God Can Rescue — John 12

0:02 Alright. It's been a while. This is a great privilege to be given the opportunity to share some words this morning or this afternoon. Let's just open in a word of prayer. Again, father, we thank you for your love to us.

0:20 Thank you that we can take all our burdens to you in prayer and thank you that you care for each one here. Each soul is precious to you, and we desire that whatever spoken this morning would be that which would build up and encourage and strengthen each one here. We ask your guidance in all things. In Jesus name, amen. Well, I had some verses marked out here that I was gonna start with and I'll still use them even though Bob used them this morning in our remembrance of the lord meeting but that's alright.

0:57 I apologize. That just confirmed it to me that the lord wanted these. Amen. Read today. Yeah.

1:02 So, John chapter 12, we're not going to spend the whole time on this but I just wanted to read a few verses since this is Palm Sunday is and, some of the things who I grew up and they sort of celebrated Palm Sunday, but John chapter 12 and verse 13, Let's just, turn back, just a few more verses, because I wanted to connect something with Lazarus here. Verse nine, John 12 verse nine. Much people of the Jews, therefore, knew that he was there and they came not for Jesus' sake only, but they might see Lazarus also whom he raised from the dead. But the chief priest consoled that they might put Lazarus also to death. For some reason, that strikes me as him being able to say, you know, I've already been there.

2:06 Been there and done that. You know, just they were consulting, you know, and I don't think Lazarus would have been afraid of them putting him to death and he'd already been raised by the Lord. But verse 12, on the next day, says much people that were come to the feast when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem took branches of palm trees and went forth to to meet him and cried, Hosanna, lest is he... Lest is a king of Israel that cometh in the name of the lord. And Jesus, when he had found the young ass, sat thereon as it is written, fear not, daughter of Zion.

2:47 Behold, thy king cometh, sitting on an ass's coal. These things understood not his disciples at the first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written of him and that they had done these things unto him. It was already mentioned this morning too that that the lord Jesus is a king of kings and lord of lords and he is gonna come back again and set up his kingdom on this world. After he's called his own out of this world, he's gonna come back and every eye will see him then and really recognize him as a king of kings and lord of lords. And I wanted to speak a little bit today.

3:32 I wanted to... It's on my heart to give a testimony of what the lord has done in my life. Been a while, and I'm just thinking, I never know as you get older. You know, you tend to forget things and I'm forgetting more and more. So, I just thought maybe it'd be a good time to give a testimony to what the lord has done in my life and some of it's connected with Palm Sunday.

4:01 Palm Sunday nineteen sixty five stands out in my mind. I don't know if anybody here would... Wouldn't ring a bell necessarily. The Palm Sunday nineteen sixty five was a tornado that started basically in Wellington, Ohio and went through Wellington parts of Oberlin. Before it did that, it wiped out the whole town of...

4:39 And we went down the basement, You know, we heard about the tornado warnings. And that was the time my family... Well, they brought a bible downstairs with them. I don't know. It was...

4:48 We're all kinda scared, and that was maybe the only time we had a... Not the only time, but one of the rare times we would have a family bible reading was being scared of a tornado coming. And then I'm sure you met some people down in Mississippi that have been through a lot, and I do appreciate you guys went down there. I'm sure they did too. Was Samaritan's Purse down there at this time too?

5:11 They're usually involved in in things like that. But there was another Palm Sunday experience I had, and this was on 04/03/1966, a while ago. But I was confirmed in the Lutheran Church, the church that I had grown up in. And that meant that you'd studied, you know, your verses and it was like a two year period, but not constant, you know, but it seemed like every Saturday morning for a period of time for a couple hours, we would come together and talk about some bible verses out of Luther's small catechism. Now Bob mentioned Luther last week, and there are a lot of good verses in there out of scripture.

5:58 And one thing I can say, even though I don't doctrinally agree with everything that they teach, but one thing that was really good was the memorizing of the word of God, little verses. And some of these verses came into play later on sometime after that. One of the things that I got for being confirmed going through that was I have an uncle who... I don't know how many nephews there were and and nieces, but each one of them when they were confirmed was given a new bible. And I was given my new kind of a large bible, King James bible.

6:41 Oh, surprise. Right? Anyway, it has... I still have it and has a date on it, 04/03/1966. But I started...

6:51 I thought, well, this is pretty good. I'm gonna start reading this Bible a little bit. And I don't know what happened, but I didn't get very far. I kept thinking, boy, this is... I don't know how anybody can understand this.

7:05 I got as far as, I know I must have got as far as at least Matthew seven verse 13. This is starting in Matthew one, so you know how far I got, but I got at least this far. Matthew seven verse 13 says, enter ye in at the straight gate for wide is the gate and broad is a way that leads to destruction, and many there be which go in there at. Now I was looking through the... This catechism that I still have.

7:36 I didn't have a circle by that verse, but somehow, the Lord ends up using that verse to speak to me later on. This was about the time, you know, passing by this. There were some other verses that memorized and... Let's see. First Timothy one fifteen.

8:02 Let me turn there real quick. First Timothy one fifteen. Again, I didn't see exactly where this was at in the catechism that I was looking at it, but I know I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my father and trying to say this verse, and many of you I'm sure have learned verses and said them to parents or whoever or people, they wanna leaders. Verse 15, first Timothy one fifteen, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I have chief. Now, this stands out to me because not only because it's a good verse but my dad used to joke about a little bit.

8:47 He'd go around every now and then and say, Wayne's the chief of sinners. You know, if you knew my dad, was not unusual for him to be joking around. Again, the importance of memorizing the word of God though. Just... Some of us recently...

9:05 I know Don mentioned something. I don't wanna put... I always put Don on the spot here. I forget Don exactly. I think it was last week at the men's thing where you mentioned your mother up into her eighties memorizing scripture.

9:19 Was that right? About, Romans eight, the whole chapter? So, that's just an amazing thing. I'm finding that it's harder if you're gonna memorize. And people have said this all along many times.

9:34 It's easier to memorize when you're younger. When you get older, it's harder to memorize. But... And that's true. I think Roger and I were trying to memorize together Psalm a 116, not a 117.

9:49 117 is only two verses. That's fairly easy. Psalm a 116, and I got to where I could memorize... I know the verses, but I don't know if I could put them in order, and that's kinda hard. Anyway, another one that was one I did memorize is Psalm 50 verse 15.

10:53 So that's another really good verse that encourages us to to call upon the lord, to call upon the lord and it says in in Romans, whosoever shall call upon the name of the lord shall be saved. So it's important to realize we can call on the Lord. And, so I'd memorized a few verses. I don't know how well I knew them, but recently, it kinda struck me about the time period some of us went to see the movie Jesus Revolution. And I can relate to a lot of things that were going on at that time.

11:34 It was 1970. I was a senior in high school, and it was popular at that time where I lived to hang out downtown Kent. Well, Kent was kinda like California in some ways. You had hippies all over streets and stuff at that time. And I was kind of identifying with them.

11:53 I guess what got me to that place was that I had some friends that... Well, before that, you know, as teenagers, you can be tempted to drink and things like that. Well, we were doing that quite a bit. But then it came to the fact that some said, well, why don't we smoke this stuff? You know?

12:13 And at first, said, I don't want anything to do with that, of course. Well, eventually, and I've said this here before, you can decide, well, if you can't beat them, join them. And so I started going along with them and all those things, even to the point of, you know, doing LSD and things like that, you know, very tough time. I should say that before this happened, I had an event happen in my life that kinda shook me up, and I I have to say that I kinda blame God for allowing this. And this was on New Year's Eve nineteen seventy.

12:55 I can remember my dad saying, excuse me, why don't you stay home with us, Wayne? And this is on New Year's Eve. And I thought, you know, as a teenager, staying home with your parents on New Year's Eve didn't seem to me the coolest thing in the world to be doing. But... So I went out with the friends and so on.

13:16 And... But the next day, we got up. My dad was kinda talking kinda strange. He wondered what... What's going on.

13:22 He couldn't put a sentence together very well, and We didn't know what happened. Called the doctor, finally found out he had a stroke. He was only 50 years old, which seems pretty young to me now. He had a stroke. And they didn't hold up much hope for him.

13:41 But then we went to the hospital. He was out of it for a while, and then seemed like he was getting better. And so he seemed like he understood us. I told him I loved him and so on. But later that night, he went into a grand mal seizure.

14:02 It seemed like after that, he was just kept alive by machine. Can picture the breathing machine, I still can. You feel like they're gone, but the body is breathing. So he left this world. Excuse me.

14:19 You know, you know, drink, they get dry throat. I already had about a gallon of water. So... No. So that was a hard thing to go through.

14:31 I do believe that my dad knew the lord as a savior, and that I can rejoice in that. He had been an alcoholic, but I never knew him as as a drunk or anything like that. He had been an alcoholic, but he got an AA. And with him, I mean, as when he really trusted the lord as his savior. He was in the Lutheran Church and sometimes they didn't say you could have that assurance but I know he knew the lord and many times I saw him on his knees by his bed in the morning and just asking for help for that day.

15:09 You know? And so I thank the lord for the parents I had. I know I was listening to the testimony of Greg Laurie recently and all that he went through with his mother who was married four or five times and just, you know, I can really be thankful for the parents I had. Which brings me back to the movie, The Jesus Revolution. And it's just it was the spirit of god working, I believe, in the world at that time in this country.

16:14 Either rededicate their life to the Lord or to to turn to him for salvation. And this can only happen by the Lord working, really. And so I think we can be thankful of that. But, boy, we need to real... Really continue to pray that God will work in a in a revival even in this country.

16:36 And I know some have been praying especially for some time. And, really, it's just... God can do it. God can do it. I believe he can.

16:49 And so another thing that happened to me about that time, I was home for some reason, and a Billy Graham crusade came on TV. I know that others here, I think it was Carl, that was saying that he had gone to a Billy Graham crusade, and and that's where he trusted the Lord as a savior. Well, this was... I looked it up. It was the end of May nineteen seventy was a crusade in, I believe it was Memphis, Tennessee, right down in that area.

17:21 And I was watching the Billy Graham crusade on TV. Something about that just seemed to speak to my heart. You know, just... I don't know what it was, but I I remember going to my room and praying for the first time in a long time. Again, just to repeat, I was kinda mad at God because of my dad's death, and I just didn't look at the Lord as a a gracious God.

17:49 You know, I just wondered why. But that is one step. You know, it's amazing that God is he works to draw people to himself. And it's inspired his holy spirit, he does that. It may be, you know, a number of steps that happened.

18:09 Recently, we were kind of studying the book of acts, and you find that Paul went to Corinth, preached the gospel to him. A lot of people got saved. And later on, Apollos went to Corinth as well. And in that first chapter, we won't turn to it now, but first Corinthians, Paul said that who's Apollos and who's Paul? What ministers by whom you believe?

18:35 You know, we're nothing, but it was but but God's grace was working. And and Paul said, I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So anytime a person is saved and believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, it's because of his work. It's because of his working to draw them to himself. Another thing that happened about that time was, I went to a, the Talmadge fair, Summit County fair, and they had a, Campus tent set up there.

19:12 And this friend of mine was with me, and he said, let's go in and check it out, see what it is. And Campus Life is a Christian ministry group. And they were... What they were having was people were doing, surveys of... They'd ask you these questions like, are you a Christian, or have you ever been born again, things like that.

19:34 You'd fill out the survey. And I don't know. We must have given him our address in the same... You know, in the process. But this young fellow asked me, are you saved?

19:45 I said, well, I used to be, but I'm not anymore. Or he asked me, are you a Christian? I didn't... At the time, I don't know if I knew, really understood what the term saved was. You know, a lot of times we throw terms around, but people don't really know what we're talking about.

20:01 But he did in... He did send me a letter maybe a week or two after that. And this is again in probably June or so of nineteen seventy. And I I still have the letter. Wrote down this one quote here.

20:15 He says, did you receive Jesus Christ as your savior and lord? That was one of the first big questions on this letter. And I wondered about it. He also sent along a little gospel tract that's been around for years and years. It's called, you know, the four spiritual laws.

20:36 And one of the themes of that anyway is either everybody either has self on the throne of your life or Christ is on the throne of your life. Well, I knew just looking at that and thinking about it, you know, that self was definitely on the throne of my life because I was just doing my own thing. That was kind of a searching question he asked. Well then, to make a long story short, just in the drug use and things like that, it got to the point where I just felt like there was no way out, like it was taking over my life. And it just seemed hopeless.

21:39 But then, you know, one of the guys I hung around with, all of a sudden he was carrying a gun. I thought, what? This doesn't seem to fit very well. He was a dealer and he was afraid somebody was gonna rip him off or something. It's just one of those things that stands out in my mind as this doesn't fit with the peace, love, flowers, and all so forth.

22:02 But it just seemed like there was no way out. And then this one particular night, we went back. I was with some friends, and they were I was on a bad trip, like Greg Laurie was talking about when... In his testimony. I was on a bad trip.

22:20 I said, just take me back to Kent to get my car because that's where I had parked, and I was out with these other guys. And under some drugs, you could believe just about anything. And they were doing crazy stuff, and it was freaking me out. I guess I could say using that term. I said, just take me back to Kent to get my car.

22:40 So we went back to Kent, get back there, and and the place is surrounded by police. You know, every entrance to the parking lot where my car was at, I never saw so many police cars at one time. It seemed like, now what am I gonna do? I gotta get away from these guys. I can't get my car out.

22:58 I don't know what it was. I thought it was a big drug raid or something. And if they had put some stuff in my car, I would've... They would've denied it, and I would've, you know, got in trouble for that. But anyway, so I got out of the car with this other fellow.

23:11 We started walking back to Cuyahoga Falls, which probably... I guess it would be an eight miles or something like that. This is a hot July night, 1970. It just seemed like the Lord was working, and I kept thinking of... I was getting...

23:30 It was a wide road, I can say this. Broad Road, Route 59, and I just... For some reason, you know, by the... By God's grace, that verse came to mind, brought us away that leads to destruction. Brought us away that leads to destruction.

23:47 I I just... I don't know how I I remembered that. It had been a couple years. Maybe I'd read it in the Bible, but I certainly didn't try to memorize it at that point. But that verse kept going to my...

24:01 And through my mind, and I just thought, I'm headed for hell. I'm headed for hell. I'm headed for destruction. You know? Just recently, I I watched a...

24:14 An interview. This was Greg Laurie interviewing Alice Cooper, who had come to know the Lord. He said he had to be scared, first of all, into putting his faith and trust in the Lord. Scared of being lost. And that was my condition.

24:31 I was scared. I didn't want to go the rest of the way down that broad road. And, again, the verse I said I had memorized some time before that, call upon me in the day of trouble. Call upon me in the day of trouble. I didn't think of that verse exactly at the time, but I think the message of it was that I can call upon the Lord.

24:54 I can call upon the Lord. And I I told this fellow I was with to go on without me. I tried to talk to him about the Lord a little bit and say, do you know anything about God? Or did you ever go to Sunday school? Something like that.

25:08 And he said, well, once when I was little. So I knew he didn't have the answers for me. So I just thought I've gotta call upon the Lord. You know, I physically thought I was walking to hell, which was a very scary thing. So I just got on my knees by the side of the road and cried out to God in in repentance, you know, forgiveness, asking God for his forgiveness and asking him to forgive me for Jesus Christ's sake.

25:35 And I know that the burden was lifted at that point by the grace of God, by his love. I didn't deserve anything of the lord. You know, I deserve to go the rest of the way down that broad road and I thank the lord, you know, for what he's done and taken me off that broad road. And I just, you know, I love this verse Psalm or Isaiah 59 verse one. You can turn to that, Isaiah 59 verse one.

26:50 Turn back to Isaiah 59. Isaiah 59 and verse 19. Isaiah fifty nine nineteen, just part of the verse. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the spirit of the lord shall lift up a standard against him.

27:20 That's just amazing, you know, but god has the power in spite of everything going on right now to cause her to be a revival, to bring many souls to himself. And we're praying that he will. And it's just... I just can thank the Lord... Can't thank the Lord enough for what he's done for me.

27:43 But just to reassure you, no matter where your heart's at right now, God can hear your cry if you call upon him and believe that he sent his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for your sins. See, all of us are sinners. We've all sinned and come short of the glory of God. We're all lost, but God sent his son to be the savior of sinners. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

28:16 And so let's just keep that in mind. And one other verse here, Isaiah 44 verse 22. Isaiah 44 and verse 22. Should've marked it. Isaiah 44 and verse 22.

28:44 I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions and as a cloud thy sins. Return unto me for I have redeemed thee. This is a verse really that all of us can can think about and just I thank the Lord that he can choose to not remember our sins, but he's bought it them out as a thick cloud. And, he says, return unto me for I have redeemed thee. One other verse, I'm sorry.

29:18 This verse is just, let's turn to Jeremiah chapter nine. Jeremiah nine and see here. Jeremiah nine verses twenty three and twenty four. I forget who I heard mention this recently. It could have been on one of the radio programs or could have been someone here.

29:59 I can't remember, but I looked it up and, this verse 23. Thus saith the lord, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, but let the rich... Let not the rich man glory in his riches. But let him that glory glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving kindness, judgement, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, saith the lord.

30:34 Just that phrase, you know, how can we know him? Let him glory in this that he understandeth and knoweth me. How do we understand god? I am just kind of overwhelmed with that thought. Understanding god and scripture says, his understanding is infinite.

30:52 But we know from the word of god what his heart is. His heart is toward all that are lost, and, he goes after those that are lost. Like, the good shepherd goes after the lost sheep. And so if you're lost today, the Lord Jesus wants you to come to him just as you are, and he will cleanse your sins. He'll give you a new life.

31:18 Now after I trusted Christ, I started reading the Bible again, and it was like a whole new book. You know, it just... We we really need the spirit of God to help us understand what the word of God is saying. So just make that decision today if you have not. And again, the Lord is so great, and he never leaves us and he will he's out still working today to draw souls to himself.

32:15 And we just pray you would help us to reach out to this dark world around us to shine brightly holding forth your word of life and loving other people lord and sharing your grace with others lord we just pray you would work in a mighty way here in Westlake and wherever we we are lord we ask your help in all these things in Jesus name amen