In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of following a specific order in obtaining knowledge and salvation. She explains that just as there is a specific sequence in material things, there is also a sequence in obtaining spiritual knowledge. The preacher then offers the forgiveness of sins through belief in Jesus Christ and his sacrifice on the cross. She urges the audience to repent and accept Jesus as their savior. The sermon also includes a story from the newspaper about a tragic incident in a bank, which serves as a reminder that our sins will eventually be exposed. The preacher concludes by quoting Galatians 6:7-8, which warns about the consequences of sowing to the flesh versus sowing to the spirit.

Always one of mine, also one of mine, and we're going to sing it. I'm going to ask Mr. Worth Ellis if he won't just come on to the platform. I want him to see out there how well you look tonight and how well you're singing on this grand and wonderful gospel hymn, Saved by the Blood of the Crucified One. 151. We're going to stand and sing this one because it's just one of those, as Albert Ponson says, you can't sing it sitting down. You've just got to be on your feet, and when you get to that chorus, I'd like to see you looking this way with your eyes smiling as well as your mouth and singing it right from your heart, this wonderful hymn. All together now. Saved by the Blood of the Crucified One There is a miracle of love Though here His glory has been shown We still can't fully see The wonders of He took on me Brother Joe Westmoreland, if he'll lead us in prayer at this time. God's strength Today, today, our Sunday school attendance was back up to nearer what it ought to be there, 470, a nice increase over last week. We've had one of the finest young people's activities that I've ever seen today presented to us since I've been in the Assembly for over 20 years, as we had a two-hour program today from 5 to 7. Had a wonderful crowd here, some visiting from other cities. And then tonight, to see the building well-filled for this first evening service of the campaign is certainly delighting our hearts. We would like to announce that these services will continue in the will of the Lord each night this week at 7.45, except Saturday. There will not be a service here Saturday night. And then next Lord's Day, our brother Ellis will be back for the 11 o'clock Family Bible Hour and in the will of the Lord for the evening service. Now, we're delighted to have some of our friends here tonight and many of you visiting, and we hope you'll see fit to come back each night. We would say another word to the Christians, just keep working. We know you have, this is proof of it, and we hope you'll keep inviting your friends out. Monday night, particularly, we need your help. It seems like down through the ages that Monday night has been a kind of an off night in many meetings, and yet I find in business and in other activities there are less activities on Monday night than perhaps any other night in the week. So perhaps if we double our efforts, Christian, between now and tomorrow night, we'll have another fine crowd and many here who we do not believe knows the Lord Jesus Christ. That's our purpose, is to win men and women and boys and girls to Christ in these meetings. So we appreciate your help, your prayers. I know our brother Ellis says amen to that, and that's what's going to make a grand campaign throughout this next week. Now we have a chorus we'll sing each night. It's 492, if you don't already know it. We sang it this morning. We're going to make it the theme chorus of our meeting this week. It's our whole purpose, one of our purposes, I should say, not our whole purpose, but one purpose in being saved, and that is that we're saved, saved to tell others. So shall we sing 492? Immediately after this, the fine duet from Durham will bring us another number. We're saved, saved to tell others. You know, I'd like to say just before we sing this, that to me it's been a real joy to have the peace of God reign in my heart this week, especially since the world is in such turmoil and strife. And to me, this song that we're about to sing certainly is timely. It's especially for a Christian to enjoy. And we trust that God might bless the words to your heart as well as ours. Tenderly, he watches over you. Tenderly, he watches over you. I could say that Dallas and Margaret would be with us all week, but that isn't true. They have busy schedules, too. And Dallas has just returned from Bristol, Virginia, Tennessee, where he led singing and was soloist for the big CBMC rally there. And I know he has a full schedule this week, so we might prevail on him to try to come back. But we do have other special music. Trula Martin, whom many of you have heard, fine soloist, is coming over on Tuesday evening. And then Dave Stallings from Durham will be here, perhaps with some others, but certainly he'll be here next Sunday night in the will of the Lord. We have some of our own talent for Wednesday night of this week, I believe, and Thursday night. And we're designating Friday night as Youth Night. Now, that doesn't mean that we won't all be coming, but it means that, in a special way, we want to emphasize again our interest in our young people, and we trust that they, in turn, will emphasize their interest in being of benefit to the Assembly and to other young people by turning out as many as possible on Friday night. Perhaps they'll also be providing music for us, but it will be Youth Night on Friday night. Now, that means we all come, too, but they're just going to see if they can't bring more than we do and be here in large numbers, we trust, and bring many of their unsaved young people with them on Friday night. Now, we're going to sing, by request, No. 509. It's just a chorus. We're going to give this duet a chance to bless our hearts again with one other number before the message. When you come all the way from Durham, we want to get as much from them as we can and trust that they, in turn, will get a blessing as they sing. No. 509, To You Know Jesus. You'll never know if he still you know Jesus. He is coming to you. And again, we're not going to take away from his time to give love. He preaches the gospel because he loves the Lord Jesus, our brother Worth Ellis, and he'll be speaking to us just after Dallas and Margaret bring us another number. We are reading tonight from the third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, Romans chapter 3. Romans chapter 3, reading from verse 9. Romans chapter 3, beginning at verse 9. Shall we pray? We thank Thee, our Heavenly Father, for the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of sinners. We would acknowledge to Thee before we read from Thy book and seek to exalt Thy Son, that salvation is all the Lord. Lord Jesus Christ, our risen Head of the Church, the Father that's given Thee authority over all flesh, we claim afresh the promise from Thy known lips, our blessed Son of God, He that believeth on me as the Scripture has said, out of His innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. Grant it, Lord Jesus, for Thy known glory and honor. Amen. What then are we better than they? No, in no wise, for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all understanding. As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open selpuker. With their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of ash is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what thingssoever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all in the belief, for there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. I was saved sometime during the fall of the year, 1944, at the age of twenty-seven. As far as I can remember, I had never prayed in my life. I didn't know a single verse of scripture, had not been inside of a church, if my memory serves me correctly, in eight years, did not believe there was a God, a heaven or a hell, or a Jesus Christ, and was personally convinced that anyone else that did was nothing but a silly fool. Just that ignorance of all of the eternal virtues of the word of God, about the needs of the Son of God who is seated as my Lord and Savior, and I've been rejoicing for eighteen years now in the full assurance of the absolute and complete and eternal forgiveness of all sins, past, present, and future. And tonight, I would not stoop so low as to cast in a reflection upon your intelligence, but I'm going to treat you tonight just as if you are as ignorant as I were back in those days of spiritual fame. And we're going to take you to kindergarten, and we're going to teach you tonight your ABCs by the mercy of God. And in doing so, I'm going to violate one of the first principles of good preaching, and when you're not a good preacher, you don't have to worry about violating the principles anyhow. You just talk. And I'm going to lift out of its context three portions of scripture, not new to many here. We read one of them here in the Roman Epistle, chapter 3, verse 23, All have sin. We're going to take the second one out of a verse of scripture found in the book of Numbers in the Old Testament, chapter 32, verse 23. It reads as follows, Be sure your sin will find you out. And we're going to take the last one out of 1 Corinthians 15, verse 3, Christ died for our sin. And my heart's desire and prayer to God tonight is this, that you'll not only learn your ABCs, but by the mercy of God, when you leave this building, you will have graduated into the full assurance of the acceptance of the forgiveness that's in our Lord Jesus Christ and the knowledge of peace with God. I believe all of us gathered here tonight will agree that one thing essential to learning is to begin at the beginning. Now, that might sound facetious, but it's true. Regardless how much one may know or how much knowledge one may acquire, we have to confess that there was a time when they knew very little and go a little further back and there was a time when they knew absolutely nothing. And that's where you must begin in order to be saved. The most learned man the world has ever known may pick up his pen and may sit down or down to his typewriter and write a lengthy and a very weighted volume renowned the world around for its profundity. It may contain 500 pages and 50,000 words, but when he completes his novel, it may be a bestseller, may win him a Nobel Peace Prize, and may be filled with jewels of wisdom and wit and humor and papals and drama that the world has never seen. But when he lays down his pen after his laborious task, he will only have used 26 letters if he writes it in English, and that's the alphabet, A, B, C, D, E, and so on. What I'm trying to impress upon your hearts at this time is this, that in the acquiring of knowledge, regardless of whatever sphere you may be in, that there is a basic approach to the problem of understanding and to the problem of learning, and that simply is to begin at the beginning. I am positively amazed at times at the intellect of some men that I am acquainted with by way of the newspaper. Whenever I see a man like Dr. Wernher von Braun's picture in the newspaper, who is the present head of our space program, I would just love to have a sort of a seeing eye like Superman is supposed to have, slip up on him sometime when he's figuring out one of these mathematical problems and just watch the wheels in his head see how they run around. I am simply overwhelmed with a sense of a man's intellect, and it's not hard to understand when you consider, and I say this in all honesty, that I can't this very day work very simple subtractions. You'll have to forgive me in my ignorance, but I can't do it. It didn't take when I was in school, so I gave up and I quit. But you take a man like Dr. von Braun, can sit down with a pencil and take a piece of paper, and by mathematical equations can divide an atom. He can turn his paper on the other side and take the same pencil and he can take that atom and blow it past the United States at one time. I think he's a pretty smart cookie. Now I say he's got grace. Would you agree with me that he's a smart man, an intellectual, an intelligent man? If you go far enough back in the history of Dr. Wernher von Braun, if he was born and raised in this country, and the name hardly permits me to think so, but if he were, you could go far enough back in his experience, and there was a time in his life when he only knew ABC. And if it'll make me feel any better, I can remind you of this. There was a time that Dr. von Braun and I both were in the first grade in school. The main difference is he went on and matriculated, and I quituated. Nevertheless, the fact still remains that regardless of how much sense a man may have or how much brains, how many brains, or how much intelligence he may sport, there was a time in his life when he had to begin at the beginning. In the acquiring of knowledge, as we have said, there must be, first of all, a basic approach to the problem, to begin at the beginning, and another principle is this, that also in the acquiring of knowledge there must be an orderly progression, that is a moving from point to point in an orderly manner in the acquiring of knowledge in any given field. Step one, step two, step three. Now there's first of all A, then there's B, and then there's C. Now for you young people here tonight who are discouraged in school, it seems to me that I must have reached the fifth grade before I ever mastered my alphabet, and I thought that was quite an accomplishment. But I had a schoolteacher who was very, very hard to get along with. You know how hard some schoolteachers are to get along with, don't you? She wanted to have her way and I wanted to have mine. That's where all the trouble came in. Why, to me, I didn't understand why I couldn't start with a Z and work back up to the A. What difference does it make? As long as you learn them all, you start in the middle. Who cares? You know them, don't you? But patiently, laboriously, and very carefully, and very long-suffering as I look back now, she used to sit down and she'd say, That may be the way you'd like to do it, but this is the way it's got to be done. First the A, then the B, and then the C. Now that's not only true in connection with the knowledge of material things or of secular knowledge, but this principle is also applied to the obtaining of the knowledge of salvation. God offers to you tonight, if you're here without the Lord Jesus Christ, I can testify on the authority of his infallible word, the forgiveness of all of your sins, if you'll bow your knees to the Lord Jesus Christ tonight, and just simply by believing that this booklet here represented the entire record of every sin you've ever committed, if you would believe with all of your heart that in three hours of darkness, God placed the record of all of your sins upon the spotless soul of his only begotten Son, and that the judgment of God fell upon his soul in your room instead when he bore your sins in his own body on the tree. You put your trust and confidence in that alone without any kind of reservation, mental or physical or any other kind. Put your trust in that for the payment of all of your sins and receive him by faith into your heart and life. As a living person, God will give you eternal life. But I'll tell you this, you've got to start at the beginning. And before you can know anything about the blessedness or the forgiveness of sins and the peace and joy that we have as Christians, you must remember this, first the A's, then the B's, and then the C's. And that brings us to the A's. Now, if you're ready to commit your education in spiritual things tonight, will you look at this verse that we read together from Romans chapter 3 and verse 23 and notice what the eternal word of God says, All have sinned. Now, if you're here tonight without the Lord Jesus Christ, I would like for you to try and memorize this portion of Scripture and take it home with you. All have sinned. This you must absolutely learn, first of all, before you can know anything else about this marvelous salvation of God. From where you are sitting tonight, if you have never put your trust in the Lord Jesus as Savior, if you do not know that your sins are forgiven, I guarantee you that no matter how hard you struggle, no matter how hard you may try to figure it out, no matter how hard you may work at this business of trying to become a Christian, trying to work yourself up into an emotional condition where you feel like you're saved, I'm going to tell you this, and listen carefully, you will not move one peg from where you're sitting in your spiritual education until you learn, first of all, this A, All have sinned. You take today the most learned theologian in our seminaries, and some of them are godly men, praise God for those wonderful men down at Dallas and all the fundamental schools. These men are real theologians in the strictest scriptural sense of the word who know the truths of God's eternal word and can defend the faith, and I thank God for them. But Dr. Pentecostal has written a book this thick on things to come. I'd just like to get lost and get drowned in it every day or two, and just wallow around in it and swim and flounder around in it, and just let it slop all over me. I have the grandest time, and I must confess I can't understand all of it. I don't ever expect to, but I'll tell you one thing. If Dr. Pentecostal is here tonight, he can stand on this platform and tell you that the first thing he had to learn before he could write a book this thick on things to come was this, that he was a sinner. He had to learn that first. Now, he didn't start off working down at Dallas Theological Seminary. He didn't write that book to begin with. Well, bless his heart, there was a time that he was just as ignorant as I was before I trusted Jesus Christ as my Savior. The natural man cannot perceive the things of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness unto him. The Bible says he cannot know them, cannot know them. That is, if you are natural, unregenerate, unsaved, the first thing you've got to learn is this, that you are a sinner. Now, notice this statement, And I would like to bring this to your attention at this particular time. This statement does not necessarily imply base or immoral conduct. When you read this verse of scripture from the Bible, some people think you're talking of murders and drunkards and of harlots. But that is not necessarily the truth. It's a simple statement of fact given to us by God Almighty that all have sinned. And remember this, let God be true and every man a liar. In Romans chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3, it is the act of sin that is primarily in view. But I cannot help but be personally convinced that Paul overhead in his mind the fifth chapter of Romans when he speaks of a sin making its entrance into the universe through the one man, Adam. And as far as I'm personally concerned, this might be correctly read for all sin and our coming short as a result of having sinned, being born with the same sinful nature that Adam inherited by his transgression in the Garden of Eden. And the great problem of sin here, and in the will of the Lord, we intend to go into that a little fuller detail tomorrow night, the great problem of sin here is not so much the act of sin as it is the fact of sin, the presence of sin. All sin that comes short of the glory of God. Now, I believe that the definition of this statement, and will help you to understand it, is found in the last phrase of the preceding verse. Tie the two together. There is no difference, for all have sinned. The difference tonight, beloved sinners, is in the degree of sin, but not in the fact. He does not mean things at all of base, lewd, and immoral. He does not mean things that all have sinned to the same degree. But what he is saying is this, that if you have sinned at all, you have missed the mark because God demands perfection, and perfection is to be had only through faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The perfection that makes a man or a woman fit for heaven is not some spurious kind of sanctification by asceticism and keeping sin down to a minimum by emotionalism. But the perfection that fits you for the presence of God is a robe of salvation placed upon you as a free gift from the lail-pierced hand of the Son of God who purchased your eternal redemption upon the cross of Calvary. And that's the perfection that you need. And all of us, the Bible says, have sinned in the day-by-day coming short of the glory. I like to believe also that the glory mentioned here is not so much such a kind of glory of God, not so much the glory of His person as it is His standard. It reminds me of that verse somewhere in the Gospel of Luke where we read of many of the elders who trusted the Lord Jesus, who believed on Him, but because of the fear of the Pharisees, they would not confess Him because they loved the praise of men more than the praises of God. And it's the very same word, praise, there that's glory here. And the praise there must of necessity be they loved the approval of the Sanhedrin more than they did the approval of God, and so they would not publicly confess the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. And so all sin and are coming short of the approval of God. See, sinner, that's your trouble tonight. Not that you're a junket or a bond or a sock, but it's that all the moral motiners of your entire being have been paralyzed by this thing called sin, and you're coming short of the approval of God. You fail to meet the standard, and the standard is perfection, and the personification is Christ. And that's your trouble. Now, you've got to learn this. You're a sinner. And as a sinner, if you die on your sins, you'll be eternal loss, and that's the first word that we have got to learn of this alphabet that makes us fit for heaven, is that all have sinned. Now, listen very carefully. Let me repeat this before we pass on to my first point, that the standard is God's glory or God's stamp of approval. Because you're a sinner by nature, you're daily falling short of measuring up to God's standard of approval. Now, whether you've committed one sin or one thousand, it messes up the picture, and that makes you responsible to God, and the wages of sin is death. Now, the Bible says that all of us are sinners by nature. We are sinners by choice. We are sinners by practice, and it is absolutely no sense whatever in your trying to conceal or hide your sin, for the second letter of our alphabet says, Be sure your sin will find you out. It's impossible, friends, to hide the fact that you're a sinner. It's impossible to hide from God. You may be here tonight as a married man. You might have been unfaithful to your wife. She may never find it out, but God knows it. You may be a teenager here tonight who has done something disgraceful. You're living in sin, and you know it, and your heart condemns you, and the only thing that enables you to enjoy that filthy sin of yours from day to day is this one thought, Well, Mom and Dad will never find it out. But almighty God sees you. It's absolutely impossible to hide your sin. You cannot do it. Be sure your sin will find you out. Are the members of war in grammar grade? It must have been about the 6th or maybe the 7th, a little higher than grammar grade. I used to thrill at the story that we used to have in connection with Greek mythology. And the story had to do with the era of Grecian history when the Spartans were taught to endure pain. And it was a sign of bravery. And it was something that merited a sort of a badge of public recognition if you could endure pain without letting anyone know that you were hearty. Now, I remember this story when I was a boy in school. This little boy one day on his way to school over in Greece, he saw some kind of an animal that belonged to someone else. The animal was of the rodent family, something like a large, overgrown rat. And our story went on to say that he stole this animal. He hid it in the bosom of his punit, and he went on the way to school. And there it was safely tucked away in his punit with that little animal. And as he sat down in his class that day, sometime during the day the little animal became very hungry. And the story goes that he began to gnaw away at the stomach of the little boy. But the little boy was a Spartan, and he wanted to be a soldier in the army of the emperor. And he said to himself, never will I let anyone know that I am hearty. Besides, he had been guilty of stealing. And he could not let that be found out. And after a while his teacher looked back, and she saw this little boy with his head over upon on his desk. Oh, the rascal, she said again, had gone to sleep on class. The story goes that she went back, and she spoke to him, and he would not listen. He would not be around. She took him by the hair of his head, and shook him, and raised him up. And she looked down into his sightless eyes, and he was lying quite cold in the icy jaws of death. The story goes that she looked down into his bosom, and saw this garment saturated with red fluid. And she opened it up quickly, and she looked, and out came this little animal all soaked in the blood of this little boy. He had hidden this animal in his bosom, and when it had become hungry, it began to eat away, and finally it lured its way into his vital being, and he fell over dead. The Bible says the wages of sin is death. Be sure your sin will find you out. You're talking to a man tonight, and I'm not going to talk about myself or my sin. But I have been down in the filth, and the dredge, and the mouth of sin, and I can remember when every one of them started with some sort of a little tidbit or a morsel, with just an idea for a jamb, a celebration, just something to do. And I took first one, and then another of these, and I held them to my bosom, and I hid them from my mother. I hid them from my wife, and I hid them from my children. Of age, all of these things had lured their way into those animals' recesses of my being, and I was absolutely paralyzed and bound with Satan's captive chain. And I'll tell you tonight, my friend, that regardless of whatever it is you're hiding in your heart tonight, the Bible says be sure your sin will find you out. It'll be brought out in the open some day, and might be splashed in the headlines of the newspaper, much to your heartache and to your embarrassment. Listen to the eternal word of God in Galatians chapter 6 and verse 7 and 8. Be not deceived, for God is not mocked. Now, notice in my study of the Scriptures that one translator puts it this way. Do not deceive yourself, for you're not fooling God. Be not deceived, for God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. He that soweth to his flesh, that's not his meat, but it's those sensual desires, those evil propensities of his unregenerate heart. He that sows to these and lives in the realm of the baser and loots out of his life shall of his flesh reap corruption. Corruption, sinner, corruption. If you sow to your flesh. He that sows to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting. And the way to sow to the flesh is just to go on like you're living, living in your sin, rejecting Jesus Christ, and you're going to reap corruption here in this life, and eternal damnation in the life to come. But sowing to the spirit is believing that Jesus died for your sins, for the Bible says the Spirit of God convinces you of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. The Holy Spirit is the one who awakens you to see your need. He's the one who shows the all-sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ to take away all of your sins. He's the one that takes you by the hand and leads you to the place called Calvary, and gives you to see that upon you on the cross the Savior died and took all your sins away. And having been met with a deep sense of your need of a Savior, takes you by the hand away from the cross and not to the tomb of Him, points your eyes to the Lord and gives you to see that the man who died on the cross to put your sins away. There's a lot in heaven tonight to save you. That's sowing to the spirit. And if you do, the Bible says you'll reap life everlasting. Would you like to be saved? Be sure your sin will find you out. You know, the best illustrations I believe we have come from the Bible, and yet there are some that we get out of the newspaper. First of all, I'd like to give you one out of the newspaper, and then again, one out of the word of God. I remember several years ago, I picked up the newspaper down home, and I looked, and I read a story. Now, this story was very sad and very tragic, but it was not new. In a small city of Iowa some 75 or 80 miles east of Durham, the employees of the leading bank of the city went in one morning to work, and they couldn't get the door open to the office of the president. And inside the office of the president there was a man who was the outstanding civic leader of that entire city. He was a man to whom you would always go for the most liberal contribution to all charitable organizations as the world rise. He was a man upon whom you would call if you were in trouble. He was, Mr. Citizen, number one, the one whom everyone looked up to as the most outstanding citizen of the entire community. They said, Well, Mr. So-and-so must be sleeping a little late this morning. But one hour passed, and two, and then three, and they called home. He wasn't there. His wife said he left for work early this morning. And so finally they broke the door down, and your guess is as good as mine. There was that noble, outstanding, number one citizen of one of our fairest cities with a revolver in his hand and a hole through his head. Be sure your king will find you out. And you know what caused it? The oracle was coming that day, and that man had been stealing for years from the people. And when something like this comes out into the newspaper, you say, Well, it's tragic that a man should fall into something like it. He didn't fall into it. He walked in it with his eyes wide open. And he just began a little hill, and he kept going. Be sure your king will find you. Don't go to hell. God loves you. And there's not one doubt in my mind that the devil is here tonight, and I've heard it personally. And to prove it to you, you're going to get it. But I want to tell you one thing, that if you do, you go away from here tonight with your sins unforgiven, and you die and go to an eternal hell, you'll go to hell unsaved, but you'll never go to hell unloved, because God loves you. And Christ loves you, and He proved His love for you by dying on the cross. And I love you, but I can't save you. I couldn't even save myself. But I've got a Savior that can save you. If you'll only let Him send all of our stubborn and penitent souls who are worth our gold in my transgression and refuse to bow their knees to the Son of God, do you think you're going to get away with it? Be sure your sin will find you out, the Bible says. In the book of Joshua, chapter 7, we have the conquest of a little city called Ai, the second city they attacked after they went into the Promised Land, the children of Israel. After this tremendous victory on the city of Jericho, they were feeling sort of cocky, full of confidence. And so they sent out the spies, and they came back to Joshua, the captain of the host of the Lord, and said, Well, there's not many up there. Just send a couple of three thousand. No need of everybody having to work so hard. There's only a few of them. See? But something they did not know had taken place. When they had gone into the city of Jericho, God had said, Don't take anything out of your cursed city, except perhaps those things that might be used in this worship of the Lord. Those things were all right, but don't take any of your cursed thing out of the city. Don't take it. But there was a man by the name of Achan, and we read of him in Joshua, chapter 7, when he confessed his sin before Joshua and the people of Israel. He said, I saw, I coveted, and I took, and I hid it in my tent. And when they went up to take the little city of Ai, they fled, discomfited, and they killed thirty-some-odd men that day. And the nation of Israel was put to wrath, and Joshua fell upon his face. Oh, God, what shall I do? said the great man of God, the victorious general of the Lord's army, he succeeded Moses. What shall I do when Israel turns their backs and run like a bunch of cowards before their enemies? Joshua said, the Lord said to Joshua, Joshua, get up off the ground. Israel has sinned. Israel has sinned. Now, I want you to notice what took place. So far as we know, at that particular time, there were approximately two-and-a-half millions of people in the nation of Israel, pitched in their places, in their camps, around about the tabernacle. And here's what God told Joshua to do. He said, Joshua, tomorrow morning we're going to have a little special service out here. I like to think it took place outside the core of the tabernacle. He said, I'll tell you what I want you to do, Joshua. I want you to bring every one of them, all two-and-a-half million of them, and let's take a look at them. Now, I'll tell you, if I'd been aching out of one out of two-and-a-half million people, I'd have felt fairly comfortable, wouldn't you? So, hide in the well as any detective agency. Pinkerton or Scotland Yard or FBI, anyone else is going to find one man in two-and-a-half million. But we're not dealing with Pinkerton. You're dealing with God. Now, listen. The next day we read in the Word of God in Joshua chapter 7 that all the nation of Israel came before Joshua, tribe by tribe. Now, as they came by tribe by tribe, God put the finger on the tribe. Would you like to know the man's name who was in the tribe? His name was Achin. After the tribe came family by family, and families must have had hundreds of thousands in them. And do you know whose family was taken? Then that family was a man by the name of Achin. Then after the family there was household by household, and a man had a big household, and that day was no telling how many wives. And do you know whose household was taken? God put the finger on a household, and the household in it was a man by the name of Achin. And then the household came by one by one, and I could see this man Achin who had stolen this good Babylonish garments and wigs of gold and hidden them down in the dirt under his tent, who said, I saw, I covered it, and I took, and I hid and dissembled them, and I hid them. I can see them way back at the line of a family, maybe a hundred, maybe two. There might have been three hundred people in his father's family at that time. I mean, in his household. But I can see him way back there, and he said, My, this is a strange series of coincidences, isn't it? But he's getting a little uncomfortable. They come by one after another, one after another, beginning at tribe after tribe, house family after family, household after household, man by man, and there stands this man Achin, and not one human being out of two and a half million, less one in the nation of Israel, who had committed a sin. And when this man Achin stands before Joshua, the man of God, God put the finger on him, and he said, Achin, give God the glory and confess thy sin. And then Achin said, Yes, it was me I saw. O sinner, yes, it's you you saw, and it looked good, didn't it? Yes, it looked good to your eyes. It looked like it would please that wicked heart of yours. And so you saw it, and you hid it. But first of all, you saw it, you coveted it, you took it, and you hid it. And then when you hid it, you said, I hope my wife will never find it out. I hope my husband will never find it out. I hope my mother and my father will never find this out. They would die in disgrace and shame. But listen, give God the glory and confess. Be sure your sin will find you out. And because Achin saw and coveted and took and hid in his tent, the last we read of this man, Achin, they took him and all of his family out in the valley, and they buried him underneath a heap of stones. Be sure your sin will find you out, friends. You cannot sin and get away with it. You can't do it. The Bible says the wages of sin is death. So I'll leave you with a second part. Be sure your sin will find you out. Why would you go to such, why would God go to such extreme to hide sin? Why would he? Why would God go to such extreme to expose sin, as we just read, unless it was because he wanted to emphasize the absolute impossibility of getting away with it? I want to leave you just with a couple of verses before we leave this section now. In Hebrews 4.13 we read in the word of God that all things are naked and open under the eyes of him with whom we have to do. And in Luke, I want you to turn to this one because I want you to read this one. It's so important. Luke chapter 12. I heard a favorite radio preacher of mine preaching over WVIG in Greensboro on Sunday morning read this verse of Scripture ten or twelve years ago, and I wrote it down. I've never forgotten it, and I've used it ever since. And I want to bring it to your attention again tonight. In Luke's Gospel chapter 12, look at verse 2. The Savior speaking says, For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known. Are you looking, sinner? Do you have your eyes on those words? You've got your morsel of sin hidden in the bosom, in your tunic, haven't you? Well, look, there is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed, and nothing that shall not be known. Now look at this. In the second verse, Therefore whatsoever you have spoken in the darkness shall be heard in the light, and that which ye have spoken in the ear enclosed shall be proclaimed from the house top. Be sure your sin will find you out. But all you know, before I leave this part, I want to sort of take you into the best part of this message with this glorious thought that as a divine principle runs throughout the Word of God, and it's this. Now listen. If you're going to get a good education, you need to learn this. Listen. If you cover your sin and refuse to bring it out in the open, God is going to uncover it. But if you confess your sin and bring it out in the open before God, God will cover it up. He'll bring out thy transgression as a thick cloud. In Proverbs 28 and 13, the Bible says, He that covers his sin shall not prosper, but he that confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. See? Now you don't need to turn to these, but I want to read you just a few verses, and you listen very carefully. Here is one of David's penitential psalms. I believe we have here something of the confession of David when he was convicted of his sin. Listen. When I kept silent, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long, for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my moisture turned to the drought of summer. You see, David had sinned, but he wouldn't acknowledge his transgression. He heard it, you see? He saw. He covered it, and he took her, and he hid her in his bosom. But this sin ate its way into David's very heart, and the sword of judgment never departed from David's house all the days of his life. Listen. But David wouldn't acknowledge it. When I kept silent, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long, for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my moisture turned to the drought of summer. But blessed be God! The Lord Jehovah knew about David's trouble, and so he sent Nathan to see David. And here's what Nathan told him. He says, The Lord, when David realized this, and Nathan went to him and put his finger on David, he said, David, thou art the man. And the moment he said it, here's what David said, I have sinned against the Lord. And the moment he got the words out of his mouth, Nathan said, Yes, and the Lord has forgiven thy sin. Do you see it? Now look at the words in Psalm 32. Don't look, but listen. I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not healed. I said I will confess my transgression unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Don't you see it? If you hide it, there's coming a day when it's going to be proclaimed from the housetop. If you refuse to acknowledge your sinnership, and to tell God just how big a sinner you are, there's coming a day when you're going to be exposed in all your guilt and sin. But if you will by faith bring it out in the open and say, Oh God, that's my whole sinful record of my wicked life. I bring it out before thee, Lord. My transgression is ever before me. I've sinned against thee. If you do that, God will cover your sins with the blood of Jesus Christ, and thy sins and iniquities he will remember no more. Would you like to be saved? Don't you see how simple it is? Praise the Lord. That's all you have to do to be saved. Acknowledge your sins. Believe that Jesus died for your sins, and you'll be eternally saved. Now, that brings us into the last part, the best part, and the C is in 1 Corinthians 15, 3, Christ died for our sins. Oh, by the way, before we go too far, like my old school teacher used to be, are you keeping up with me? Did you learn that last part? Now I ask you, friend, have you learned your A and B? Do you know you're a sinner? Do you? Are you convinced that your sin is going to find you out? You can't conceal it. You can't hide it. You can't do it. Hey, God, the Egyptian made that day out in the desert with her son under a bush over there. She said, Thou, God, seest me. Thou, God, seest me. Everything is naked and open under the eyes of him whom we ever do. He sees you, sinner, and the thing that you're hiding and hate worse than anything in the world, think of ever being revealed. If you don't acknowledge it, I don't say you have to make a public confession of that particular thing, but if you don't bring your sinnership, the fact that you are often a sinner, out in the presence of God and acknowledge it and let God cover it up, someday he's going to jerk that shroud of hypocrisy off of you and you're going to be revealed as a sinner you are. But oh, the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth from all sin. Be sure your sin will find you out. Now, Christ died for a sin. You know, sometimes I feel like we miss some of the blessing because we get too familiar with some simple passages of Scripture and in reality they're so profound that we can't possibly grasp them apart from the enlightening minister of the Spirit of God. You take, for example, a simple statement like this, Christ died. Explain that to me, will you? In the light of Romans 6.23, the Bible says the wages of sin is dead. The only thing that God sets for sin is death. In Romans 5.12, the Bible says, for by one man's sin into the world, and by sin came death. For the Lord had sinned to the pittance of death and crashed upon the human race because of sin. Sin is the root cause of all death, whether it be spiritual death, which is separation from God, or physical death, which is separation of the spirit and soul from the body. See? Sin is the cause of both spiritual and physical. And yet the Bible says he died. Do you think that's simple? I don't know whether this is the right interpretation or not, but I believe it's in the Gospel of Luke in the account of the transfiguration where Moses and Elias appear talking to the Lord Jesus, and in that Gospel it tells us what the topic of their conversation was. They were discussing his deceit or his death that he was to accomplish after his life, which leads me to think, in my happy ignorance of theology, that it was extremely difficult for the Lord Jesus to die. See, it was alcohol in the past. He was God in the Father. He had no sin. See, he couldn't die. And yet the Bible says Christ died. Connect these words with it. For our sins are wages of sin as death. And when the blessed Christ of God, in love for your soul and mine, took everyone of your sins and mine and made them his own, it became incumbent upon the justice of God to execute the penalty. When he became a sin for us, we might have made the righteousness of God in him. And it was not the Father's son. Read the 22nd Psalm, speaking prophetically of the shame and disgrace. He was to suffer at the hands of man. Not one word did he say in objection to it. But men cannot exact repentance for our sins, and after they've done all they could to him, we read in the Psalm in chapter 24, For thou, O God, hast brought me into the dust of death, and the blessed Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son, died under the sin of your sins, sinking down into the deep priority of sin. And that's the seed. Oh, bless God for such a wonderful salvation. Listen. We read that wonderful verse in Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 9. Speaking of a day yet to come, I believe, just prior to the 9th verse, when our Lord Jesus Christ is going to come back and establish his kingdom upon this earth and reign in absolute righteousness on his Father David's throne in the city of Jerusalem. We don't see that yet, but here's what we do see already. Jesus, who was made Lord and the angel for the suffering of death, crown of glory and honor, listen, that he might taste death for every man. And he tasted both physical death and spiritual death for every sinner here tonight. In Matthew chapter 27 and verse 4 to 6, we read that the Lord Jesus Christ died spiritually. What is spiritual death? It's separation from God. In three hours of darkness, the Son of God said, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And being separated from his Father because your sins and mine were on him, he suffered spiritual death. But in Luke's gospel, chapter 23 and verse 4 to 6, he suffered physical death. While we read, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit, and he gave up the gust. The wages of sin is death, spiritual and physical. Jesus endured them both. Listen, sinner, Jesus tasted both, and he did it for you. Now, look, what would you get up tonight if you saw a way without receiving such a wonderful? He who sought to save you from eternal hell, would you be so mean? Absolutely, child, could it be that thine heart Be sure of this, Daniel. Just how simple can God be? I'm going to close with this little story. I love to hear people's testimonies. I just spent two weeks, finished last Sunday, in Hinton, West Virginia, in a railroad town. Wanted the old brother in the meeting. His name is Jim Leslie. He's like me. He ain't very well educated. But I remember Brother Jim and I had lunch with him one day. He gave me his testimony. Sitting there with the tears in his eyes, he said, You know, I was a drunkard, and I had never come home from work in my life without whiskey in me and half drunk for I don't know, 10, 12, 15, 20 years. But he said, I got into conviction of my sin. I knew that I was a sinner, and I knew my sin was going to find me out. And I knew that Christ died for my sins. But he said, I didn't want to give them up. He worked on the yard on the swing shift late in the morning down at the railroad yard switching engines and things like that. He'd been in a conviction for a long time, and he used to go down to the shanty where the fellows gathered around the big potbellied stove before they went out on the tracks to work in the cold. And it gets cold in Hinton, West Virginia. He said, I used to stand in the shack and preach to the fellows, and I was on my way to hell because I was just trying my best to figure out this thing. How in the world can I ever get saved? I said, I know I need to be. So he said, he went to work that night, and the foreman called from up the main office down in the shack and said, send Preacher Leslie down, hook up number nine. He said, I got my line with a heavy heart, and I went walking down the road, and he said, when I got... See how simple it is? No catechism. No, bless your heart. Just an opening of the heart and receiving the person of Jesus Christ. God, you saved others. You're saving others. Why don't you save me? And he did. See? Was it real? He said, after 15 or 20 years never drawing a sober breath, he went home, and the next day his neighbor shook a bottle of Old Crow at him and asked him to have a drink. He said, no, thank you. I'm finished. Jesus Christ has saved me. From that day to this, he's been a new man. See? May I ask you this in closing? Could God make it any simpler than that? God's just saving others. Save me. Father, in the Savior's name, we thank Thee for the gospel message, and we pray that the beauty of it, we pray that the joy, Father, that the blessedness of the sins forgiven might have an attraction to some heart tonight. O God, honor the Word, but above all, glorify the Lord Jesus, we pray, in His name. Amen. Amen. Amen.