Jesus Can Save Even You

There's a story I want to share with you friends, and it's about a young man's life who was changed. Two college boys were roommates. One was a Christian and the other was not.

One night the Christian boy asked his friend if he would join him in attending a tent revival meeting not far from campus. By a visiting evangelist he wanted to hear. He was only a couple blocks away and they could walk there.

The roommate, who wasn't a Christian, only agreed to go because it would be an excuse not to study his economics book. So they walked across campus to this outdoor meeting. As they grew closer they could hear the preacher.

He had a thick southern accent and this appealed to the non-Christian who was from the south himself. He had forgotten what a southerner sounded like among so many midwestern folk. The evangelist was an old man and his voice trembled when he spoke as he told of a bleeding Christ hanging on a blood-stained cross for the sins of men.

The preacher described a crucified savior in the most graphic terms with all the ramifications of death on a cross, the suffering, the agony, the dehydration, the loss of blood, the weakness in the legs in being unable to support the battered body that just squirmed and squirmed and that had been whipped so viciously by a cruel Roman soldier with a scourge of broken glass and nails in his hand. How the back of Jesus was so cut and lacerated and torn up that it looked like 10 pounds of raw hamburger meat out in the sun with flies on it. The thought of it made the unsaved boy squeamish in his stomach, but the preacher kept on saying, Jesus can save even you.

Listen friend, Jesus can save even you. Why, he saved one of the thieves next to him when that condemned criminal trusted Christ to save him, but the evangelist pointed out that thief had owned up to his own crimes in being a lost sinner in need of a savior. Then the evangelist said, Jesus is the pearl of great price worth selling all for so he may be gained, but you must feel your need of him, friend.

Only a sin-sick individual needs a remedy for sin. Jesus didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Then the old preacher closed his message with the following request.

He said, all I want you to do tonight, friends, is to go home quietly thinking about what you heard tonight concerning the love of the father who gave his only begotten son to hang naked on a bloody cross for sinners. Are you a sinner? Jesus said, the son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. Are you a lost sinner? Do me a favor, friends.

All I ask of you is to go home tonight and take out a piece of paper or an index card and write one word upon it. Write the word in big capital letters. Write the word SAVED or LOST.

If you're saved and you know it, then write SAVED and go to bed in perfect peace knowing if you died tonight, you'd wake up in the arms of Jesus. On the other hand, if you are a lost sinner, I want you to have the courage, the guts to write that word LOST and I want you to think about where you would end up if you died tonight outside the saving blood of Christ Jesus and the terrible torments you would endure for all eternity in a devil's hell. Then the southern preacher closed the meeting without even giving an invitation, which shocked everyone there.

The old man just closed his Bible, wiped a tear from his cheek, and before he turned to leave the platform, he called out in a trembling voice filled with emotion, Dear Lost Friend, no matter what you've done, Jesus can save even you. Why, it was like a sword going through the young man's back. It pierced him to the core.

The two roommates walked back to their dorm in the night in complete silence, each afraid to speak to the other. Back at the dorm room, they climbed into each of their own beds quietly. The Christian read his Bible a while, and before turning out his light, he wrote on a piece of paper the word SAVED, and then he went to sleep.

The other boy couldn't sleep for a million dollars. He was so torn up, so torn up inside with guilt, he knew he couldn't write the word SAVED on his piece of paper because he knew he wasn't saved, but he could not bring himself to write the word LOST. The boy was just torn up with guilt because he had done something awful nobody knew about.

There'd been an old lady who lived next door to his parents' farm, and he hated her. She had squealed to his father about how he stole her groceries one time that were on her porch, and he'd gotten a whipping from his strict father, who seemed to be always whipping his rebellious son, and the boy never forgave that old woman for telling on him, and she was an old widow who lived alone, and her only companion was her fat calico cat that always seemed to stay in her bony lap. One day while she was out, the boy grabbed that cat and took it behind his barn, and he strangled it and buried it in the yonder woods, and it wasn't long that he regretted killing that cat, for the cries of that old woman kept him up that night when her cat never came back home, and for the last 12 years he had lived with the guilt of that crime that nobody knew about, about strangling the neighbor's cat.

As the boy lay in bed, those words of the preacher rang in his ears, dear sinner friend, Jesus can save even you, and then he also recalled the preacher quoting Jesus, who said, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Finally, at about 2 a.m., the boy crawled out of bed, grabbed a piece of paper, and wrote in big letters the word lost. Then he dropped to his knees and admitted to a holy God that he was a big sinner who was lost and who needed to be saved.

He begged God to forgive him for killing that old lady's cat, and then he thought of a lot more sins he needed to confess as well. Finally, it was as if a ray of light came into his soul and would join his heart. He rose to his feet, he grabbed that piece of paper, and crossed out the word lost, and in its place wrote big letters, saved, with an explanation point.

Well, I like that story, friends, because no one is too bad to be saved. Jesus can save even you, friend, but you must trust him. Dear sinner friend, you may be listening to this radio message in a college dorm room, or you may be listening to this message in a prison cell.

Perhaps you were like that boy in the story who'd done an evil act, and he was eaten up with guilt. He thought God couldn't save someone who'd been so bad, but God doesn't accept good people into his heaven. Only forgiven people get to go there.

Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. Are you a lost sinner? Jesus can save even you. You may be in a prison cell listening to this, or you may be in a prison of your own doing, but listen, friend, you still have to trust in Jesus and surrender all you are to all he is, and he is Lord.

Listen to this gospel call. And the Spirit and the bride say, come, and let him that hears say, come, and let him that is a thirst come, and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.