Making Room

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? You doing alright? Oh, I trust so, bless your heart. If you happen to have struck a rough day, look up and say, “Lord Jesus, I don’t like this but I’m gonna go through it by your grace. You stand with me, you help me through,” and He will. He says, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee,” so that we may boldly say the Lord is my helper. One of the great verses of the scripture. You know? The Lord. Who is that? Well, the one who built the universe, threw all these galaxies out there into space. They’re discovering new galaxies still. It was in the paper the other day that they’ve found a new galaxy bigger than anything else they know about. [chuckle] Out there, 12 billion light years away or so, and God is the one, the one that you pray to, the one about which we’re speaking in that particular scripture that I quoted. He’s the one that flung them out there into space and got this whole universe working in apple pie order, on split second time. We set our clocks by God’s clock, don’t we?

And He says, God, that same God has said, “I’ll never leave you nor forsake you,” so that we may boldly say the Lord is my helper. Yes, He built the universe and runs it. Yes, He keeps everything going. Yes, He’s God and I worship Him and love Him because I have trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior and now I can say the Lord is my helper. Not only my God and my heavenly Father, and the sovereign of all the universe but He’s helping me. [chuckle] Oh, that’s great. My Father’s hand on mine.

You would have laughed to see me trying to learn to ride a bicycle. I don’t know what grade I was in, maybe sixth or seventh, something like that. And my father got this old second-hand bicycle somewhere and he said, “Here, boy, see if you can ride it.” [chuckle] Well, I hadn’t learned how to sit up on the saddle, so what I did was, it’s a wonder I didn’t kill myself. I put one leg through the frame of the bicycle and the other foot on the pedal on the side where it normally belonged, and then I would sort of stand on the pedals with one foot sticking through the frame onto the other side and pedal that bicycle and go uncertainly down the sidewalk. Oh, yes.

Well, one day he said, “Now, my boy, I’m gonna teach you how to ride the bicycle.” “Oh,” I said, “I don’t know if I can do that.” He said, “Well, I’ll hold it. Now, you get up on the saddle,” and I did and he said, “Put both hands on the handle bars,” and I did and he said, “Don’t you do anything. You just sit there, I’ll take care of the rest.” And he had his own bicycle, he rode a bicycle right straight through his life until his sight failed him and he could no longer navigate the two-wheeled vehicle precariously along the side of the curbing on the street, and he finally had to quit in his 80th year, I guess, something like that.

Well, he was an expert cycler and so there he was with his own bicycle and I was sitting on this second cousin to a Sherman tank, heavy, old, ungainly, second-hand bicycle that he’d gotten somewhere for his boy. Now, he says, “Don’t you try to steer, you just sit there and pretty soon you’ll feel how it goes. Now we’re going out on the street, boy.” [chuckle] We lived on Prospect Avenue in Cleveland. I don’t know if any of you Cleveland people know what Prospect Avenue is like, a lot of traffic, even in those days. And so out we went, he held on to my handle bars with one hand and he guided his own with the other hand and there we went out on the street. And I was on his left so that I was out there where the traffic was and I was scared stiff. He said, “Don’t be scared, boy. Just sit still. It’ll be all right.” [chuckle] “You could pedal a little if you want to.”

And so I began to work on the pedals and that made us go a little more easily, and he was balancing both of those bicycles as we went along. “Now,” he said, “You get the feel of it, boy. And you learn how to balance,” and away we went, his hand covering mine on that one portion of the handle bars, and pretty soon I began to feel a little more at home. I began to realize that you could balance this ungainly thing and that in order to keep it upright, you would turn just a little toward the side where you were starting to fall over. To keep from falling over, you turned toward the direction of your fall and so you didn’t fall but you kept going. And so around the block we went and around and around and pretty soon he said, “I believe you can do it by yourself, boy. Try it.” So I tried it by myself and lo and behold, I could ride the bike. [chuckle] What did it? My father’s hand on mine.

Oh, God. The Lord is my helper. Yes, He runs the universe. Yes, He’s God Almighty, but yes, He loves you so much that He wants to stoop down and put His hand on you and steer you through the traffic of life. My father’s hand on mine. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosever believeth,” that’s what we were talking about. Believing is committing yourself and letting God steer you, “Should not perish but have everlasting life.” That word ‘perish’ is an awesome word because, you see, it means not only the dissolution of your physical life but the spoilage, the eternal loss of your spiritual life as well. A million years from now you’ll be alive somewhere, but if you don’t know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, if you’ve never committed yourself to Him and become by faith a child of God, you’ll be lost, my friend. Oh, yes.

They asked me to call on a man one time back in a little country town in Pennsylvania. This would’ve been, I suppose, back in the early 1950s and they said, “He is an unbeliever. He steadfastly refuses to talk about the Lord, but maybe you could say a word to him.” Well, I called at that home and I found a man crippled, dreadfully crippled with arthritis. He was bedfast. His hands and fingers were gnarled with crippling arthritis, his legs had been drawn up by the same process of crippling and so he was completely immobilized with arthritis. A very intelligent man, however, and a spark of intelligence and interest in his eyes. So I sat and talked with him for a while and then I said, “You know, Mr. So and so, they asked me to come and talk with you about your soul.” “Oh,” he said, “I’m not interested.” “Well,” I said, “I just wanna tell you that the Lord Jesus came and died for you and that the Bible says that unless you trust Him as your Savior you’re going to be lost forever. That means Mr… ” And I called him by name, “That for all eternity you’ll be without God unless you open your heart to the Lord Jesus.” And then I prayed for him. Of course, he was crippled, he couldn’t throw me out, he couldn’t do anything. A captive audience, for sure. And I prayed briefly for him and took my leave.

They told me that after I went out the door he said to his wife, “Never, never let that man in here again.” Oh, he was furious, but somehow or other, the Holy Spirit of God worked. I don’t know whether God used anything I said or not, it doesn’t matter. But they told me later on, it was a matter of a couple of years later, someone told me that that man had trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior and he died as a believer. Ah, yes. Oh, should not perish. You know, it’s an awesome thing, a frightening thing, a horrible thing to realize that your and my refusal to accept God’s free pardon can ruin us for all eternity. God has done all God can do. God so loved that He gave. John 3:16, “God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. The word ‘for’ is the Greek word ‘huper,’ up over in my stead. God has done everything He can do. He paid the penalty for sin. He tasted death for every man. He went down into the grave and came back a victor. Jesus our blessed Lord is God’s proof that He loves you and that He has done everything He can to save you. Now, the rest, my friend, is up to us. “Turn ye,” He said, “Turn ye,” Why will you die? “That whosoever believeth in Him.” God waits for you to commit yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Someone told me the story of a man who was violently anti-religious who was in prison for a crime he had committed and he would never let any minister come within earshot of him, he would curse and swear and say he didn’t want anything to do with them. Well, somehow or other through the influence of influential friends, the governor had been interested in the man’s case and prepared a pardon for him and in this case, he himself, this was in the old days, he himself went, went out of the state house and on over to the prison with the pardon in his pocket. And so they let him in and he walked down the corridor and he was dressed in formal garb, a black coat and all of that. And so, as he walked down toward this man’s cell, the man looked at him and thought he was a minister and he said, “Get away from me. Get away from me. I don’t wanna see you, don’t wanna talk to you, don’t wanna listen to you.” And the governor stood, they tell me, in front of this man’s cell, looked through the bars at this fellow who was raving at him and said, “If you knew what I have for you, you’d listen to me.” “No,” he said, “I don’t want anything to do with you.” And so finally, this man turned and went away.

And by and by, the guard came, looked in at the prisoner and smilingly said, “Well, did you see the governor? Did you get your pardon?” The man’s face turned ashen gray and he said, “My God, was that the governor? And he had a pardon and I threw him out?” That’s what many people are doing with God’s pardon for sin. “The penalties have been paid, Jesus our blessed Lord was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities.”The chastisement of our peace was on Him,” says Isaiah, “And with His stripes we are healed.” And God says, “Come on, I’m willing to receive you, and pardon you, and adopt you into my family. Just commit yourself to me.” I hope as you listened today that many of you will do that very thing, commit yourself to the Lord Jesus in faith and let Him save you. Do it.

Dear Father today, oh, may we make room for Thee in our lives and commit our entire being to Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!