In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of being prepared for the imminent return of Jesus. He reminds the congregation that their lives are not their own, but belong to God. The preacher also challenges the audience to examine their faith and ensure that they are truly saved. He warns that many people in churches may be religious but not truly serving God in their hearts. The sermon concludes with a reminder that God has a purpose for bringing everyone together and that the purpose is to prepare for the return of Jesus and the great marriage celebration described in the Bible.

I want you to take your Bible tonight and turn with me in the Old Testament, if you would, to the book of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 53. Am I closer to God tonight than I was this time last year? Have I grown at all? If God took me out of my chair and stood me up against the wall in the throne room of a holy God, have I grown an inch spiritually for a holy God? Am I growing for God, or am I stagnant for God, or am I shrinking for God? Am I reading my Bible more than I read last year, or am I reading my Bible less than I read last year? Am I praying more than I was praying last year, or am I praying less? Am I doing more? Is my life consumed with serving God, or is my life consumed with serving me? Who's getting all the attention at my house? Does God get any attention, or am I focusing on myself? I want to know how I'm doing with a holy God. I want to know what's going on. I want you to take that burden with you. Are you going to church Sunday out of spiritual routine, spiritual habit, because you just feel better? Do you use your church pew for a psychiatric couch and your pastor for a therapist? Do you just go to church because it's the Sunday thing to do, and I'll feel better if I go, and if I don't go, they're going to send me one of those little postcards that say, I missed you on Sunday. I don't want my Sunday school teacher to call me. I don't want one of the deacons to call me. So I'm going to go, not because I'm in love with the Lamb, but because I'm caught up in a spiritual routine, a religious habit. You see, God knows what's in my heart, and He knows what's in your heart. We ought to carry that burden. Well, how am I stacking up? If I'm measured in the throne room tonight, am I growing? What am I doing for God? Secondly, what is my motive in my local church? Am I help carrying the load of that local church, or am I the burden of the local church? Is someone having to carry my weight spiritually? Is someone having to feel my place on the field of battle in these last days? Whether you understand it or not, whether you can appreciate it or not, we are at war. America's at war, but the church is at war. The Bible teaches clearly that we're battling the principalities and the powers of the air. We're wrestling against things we cannot see. If there's ever been a day that you ought to know God personally, it's this day and hour that we're living in. You can't go to heaven because your wife is a Christian. You cannot go to heaven because your dad is a Christian. You can't go to heaven because your son or daughter is serving God. Every man and every woman, every teenager and every young adult, we have to give an account to God on our own. Therefore, the third element of this study is not only how am I stacking up, what am I doing in my local church, but do I even know that I'm really saved? How many are in our churches on Sunday? Our lost people. B. R. Lakin talked to me one day while he was there in Asheville. I spent some time walking with him and praying, and he told me he was convinced that one of the greatest mission fields in the world was the average Baptist church on Sunday morning, because there are so many people walking in religious habits but not serving God in their hearts. Now, where does that bring you and me? Why are we here tonight? Well, first of all, let me just let you understand something. You're in this tent tonight because God had a plan. There's not an accident under the old gospel tent tonight. God doesn't operate on accidents. God's bigger than accidents. God's sovereign. That's a big word that means he's in charge. He is in charge. He has a plan, he has providence, and he has purpose. I cannot go home and repent of this service any more than you can go home and repent. I can't go home and say, God, I'm sorry, you spoke to me under the tent tonight. I can't repent of light received, and neither can you. But we need to understand that God has allowed all of us to gather here tonight because he's got a purpose. I'm convinced that that purpose is the imminent return of his son, that at any moment Jesus could come. And according to the scriptures, that the church, the believer, the saved, the born again, whatever term you want to use, that we ought to be getting ready to go see him. The Bible says that there's going to be a great marriage celebration. He compares the church, the believers coming home, to a great marriage ceremony and a celebration of people coming in for a wedding. And he said for that reason that when you go to a wedding, you wear your best garment. You don't wear something dirty. You don't wear something raggedy. You wear the very best you've got. You don't wear what you've been working in the garden planting those greasy cut short beans and Kenny Beck potatoes and big boy tomatoes. No, you're going to go up, you're going to take a shower, you're going to clean up, and you're going to put on your marriage clothes, the very best you've got to go to the wedding. The Bible says spiritually when we know that the King is coming and we're going to the wedding that we ought to get our garments without spot and without wrinkle. That means that I don't have my religious clothes rolled up under my bed all wrinkled up and I just drag them out to go to church on Sunday and then when I go home Sunday night I take off my church clothes and I roll them up and stick them under the bed and then I live like the world through Monday through Saturday. You see, God knows how we're living. God knows how we're behaving. God knows how we're living our lives when no one's with us and shall be speaking to the church for us to get ready. Isaiah 53 and verse 1 read, who have believed our report and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed. I'm really convinced tonight that the church, the faith, the believers, I'm convinced that we have a credibility problem. I'm thinking that the people we work with and the people we live next door to and the people that we shop with and the people that we eat with in the restaurant and they find out we're Christians and we're going to church and we're going to a meeting and we're going to go be in our church on Sunday. I really believe that a lot of those people have second thoughts when they look at us. They wonder. I wonder if they're real. I wonder if they're putting on a religious act or if they really do try to serve God. After all, they work with us. They know us. They know all about us. Isaiah 53, 1 asks, who have believed our report and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed. Not only does the world have a problem, not only does the world worry about if we're real or genuine, but the sad part is in the church today that we're having trouble with our own children. The kids that have grown up in church, have they grown up seeing the power of God? Have they grown up seeing moms and dads on the altar? Have they grown up in your church and in my church hearing the men talk about how much they love Jesus and hear the women of the church talk about how much they love serving the Lord? Or have they grown up hearing us playing games at the foot of the cross, choosing up sides, politicking in the house of God, getting mad at each other, talking and gossiping, spreading rumors on each other? What have they grown up with in the house of God? Have they seen mamas and daddies come home from church on Sunday and take that black-backed 1611 Bible and lay it up on the counter and then walked in the living room and sat down in the recliner and kicked that lazy boy in low and turned on the race or the braves or golf or football and about church time looked down at the watch and said, You know what? My back's just giving me a fit. I don't believe God wants me to go sit on that old hard queue and hurt myself. And I have had a rough week. After all, I don't really like the way things are going over at church lately. If I was in charge, we'd be doing things a little different over there. If they'd listened to me, they wouldn't be having all these trouble. Hand me that TV channel changer and let's see if I can find something that'll make me feel good. I don't want to hear any of that old Bible preaching. And those kids are picking up on that, that 14-year-old boy, that 8-year-old girl, that kid home from college, they're listening to mama and daddy talk. And they're there all week long and they see that Bible laying there on the counter, and then they hear that same dad walk down the hall Sunday morning. Has anybody seen my Bible? I laid it on the counter last Sunday. Oh, there it is right where I left it. I wonder if our children even believe our report. I wonder if they believe it when they say we love the Lord. When's the last time we had a family altar? When's the last time they came in and found mom or dad praying? You see, before I get home, Jesus could come. Before I get to the car, Jesus could come. And God loved you enough, and God loved me enough that he let me come under this old tent tonight and say, before you have to face me, why don't you stand up here in the Holy of Holies and let me see how you measure up. Let me see if you've gained any weight this year. Are you still on milk? Are you trying to get in the meat of the Word? Are you an encourager in your local church? Are you a discord sower? Are you praying hell off the back of your preacher? Are you the hell that he's having to live under? You say, Brother Sexton, we won't be back Monday night. Isn't that amazing? God's the one that called me to preach. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing? You say, well, you won't pay the bill. Isn't that amazing? I don't own this. All this has been dedicated to a three-time holy job that don't belong to me, a church don't belong to me, and old trumpet don't belong to me. Hey, it's not that quick your life can end, that quick the trumpet can sound, and any minute God can just take me by the nape of my neck like a little old bunny rabbit and just hang me right up in the Holy of Holies and turn them holy eyes on me and say, Ralph, after I saved you, what did you do with my grace and mercy? Do you remember where you were when God saved you? Do you remember that crowd you ran with the night God saved you? Remember the night before you got saved, where you were, what you were doing? Some of you had your hand around a bottle of wine. Some had your hand wrapped around a fifth of liquor. Some had a 24-pack of blood. Some was doing drugs. Some was living in ungodly and wickedness, the past description. And God saw you in that the night before he saved you and walked right by you the next night, looked down in that miry pit and said, well, that's just exactly what I've been looking for. Let me just go down there and get her. Let me go down there and get you, picked you up, started wiping the mud of the world out of your mouth, cleaned out your ears, wiped out your eyes, kissed you with Holy Ghost mouth-to-mouth with the sense of patience, breathed life into you that was dead in trespass and sin and resurrected you to newness of life. And you're sitting in an old tent tonight instead of in hell. See, if God had left you alone, you wouldn't even be alive tonight. God left you alone, you wouldn't be alive tonight. Hey, you wouldn't even be alive. Your life had already been over. Some of you wouldn't be alive, but you'd be curled up with HIV and AIDS and syphilis and gonorrhea, nervous system shot because of drugs and alcoholic rehab centers and drug centers. And God Almighty got right down in the middle of your hell, got right down in the middle of your old miry pit, invaded your nightmare, picked you up and loved you to righteousness and made a new creature out of you. The Lord can say so. In spite of you, in spite of me, I'm believing I'm an Episcopalian pastor, but I don't save anybody. If God picks me up tonight, if God were to pick you up and take you into the throne room and stand you up against the wall, and he said, Ralph, here's where you were last May. See that mark on the wall? That's where I measured you. I don't believe you've grown any in a year. See, my wife, for years, we got a closet in the house when we remodeled. We cut out a piece of sheetrock out of the kitchen wall, stuck it in that closet. That's where Beverly and Mark and Kent were growing up. I'll just say 1980, 1982, 83. There's Mark, there's Beverly, there's Kent. Now in the living room, we got a big old rough vacuum beam, and on that beam it says, Ian, and Preston, and Sophia, and Scarlett, Savannah, and Winston. We're raising another generation of wall markers, and if something happens and nobody grows, you get real scared. Your mark's not gone up in a whole year. We better call the doctor. We better get them over and get a bone scan and an MRI. We better get some blood work done. We better find out what's going on, because there's something mad wrong. It's been a year, and there's no growth in glory. God's got you engraved in the palm of His hand, but He's got a mark on the wall where you've been growing. Who hath believed our report? Does your wife even believe that you're saved or that you're a man of God? Does your husband believe that you're a woman of God? Do your children believe? Do your parents believe? Do your grandchildren believe? What about your best friend? Some of you got best friends. If they died tonight, they'd go to devil's hell, and you didn't love them enough one time this week when the conversation was going on that you just went over and said, you know, I love working with you. You're a good friend. I don't want you to ever, ever forget how much I love you and how much God loves you. I hope we get to spend eternity together. You don't have to preach them a sermon. Just let them see that you love them. Let them see that old hot tear rolling down your cheek because you was up all night praying for them, because you was over there in the Holy of Holies lifting weights, glory to God, working out, saying, God, cut me another steak, pass me them taters, give me some jubilee tea. I work with lost people. There's an old dark world out there. Load it on me, God. Give me a little more. I won't bore you, God. Clean me up. God, get me out of the way. Purify me. Sanctify me. Separate me. Get the world off of me. Clean me up. Let me feel like it used to feel when I knew you were number one in my heart and love. There's room at the cross for the church to get right. We can't have revival, but it's not going to start in the world. It's going to start with God's people. It never fails when we have a meeting like this that one church will be the key. That's a sobering thought, but God uses people. But one of the churches that's working in this meeting, for some reason, God will let them get under the burden, and they'll back up under the rock of ages, and they won't come up for air until this old tent comes down, because they'll say, God, if not now, when? If not here, where? If not us, who? God, don't leave while you're this close. We've not been this close in a long time. Who's going to pay the price? Who's going to believe our report? Are you ready to meet God? A few weeks ago, a few months ago, I guess it is now, I was in the office having a staff meeting. My church family's heard this story. The secretary buzzed, and she said, Pastor, I'm sorry to interrupt the staff meeting, but there's a man out here that says he needs to see you. And I said, someone's got an appointment? And she said, no, no, this is not that kind of deal. Said, it's an emergency, I guess. Said, he's really crying. And said, he's got to see you right now. And I said, well, sure. I said, let me come out there. And I went out there, and I went out into the little waiting area, and when I came down the hallway, I heard that man crying out in the waiting area. He was crying. And when I walked in, he was doing like this. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. What have I done? Oh, God, please have mercy on me. Oh, God, please. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, God. Oh, God, God, please. Oh, God, what have I done? I walked in the room, and I said, sir, could I help you? And he grabbed me. He just ran at me like a drowning man, just grabbed me. And it startled me for a moment. He said, I got to talk to you. Oh, preacher. Oh, God, please help me, preacher. Oh, you got to pray. Oh, preacher, preacher. Oh, God, please help me, please. I said, well, sure. I said, the preachers of the church are back here in the back. Just come back here in the room, and all these men will just gather around there and pray. We got back there in the office and closed the door, several of the staff members. And he started telling this story. He said, brother Ralph. He said, oh, brother Ralph. He said, oh, brother Ralph, I watch you on TV. I listen to you on the radio. He said, this isn't my church. He said, I can't go to my pastor. Oh, God, what have I done? What have I done? Oh, God, what have I done? He said, I can't go tell my preacher. I'm too embarrassed. Oh, brother Ralph, I'm a deacon in my church. Oh, brother Ralph, I'm a Sunday school teacher. Oh, God, oh, God, what have I done? Oh, God, have mercy on me. And I said, well, sir, just tell me what's the matter. He said, oh, preacher Ralph, preacher Ralph, oh, God, please help me. Oh, brother Ralph, he said, I just left the doctor's office. The doctor told me I've got AIDS and I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. Oh, God, please, brother Ralph, please have mercy. Oh, please. Oh, preacher, please, would you pray for me? Oh, God, help me. What have I done? I said, sir, what have you done? He said, I'm a deacon. I'm a deacon. I'm a deacon. I'm a Sunday school teacher. I'm a Sunday school teacher. I know better. But then at work, at work, oh, there's a pretty lady come to our work and said, oh, God, oh, I got to spend time with her at work and talking and talking. And I started lusting in my heart, oh, God, help me, Jesus. I'm sorry. Last year, last year, oh, preacher, I asked her out and I met her. We went to a motel one time, one time, one time, that's all, preacher, one time, that's all, that's all, preacher, just one time. I just went in the motel one time. Oh, God, what have I done? I didn't know she was a drug user. I didn't know she had sold her body before the people in the world of lesbianism and homosexuality. And oh, God, I didn't know, I didn't know. I got AIDS. Oh, God, preacher, what have I done? I'm going to die. And I know better. It's just one time, just one time. And then he stopped and he said, oh, preacher, oh, God, oh, God, Jesus, what have I done? The doctor said for me to bring my wife in. Oh, God, preacher, I may have killed my wife. Oh, God, oh, God, I've killed my wife. I've killed the woman I love. Oh, God, have mercy on me. He collapsed on the floor crying. We gathered around him and prayed. And while he was praying, he prayed something, I'll never forget as long as I live. You know what he prayed? He prayed this prayer. He was praying for God not to let his wife die, not to leave his children orphans. And he said at home, I got a little boy, two years old. And this is what he cried. We were all praying. And all of a sudden he just started screaming out loud this phrase, God, God, please don't treat my baby like David's baby. God, oh, God, don't treat my baby like David's baby. Church, I'm saved. You're saved. This isn't Superman on my shirt. I'm a sinner saved by grace. I can go and mess up in 30 minutes what I've worked for for 30 years. Any of us can. Any person here can destroy. We can't. One of us both say I'd never do that. No, you only reason you're serving God. Only reason you're in a tent meeting tonight is God's mercy and God's grace. We can't boast in our righteousness. It's his righteousness. I'm going to tell you what we can do, though. We can understand that Jesus is coming, that we're all going to be held accountable for our lives. God knows who's here tonight. And you've been sprinkled and you've been baptized and you think that's salvation. God knows who's joined the church and you think that's salvation. And I'm going to tell you, none of those things are salvation. There's not enough candles in America to get you into heaven. Only thing that gets you into heaven is the royal red blood of Jesus Christ being applied to your own black sins and having them washed whiter than snow. And after you're saved, yes, you can mess up. Yes, you can backslide. And yes, you can get under an old cloth and say, God, I'm sorry. Forgive me. You can be saved. You can be living right. You can be living clean and you can be not growing. You can just be going to church, taking care of business, and living in a spiritual rut. We're going to open these old-fashioned altars. And if God's spoken to your heart, if God's dealt with you as a Christian, as a man of God, a Sunday school teacher, a deacon, a leader, some of you are gifted writers. There's three or four of you tonight. I know God's given you the talent to write. We desperately need Christian journals again, accounts of meetings, testimonies. But where's your talent? Some of you are supposed to sing in the choir, but you got your voice on the pew. Some of you are supposed to be in the prayer room, supposed to be praying at home, but it's been a long time. Some might be under this tent tonight. You're a backslider. You're out of fellowship. And I know without any doubt tonight there's people under this tent that you've been around God and God's people all your life, but you've never been saved. That's just the way it is. That's life. With heads bowed and eyes closed.