In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of gratitude and the consequences of neglecting others. He shares a story of a gardener's son who saved a boy from drowning, and as a result, the boy's father financed the gardener's son's medical studies. This story illustrates the great reward of gratitude. The preacher also highlights the urgency for Christians to share the message of God's redeeming love and grace with those who are lost and in need of salvation. He emphasizes that the message of the cross is the only thing that can bring peace to a restless world. The sermon concludes with an invitation for anyone who feels their life has been wasted to come to Jesus and find salvation.

Greetings to our radio friends. Our gospel program opens today with a choir singing Love Found A Way. We are told that a queen of the Belgians uttered these last words, My people no longer remember me, it is time to go. Her heart was broken by the forgetfulness of those who were so dear to her. If she neglected her people, there may have been a reason why she was forgotten. If not, her sorrow was caused by the negligence of well-meaning people who were guilty of ingratitude. There are many other events in history which reveal the great reward of gratitude. Perhaps you've heard the one of the gardener's son living in a well-known estate in Scotland. One day the son saved a young fellow from drowning in a swimming pool. That boy's father was so grateful to the life savior that he financed the gardener's son in the study of medicine, and in later years that physician's name came to be known around the world. Dr. Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin. Of course, the boy whom he had rescued also became well known. We know him as Sir Winston Churchill. The story would be quite different if Churchill's father had gone away without any expression of gratitude. There may be some who feel like saying, how can we be thankful when we have nothing to be thankful for? The answer to that question is no one ever honestly gets to that place. Whether or not we believe it, the statement can be made that God has been far better to us than any one of us deserves. We are daily indebted to our gracious God for his tender mercies. They may come so freely and so regularly that we scarcely notice them, and for that reason God sometimes withholds a few to cause us to notice them. Have you been grateful to God today for all his mercies? Have you taken time out to express your gratitude? One of our soloists enjoys singing that hymn, I've been going my way living life day by day, never thinking or stopping to pray, till the storm clouds drew near, taking loved ones so dear, and then the chorus goes, take time to pray, bow your head in prayer every day. If we permit one day to pass or even a part of a day without lifting our hearts to the Lord in prayer, we are guilty of this common sin of ingratitude. If you are still unsaved, you will have difficulty in praising the Lord beyond just your temporal mercies, your food, your home, your health, your strength, and many more tangible things which cause you to praise the Lord. Those who are saved have a great deal more for which to praise the Lord. We must not forget our daily bread and other temporal mercies, but that which means even more to us is the great gift of the Savior. In days past we enjoyed God's temporal mercies, but we knew not the Lord Jesus Christ. Our sins were unforgiven. We knew God only as a far distant creator, a mighty one with unlimited power and wisdom. But since we've come to know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we find ourselves thanking him first of all for the great salvation that we are now enjoying. A little while ago we were lost on the broad and crowded road that leads to torment. You can imagine how unhappy we were in that condition. But we heard a most unusual message from God. It was a message of good news that in spite of our lost and sinful condition, Christ loved us and took our place at Calvary's cross, dying in our stead and for our sin. At first it seemed almost too good to be true, but we found that good news in the Bible, God's holy word. Therefore it had to be true. In searching carefully for God's condition of salvation, we found that although Christ died for all sinners, that did not mean that all would be saved, but rather that all men had an opportunity to be saved. The condition upon which God will save sinners is personal faith in Christ and his all-sufficient sacrifice. That is an act of the will, and there has to be a definite moment when we acknowledge our true condition as being lost and helpless. Then by a definite act of faith we place our full confidence in Christ for salvation. His word declares that immediately we are born into God's family, having received divine life. No longer on the broad road that leads to weeping, but on the narrow road that leads to eternal joy and glory. God pledges his divine honor and power and assures the salvation of all who will accept his Son as Lord and Savior. The great salvation cannot be purchased. It cannot be earned. It must be received as a gift. Consider this. Supposing it could be bought, what price would you be willing to pay to have all of your sins blotted out? Perhaps you would reply, if I had it, I would give all the money in the world for such a wonderful possession. It's very strange that many would be glad to sacrifice greatly for the sake of being saved, but when God offers it as a gift, there seems to be no interest in being saved. My most difficult task is to get men and women to believe what God says regarding his plan of salvation. Nearly everyone has formed a personal opinion, and you will hear people saying, this is the way I believe. It would be far better if they would say, regardless of my former opinion, I want to learn God's condition of salvation. When an honest person lays aside all his own ideas and turns to the Bible, he will discover that salvation is altogether by grace, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, apart from works. One of the first evidences of a true conversion is the expression of gratitude. Since Christ loved me and died for me, I must thank him for the remainder of my days. Do you understand why a born-again child of God considers his temporal mercies as secondary in comparison to the great blessing of salvation? The greater the deliverance, the greater the appreciation. We have been saved from coming wrath and judgment, and that's a great blessing to say the least. God has brought us into a life of peace and satisfaction, and that's quite a contrast to our former unsaved days when life at times seemed scarcely worthwhile. I am justified in feeling sorry for you who do not personally know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. Your past is not pleasant, your present is almost unbearable, and your future is the worst of all. It's not intelligent to live that way, and it's not necessary since a loving God stands ready to save you the very moment you will accept his Son as your Savior. You who are still unsaved must at times feel that your prayers are worthless, and that may be true, for when Christ is presented to you as an all-sufficient Savior and you do not receive him, you are making God very unhappy. He rejoices over those who trust his Son for salvation. I can't think of anything that you could do right now that could be of greater importance than to settle the question of your soul salvation. Immediately upon trusting Christ, you will receive a sense of gratitude that you never possessed before, and like the great apostle of the New Testament, you will be able to say from the heart, thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift. Notice Paul calls the gift of the Savior an unspeakable gift. Unspeakable is the yardstick by which we measure our debt to God. Poets and scholars have tried to express in earthly phrases the vastness of this great gift, but at the very best, they have only dimly expressed the extent of the gift of God's Son. One of them penned these lines, O could I speak the matchless worth, O could I sound the glory's fourth, which in the Savior shined. If we had Gabriel's knowledge and language, we still could not completely tell the wonders of our Lord Jesus Christ and the depth of our obligation and debt to him. Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift. It was unspeakable because God had only one Son. How many children do you have? Now stop and consider. Which one of them would you gladly surrender to a painful death at the hands of brutal torturers to benefit an enemy who hated you bitterly? God had one Son, and he gave him freely to such a death to win a few of his enemies to friendship. Not that God might be benefited, but that the enemies might be saved and blessed. These are just a few of the reasons why those of us who are saved can't forget to praise him for his great love. To us, it means the difference between being saved and lost, between going to heaven and going to hell. Once more, I present this loving Savior to you, and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I ask you to trust him for your eternal salvation. Greetings to our radio friends. Our gospel program today opens with a choir singing, I want my life to tell for Jesus. One of the most practical books of the Old Testament is the book of the Proverbs. It was written by one of David's sons, Solomon, to whom God gave special wisdom. The wisdom in this book is not human cleverness or ability, but the wisdom of which comes from above, which built the heavens and the earth and maintains them in being. How wonderful that God should place his own wisdom at man's disposable, that simple men might find true peace and happiness. Out of the 3,000 Proverbs that Solomon wrote by the power of the Holy Spirit, I want to call your attention to one which is found in Proverbs chapter 10 and verse 27. Here it is. The fear of the Lord prolongeth days, but the years of the wicked shall be shortened. As we read this proverb for the first time, we are tempted to say that there is an apparent discrepancy in these words, for we can very readily recall some exceptions to this rule, cases of sinful and vile men who lived to a ripe old age. On the other hand, we may recall some godly person who died comparatively young. How then can we reconcile the truth of this proverb, the fear of the Lord prolongeth days, but the years of the wicked shall be shortened? First of all, we must take into consideration the fact that our text does not necessarily limit itself to earthly days or physical life, for the word of God is more generally interested in the life that is beyond this present one. Our physical life on this earth is, humanly speaking, our one paramount desire, but when we think in spiritual terms, we think of this brief span of time as of little importance in the light of eternity. When a person discovers that he is born in sin and is before God lost and guilty, he takes his place, or rather I should say he should take his place as a sinner and receive the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and immediately he prolongs his days to all eternity. His days are lengthened into eternal life. He shall never die. Can there be longer days than those encompassed in the term eternal life? On the other hand, if a man rejects Christ and his offer of pardon and forgiveness, lives for sin and self, he receives not eternal life, but the extreme opposite, eternal death or the second death. If a Christian lives on earth for, say, 30 years and then goes to heaven to live forever, he is certainly blessed with longer life than is a sinner who lives on this earth for 90 years and then perishes forever. I think our little proverb also suggests that the length of a life is not measured by the exact length of its years, but rather by the usefulness of those years. One person may exist here for 60 years, living a rather harmless, peaceful life, but accomplishing nothing for God. He may even be saved, but content to sit idly by and let George do all the work. Such will go to heaven empty-handed and will miss the servant's crown, saved so as by fire. Another saved person may live only 40 years, but he may see the wisdom of crowding into those years every possible avenue of service for his blessed Savior. He may spend much time before the throne of grace in prayer and intercession for the lost and groaning world, and especially for loved ones who are still unsaved. He may see the value of living a separated, consecrated life so that no one will be stumbled by his conduct or his conversation. He may see the importance of being a soul winner or witnessing to others of the saving grace and the keeping power of our Lord Jesus Christ. This fullness of life is perhaps what Paul had in mind when he wrote to the Thessalonian believers and said, remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. A Christian who so lives a life full of service may be counted as being actually longer than the fruitless, wasted life of one who lived a greater number of days. This truth should stir every Christian and produce a desire to live a full life, making every day count for God. Sinners waste their days by running after sin, and Christians waste their days by running after soap bubbles, worthless vanities which add up to a wasted life. Sometimes I think that unsaved people who are ignorant of the way of salvation and who are trying to work their way to heaven have more ambition than some lazy Christians. How can any Christian sit idly by when friends and neighbors are dropping into a lost eternity, all for the want of hearing the story of God's redeeming love and grace? How can Christians go to sleep on the job when a restless world is crying for something solid to cling to in the wake of coming judgment? The message of the cross, or rather the Christ who died on that cross, is the only message that will calm and quiet the restlessness of this troubled world. The fear of the unsaved is dreadful, but the future of the unsaved is even more dreadful. No matter how long their years may have been, the unsaved always feels it is too soon to die. To them, their days have been too short, and they cry out in despair, Lord, prolong our days so that we may continue in the pleasures of sin a little longer. Perhaps I am speaking to someone who has come to the realization that thus far, life has been wasted. You may realize that if you continue on in your present course, that at the close of your life you will be compelled to say, my whole life is a display of poor management. I am sure that you are aware of the fact that nothing can be done about the past, but something can be done about the present and about the future. You may bring a halt to that miserable history right now by coming to the Savior who has died for you and who desires to save your soul. This choice is yours, and if your soul is lost, you will have no one to blame but yourself. God has sent his servants to proclaim the message of warning so that you will not be able to say, I was ignorant of these facts. He has sent his Spirit to convict you and to convince you and to make you sick of your sins. If you deliberately ignore all of these red lights, there is only one alternative. God will deal with you as a rebel in judgment. He would far rather deal with you in grace now, for judgment is a strange work but necessary. Even though you have wasted the greater portion of your life, it is still wise to turn to the Savior. Sometimes we see elderly people coming to Christ late in years with a deep regret that they had not come sooner, but their testimony is usually, these few months of knowing Christ are worth more to me than all the rest, and you may experience the same by coming now to the Savior who stands with outstretched arms ready and anxious to receive you. There is still another sense in which the fear of the Lord prolongeth days, and contrarywise the years of the wicked shall be shortened. By remaining unsaved, the devil will entice the sinner to be reckless with his body. He will cause men to be careless with their personal hygiene, and so the unsaved man shortens his days by abusing his health and strength. Christians are commanded to yield even their bodies to the Lord right from the very day of conversion, and there is no better way of caring for the body than to yield even our health and strength to our loving Savior. In purchasing us at Calvary by his precious blood, Christ bought us spirit, soul, and body. These bodies will have to last us for the duration, and the principles of Christianity include cleanliness and care for the body as well as for the soul. From every viewpoint, we must come to this conclusion, that you can't win by remaining unsaved. You will profit bodily, spiritually, mentally, and in every way by trusting Christ as your Lord and Savior. There is no better time than the present, and it is our sincere desire that you will see the wisdom of acknowledging Christ as your Lord and Savior today. Remember our text from Proverbs 10 27, the fear of the Lord prolongs days, but the years of the wicked shall be shortened.