name brother Bob that is given to my Lord at his conception, thou shall call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins, God Emmanuel, Joshua, Samuel, he shall be called Jesus because he's God with us, given a task to save his people, not in but if I am from their sins, well he was born of a virgin, didn't have a human father, he lived a life apart from sin, he was crucified on a Roman gibbet outside the holy city of Jerusalem, he is buried in another man's grave, he is swaddled in another man's clothing, perfumed as body was by spices somebody else furnished, he was raised by almighty God, he was enthroned at the right hand of the majesty on high, and there he said he must stay and he must reign till every authority and everything in the universe has been brought into subjection to him, that's who this Jesus is, and salvation we're going to try to find out Tuesday night, is not believing these things but being vitally joined in faith to this Jesus, you are the branch, the way you can sing he's the lily of the valley, and morning star, list of ten thousand, everybody ought to know who Jesus is, to where he's the lover of your soul, to where you can read the book of Solomon and make it yours, oh where is my beloved, where can I find him, read with the deepest spiritual men of the book of Psalms, early in the morning will I seek thee for thee, that's the language of somebody who's been married to the living, and they're not about to get a divorce, become adulterers and friends of this world system that did him to death, because they found him as the lover of their soul, in the book of Matthew chapter 16 my lord, always anxious, and that folks that know whom they were talking to and with whom they were dealing, he said the disciples what are folks saying about me, whom do you know, and he said well folks are talking about you, and they say that you somehow say you Isaiah, and some say you're Jeremiah, some Elijah, and some they don't know just exactly, they can't pinpoint it, but they say you're a prophet, now that's as high as any human being can speak of Jesus Christ, the power, as he did the apostle Paul, who Jesus is, that's as high as you can go, and that's as high as the average church member's ever gone, he's a great prophet, such a mighty fine thing, this world would be so much better off if we pay some attention to the golden rule, the great teachings of this man Jesus, but man cannot descript you say by searching find God, and so the Lord Jesus Christ, since that's what the people are saying, that's as much as they can say, no man can call Jesus Lord, except by the spirit, first Corinthians 12 and three, impossible, whom do ye say that I the son of man am, the Lord said, and Peter said thou art the Messiah, Christ means Messiah, the anointed one, the sent one to Israel, thou art the Messiah, the Christ, yes, the Pharisees over there, whose son is this Christ, and they said he's David's son, well he said how come David calls him Lord, if that's all it is to it, and now he asks the disciples, since men say I'm just a prophet, that's as high as they can go, what do you say about it, and they said thou art the Messiah, the son of the living God, and the Lord said hath they art thou Simon son of John, for flesh and blood hath not revealed the son to thee, but thy father which is in heaven, you see when we got this telling men that they got saved by deciding for Christ, we became butchers of souls, for men decision for Christ not worth a dime, it's God's revelation of Christ to a man, that's salvation, that's salvation, said you disciples didn't find out who I am by going to school, you found out who I am by God revealing me to you, and that's the way people get saved, now I'll fight you about that, I'll fight you about that, I'm going to look in the face and tell you you ought to cut out this butchering of souls, I'm telling you that a man, Christ Jesus must be made real to the inmost being of a human being, that's what salvation is, that's what my Lord, that's how he said these disciples found out who he is, I would if I could and this is not pious preaching, I've been in it too long for that foolishness, I have many more layers left if the Lord tarries, but under God if I knew how that you'd stomp on my body, if you'd throw that little decision of yours away, and if you'd start the search, see if God would make Jesus Christ and all his glory real to you, until you could sing the old songs of the cross, now I left the cross when my Savior died and see the glory of God in that awful glory cross, until you could sing majestic sweetness sits in his home and be happy and worship him there, until these things would not be something to argue about, but something to worship and adore him, is that God Almighty has taken the scales off your eyes as you sought him, taken the wax out of your ears, and made Jesus Christ, the enthroned Christ who sits through a pool of his own life's blood to get there, until he'd be real to you, and you could say he's mine and I'm his, I was a chaplain a little while in the second world war, your little decisions they went out the wind in two weeks, that's the boy got away to church and mama, you know what I'm talking about the Christian boys in the camp of 30 ,000 men would follow me around like a little dog would his master, the so lonesome and so beaten and whipped in the midst of Baptists and Presbyterians and Methodists and Catholics and this that and the other who made a little decision called it salvation, but Jesus wasn't real to them, and I'm telling you now that you're living in a day when all hell's popping loose and nothing except the real thing's going to get the job done, and I say the biggest thing any human being ever faced is to find out who Jesus is, all the glory of his person and the splendor of his work when he laid down his life on our bloody cross, who is Jesus, is Jesus on God's throne, ladies and gentlemen he changes everything he touches and if there's one scandal of what we call Christendom today it's unchanged lives, nice creeds, orthodoxes all get out, but not transformed as they sang this morning, but the old hadn't been changed, with a change that kept on changing you day by day and will keep on changing you until you're conformed to the image of Christ, you've never touched the Lord and you're not saved, there are three things that are settled about who Jesus is, he's your Lord, whether you like it or not God made him Lord, there's a second thing that's been settled about who Jesus is, he's the one who will save you or damn you, he will save you or damn you, he's been given that job, you do not have the privilege of deciding whether you'll accept him or reject him, you do have something to say about when you'll accept him, or accept him you must, he'll make you, it's settled that you receive him as Lord, in the New Testament let me give you two or three statistics, in the entire New Testament Jesus Christ is called Savior 24 times, he's called Lord 520 times, must be some significance in that, he's called Lord Jesus Christ 81 times, 24 times he's called Savior, 520 times he's called Lord, 81 times he's called the Lord Jesus Christ.