Preparing Your Heart to Receive the Truth — Rolfe Barnard

Preparing the Heart to Receive God's Truth

Finally decided on is the mind of the Lord. At any rate, I want to speak very carefully as I can tonight on the subject of preparing one's heart to receive God's truth. Preparing your own heart to receive the engrafted word which is able to save the soul.

Let's begin reading in the first chapter of James at, well, we'll begin with verse 16 of James chapter one. It's not fair, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

Of his own will beget he us with the word truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. Wherefore, listen to this carefully, if it be true that of God's own will, by the use and means of truth, we were born into the kingdom of God, how desperately we need to hear, if we value our souls, this nineteenth verse.

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath. For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. He's exhorting now, he's advising now, he's speaking to us now.

Wherefore, lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your soul. But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

Today I'm sure that we would not address someone whom we, using what wits we have about us and what spiritual discernment we have about us, we would say that person is not one of God's children yet, has not been brought by faith in the Lord to God, we wouldn't address him as a brother, beloved brethren.

But I'm persuaded that the early Jewish preachers, and James was a Jewish preacher, might sort of address his fellow Hebrews in these terms, because they didn't, it doesn't mean that they believed they were in Christ, but they were fellow Jews.

Well, whether that be true or not, you notice here it says, verse sixteen, he addresses them as my beloved brethren. And he's talking to somebody that he loves, and calls them brother. I do believe, whether that's the right interpretation of this or not, that the words of James, here in verse nineteen, wherefore my beloved brethren, are excellent advice, form these words, from nineteen down through verse twenty-one, three verses, in which we find some excellent advice from James to anyone who has not yet united to the Lord Jesus.

The Engrafted Word and Saving Faith

Here's three, by way of advice, here are three things in these verses that are addressed to unsaved men and women, who would prepare them to receive what he calls, in verse twenty-one, the engrafted word.

And he says that this engrafted word, that it's able to save your soul. Now, it may seem strange that the preacher would say that if anybody wishes to become vitally united to Christ, not just stand afar off and claim to believe in his atoning word, but to be united to Christ.

For we definitely hold that you cannot have the merits of Christ's blood unless you have him, that you cannot separate him from what he did. We believe with all of our hearts that multitudes of people, honestly, earnestly, are doing what they say, trusting in the shed blood of Christ, but they're not saved.

Because we do not believe that unless you have regenerated, you can't participate in the merits of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. And thus we say to men and women, that if you would, in these days of religious confusion, where everybody has a gospel, and everybody has a doctrine, and everybody has fixed interpretations of those individual doctrines, and what I say is just what I say, and there's not much respect for what anybody says, that if you value your soul's welfare, you'll take seriously the injunction of the prophet James, the apostle James, to prepare your heart.

For unless your heart is prepared, and prepared by you, you will never receive the word savingly. Did you get it? You'll spend all the days of your life talking about how you believe in the word, and how you trust him in the blood, but an unprepared heart cannot receive the word of truth.

And the only way to be born of the spirit, by the incorruptible word of the living God. That introduces me to the biggest tragedy of my ministry, as I go from place to place. I wonder if anybody gets saved, because nobody's got time to prepare his heart.

You didn't prepare your heart for whatever message the Lord would have for you tonight, you didn't have time, did you? Did you? So it'll just bounce off of you, and it'll go in one ear and out the other.

Won't be my fault, won't be the fault of the word. Your heart cannot receive truth, unless it's been plowed, unless it's been prepared. Do you see it? I don't care if you're a Christian, you don't get a thing out of anybody's divine service.

I don't care what kind of service it is in these days, because we don't have time. Nor do we feel the necessity of plowing our own hearts and preparing our own hearts, so that if the seed were to drop, it'd fall on good ground.

Preparing the Heart as Good Soil

We're reminded, of course, in the book of Proverbs, chapter 16, verse 1, you can turn to it later if you want to, that the preparation of the heart's the work of God, aren't you? Well, it turns out I got it marked.

The preparation of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue is where? It's from the Lord. But we're also told in the word of God, in Hosea, I also got that marked, so it wouldn't take so long to find it, soul to yourselves in righteousness.

Now, this is something that the sinners addressed. He said, now, God said, you, over in Padua, said, this is the work of God. That's so. In Hosea, God tells the sinner to soul to yourselves in righteousness, and if you do, you'll reap in mercy.

Break up your fallow ground. Break it up. Break it up. Break it up. For it is time to seek the Lord, and you seek him till he comes and reign righteousness upon you. Now, any spiritual truth that falls on bad ground doesn't bear fruit, does it?

Isn't that right? In the 13th chapter of the book of Matthew, we are told plainly over and over again in those different parables, or not tons of them, but you remember them, the parable of the sower and the seed.

He went out and he sowed seed, and the seed was good, nothing on earth. Wrong was the seed, or the sowing of the seed. The trouble was that he sowed it on four kinds of ground, and only one ground was prepared.

And so the seed fell on some ground, and the fellow was gloriously converted. You remember how old Bill got gloriously converted? You remember about that, you know, and he shouted, and he just knocked a home run, and he went down on the streets, and he told everybody about how God had saved him, and two weeks later, he folded up his tent, taken down the flag, and taken out.

You see, there was no root there, the scriptures say, and he flourished for a little while, but because the seed didn't take root, is that right? First time a little windstorm of adversity came, he played out.

He played out and on and on. But there was one type of ground and one type of owner that had been thoroughly prepared. And this is interesting in view of the fact that James is inviting men and women, is giving some advice about how we are together, how we're together, the Word of God.

And the book of Hosea will advise us to sow to our self-righteousness and to break up the fallow ground in our own hearts. And somebody says, explain that, I don't have to, I didn't write them, I'm not the author of the Bible.

They say, well, I can't understand that. Well, that makes two of us. There's very little in the life about us that we can understand, but thank God we can believe. Now, if any kind of spiritual truth comes your way, unless your heart has been prepared to receive truth, you can't receive it.

You can't receive it. It just can't be done. The truth just bounces off, bounces off. I was talking to a priest in Texas the other day, and he said, Brother Barton, I can't understand. I went to college, a Baptist college.

I went to seminary three years. I taught in one of our Baptist schools. Our Baptist churches were held evangelistic campaigns all over the West. And for two years ago, I had never seen anything in the Word of God about salvation by grace.

He says, now, pick up my Bible, it's on every page. But until two and a half years ago, I'd read the same verses, I'd study the same chapters, I'd preach out of the same books, and I'd read the verses.

And what the verses said just went in one ear and out the other. And he was not able to receive truth, even as a preacher, until God had brought this thing and that thing and that thing and the other thing on his life, until he had a prepared heart.

Now, that's true of an unsaved person. You can attend services until you're blue in the face and do what you call a lesson, but until you take seriously the fact that only by receiving the Word sufficiently until it takes root in here is any salvation produced, and that no seed will take unless the heart's been prepared.

See what I said? That's a tragedy. My tragedy now as I go up and down the country, I get one person in the service one night, people go out and visit and ring doorbells, and finally they get rid of some importionate church member, that old unsaved fellow will do him a favor and he'll attend the meeting one night.

But the next night he goes to the picture show or bowling or something, you see. And the next night he goes somewhere else. Nothing happens, not planned. This is fundamental. This is fundamental. Now, James says in these verses, verse 19 through 21, he lays down three things, that men who were interested in preparing their hearts so that they could receive the engrafted or the word that we'd understand a little better, especially if you're a farmer, the root it's worth.

The seed was sown, plant a grain of corn in the dirt, it takes root, is that right? You plant a little sapling and it takes root. If you have a tree, it's got to go down first before it goes up, isn't that right?

And that's true in this business of salvation. Sinners are not saved accidentally. And fellows say, well now, the preacher tells me that a sinner can't save himself, that's right. And the preacher tells us a sinner is helpless, that's right.

But there are lots of things a lost man could do. He could look at himself through God's law. There's not a lost man this side of hell that could be prevented, if he wanted to, from buying him a Bible.

He can get at least a New Testament for a quarter, I guess, down at Woolworth's. I don't guess it costs him more than that. He used to get one for a nickel or a dime. And nothing could keep a man from reading carefully what God says about him.

A man could do that, couldn't he? And a man could set himself to get him a pick and a shovel and start plowing his own hearth. Nothing to keep a lost man from doing that, is it? Huh? Now, that wouldn't save him.

But unless the sinner becomes so that the seed will take root, he may have some kind of experience. But unless the seed of the gospel takes root, he'll not bear fruit. And if you're not bearing fruit, you're not God's child.

Is that all right? So I'm interested, as I go up and down the country preaching to men, in telling them what James says. He says there are three things that an unsaved man ought to do. If that unsaved man is interested in having a heart that can receive, the truth don't bounce off it.

Some of get down in there. See what I'm talking about? And these three things are first. The sinner must cease from rebellion against the word of truth. Look again at verse 18. Of his own will beget us with a what?

Not apart from, but with the word of truth. His attitude toward truth must decay. The sinner must enter out of hell from making all the effort that a man can make. That's all a man can do. Whatever's the best a man can do, that's the best he can do.

But he could do that, couldn't he? And he could make an effort for spiritual truth. Look what James says about it. In view of the fact, did you get it yet? Of his own will beget he us with the word of truth.

Nor that we should be a kind of first fruits of his preachers. Wherefore? In view of the fact that men are born again of the Holy Spirit for the use of the truth of the gospel. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear.

Let him clean out his ears. Let him get the wax out of his ears. Let him spit on his hands. Let him roll up his sleeves and be swift to hear. And cut out all this business of buckles when the gospel preached.

They're not swift to hear. They don't make an effort to hear. Make an effort to hear in a church service is something. Most everywhere I go, most sun school teachers cannot get their youngsters quiet long enough to quote a verse of scripture.

I'm telling you the truth. Men are not keen to hear now. But in view of the fact that of his own will he begat us with the word of truth. James says, wherefore, let every man be what? Be swift to hear.

Be swift to hear. Nothing to keep you from hearing, is it? Except you don't want to, is it? And this word must be heard and it must be heard and not bought and received until it takes root. That's right.

If it don't, we'll just have another fellow that got converted and went on to hell. It's got to take root. It's got to take root. People are swift where they demount their ignorance against the truth of God.

And to do it with a good eel of immaterial flesh. A lady rushed up to me the other day down in Texas. She was shaking. Her eyes were full of tears. Her voice was choked. And she was in terrible shape.

I didn't know who she was. It turned out later that a preacher had warned her about what a terrible fellow I am and about my terrible doctrine. And warned her and told her not to come here and preach.

But she was a Sunday school teacher and a member of the church. And she came on anyhow. But she was set there. Not to hear. Not to hear. She wasn't swift to hear. She came to resist whatever was said.

If an unsaved man wants to be dead, he goes to hell instead of being swift to listen. Let him voice his ignorant mouthings and be in a hurry to show his wrath and his rebellion against the truth of God.

This woman came and she was torn all to pieces. I didn't know who she was. Later I learned. And because I didn't know who she was, I think maybe the Lord helped me deal with her. Otherwise the flesh might have got in.

And very gently she rushed up and said, Brother, preacher said, I'm just torn all to pieces. Said, you're tearing everything up I've ever heard. Said, all I've ever heard is against what you're preaching.

And I said, well, I'm sorry to hear that. I didn't know who she was. I said, what was it about the message tonight that, that, that, that distressed you so? And she said, well, it was this morning and tonight.

Said, I, I've just walked the floor all day since the morning service. Said, I never heard anything like that. Just tore me all to pieces. And said, my boy, that 18-year-old boy said, he asked me to explain it and said, I can't.

And he was in desperate condition. And I said, well, tell me, tell me what it is. Maybe I'm wrong. I'll listen. God knows I will. And, and she, she said, well, so and so. She said, and I said, well, you didn't quote all the verse.

Well, she said, what is it? I said, you're the one that started it. You pulled it from her. She said, I don't know. I don't even know where it's found in the Bible. See, she's awful well-informed to be so torn up and be dead certain that what she's hearing was not so.

See, she prepared not to believe the things she heard. She couldn't help it. She'd been warned. Now, if there's a person here tonight that's not a Christian, and you want to be dead sure you go to hell.

You keep on closing your mind and refusing to be swift to hear the truth of God. I don't care if it comes from a donkey. You be swift. Well, it turned out with the woman that she began to quote part of the scriptures.

And I said, yes, that's found so-and-so, but she didn't quote all of it. And we turned to it and read it and said, well, I never saw that. And then, then she said some of the things you said. I said, well, do I have Bible?

She said, I don't know. And I said, well, let's turn to some of the scriptures and we'll reread them again that I quoted. And you tell me what you've got to find fault with what the scripture says. And she, we turned and read some of them.

She said, I've never seen them in the scripture. I'm using that as an illustration. Don't be in such a big hurry to go frothing in the mouth if you can't even quote all the scripture you've heard from somebody.

Be swift to hear and a little slower to rebel. James says, wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear. In view of what? Your verse 18, that we have forgotten, we're born of the spirit through the word of truth.

Now, I think that if you allow me, I think you will, I want to mention five great teachings of the word of God about which men rebel. Unsaved men will rebel against all five of these things or they'll rebel against any of them, unless your heart's been prepared.

The Sinfulness of Humanity

You'll keep on bucking them. Keep on going. You hear some preacher make fun of them, you'll keep on bucking them. You make a profession, you'll go through the motions and you'll split hell wide open. For only a prepared heart can these five Bible teachings.

You cannot but help rebel against what the Bible says about the kind of person you are. I'm telling you, when you pick up the word of God and start trying, just find out what it says about you and me.

Say, stick out your tongue, old snakes come out. Look at your feet, they're swift to shed blood. Just look at you from your mother's womb, you went about full of lies and hypocrisies. From the whole top of your head to the bottom of your feet, Isaiah says, you're just one mass of putrefying sores.

He says, you dumb, you haven't got as much sense as a donkey that the ass knows his master's crib, and you don't even know it. That's what it says. Oh, if the Bible don't say some terrible things about us folks.

And you can't take it, you'll rebel against it. And you're going to keep on rebelling against it till you wind up in hell. Unless you make up your mind, you value your eternity by him so. And you get you a block and tackle or pick and shovel and start preparing your heart.

Asking God to enable some of the truth about yourself to sink in here and take root until you get a little alarmed and you get desperate to find out whether there's any hope for a fellow that's as big a sinner.

You just can't take that, Brother Elmus, apart from a prepared heart. It says your best righteousness is a filthy rag. It says you drink iniquity like water. You just lap it up. You're a man of your heart.

The Bible talks that way about me. That's yours, you footheirn, yet you'll never be saved unless it's brought home to you what kind of person you are. Because being a human being from Adam's fallen race, you'll never be interested in a doctor as long as you've just got a headache.

You're going to have to get plumb sick before you start screaming for a doctor. Be swift to hear what God says about us. If I'm preaching to nice people, it's a different thing. But I'm not preaching to nice people.

I'm preaching to people who are born in sin, conceived in iniquity, and you're a cesspool in a hotbed of rebellion against God. You hate everything that's high and holy. We're not for the restraining power of the Spirit of God in the influences of the gospel.

And Carl, now, this would be a madhouse tonight, and you know it. You're not nice people. You're ruined people. You're rebellious people. You're stiff-necked people, and you don't like to be told it, and you're going to go to hell fighting it unless your heart is prepared to receive God's truth about yourself.

God's Holy Law and Human Rebellion

Then there's another teaching of the Word of God that's wrapped up in this business of the need of a prepared heart, and men do not get saved apart from being confronted with the strictness and the severity of God's holy law.

Where no law is preached, there's no gospel preached, because the gospel can only be preached in the context of the holy law of God. And where men and women are not awakened by the unrestrictable severity, they'll never be interested in the rest of the shed blood of the Redeemer dying on the cross.

I know that's so. And yet, I'm not talking to nice people tonight. All on God's earth, I've got to do to an unsaved man is, in the name of God, tell him not to do something, and he'll split hell wide open to do it.

It's his nature. All you've got to do with that little child sitting by you is say, you be dead, sir! You don't do so-and-so. And they'll do it if it kills them. It's in their nature. They hate law.

They hate restrictions. That's right. And yet, unless a man is confronted with and becomes swift to hear how terribly strict God's holy law is, and how unutterably, horribly severe His law is, they'll never be interested in the Lord Jesus Christ, and only a prepared heart can receive that truth.

That's right. The rest of it will bounce off of you. It bounced off of me, brother, and I made out of the same piece of cloth you are. It'll bounce off of you. And yet, you've got to face it. You better become swift to hear how strict God's law is, how severe God's law is.

If it's as strict as the Bible says it is, you dead sure need a safe. If it's as severe as the Bible says it is, my, how terrible it'll be to go out and meet God, in whose hands will be the penalty, and He'll bring its flash upon the backs of men and rats.

The Absolute Sovereignty of Christ

Broken is holy law. As the third Bible shows, it cannot be received except by a prepared heart. And that's the absoluteness of the sovereignty of God. I don't mean the sovereignty of God. Everybody believes in the sovereignty of God now, but the absoluteness.

We're living in a day now when everybody accepts the Lord. You know that? The wickedest men in town will brag on the Lord. That's right. Everybody accepts the Lord, but the Lord they accept has been stripped of His glory.

If you take, when Khrushchev was Premier, whatever he was, I don't know what the title was, Secretary of the Communist Party, whatever it was, if you take him out of his office, he's pretty likeable sort of a fellow.

And if you'll take Christ out of his office, people take him as a buddy-buddy. All the Hollywood actors and the Lord, they're buddy-buddy. I don't know what your eschatology is. That's a big word. That's why I proved I've been through.

I don't know what your views of the Second Coming are, but I have to read the sport page every morning when I get a paper. You tell a man's character, when he gets a paper, what he turns to first. Real brilliant, smart people turn to the sport page.

The reason I do it, I've got to find out whether the rapture's taking place or not. If the Christians still playing ball on Sunday, I know the rapture hasn't taken place. This fall, I'll have to watch the football games on Sunday to see if the Christians are playing.

If they are, I know the rapture hasn't taken place. See what I'm talking about? Everybody done got buddy-buddy with this little Lord that everybody likes today, but it's the Lord stripped of the absoluteness of the sovereigns, and you can't take it.

I don't care how big a profession you make, you bucket, you rebellious, you turn thumbs down on the absoluteness, the totalitarian rule and reign and claims of King James. You can't take it, brother, except with a prepared heart.

Now shoot, there would be a bit of trouble on earth in getting America converted before midnight if everybody in this country would do like most of the preachers have done. Preach of Jesus who has been stripped of his glory.

There's no trouble getting people to accept Jesus, this nice little Jesus that buddy-buddies with people and lets them go on and live as they please. But the difference is this Jesus who has no rivals, he's absolute.

He has the reins of every man's heart in his hands and he exercises those reins. Now you need to take some time off if I speak to somebody that don't know my Lord. You better take this seriously. You will never get saved if you haven't gone get serious about this.

All this fool stuff they call evangelism now, you'll expel your head and lift your hand if you want to be prayed for. I'm trying to slip up on you and get you and the kings out, you and nobody else knowing it.

It don't happen that way. No, sir. You're going to have to take this thing seriously. The word of the truth of the Gospels got to take root in you, see? And it'll take root in your heart. Only your heart has been able to thrust out the rebellion that's in it, you're born with it, against these great truths.

Salvation Through the Shed Blood of Christ

There's another truth that men cannot take unless it's with a prepared heart. That's the way of salvation in the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Self-righteous people will go to hell saying, I think I'm as good as the other fella.

Isn't that right? I think if that fella makes it, I'll make it. I'm not such a bad fella. Do you hear those things? And you'll keep talking that way. You'll never, you'll never care anything about the blood of Christ.

You'll never have any interest in the truth that you're in such a desperate condition. Another, that one was God, had to die or you had to go to hell. You can't take that. You aren't built that way. And that's not going to glance off of you and save you.

That truth is going to have to take root. Your heart needs to be prepared. Now, as I've been preaching these thirty-eight years, I found out some people, at least in their heads, they'll say, well, brother Martin, I can take the strictness and severity of God's law, and I can take the fact that the only way I could be saved is by Jesus dying.

And I take the sovereignty of the Lord and so forth. But when I come to this last truth in the Bible, that all of these are involved in this matter of salvation, that saving faith is not simply the act of the will of a natural man.

It's not a moral persuasion, but it's a grace and an inward and spiritual view of Christ and his sweetness and glory. And while you have to exercise faith, God has to work it in you before you can work it out.

And that's the most offensive thing in the Bible. That's what stirs up people in my meetings more than anything else. They've heard all their life, and I've said, you just take Jesus as your Savior, he'll save you.

Well, that'd be fine if you could do it. And unless you do do it, you're going to hell. But the most offensive thing in the teaching of the Word of God is, God requires faith, and you ain't got it, unless he gives it to you.

And you make all the decisions you want to, you'll never be joined to Christ. Now, that's offensive, isn't it? If you don't quit rebelling against it and start preparing your heart to ask God to break up your old heart and help you throw your rebellion down and become a swift to hear person, praying that the truth may be buried in there, rooted in there, where we're born for the will of God through the Word of truth.

Men just can't take that, and therefore it's left out of what's called preaching today. But God bless you, your heart needs to be prepared unless it is, you'll rebel at every one of these five things.

Laying Aside Sin

You just can't take them with a heart that hasn't been plowed. James said you'd be swift to hear. Now, I spent most of the time, I want to mention two other things without preaching on them, except to just mention them.

James also says, there's another thing, lay aside sin in your life. Now, who's to do this? The man that wants a prepared heart. The man that wants to be saved. James says, tell you what you do, you be swift to hear, you cease your rebellion against truth.

And second, you lay aside sin, verse 21, wherefore, lay apart all filthiness and superfluity, of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your own self. Now, I'm not going into that, it's going to take up too much time, you can work it out if you're interested.

But here, James is not teaching that a man must become sinless and perfect in order to be saved, for that's so nobody to save. But what James is saying here is that you've got to come to have the heart in mind and being to be willing to lay aside any and all sin which keeps you from receiving God's truth.

Let me repeat that. God commands you through this man, James, you won't go to heaven when you die, you want to be saved. You better listen to me now. You better not keep on hugging sin. You better lay it aside.

You say, well, that saves you? No. Well, it's a matter of heart preparation. What saves you is the truth taking root in you. But it's not going to take root in there as long as there's sin that you hug and you're clean.

Do you see what I mean? And you say, well, what can I do about it? James says, lay aside. Well, you say, that'd be harder to do. That's right. That's the reason this matter of salvation is an agony. That's the reason the scripture says we enter the kingdom through what?

Much tribulation. Lay aside. Now, I don't know the heart of anybody here. I close this point simply saying, if there's anything, anything that's keeping you from becoming a devoted disciple of my blessed Lord, lay it aside.

That won't save you, but it's heart preparation. It's going to take place before God saves you, and you're to do that. Lay aside. Lay aside. And then the last thing that James says is, be like a little bitty child with meekness.

Receiving the Word with Childlike Meekness

Receive with what? Meekness. The rooted word. And what about this rooted word? The word gets in here. What happens? That saves the soul. Receive that rooted, ingrested. We understand. I think it makes more sense to us, rooted.

That's a little nearer the Greek. The farmer. Receive it how? With meekness. That suggests a little child, doesn't it? Not arguing about anything, but in simple, just meekness. You know, one characteristic of a little child that I think James is talking about here, and I know my Lord talked about in his ministry.

You know what a little child will do? It'll believe what you tell it, woman. Of course, it gets a little older, larger by it, but when it's a little fella, it'll believe what you tell it, woman. James says, now you want a heart that's open, the seed of the gospel would fall, and it'd take root, instead of just bounce off, see?

Said you'd be like a little child. God says something, say amen. That's fine, isn't it? Just like that. I believe that. God said it. I believe it. Amen. It's just like a little bit child. Don't argue about it.

Don't argue about it. My little girl was a little tiger, and I was on the road. I never made a trip without making her a promise that I'd bring her a present. I brought her some kind of 10-cent present or something.

Every time I came home, she never doubted. She just knew when Daddy came home, and I never failed. Why it never occurred to her to argue about it, to wonder whether or not she going to get that gift, she'd believe what I told her.

Now James says, you be swift to hear. Quit booking true. Quit rebelling against true. Get the wax out of your ear and become a listener. Be swift to hear. Lay aside whatever sin or sins. Your trouble's not that you don't understand.

Your trouble is, there's iron sin in here. That's it. You're not going to go to hell because you don't understand the doctrines of the Bible. You go to hell, it'll be to pay for your S .I. in sin. You lay aside anything you know about in your life that's keeping you from receiving God's truth.

See? And then just like a little bit of charm, God says if you just believe it, amen, your life will come to the assurance of God's wonderful salvation if you keep on just believing what God tells you.

Take time, James would say, to prepare your heart. How can I prepare it? By being swift to hear and slow to rebel. Laying aside sin. And by being like a little bitty child with meekness, thank you, meekness, receiving the word, the engrafted, the rooted word, is able to save the soul.

Prayer for Hearts Prepared by God's Grace

May God bless you. I don't know what kind of ground this little talk has fallen on. I don't know who's here tonight. I can't look inside people's hearts. I don't know how it is with a single person here.

You do, and God does. Let us have a word of prayer. Our Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we commit this little message into thy good, loving, tender, merciful hands. Commit these people to thy grace and mercy.

And we pray that the Spirit of God might be pleased to speak to every heart in just the way they need to be dealt with by a thrice holy and wonderfully merciful God. Lord, speak to hearts right now and bring men and women face to face with the truth, whatever there be of it, in the message tonight.