The Exceeding Sinfulness of Sin — Leonard Ravenhill

The Sinfulness of Religious Self-Righteousness

Think of sin, we classify it so many ways, but let me just leap over and say this. Do you remember that the Apostle Paul used this very word? No, no, no, no, he wasn't an adulterer. He was a man of impeccable morality.

He was of the tribe of Benjamin, of the seed of Abraham, a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He belonged to the greatest holy club in the world, and they guarded it day and night, that nobody unclean would get in.

And with all that pedigree, yet he writes one day to a young friend, and he says, but God, who is rich in mercy, for maybe God needs more grace with Pharisees than he does with adulterers and unclean people.

They're going to get there on their own merits, on their own righteousness, on their own goodness. As we were singing tonight, I was thinking of one night I, one afternoon I preached at a Keswick convention in London, England, in a church called Orange Grove.

It's a beautiful old Gothic church with stained glass windows, the pulpits all magnificently carved. And I got hold of that pulpit like this, and I rubbed my feet there, and I gripped there and said to myself, you know, this is nice to stand here.

Because the pastor of the church was a man by the name of Toplady, many years back. And he wrote that lovely hymn, Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me, Let Me Hide Myself in Thee. And he had such a conception of sin, because this is what sin does.

You either get rid of it, or it gets rid of you. And when he saw what it was, he said, Now if you die with sin in your heart, you won't go to a third class heaven, because there isn't one. You'll go right bang to hell itself.

The Urgency of Judgment and the Neglected Gospel

You don't hear much hellfire preaching over your pretty Sunday morning groups, do you? Those pretty boys that want your money, and have nice little girls swinging their hips and clapping their hands and saying to a world that's doomed and damned, and something good is going to happen to you.

The biggest lie ever told, but they tell it every week. We're heading for judgment. We've had more light than any people in history. Oh, yes sir, I spent two years in the subculture of New York, where David Wilkinson amongst prostitutes and jailbirds and yuck, folk that had sex relation with animals, every devilish thing.

But I'll tell you one thing. You never had to get them to, you never had to prove to them they were sinners. And I remember going in the chapel one morning. Usually I just had the privilege of talking to the staff twice a week.

And they said, would you take the chapel this morning? And I went in, and this side of the room was filled with girls, and this side with young men. Some of those girls were the prettiest girls you'll find in New York, and the most expensive prostitutes.

And a little Puerto Rican fellow there. And I remember he stood there that morning, his face radiant, and he talked very, very quickly, and he said, well, praise the Lord, here we are this morning by the radiance of God, isn't it wonderful to be here?

And let's stand up and sing our song. What do you think they sang? Oh my, they sang, they sang, they sang, better than any cry you ever heard in your life. You know what they sang? And they sang it with tears running down their faces, and they sang it with their hands up.

They sang, amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. And you know what? Every one of them believed it. I'm found, I was blind, now I see. And they sang the last stanza. And we'd been there 10 ,000 years.

A little fellow said, Mr. Rennie, could we sing another stanza? I said, go ahead, sing all you like. And you know, I looked round, and those girls' blouses were all soaked with tears. And those boys who told me they used to pull out the switchblades and cut a man's belly open if he wouldn't give them his pocketbook.

And they'd raped women, and they'd done every devilish thing. And there they were standing with tears running down their faces. And I'll never forget it as long as I live. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.

You see, the man that wrote it used to raid the coast of Africa and steal slaves. And then he got so bad they made him a slave. And when he'd been to hell and back, Jesus rescued him. And the trouble with some of us, we've been so good all our lives that after all, we should have made heaven even without redemption.

I mean, after all, when your uncle's been a deacon and your grandmother bought the stained glass window in the church, you can't do much more, can you? Amazing grace. Oh. Then I went to a church, and it wasn't about this.

False Profession and the Meaning of Grace

Sunday morning a few months after. There's a little doll down here, and she was very beautiful. The Avon lady had worked on her about three days before she came to church. She'd as much paint on her as the Queen Mary may be, and boy, I don't know whether she'd hair or a wig or what, but one of the hairs kept straying, and she was singing Amazing grace.

How, how, that saved a wretch like me. I once. Well, she was three streets behind by the time we'd finished the hymn. She hadn't got to the second verse hardly. And I felt saying, you dumb doll, what are you singing?

You're not a wretch. If I told you you're a wretch, you'd get mad. If your husband told you, you'd get a divorce, I suppose. But you're not a wretch. You're singing something that doesn't mean a thing to you.

The Banner of Truth book group have recently published a, or republished a book by Brownlow North. He was a grandson of Lord North. And he went to the devil, and eventually he ended up in the gutter in Paris.

He got so bad, even wicked women didn't want him, and wicked men left him. And one night he went down to the River Stein there, and he stood on the edge of it, and he said, this is the only way out, there's no other way.

Here I go. Years afterwards, in Scotland there was a banner across Main Street. Come and hear Brownlow North. Brownlow North. The man went in the meeting, he scribbled a note and said, would you pass this to Brownlow North quickly please.

And Brownlow North was just going to come on the pulpit when they handed him a note, and it said, hey Brownlow, this is your old buddy so and so. You stand up there tonight, and I'll stand up and expose your immorality, your perversion, your lying, your depravity.

Boy, will I have a time. And the man with him said he went as pale as death, and he stood for a minute. Are you all right sir? Yes, I'm all right now. He went up in the pulpit, and he said, somewhere in this great crowd there's a friend of mine just sent me a note.

He's going to tell you about my life story. Would you kindly stand up? I don't know where you are, I haven't seen you for years. He said, stand up, stand up, tell them, tell them. Will you tell them? The fellow standing up, he was shrinking down, down, down, down like this.

He didn't want to get up at all, he didn't want to say anything. And Brownlow says, let me tell you what he says. He says, I was with the vilest women in Paris. I went with the most rotten of the prostitutes.

I drank, I spent money, I cheated, I lied, I stole, I did everything. He's right, he's right. But I want to tell you something else. That when that man pulled out on me, and when I had to sleep under the arches, and when I had no food or anything else, and when I stood one night at black midnight, I stood there on the edge of the river, just going to jump in there, and he said, alright, alright, I guess it's true, there must be a hell, and if any man on earth deserves it, I do.

Here I am with all my sin, and I just leaned forward, and he says, I did. In loving kindness, Jesus came. My soul in mercy to reclaim, and from the depths of sin and shame, in love he lifted me. From sinking sands he lifted me, with tender hands he lifted me, from shades of night to planes of light.

Yes, he said. I had all the sin he mentions, and a lot he didn't know anything about. But I came to Jesus. You know, we sing in all our conferences, meetings rather, Billy Graham popularized it a great deal, that lovely old hymn, Just As I Am, without one plea.

But mostly we sing the first stanza. I like the other stanza that says, Just as I am and waiting not, to rid my soul of one dark blot, to thee whose blood can cleanse each spot, O Lamb of God, I come.

The Global Mission and the Cost of Discipleship

And brother, if you're going to the hell holes of America, and there are plenty of them, if you're going to the savages in South America, and God knows how many there are, nobody else does. When I go around the world, and I remember in Australia not a while ago, I took a plane one night, in the dark obviously, and as we came up from that magnificent city of Sydney, we flew inland, we were going up to Port Darwin, and my friend Paul, who's a missionary now, was sitting with me, and I said, Paul, you see all those lights on the ground, those fires, do you know what they are?

He said, yes daddy, I know what they are. You see, those people don't even wear a G-string. Those people don't even have houses. Those people are the lowest known in the world. They don't have cooking utensils.

I've been to tribes, I've been to places where there were cannibals, but they have some utensils, but those people in the northern parts of Australia don't. And the thing that always burned me up was this, that I could go to a hotel in the city, and it's like a New York hotel.

It's got hot and cold water, a lovely bathroom, TV, all the modern conveniences, and you take a jet plane for an hour and a half, and instead of being 1976, I know Dominic, it's 1976 BC. I went into a home in Papua New Guinea.

The door was about 30 inches high, 30 inches wide, so I had to crawl on my hands and knees. Very nice, they got wall-to-wall dirt. They got big beautiful women naked. And there's a dog there with six pups, and one of them can't get to feed, and so she fixed it up and put it on a breast.

She lays the baby down, puts it on a breast, and she suckles the dog. And she puts it on the floor when it's quiet, and picks the baby up and feeds it. You go in the next place, there's a woman feeding a pig.

They feed everything. The children come in and grab the mother's breast. They feed on the mother till they're about six or seven years of age. And some ignoramus with a PhD tells you, leave the heathen alone, they're happy.

I'll tell you what, they're about as happy as they are in hell. They're terrified of the dark. They wail and they gnash their teeth, and they scream when they bury people. They've no hope. Oh, here in America or England, the so-called civilization, we've got drugs.

Creature comforts have anesthetized us. The gospel, we've become choosy about it. We spend our days arguing between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, theologically, and the world goes to hell fire. See, that's why, as the pastor was saying tonight, it'll cost you all you have if you're mean.

After all, it cost Jesus all he had, didn't it? The exceeding sinfulness of sin needs to come back. I know some of the problems the pastor was talking about. I have fellows call me all over the nation.

Sin, Family Responsibility, and Spiritual Decline

I have people come to my home, hundreds and hundreds of miles, sometimes thousands, to talk about problems. And suddenly they discover now their sons and daughters have got to 14 and 15 years of age, and they didn't correct them.

And the girl comes home to tell you that last night she met a nice guy and she experimented in sex. Well, I may as well tell you, last week I smoked a little marijuana. And she gradually breaks down and he says, you know, I think my daughter's in serious condition.

Serious condition. If you want it in plain theology, she's damned. Have you stayed out of bed? Have you wept for her? Have you looked in her eyes and said, listen darling, I'm going to fast and weep and pray, and I'll die on the spot rather than see you perish?

Or did you send a request for prayer to the church and write a little note, pastor, pray for my daughter, she's coming in late. As Dave Wilkerson used to say, most of you daddies helped your daughter.

The first bedroom she was ever in was the backseat of that automobile you loaned her. When she got mad that she couldn't have it like other girls. Man, I've listened to stories in my office in New York that turn my hair nearly blue.

I realize it again, as the pastor said, we're living in the most dangerous situation. Our threat is not communism. Our threat is not otherism. No sirree, our threat, our problem, as I said, that was it last night, that God's problem in America is not communism or otherism.

God's problem in America is dead fundamentalism. We know the phrases, we know the terms, but sin breaks the heart of God, and sin breaks the heart of everybody that indulges in it. And David thought he could get away with it, but it's as a good book says, it's sweet to the taste, but it makes your belly bitter.

He played with fire, and now he finds that though he got rid of the man, and though the baby was his, and so forth and so, now he's staid, now he's guilty, now here he feels, what a leper he is. There's nowhere to turn, and so he comes to a merciful God.

I think the second time Billy Graham came to England, they sang that big Methodist hymn, I don't know, you perhaps don't have it in your book, and can it be that I should gain an interest in, and they sang it in the Victoria Station, and it was reported all over England.

Hundreds of people greeted Billy Graham, and can it be that I should gain, and somebody, some old soul there, that wasn't there just for the feeling of the trimmings, he struck up the second stanza. Reminds me of a big fat man that was in our church.

He's an important man, he gathered the garbage, and man, he'd been a fighter, drunkard, he'd done every devilish thing he could do, and Jesus saved him. And you know what, they never muzzled him after that.

The respectable ladies didn't like him, because you know, I knew when he was going to blow his top, because he sat across the aisle from us, and I could hear him go,.

And I thought, all right, all right, hold it, hold it, and he'd say, Hallelujah! Oh, all the ladies go.

And when the preacher, a visiting preacher, our preacher cut the hymn out, he was very sweet and smart, but a visiting preacher would say, before I give the message, we shall sing Charles Wesley's lovely hymn, and can it be that I should gain an interest.

We'll omit verse three. I thought, will you? Well, you'll see if you will. So they sang verses one and two and four, and they sat down, and the big fat man who always rested his belly on the pew in front, it was too big to hold up anyhow, and he put his hand up, and the tears rolled down his face, and he'd sing, oh, with a voice like a bullfrog.

But I'll tell you what, I get head and gut excited about it. Do you know why? He'd strike up like this, long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature's night, then I diffused the quickening ray, I woke, the dungeon flamed with light, my chains fell off, my heart was free.

I was a little guy, I didn't understand it. But I knew when they said, omit verse three, I thought, you wait till that boy gets cracking. And the girls in the crowd all go, I thought, you, you stinkers, you've never been to hell like.

God rescued him, he was just about in the last stages any man could be, and he was so full of gratitude, he didn't care if he sang ten degrees off the center. But I'll tell you what, he changed the atmosphere of that church every time he stood.

Personal Redemption and Passionate Witness

You see, you were never far down in the pit, were you? No, I've had a good upbringing. Well, I'll tell you what, if you don't get saved, you'll end up in the pit anyhow. We need a lot of guitars, and I'm not against music, but I'll tell you what, once you've tasted the mercy of God, and something happens deep down there, whether it's in the pit of your belly or in your heart, or where it is, and you see what redemption really is, and you say, he loved me, because Paul believed that God so loved the world.

And he wrote that Christ loved the church, but he said, greater than loving the world and greater than loving the church, he loved me and gave himself for me. The prayer of a sinner. There's joy in the presence of the angels of God.

When we have a parade? No. When twenty-five thousand or fifty thousand people gather for a gospel? No. When everybody meets at the Bill Godford meeting? I don't think so. I think the Lord likes it, but I don't believe it makes heaven excited.

I'll tell you when heaven gets excited. When a man staggers up to the cross, I like the hymns about the cross. There was an old American preacher fifty years back who said he'd never had one meeting without, that there was a hymn about the blood in it.

I never leave the blood out of any service. And if some old drunken reprobate came down this aisle tonight and found mercy, they'd be more excited than heaven than if you published ten new books on the work of Jesus Christ.

When I was at Teen Challenge, I used to come over the bridge from Brooklyn onto Canal Street and I always looked sideways if I had time before the light changed and there was a sign, Water Street. Oh, I wish they hadn't changed it.

It was that place where a man walked in one night on his rubber legs, you know, and he staggered in and they said, Do you want to be saved? And he said, Yeah, I want anything you've got. He didn't want saved.

I think he thought they meant shame. He was scruffy and dirty and he knelt down and somebody said, Say the sinner's prayer, God be merciful to the sinner. Are you saved now? We'll baptize you Wednesday night.

This is true. Do you know how many times they baptized him? Nineteen. He holds the record except for Mormons. He got saved and backslid and rebaptized. And one night he went to the front and somebody said, John, pray with your...

Forget it. Prayed with him three times. You pray with him. I said, I prayed with him five. Tell Jack Bear to pray. Jack, go pray with that old reprobate. Man, I prayed with him three or four times. One man went up to the side of him and he said, Listen, I want to tell you something.

I can't explain it to you but it goes something like this. Jesus says, Jesus said, If you come to him, he will no wise cast you out. If he doesn't cast you out, what does he do? He said, He takes me in.

Oh, I see. He takes me in. He takes me in, he said. He got in that night. Some years after, there was a funeral. It looked as though they were burying the mayor of the city. They were burying that old drunk, Jerry McCall.

And his casket was there. It wasn't worth much and his eyes were sunken, his cheeks, he was old and the place was jammed up. And they opened the door and a bunch of rough looking women came in. Every one of them had a white carnation in.

Every one of them had a jail sentence that had been a prostitute and every one of them had been led to Jesus by the old corpse lying there. And after they'd bent over and kissed that old man till his eyes were just full of water, their tears had flown into the socket.

They opened another door and a hundred men came, all wearing a red carnation, symbolic of the blood that redeemed them. And they went and they touched him and some of the old rascals even knelt there and they kissed him.

And they stood round and they said something like that, He loved us. He loved us. Do you know why I love them? Because he'd been one of them. Because he'd been one. Some of you people say, you know, my, if I'd been saved earlier, I'll tell you what I'd have done.

I'd have been on the mission field. All right, start a mission field. Fill the back seat of your car up every Sunday for the next year and show God you mean business. Much easier to give a dollar for gas for the church to run buses, isn't it, than you get from people that might leave fleas in your car.

You can't impress God with words. He's smarter than that. He knows you too well anyhow. You see, we'd all like to be Billy Grahams and address the crowd. We'd all like to be heroes on a mission field and somebody would write a book about it.

Get down to business. Get down to the hell hole. My daddy was rescued out of sin. A Saturday night, he put old clothes on, his elbows sticking out and a beaten up cap and he stood outside of the taverns and when a guy came up on his rubber legs, my daddy put his arm in his and he took him to the basement of our church and they gave him hot coffee and got them sobered up and led them to Jesus.

And Sunday, he'd say, Lucy to my mother. She's a lovely lady, Lucy. I love Lucy. And he'd say, Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. I'll see you in church. Where's daddy going? Oh, oh daddy, daddy last night, he didn't come in.

Did you hear him come in at one o 'clock this morning? He was able to take a man he found outside of a tavern. A man who, well then he'd been a naughty man, a bad man. He'd been to jail. He'd been a wicked man and daddy took him home and do you know, the man didn't even have a bed to lay on.

He had some rags in the corner and I'd see that man come to church and my old dad with one or two others would buy him a suit and a shirt and the next week he'd come all cleaned up and before long we'd a whole string of people like that in church.

You know, I kind of think my dad was a missionary. I think he spelled out his love, not, not in a communion service or the whole realm of nature, mind. Forget it. You won't even give him a prayer meeting.

You won't give him a night out of bed. Who are you fooling? You may fool your pastor. You may fool yourself. You won't fool God. There is no other way for America to be saved unless we have a Holy Ghost revival that makes men hate sin and loathe sin and turn from sin and repent of sin.

Restoring the Joy of Salvation

All right, the second prayer. Quickly, he prayed the prayer of the synodary. He prayed the prayer of the right side. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. Yeah, we sing Culper's hymn, Amazing Grace.

Do you remember some of the other hymns he wrote? Where is the blessedness I knew when first I sought the Lord? Where is the soul refreshing due of Jesus and his word? And he thinks of those days when, like you used to have, days when this book was sweeter than the honey in the honeycomb and now you hardly ever bother with it.

Days when prayer was so real that you hardly knew whether you were in the body or out of the body. Now he doesn't praise you much. You pray at night. Lord bless me and the kids. Amen. And get into bed.

Do you know what he says? Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. That the bones which thou hast broken. Did you ever break a bone? I jumped out of a burning hotel. It was higher than this. And I jumped on the sidewalk.

I didn't want to. I had to. I brought my back in three places. My leg was hanging in three places. My feet were broken. And I was lying in the street at three o 'clock in the morning. That's not a good example for a preacher.

But anyhow, there I was. And a man came round the corner. He said, What are you doing here? I almost said, Playing tennis, can't you see? But anyhow, here I was crippled. And he said, Let me put you on the side because something might come round the corner and you'll get hurt.

I said, Listen, I'm hurt enough. Don't touch me. Do you know what he did? He put his hand under my back and he put his hand under my broken legs and he lifted me up. I actually bit a piece out of my lip there.

I'd always been taught you should be a British bulldog and not squeal, you know. I didn't want to let the side down so I bit a piece out of it. But you know, when he lifted me up and those bones touched together, it was like two live electric cords that sparked and agony went through my body.

And he laid me down in the snow. And do you know what? David says, When you're out of relationship with God, it's like a broken bone. The bones which thou hast broken, he hadn't a broken bone in his body.

He had a broken relationship with God. The song had come out of his heart. The joy had come out of his spirit. And you can give all you like to missions and you can do all the things you like. It will never bring the joy back until you repent and ask God to bring the glory back into your life.

Repentance Requires Restitution

It happens so easy. I was preaching in a church in Ohio a few years ago. A beautiful girl came to the altar with a bunch of other people. She had long braids. And I stayed at the altar more than an hour praying with men and I was going home and I, to cross to the hotel I got my arm in the sleeve of my coat and was getting, and somebody said, Brother Angel, would you take a little time with this girl?

And I went to the front and I said, Hi, how are you? And she was sobbing. I said, Brother Angel, you've been crying an hour. Quit. There's a time to weep and a time not to weep. Let's get to business.

What's your trouble? I'm a backslider. Oh, well, that's great. You know the problem. Most people don't even know that. You're a backslider. Well, I can tell you the way back. I'll tell you what God says.

He'll heal your backslidings and he'll love you freely and so forth and so on. Now, are you prepared to tell God about it? She said, Yes. You see, Mr. Rameau, I like to swim. I like to swim and that big shop next door had some swimsuits and I saw one on a model.

You know, the old story. He saw it and he looked at it and coveted it. I went in another day and it was there. I went another day and it wasn't there. It was on the edge of the counter and there's nobody looking and I slipped it under my coat and walked out.

So my mother, I found it in the street and she said, In the middle of the meeting tonight, your voice dimmed away and I heard a voice saying, Swimsuit, swimsuit, swimsuit, swimsuit, swimsuit, swimsuit, swimsuit, swimsuit.

What is that? Swimsuit a thousand times. I never heard that swimsuit. But when he is coming convinced and the only way to get to that girl was to say, Swimsuit, swimsuit, swimsuit, swimsuit, swimsuit, swimsuit, swimsuit,.

She just wished I'd shut up, she said. Of course, that's common. Everybody does that, but apart from that, Swimsuit, swimsuit. I said, Okay, are you prepared to go back to the shop and tell them what you've done.

Bring forth fruit meat for repentance. I don't have enough money. Well, I'll give you some of mine. I'll get the pastor to give you a little.". Hoped he would, but anyhow I said that. Now I said, let's, and by the way, you said you told your mother you stole it.

You'll tell your mother that you, oh I couldn't tell my mother. I said, oh good night. I said, Mr. Redhill don't leave me. Why not? I want God to forgive me. Tell your mother what you've done. Alright.

Is your mother here? Yes, she's right at the back of the church. The very stylish lady with the big cartwheel hat. So I said to one of the friends, get the lady with the cartwheel hat. Bring her down here will you?

And she came down, you know. Is my daughter here? Well, I think so. Oh, she's the finest girl in the church. She sings in the choir. She collected more permissions last year. She teaches this. I said, lady listen, your daughter's a thief.

Oh what? My daughter's no thief. I said, oh she said she is. And the girl said, mother I never found that swimsuit. I stole it. I said, mother you've done wrong as well as her. Listen, you get down here at the side of your daughter, at the other side, and I'm here and we're going to pray and get this girl straightened up.

And the mother got down like this, you know, as though she cracked before she got there. And do you know what God did? As sure as God is God, as soon as she said, I'm sorry and I'll never do it anymore and I apologize for deceit and hypocrisy.

And suddenly the bells broke in her heart. And she jumped up. And she ran down the aisle leaping and she said, pastor, pastor, I've been a hypocrite. I've cheated on you. Do you know what? I stole something years ago and Jesus forgave me and my joy has come back.

I feel marvelous. Started putting my coat on and the fella said, there's a lady at the altar. Yeah, there is. Plus a cartwheel hat. I said, say, could I help you? Maybe you could. But she trembled. She wasn't there when her daughter told me what happened.

She said, in the middle of a meeting tonight, the Holy Spirit said, sewing machine, sewing machine, sewing machine, sewing machine, sewing machine. He must have said it a thousand times. Oh, what happened?

She said, did you notice my daughter said that she cheated on me for 15 months? I, yeah, I remember that. I've been cheating on my mother, who's at home 80 years of age. I've been cheating on her for 15 years about a sewing machine.

I told a lie about it. You'd better watch some of you parents. What's the trouble with your children? It's something you sowed in them and you're going to reap it through then. Do you know why? Because this girl cheated, and mother had cheated, and the mother reaped what she'd sown.

What did David do? He committed adultery. What happened? One of his sons took his daughter, one of the sons took his sister, which was David's daughter of course, and committed adultery or fornication.

David came in one night, what's that? A body turning over. It's my son who killed him. And the other son says, oh he killed him because he fouled my sister's life up. What did he do? He sowed murder. And in a scientific day like this, with all the wizardry you have across the canal there, men still do not gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles.

What you sow you reap. You see, this country and my country in the last five years have been rejecting Christ more than ever. Do you know what God says? That when you reject Christ, he'll send you Antichrist.

Do you know there are 2 ,000 gurus in America at this moment, dirty lousy people that have come from India and elsewhere, one of the dirtiest countries I've ever been in. They won't have Christ, they have Antichrist.

They've asked for a room in the Pentagon for transcendental meditation, which is the devil's take-off of being still and know that I'm God. He fakes everything that comes up. If the church goes quiet about the Holy Spirit, you have a revival of spiritism.

If the church goes quiet on regeneration, you have a revival of reincarnation. If the church goes quiet on divine healing, you have a revival of uh of uh what we call Christian science. Every time the church goes quiet on the thing, the devil's big enough to get in a vacuum and reap a harvest.

The Restored Heart and the Need for Regeneration

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. Let me say one thing about this and hurry and finish. Do you remember that old song that says, oh we don't sing it now, we're too stylish, but they used to sing when I was a boy, rescue the perishing and care for the dying and snacks them in pity.

And there's a part of that hymn that says, down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter, feelings lie buried that grace can restore. Touched by a loving hand, wakened by kindness, cords that were broken will vibrate once more.

And some of you have tried to make up the deficiency by buying nicer furniture and a better system to play your records and a few other things. And deep in your heart, there's a broken cord. There's a relationship that's been severed by your sin, by your laziness, by your unbelief.

You managed to save your life and you lost it. You managed to keep up your church attendance and you lost your passion for Jesus himself. You managed to start something in the bank that made you feel rich and you're a pauper in the sight of God tonight.

The first prayer, he prayed the prayer of a sinner. The second prayer, restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. The third, he touches the high peak of the whole psalm. For after all, this is the answer to all the problems.

He says, creating me a clean heart of God. All for a heart to praise my God, a heart from sin set free, a heart that always feels the blood so freely shed for me. A heart in every thought renewed and full of love divine, perfect and right and pure and good, a copy, Lord, of thine.

Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart. Come quickly from above. Write thy new name upon my heart, thy new best name of love. And it was Fulks Jackson, the Methodist, that taught us this thing. I want, dear Lord, a heart that's true and clean.

A sunlit heart with not a cloud between. A heart like thine, a heart divine. Is that your desire? You know, I'm convinced of this. We do not preach salvation in the day in which we live. We preach forgiveness.