One of my main aims in life used
to be to make money, and I became
very proficient at it.
I'd jump out of bed in the morning.
I couldn't wait to get to my office
so I could make more money.
I never minded hard work and sacrifice, and
it wasn't long before I was a very
successful businessman who wore Brooks Brothers suits to
work.
My shoes were expensive Italian leather loafers.
I had a shiny Rolex on my wrist.
I had a built-in refrigerator in my
black Mercedes that I kept cool bottles of
Pellegrino water in for when I was thirsty.
When I traveled, I stayed at Clearages in
London or the Four Seasons in Boston.
On the west coast you could find me
at the Beverly Hills Hotel in the Polo
Lounge or in Carmel at the Lodge at
Pebble Beach because I was addicted to the
game of golf.
I had the most expensive golf clubs money
could buy, and I had played Pebble Beach
often enough to be able to draw the
course layout hole by hole on the back
of a cocktail napkin.
Because I was a member of a exclusive
country club, I could ask my golf bro
to pick up the phone, and she could
give me access to any top course in
the nation.
That's how I played Riviera Country Club with
O.J. Simpson's former golf buddies.
I was on top of my world.
My wife was drop-dead gorgeous, and when
we would enter a room in public, just
about every man in there would turn his
head and stare at her.
That's how pretty she was.
We lived in a big fine home in
a upscale neighborhood on a couple of rolling
acres of land with $40,000 worth of
fine art hanging on the walls.
I kept a second home in Florida that
I maintained just so I could take golf
buddies there to play more golf.
It was not unusual for me to make
$40,000 in one morning.
I was so successful in business that headhunters
called me weekly, and when I changed firms
it was not uncommon for the hiring company
to cut me a check for several hundred
thousand dollars.
All I wanted to do with my life
back then was to make more money so
I could travel and play more golf and
accumulate more expensive things of this world.
All this time I was a faithful member
of a church, but religion was secondary in
my life back then, and Jesus was more
of a concept to me that I had
mentally accepted, but no reality in my life
as I was yet an unsaved church member.
Then my life took a unusual turn, and
once it turned it never turned it back
again.
Two things happened that altered the course of
my life.
I got saved, and I met Stephen Olford.
My life was turned right-side up, but
then God began to go to work on
me, and it was turned upside down.
Alan Redpath once said, Before God can use
a man, he must first smash him.
Believe me, friends, when I say you don't
want to look at the sorrow-filled pieces
of my smashed-up life, where my world
was smashed apart as I knew it, and
it ceased to exist.
All I can say, if you want to
know more about it, then take a walk
through Philippians chapter 3 and verses 7 through
10.
I remember Stephen Olford, who became a homiletical
mentor.
He taught me how to preach, and he
was my colleague and friend, and we were
sitting in a study one afternoon, and he
asked me to leave the business world and
come and join him in ministry as his
colleague.
And I looked him in the eye and
said, I can't do that.
I just accepted a check for $265,000
to go to work for a new company,
and I signed a contract.
And his face fell, and he replied, Oh,
well, I hope you have invested the money
wisely.
It didn't make any difference if I did
or not, because God had other plans for
me, or I wouldn't be here speaking to
you now, friends.
About three years ago, I went to a
Donald Trump rally, and it was a town
hall meeting, where me and 1,000 other
people were crammed together in a room.
Trump was the richest person in that room
that day, and I was the poorest.
I had less than $20 to my name.
That was my entire net worth, and it
hasn't been much higher than that since, friends,
as I've learned to live under the discipline
of the Holy Spirit.
And all I can say, friends, is that
it's amazing what God can do, well, with
the man who is willing to lose everything
for him so he may be gained.
I used to live my life one way,
for the world and the enjoyment and accumulation
of it, and then God intervened, because I
decided to get serious with him.
I got real serious with God, and God
got real serious with me.
He can do that with anybody.
There's nothing special about me except the Christ
in me.
But if God does something in your life,
and it has a higher purpose than what
you are doing now, you can't put off
God and slide by.
I know some men who have tried, and
they are miserable individuals with the world in
one hand and worry in the other.
Nobody really tells us the real meaning of
life, so we just adopt the world's view
of it, and there we go, off on
our personal adventure of living a life for
selfish gain.
But the pursuit of this world and its
pleasures is like a bowl of wax fruit,
attractive to the eye, but empty, full of
air, that counts for nothing in eternity.
A man gets on a track to success,
and on that track, he runs through life
in a worldly pursuit of empty things that
don't add up to a hill of beans
in eternity.
Man drifts along in life with a mundane
purpose and selfish ambition to accumulate as much
of this world's goods as he can.
Why, to leave it to another, to squander
aimlessly as well?
You can get so wrapped up in this
world that this world is what you're living
for.
King Solomon lamented, later in life, Then I
looked on all the works that my hand
had wrought, and on the labor that I
had labored to do, and behold, all was
vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was
no profit under the sun.
Back then, when I was a rich man,
I had much of this world's goods, but
I was an empty man.
I was empty like a hole in the
ground because God wasn't the center of my
life.
And it's funny how man can get by
with just enough religion to be comfortable with,
have a church he can attend when he
wants to, and give to it to make
himself feel a little better about himself, that
it all isn't one big waste.
He doesn't mind giving a little service to
God so long as there's no sacrifice attending
it.
He lives for the moment, tasting the pleasures
of life as he glides down the stream
of time, enjoying the scenery of the frolicking
waves until he comes to the roaring cataract
of death where he tumbles over that chasm
and is thrust into an eternity he is
quite unprepared for.
Over he goes, down he falls, into a
silent coffin in the ground.
The thud of the dirt clods as they
fall on his casket are reminders of what
empty things he pursued in life.
Sin is a robber and a thief, for
it robs God of his great glory and
it steals a person's time and squanders it
in light of eternity.
Sin comes wrapped in ribbons and bows and
it pleases the senses, but leaves a horrible
stain that you can't get rid of.
I remember one time I was preaching in
a church down in Mississippi and it was
down south to be customary for the visiting
preacher to have lunch with the congregation in
the fellowship hall when he was done preaching,
where they treated me to a smorgasbord of
southern cooking.
Well, I like hot dogs and I especially
like them with mustard, so I got in
line and filled my plate with a few
hot dogs and smothered them in mustard and
I sat down with a elderly deacon and
his wife at a picnic table.
I didn't know why they were staring at
me so until I realized I had smeared
yellow mustard all over the front of my
new blue suit jacket.
The deacon looked at me and shook his
head and commented, well, at least we know
now you are human after all.
But you know what, friends?
No matter how many times I had that
suit cleaned, that yellow stain never came off
that blue suit.
It always had a green tint to it
and that's how sin stains us as well.
Once it's there, it's always there, so we
get used to it.
There is only one who can take the
stain of sin away.
His name is Jesus Christ.
He came down here so we can go
up there.
But in order for that to occur, he
had to become a sin substitute, bearing our
curse, bearing the wrath for sin do us.
Mankind is nothing but a world of guilty
rebels who have broken and trampled all over
God's law because of that stain of sin
that won't go away.
Our sins stack up like a great mountain
towering over us, and if we die outside
of Christ's blood, then we die in our
sins.
And they follow us into eternity to chase
us and accuse us like hungry bloodhounds.
Jesus had been dripping on me all my
life with drops of grace here and there,
with the knowledge that what he would eventually
plant with my redemption would one day grow
and pay him dividends.
But my life course had to be turned.
I wish it hadn't turned so dramatically, but
I reckon when a structure is built with
the concrete blocks of greed and avarice, that
it must be brought down to the rubble
of a wasted life in order to be
rebuilt again into one that is altogether another.
I didn't know that a man could be
religious and lost.
I mistook church membership for salvation.
But I got to the place where I
knew the Word of God, but I didn't
know the God of the Word.
That's a dangerous place to be, friend, religious
and lost.
Will you humor me for a moment, friend?
Will you take a walk with me in
your mind and come with me to a
place called Calvary?
Look at that scene up on that hill
yonder.
The sky has just darkened and the wind
has suddenly picked up, and there's a chill
in the air, but if you look real
hard, friend, you can make out the form
of that man on the cross.
Do you see him?
Look at that man on the cross as
he hangs there, who says, And I, if
I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto me.
Look at that man on the cross as
he hangs there, suspended in air, his arms
outstretched, with the nails in his innocent hands.
He cries, Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do.
His love flows out from that cross.
He is the Son of God, who loved
me and gave himself for me.
I can almost hear him say, I am
the way, the truth, and the life.
No man cometh unto the Father, but by
me.
I can hear that man on the cross
declare, I am the bread of life.
He that cometh to me shall never hunger,
and he that believeth on me shall never
thirst.
That cross was the place where sinful man
sought to get rid of him, but by
his death it becomes the place where his
saving power flows out to all who come
in repentance, confessing they are sinners, and own
them as their Savior and Lord.
There's an old hymn that best captures this
scene.
There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn
from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunge beneath that
flood, lose all their guilty stains.
Is that your story, friend?
Are you stained by sin, like that mustard
stain on my blue suit that never washed
out?
The only one who can take that sin
stain off from you is Jesus.
He can wash that stain in his blood
and make you new again.
The redeemed in heaven can sing unto him
that loved us and washed us from our
sins in his own blood.
Are you weary of your sins?
Are you thirsty for Christ?
He invites poor sinners to come to him
and believe on him.
The duty required is to come, and he
has a pure gospel promise to all who
come.
And you can be the biggest sinner in
your town tonight, and he'll still apply to
you.
And him that cometh to me, I will
in no wise cast out.
Will you trust him, friend?
I can make you a promise if you
trust him with your salvation.
He'll be the best thing that ever happened
in your life.
Jesus is the pearl of great price.
He's worth losing all for and selling all
for so he can be gained.
If the Holy Spirit has been dealing with
you, friend, then I have a little more
of God's word for you.
Seek ye the Lord while he may be
found.
Call ye upon him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way and the
unrighteous man his thoughts.
And let him return unto the Lord, and
he will have mercy upon him, and to
our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
If you are like the rest of mankind,
you are a guilty sinner who needs pardon
because you were stained by sin.
Jesus is the only remedy and refuge for
sin.
He can wash your sins away, friend, but
you must come to him.
He held nothing back at Calvary.
He gave his all.
He wants you to give your all to
him.
Only one life will soon be passed.
Only what's done for Christ will last.
Let us pray.