In this sermon, the preacher gives a prescription for spiritual healing and conversion. He advises the young officer to read portions from the book of the law, the Psalms, and the prophets to understand his sin and need for conversion. The officer follows these instructions and realizes that he is a lost sinner and that his depression stems from carrying the burden of his sin. Through reading the gospels, he learns that Christ came to help sinners and died on the cross to deliver them from their sins. The officer then trusts Jesus as his Savior and desires to live for Him. However, he still feels hopeless until he turns to the New Testament and discovers the good news that God has for lost sinners. The preacher shares verses from Luke and Romans that emphasize Christ's purpose in seeking and saving the lost and dying for sinners. The sermon concludes with an urgent call to meet God and accept His invitation for salvation.

Greetings to our radio friends. Do you know of better news than this? That the great God of the universe is interested in saving every person who wants to be saved. I doubt seriously that you have ever heard better news than that. We all are sinners by nature and by practice, and the Almighty is anxious to redeem us, to deliver us from the consequences that must follow. We trust you are found in circumstances that will enable you to listen to our gospel program, and that in so doing you will receive a blessing. Robert Brown was a young businessman living in Detroit. He had prospered financially and was recognized as a righteous and honorable man. He was a good husband, a kind father, and everyone knew him as a generous man ready to give to any good cause. He had little time to think about religion or God, though he went to church frequently. But he was not saved. All his good qualities could not give him real peace or gain salvation for him, for in God's sight we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Worried by close attention of business, he and his wife took a trip to Scotland. They toured the country, finally locating themselves in a pleasant little village in the south. Every morning they went out for a walk, and having taken a longer walk than usual one day, they turned into a little cemetery to rest. Mrs. Brown had brought a book with her, and soon Robert began to wander around the graves. Presently he came to a large flat stone covered with ivy. He pulled aside the leaves to see what was written there, and to his amazement he read his own name and saw that the one buried there had died at his present age. Hastily replacing the vine, he passed on, but the memory of his own name on the tombstone haunted him and made him restless and rather unhappy. He could not help but think of it and wonder where his soul would be if it were his body lying in that grave. He knew he must spend eternity somewhere. If not in heaven, then surely it would be in a lost eternity. He had heard that to be ready for heaven it was necessary to be born again, but he knew that experience had not been his. This weighed on his mind so much that he soon returned home to Detroit, determined to prepare to meet God. He began to attend church regularly, but all seemed useless. Finally, in despair, he turned to the New Testament and learned there that God had good news for sinners who were lost. These are some of the verses from God's word that he read. Luke 19, 10. For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. Then from Romans 5, verses 6 and 8. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. Then verse 8. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Lost? Yes, he realized that he was, and although not ungodly in the eyes of men, perhaps still he realized that in God's sight he was a sinner. He realized by the Spirit of God that he had to come into his presence and confess, I am a lost sinner. But oh the joyous news when he saw also that one had died for such as he, and that God could through that work on the cross pardon the guilty. Christ raised from the dead is a living Savior for dead sinners, and therefore the sinner believing on him has eternal life. All this and much more he found in his testament, and gladly and thankfully rested his weary soul on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of lost guilty sinners. Years have passed since that memorable trip to Scotland, but Robert still tells from a glad heart of his awakening to the state of his lost condition of soul, and of the full and free salvation he received by faith in Christ's finished work on the cross. If a sudden summon should come to you today, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. Would you be ready for it? Remember, you must meet God, whether you want to or whether you don't. And whether you are prepared or unprepared, when the summons comes you must go. Then where will you spend eternity? At this moment God is waiting to be gracious, and Christ is saying, Come unto me, all ye that labor under heavy laden, and I will give you rest. If you refuse his call, you will perish in your sin. I trust at this very moment you will realize your need, and you will open your heart to this wonderful Savior who is waiting to bless you with his full and his free salvation. An army officer visited a well-known doctor seeking a remedy for depression. He had lived a wild, reckless life, and the doctor knew it. In his early years he had a godly upbringing, but on coming to age he seemed to burst all bonds and go in for a life of utter godlessness. The doctor was a Christian. After examining the young officer, he sat down in his consulting room chair and wrote out the following prescription. Take a portion three times daily from the Book of the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, until you are convinced of your sin against God, your deep need of conversion to God, or your certain condemnation to banishment from God forever. When this has had the desired effect, receive the words of invitation to sinners which you will find in the four Gospels, which will result in your conversion. After this, turn your attention to the Acts and the Epistles, where you will learn how to live happily in this world. A look at the Revelation will show you the home beyond where there is no need for the doctor's prescriptions. The young officer followed these instructions just for the fun of it, with the result that he became converted. First of all, he found out that he was a lost sinner. Then he found out that the prime purpose or reason for his depression was that he was a sinner carrying the load of his sin. But he discovered by reading the Gospels that Christ came into the world to help such people that he died on the cross in order to deliver a man from his load of sin. He trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, and then he had a desire to live for him, and as he read the Acts and the Epistles, he found just what God has in store for those who know him as Lord and Savior. There are no doubt many still in the same condition, victims of depression. You may go to the doctors, but really, basically, your problem may be spiritual. If you knew the Lord Jesus as your Savior, you might be lifted out of that depression, because I am not a bit surprised that people should be depressed as long as they try to live without the Lord Jesus Christ. I want you to follow this prescription. Read your Bible, discover that you are lost, receive the Savior, and then follow the instructions of all of God's word, and you will be blessed and relieved of your depression. Greetings to our radio friends! There's nothing more wonderful on earth than to know that we have peace with God, our sins forgiven in a manner that is satisfactory to God, a guarantee that we shall never perish. All this is the present possession of the person that is born again. Whether you are saved or unsaved, we invite you to listen to our gospel program. During the past few days we have been thinking of the sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I dare hardly take for granted that everyone is clear as to the details of this greatest of all events. The sufferings of Christ must be divided into two distinct classes. During his brief years of faithful ministry he suffered opposition, rejection, he suffered for righteousness' sake, he suffered under the testings of Satan, he suffered by anticipation in the garden of sorrows, but in all of these sufferings he was not forsaken of God. He could still say, Abba, Father. These human sufferings are shared by all of the human family to some degree. It's quite possible that he suffered in these to a greater degree than any of his followers, but all that he did and suffered during his life is never said to be for us. These are not classed as major sufferings. I come now to the second class of sufferings, and these can be classed as atoning sufferings. In the darkness of the cross he bore our sins in his own body on the tree. He drank the cup of judgment. All God's waves and billows rolled over his holy soul. Only a divine person could endure atoning suffering. The death of Christ was not something accidental, or which anything else might have been substituted. He spoke of his sufferings and death as a definite necessity. In Matthew 16 we read, The Son of Man must suffer many things. In John 3, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. His death was not a surprise nor an accident, but rather a necessity to produce the basis of salvation for the guilty helpless sinners of Adam's race. Besides the atonement being necessary, it was altogether voluntary. If an innocent man should be forced to suffer and die for the guilty, that would be very unjust. But if the substitute is willing, God remains just. The Son of God was not sent by force as an unwilling victim. His words were, No man taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself. Let's remember this, that right up to the brink of the cross he could have avoided it. He could have had more than twelve legion of angels to protect and deliver him, but Christ came to suffer and die as a substitute for the guilty, and apart from his voluntary death there would be no pardon nor forgiveness for any one of us. Christ came to remove the tremendous barrier that existed between a holy God and a defiled sinner. That uncrossable barrier was man's fallen sinful condition. Men may repent and apologize for sins committed, but this does not remove the past guilt. A man may amend his life, but present obedience will not remove the barrier that has blocked the way for forgiveness. God's righteousness demands that without the shedding of blood is no remission. Since no man can make satisfaction for himself, he must look for an adequate substitute, and the God-man who died in the midst of two thieves on Golgotha's hill is the only one who could remove that uncrossable barrier between God and the sinner. When God placed my sins on the sinless substitute and accepted his payment for my sins, I may well ask, why did he do it? I find no answer except he loved me. Again I ask, why did he love me? What have I done to deserve such love? And to these questions I find no answer. Christ's love extended to the undeserving baffles all reasoning. Strange but inadequate explanations are these in Romans 5 and 6, for when we were yet without strength in due time, Christ died for, or instead of, the ungodly. But God commended his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 1 John 4.10 Herein is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation or substitute for our sins. The Bible makes very clear the fact that Christ suffered not for himself, but in the place of others. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. 1 Peter 3.18 All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Through these verses I learn how God can be just, and at the same time the justifier of all who rest in his Son for salvation. If God offered pardon on any other basis, he would cease to be the moral governor of the universe. Some would try to tell us that God can offer pardon and salvation without Christ's substitutionary death, but that's just a wild guess and a very unscriptural statement. God's mercy and grace to guilty sinners flows only by way of Calvary. If you try to obtain salvation except through the substitutionary death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you have nothing more than an imaginary salvation. If you can find one degree of satisfaction in such an imaginary nothing, it proves that you have given no true consideration to the full blending of the attributes of God's character. It's astonishing what unreasonable conclusions men can draw when they ignore the plain statements of God's infallible word. Do you really believe that you can be saved apart from resting in the value of Christ's substitutionary death and resurrection? If so, you are in line for the biggest letdown that has ever crossed your pathway. You'll be let down so far that you'll never come up again. In my visit to the Bahamas a few years ago, I had the occasion in Nassau of speaking to a man about 50 years of age who said, I can't believe in the atonement. It doesn't make sense. I can't believe that God would lay my sins on Christ and on that basis offer forgiveness if I accepted his son as my savior or substitute. My reply was, explain to me why you can't believe it. He stalled for a few minutes, and then he said, I can't tell you why, but I just can't believe it. That was a clear admission that he could give no reasonable answer. His reasoning had run aground and became unreasonable. I continued the conversation by saying, Jack, when I meet a man who says I can't believe in the atoning sacrifice of Christ as a basis of salvation, I am face to face with an untruthful man. He should more correctly say, I don't want to believe it. It's the most sensible, the most reasonable thing in the Bible. It makes sense from every angle and test. The only reason why some so-called intelligent men don't want to believe in the atoning death of Christ is because it suggests that all men are sinners and can't save themselves. The stubborn heart of the natural man is too proud to admit this proven fact. Seven days after that, Jack the bluffer of Nassau dropped dead, and unless he changed his mind in those seven days, he's in hell right now, pondering his unreasonable conclusion. I learned from others that Jack was a notorious sinner, if such there be, and that explained why he didn't want to believe in the most reasonable doctrine in the Bible. Now, let's think a moment of the sufficiency of the atonement. The proof that Christ's atonement was sufficient is the resurrection on the third day. Otherwise, he must have remained under God's judgment. The resurrection proves that God's righteous claims are satisfied. Another proof that the atonement of Christ is sufficient is it can never be repeated. In the Letter to the Hebrews we read such expressions as these. Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many. By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption. Again, now, once in the end of the age, hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. The slightest suggestion that the sacrifice of Calvary needs to be repeated is an insult to the sufficiency of Christ's vicarious death and resurrection. Through Christ's atoning sacrifice, the Old Testament saints were forgiven on credit or on deposit. Since the death of Christ, believers are forgiven on the ground of the price already paid at Calvary. You must ever remember that God is sovereign. He has the right to lay down the conditions upon which men may be saved. God's condition is, he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and contrarywise, he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth in him. Have you believed on the Son? That is, are you resting entirely on his sacrificial death for your salvation? If not, you are lost, and you must perish in your sin.