In this sermon, the preacher addresses the issue of why people often fall short in their spiritual journey and fail to overcome sin. He questions why many who attend crusades or church events do not experience lasting transformation. The preacher emphasizes the importance of understanding the true meaning of being emancipated through Jesus Christ's sacrifice. He highlights the need for holiness and how it is lacking in many believers' lives. The sermon also touches on the role of conscience in convicting individuals of wrongdoing and the power of Jesus' sacrifice to set people free.

See, this is dictating thinking to a whole culture of young people. Is our robe unspotted today? He preached another time on this, without holiness no man shall see the Lord, and then he spent his entire sermon telling the people and showing them that they had no holiness at all. That was his object in the sermon. He would get people who thought they'd been Christians for 30 years suddenly crying out with a loud voice and saying, Oh my God, I'm undone. I've never been saved. Elders in the church would confess of sins. You're sitting in a classroom and cheating. Why do you break out in a sweat? Why does your heart beat faster? And when the teacher moves, you know you're caught and your face gets what? Red. And your ears tingle. What's doing that? Conscience. Conscience is saying, This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. And you're reacting to it. What's he going to do to you? He finds you in the state of your heart that you're in now. He doesn't care about outward appearances at all. I'm talking about the state of your heart. What is that sin that you've been clinging to? What is it, people? What is that thing that you once had a white robe and it's spotted? There's something on it. God can see it. The devil can see it. Humans around you can't. It's a secret sin. Nobody even knows, or hardly anybody, maybe a couple of family members know about it. You don't show it to anybody. You walk in these doors and you're faking it all day. Are you a Christian? You're going to survive judgment day in front of a judge like that? Really? You think you are? You think you are. What would your sin do to you in that day? This is how much God hates sin. He sent Jesus to go through the passion to get rid of it. That's how much he cannot stand sin. He allowed his precious lamb to be slaughtered, to be whipped to an inch of his life, to have the flesh torn off his back, to have crown of thorns stuffed on his head. Pain unbearable. That's how much God hates sin. If he finds it in you, he will put you as far from himself as he can. Are you hearing his voice calling you, young man, to cut off the right hand of lust, indulged in the chambers of your mind with magazines and books that you've hid from mom and dad and perhaps wife? You women, mental fantasies, nurtured by your television set and your daytime soaps with their sordid, cauldry bile and filthy, adulterous lace block. Are you taking every step necessary to stop feeding your lust or you just occasionally have a little whimper in the closet when your conscience gets so active you can't live with it and you whimper and cry and ask God for a little help and then you go right back with your hand and your eyeball firmly attached. Oh yes, once in a while you take a dull paring knife and scratch your hand and occasionally you scratch around your eyeball that you haven't begun to cut off and pluck out. You better listen to the words of Jesus. Not everyone who says Lord, Lord shall enter, but he that does the will of my father in heaven. If ye by the spirit do mortify the deeds of the flesh, ye shall live. The culture we live in is really not helping us, folks. This culture is not increasing the sensitivity of our conscience, is it? Oh no, no. Watch TV, it'll desensitize you. Go to the movies, listen to the music, read the books. It's just bashing your conscience. Nobody's perfect. This is the hypocrite's couch. This is the believer's bed of thorns. Nobody's perfect. That's the hypocrite's couch. He lies back, no serious determination to do the will of God. Who says nobody's perfect? The true child of God. No one is perfect. It's my bed of thorns. Wretched man that I am. I find that when I would do good, evil is present with me. To will is present, but to perform I know not. That's the bed of thorns. Is the imperfection of your obedience your couch or your bed of thorns? Now my friend, it can't be both. It's one or the other. And I'm asking you not knowing if I'll ever stand in this pulpit again, you better answer with as much honesty sitting where you sit tonight as Christ will make you answer in the day of judgment. Many people who wouldn't be boldly evil in their conversation and they wouldn't be boldly evil in their behavior are boldly evil in their mind. A man who abstains from sexual sin because he's afraid of getting caught can well be indulging in a thousand fantasies because he thinks nobody's going to discover the private sin. I'll tell you who will discover it. Your conscience and your conscience will produce shame and guilt and fear and doubt and worry and steal your joy. To indulge in sins of thought is to molest the conscience directly and nothing will damage your conscience more than the habit of evil thinking. Thought sins work directly on the conscience. He got baptized straight away. Why? Because you've got to deal with sin fully and you don't muck around with things like that because it'll kill you. It'll kill you. And if you don't have the full experience, man, if you aren't repenting and getting baptized and receiving the Holy Spirit, the whole nine yards filled to here to overflowing with the Spirit of God, I don't believe you'll last. In those days, I would say they would not even consider you to be part of them yet. They would say these people are inadequate under God. We've got to get them, you know, you see it all the way through the book of Acts. From beginning to end, repent and be baptized. You shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Why do we cut people short today? Why do we shortchange people? Why do people go to our crusades and not truly end up? Defeating sin. Why do 95% of people who go forward at crusades fall away within a few weeks? How many Christians do you think love the Bible more than they watch their favorite television shows? How many Christians do you think love the Bible and God's Word more than they love the TV? We act like Jesus. Jesus is a friend of mine. We act like the gospel is a kind of Colgate commercial. And if you, you know, we used to have this ad in New Zealand. And if you, if you brush your teeth with Colgate, you get this little ring of confidence. And of course, you can smile forever after that, because you've got it. And of course, it's a fake load of garbage. But sadly, a lot of people walking into our congregations are getting the same opinion of Christianity. That it's kind of like this fake little commercial and everybody gets the little ding of confidence and looks around smiling. And it ain't really there. It never was in half the cases. And in a lot of cases, sadly, it once was truly there and it's been lost. And all that remains is the shell of Christianity that walks into church buildings and stands and claps and does all the routine little parade and the little dance that we do. In Colorado, a man out in the western part of Mississippi, in a little rural town, way back up the river, that had a large plantation and many, many slaves. Somebody came around to the slaves and said, the Emancipation Proclamation's been signed. They went to the owner and said, now what does that mean? He says, that means I can't sell you to anybody else. I mean that from now on, you just, I just can't sell you. It's utterly impossible for me to sell you. The government said, I can't sell you. And so, well, what does that mean? That means you just go right ahead and work here and you don't need to be the least bit afraid. You just work for me and go right on working for me and I'll never sell you. I'll never sell you. You can stay right here. So one year went on, two years went on. They kept living in the slave quarters. They kept going to the field, eating the food, and taking the lash of the overseers. It's going right on. And they said, isn't this wonderful to be emancipated? We don't have to be so fear about being sold. Our families won't be broken up until you can live right here with your daddy and your mommy all your life. We go right on working for the emancipated. And so they go right out into the fields and grovel and serve. And they were talking about being emancipated because they couldn't be sold to anybody else. Then someone came along and said, what are you doing here? Well, we're emancipated. We don't need to be afraid about being sold anymore. You don't understand what emancipation is. You don't need to serve that man anymore. He doesn't own you. He not only can't sell you, but he can't work you. You don't have to do his dirty bidding anymore. You can leave here, pack your things, and go down the road and go anywhere you want to go. Well, he never told us exactly what it meant to be emancipated. And so we've spent four years working here when we didn't have to. Oh, listen, I know children of God that have been four years doing the bidding of the world and longer than that doing the bidding of the flesh and longer than that being hounded and whipped by the devil. And they never heard that Jesus Christ died to set them free. But oh, to think that when they turn, they'll go right on to the north. That's unthinkable. That's unthinkable. And so if I speak to you and you've had bondage to the world, it's been gripping and pulling the Lord Jesus Christ to set you free. He carried you with him to the cross so that as you went down in death, the world would have to relinquish its hold and couldn't follow you into death. He carried you with him to the cross so that as you went with into death, the flesh couldn't hold you and govern you anymore. He carried you with him so that the devil couldn't hold you anymore. And then he brought you up on the other side of the grave with him in moments of life so that you could walk in peace for he that is dead is free from sin. Can you go on neglecting so great salvation? You can't. You've got to admit you've bonded, admit you need, admit that you've been serving when you didn't have to serve. And come and throw yourself at his feet and gladly take from his nail to his hand the deliverance that he purchased for this world. Because you've served him. You've hurt him. And you know that he died to set you free. Set you free. Years ago an Englishman had gone out to California, made his fortune in the gold field. He wanted to go back and live with his own people. So he sent his money by check around back to England and he came overland on the Santa Fe Trail to Kansas City and down to Missouri. And then the Mississippian ended up in New Orleans where he was going to take ships to New York and from there to England. And as a tourist in New Orleans, he did as most tourists do. He went down to the slave market. Only then, in early 1850, there were still slaves being sold. And as he went into the market, he saw a lot of men gathered there and one party was put on, a young Negress, very beautiful for her race. And he heard the men as they were speaking about her. He saw two evil looking men bidding for her quite eagerly. And then he heard them say what they would do with her. And his heart just revolted against the whole swinish thing. And finally when they were bidding and the bidding prices were getting very high and smaller, he just couldn't stand it. And so he beckoned to the auctioneer and he said, a figure which was exactly twice the last bid. Utterly beyond anything that had ever been paid for a slave in that market before. He said, have you got the money? And he came up and he said, yeah, he got the money. And so the bill of sale was made out. He went over to the block to take the woman that he'd purchased. And as she came down one step and stood just about level with his eyes, he had made a mouth full of stipple and she spat right full in his face and hissed through her fence teeth, I hate you. He said nothing to the back of his hand. He went to stipple away. Took her by the hand, walked down the street across this intersection through the mud down that street till he came to a little office building. She couldn't breathe, didn't know what it was. He went to the desk, began to speak. The man behind the desk began to protest. He said, I insist it's the law. I insist. And finally he came back, paid some money and got a paper. He walked over to the woman that was like a beast ready to spring on you. He handed the paper out and he said, here, here are your manumission papers. You're free. She still hissed, I hate you. He said, didn't you understand? I said, here are your manumission papers. You are free. She said, I know. He said, no, you paid twice as much for me as they've ever paid for anybody on that block. And you're giving me the, I don't believe it. He said, yes, these are your manumission papers. And he put them in her hand and she said, stop, mister. Yes. Do you mean to say that you bought me to set me free? He said, yes, that's why I bought you, to set you free. Tears came up into eyes that hadn't known tears for a long time. They just spilled over. Her face softened and then she slipped down on her hands and knees and she reached down and put her hands around those rough miner's boots and then laid her cheek down the toe of one of them. And through her tears she sobbed, oh, you bought me to set me free. You bought me to set me free. You paid more than has ever been paid before just to set me free. And then through her tears she looked up and said, oh, sir, all I want in life is to be your slave.