In this sermon, the preacher recounts a story about a young boy who walked a long distance and then suddenly died. The preacher emphasizes that he does not know if the boy was saved or not, but he believes that the boy asked a good question about salvation. The preacher then leads the congregation in a song and encourages them to stand and pray. He mentions that some preachers may end up in hell and that God answers the prayers of unsaved people. The sermon concludes with the preacher expressing his weariness and longing for heaven.

...enable me, I'm in video discomfort now, and I have selected a text from the 16th chapter of 1st Corinthians, and it's the 22nd verse. Somebody speaking with a pathetic voice in our day has said that the best way to hide from God is to make some sort of profession of faith and become a member of some kind of church. The safest place to be to be sure you'll never hear from God is to be walled in by a profession and a membership. This generation of Church members, for the most part, is insulated against hearing from God. We never listen to him, because we have dug cisterns, they don't have any water in them, but we think they do, and we drink out of them and it satisfies us. Everybody's religious today and getting along fine, thank you. Over against that statement, whether there's much truth in it or not, I read you the most challenging verse of scripture, to my mind the most awesome verse of scripture in the Bible. If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema when Jesus comes. If any man be not a Church member, no, I don't say that. If any man be more or less moral in his living, don't say that. But if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, no room for claims there. This is a verse that no way on earth you can interpret it, you just have to face it. And it does challenge the nice, mild religion of this day. Elton Trueblood, the prophetic voice of the Quaker Church, warns us that mild religion will have to die out in your generation and mine. There'll be nothing but outright paganism and outright Christianity left. This verse doesn't have any room for mild religion, for nice people. Let's look at this verse a little while tonight. If any man, I'll have to look at this verse then, because the word in it is big enough to include me. If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, a curse, maranatha, when Jesus comes. There are three things apparently about the verse that strike us. First, the Lord Jesus Christ is still to deal with men. When he comes, things are going to take place. One thing is going to take place, he's going to curse, he's going to anathematize, he's going to doom, he's going to damn, he's going to reject, any man who does not love the Lord Jesus Christ. Upon the shoulders of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Godhead placed the job of saving his own and disposing of the world. Jesus Christ has been given a task of saving or damning every human being. Only he can save and only he can damn. And when he comes, some people he's going to damn. And there are some people, or any and every kind of people, who do not love the Lord Jesus Christ. They may love doctrine, or their church, or their denomination, or their family, or their morality, or their profession, or their decision, or their good deeds, or a thousand things. That ain't worth talking about. It's a person. And then this word, love. If any man loved not the Lord Jesus, that leaps up from the text. Tonight, if I'm able, I want to say three things about this verse of scripture. First, the best I can, with nearly 41 years of being a public preacher, I have spent those 41 years studying. I have studied like a dog. I don't know much now, but I bring 41 years of diligent, hard study of the word of God. For what it's worth, I bring that to try to ask and answer the question, what is the nature of this love toward the Lord Jesus Christ? This love, that if I do not have it toward the person of Christ, he'll curse me when he comes. We have to look at the nature of this love, because everybody loves Jesus now. You can't find anybody that's got a word against Jesus now. This is a profoundly religious age. Even the Orthodox Jews now are studying the New Testament. Everybody, from Arthur Godfrey, who signs off, be the good Lord willing, to the ragtan bands that put in a hymn to sop out consciences, to Drunken Bean Crosby singing White Christmas every Christmas, if he's sober. Everybody thinks well of Jesus now. Even the Kremlin sent a representative to the funeral of our lamented President. Charles de Gaulle, who is now President of France, who a little over 100 years ago, as a nation, escorted God outside the limits of the nation and told him not to come back. Everybody loves Jesus now. What is the nature of this love, that if any man have it not toward the person, the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus will damn him when he comes. The best I'm able to study the word of God, here's what it is. It is to find rest, satisfaction, peace, joy, complacency in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ as he works on the job. Let's look at that briefly. It is to find rest in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ as he is working on his job. For God gave him a job to do and he hasn't finished it yet. Still working on the job. It is to find satisfaction, he satisfies the longing soul, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not to believe some truth about him, but the person of Jesus Christ. It is to find joy, unspeakable and full of glory, beholding the glorious person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is to find complacency in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ as he is working on the job. The old theologians rightly, I think, divided the love of God toward the world in two ways. They said he had toward all mankind the love of benevolence. He would do all men good. In that sense he looks with pity and compassion on all men. In that way he so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Then the old time preachers, I think, biblically said that God has a love of complacency for his own. He loves that drunkard wallowing in his filth. He would do him good, but he finds no joy in him. God doesn't. He finds no satisfaction in him. He loves him, he's doing good, but he doesn't find any joy. He doesn't thrill at the sight of him. That, I think, is what this verse is talking about. Many people love Jesus, they'd like to help him out, but he doesn't need any help. The pitiful Jesus of the modern-day pulpit is so weak that if a man had a heart in his tenderest steel, he'd want to come to the rescue of the poor little Jesus of today. But the Jesus of the Bible doesn't need help and he doesn't need pity. But the love that this verse of scripture is talking about, of a sinner like Rothbard and toward the Lord Jesus Christ, isn't that I look to help Jesus out and do him good, but that I find joy in him. I find that which satisfies me as I behold him. As I'm able to understand everything on God's earth, to be a Christian, except looking at Jesus, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, that's how we run with patience the race that's set before us. But doesn't it about the instant when I'll say, no, we get our strength and our joy and our peace and our rest and our satisfaction and our complacency, that which satisfies us, if nothing else, just beholding him. But this satisfaction and rest and peace and joy of complacency delighting in the Lord, Bill preaches what he used to say, feasting on the blood of our justification. This must be directed toward the person of Jesus Christ as he works on the job that he's working on now. Here's where the conflict comes. If we could take a bloody cross and a glorious throne away from Jesus, we'd get everybody accepting before midnight. These are the issues that separate the kind of admiration and devotedness that men have toward Jesus Christ. Yes, we can preach of Jesus, apart from that bloody offering of himself on a cross, and apart from him being sat down at the right hand of God to sit there until his enemies debate his footstool. If we can find our joy in that bloody Son of God hanging on the cross, and now exalted on the throne, and that we can worship him holy is, brother, and rejoice in him. That's what it means to be saved. A precious little boy came up last night, hung around, and one of the members said, this little boy wants to talk to you. I was talking to somebody else, and I leaned down and said, you want to talk to me? Yes, sir. What you want to talk to me about? I want you to tell me how to be saved. Five years old. I don't know what took place. I don't know how to handle a five-year-old or a fifty-year-old or anybody else. I'll tell you one thing, brother, that's a great honor. The father and mother ought to be so happy. That little boy, he got right good sense. I'd love to be saved, wouldn't you? Oh, I'd love to. I'd love for a miracle to happen where I could look at that bloody cross. For it's eternal, you know. There was never a time when there wasn't a cross in the heart of God. He was as a lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. You've heard that story of the man who took his thirteen-year-old boy to the art gallery and looked at the venture's picture of the crucifixion. Pictures are no good much, but this is the best. The thirteen-year-old boy stood there, looked at the mutilated body of Jesus hanging on that tree, and he said to his father, if God had been there, that wouldn't have happened. But the father said, no, son, that happened because God was there. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to sing the old song? Because we know that instead of tragedy, there's victory there. My Lord bought a world and included me, and his cry at the finish was not the cry of the vanquished, but of somebody who had conquered. I can almost tell the spiritual pulse of any congregation by listening to it sing. Most of the songs we sing aren't worth singing, but there are a few that are old, and the reason they're old is because they're good. And I love to sing about that fountain filled with blood. The joy in the contemplation of that man hanging on that bloody cross. That's where my salvation was accomplished. But shall we then balk when we see that on that cross redemption's price was paid? But that salvation comes when life is given to dead men by somebody sitting on a throne who earned the power and right to give life to dead sinners because he bought them. And shall we find rest and joy in a dead Jesus or an absent Jesus? No, no. That love that's talking about there is loving the one sitting on the throne now. And you didn't put him there, and he's there by God's appointment, and you can't make him Lord. God beats you to it, but if you ever do find out what it means to love the Lord Jesus Christ, you'll find it out. As with your heart you bow before him at his throne, for life is there, and he gives it to his people. When Mr. Kennedy was president, I admired the man very much. He was a likable fellow, brilliant. He had what they call charisma, personality. He never did much as president, but he's there popular, of course, since he's a martyr, much more. But I didn't like him as president, which won't work that way, because he was president. And I couldn't have him as a man and not have him as president. Old Khrushchev was a likable fellow, a fellow drunk or sober, liked to crack jokes and have a good time. And I thought he'd be a jolly good fellow to be around. But I didn't like him as the chairman of the Communist Party, but he was. And you can't have Jesus unless you got him on the job. But to love him faithfully is to love him hanging on that cross and now sitting on that throne. Absolute dictator of everything about us. Do you love him? There. Do you love him there? That's the challenge, brother. I've been in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of churches, many, many, many hundreds of churches. God help me, this is so. First time those deaf people ever heard of the enthroned Lord was when they heard this poor preacher. God help us, this generation. I don't know what kind of Jesus they are, because the only Jesus they know, this generation don't know anything about. Enthroned Lord, a man in glory. I'm on pins and needles. You'll not get angry with me, I'm not a pastor. I could not be a pastor. I'm on pins and needles. I say again, some way or another this congregation must break through to the anointing of the Spirit to get a hearing. I want men and women to hear about Jesus Christ working right now at the job God gave him to do. Burn it in our souls, nice people, this generation don't know much about. Jesus Christ on the job. It's a singing at the right hand of God for his people. Controlling the movements of every gnash and fly and dictator. Singing of damning men and women. He's working now. Absolute. And the one message of the Church of Jesus Christ now must be Jesus is Lord, bow to him man, bow to him. Do it gladly. It'll take a work of grace, it'll take a miracle to get Ralph Barney to ever bow to Jesus Christ. The disenthroned Jesus of what's called the gospel today, who wouldn't accept him, but no man will bow to me in his heart, but to Jesus Christ apart from the grace of God working a miracle in his life. Oh, it took a miracle, and it still does. I long in my heart for this generation to hear the message that shuts men up to God working a miracle in them. Most of what we've called it up to now has been God done his part, he's gone off running somewhere, and now sinner, go to it, it's up to you. But the poor old sinner can quit his meanness, and there are lots of things he can do, but there's one thing he can't do, he can't change himself. It takes God to do that. Do your loving on the job. Do your loving on the job. It must be a sinful thing not to love the Lord Jesus Christ on that bloody cross, now on that exalted throne, because the penalty for not doing it is to be cursed by him when he comes. That's what I say, it's a little deep for me, I just don't want to think I could possibly believe this, but this is what it says within me, love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed when Jesus comes. I was a student in Fort Worth, Texas, 1928-1930, Southwestern Seminary. While I was there, the Depression was pretty rough, Brother, it broke in 1929, and I preached a lot down at the Union Gospel Mission, Fort Martin Street, right in the heart of the busy city of Fort Worth, Texas. They had services down there every night in that mission. The Depression was on, and men like some of you, good men, who had lost their jobs and their homes and everything else, they weren't bombs, but they just got to getting on the train, bumming rides, and going place to place hoping they could find a job. And the missions of every city were filled during the Depression, night after night. I had a three-week meeting down there between Sundays, I went to my little church on Lord's Day, but the boys, the preacher boys at the school, we'd all go down and I'd preach to them. We always had a full house, turned people away to get a square meal and a place to sleep. Good men. I remember one night we stood for an invitation, and some men came forward, different things. Back in the back of the house, a young preacher was standing beside a young man, had his hand on his shoulder during the invitation, and everybody made whatever move looked like they were going to make, and then something happened over the congregation, a stillness came. I know this is almost unbelievable, but one of the young preachers, when that stillness, quiet, calm, came on the congregation, everybody stopped singing, and the young preacher looked at his watch, and we stood there, those tired men, waiting for a meal and a bed, hungry, nobody moved. I couldn't close the service, nobody moved. Twenty-three minutes by the watch, we stood there. Not a song, nothing. We all had locked jaws. I don't know what happened. And finally that young man back there broke. Gary came, and he fell, he fell in the front, and he sobbed, and he sobbed, and he sobbed. I don't know what happened, but after a while he stood up and said, I can't look inside the people, I don't know. The Lord saves people, I know that. This boy said he saved. Well, that stillness went away. That locked jaw, whatever it was, gone. For twenty-three minutes the Holy Spirit held that congregation in a vice, while a boy fought a battle back there. Nobody knew what was going on. That must have been it. And there was such an awesomeness about the service because of that, that those tired, hungry men, when I pronounced the benediction, not a one of them went out the door anyway. Not a one of them went to supper. They made a line. The king shook hands with that boy. And after a while it was all over, and the boy walked. I think within a little while he walked the length of the building out the front door, turned one quarter of a block to the corner, and then started walking down this block. And he got exactly even with the spot where he had been stalled a few minutes ago. And after a while I heard a great promotion, some men ran in and said, Preacher, come out here. And I went out, and all of those men circled about a body lying sprawled on the sidewalk. And it was the body of this boy. And he had walked the length of the building, almost a quarter of a block to the corner, and half a block almost, and fell dead. And those men, some of them dirty, hungry, many of them I suppose unsafe, one by one they passed by his body and stopped to grip my hand. Nearly every one of them said, it's a good thing he got saved, Preacher. If he did get saved, it's a good thing. I don't know till I get to judgment what took place, but I kind of think the Holy Spirit stopped the clock for twenty-three minutes, because the Holy Spirit knew what was going to take place. I don't know. But I do know one thing, Brother, it would be a mighty good thing for you to die. If crying to God and hanging on to his coattails and placing yourself in the way where you were unable to save yourself, you became a candidate for him to work a great job. And he fixed you so you loved the Lord Jesus Christ. That would be a good thing. That would be a good thing. We're going to stand and sing together, it'd be a good thing if the Lord would save you tonight. Am I talking to somebody? If you can't save yourself, it'd be a good thing if you could find yourself in the way where he'd save you. And we're going to stand for an invitation, invite you to come forward and tell us what the desire of your heart is. That little five-year-old boy, I don't know whether the Lord saved him or not, I don't know about those things, but I know one thing, he asked a good question and he won't know how. Maybe he'd like to be read. I'm not physically able to do it. Now, what's that number? I don't bear weary in body and soul.