The Best Sermon I ever heard.

I still go back and listen to it occasionally. I had it on a cassette tape until a couple of years ago when I had it copied to a CD. It was delivered at Ridgecrest in 1994. It was preached by Dudley Hall and it is the best illustration of the simple gospel of Jesus Christ.

He begins by pointing out that people need real answers to real questions and real problems not catchy little quips that sound real religious. His illustration was that some 20% of men in churches have struggled with temptation of homosexuality and are not helped by hearing “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam ans Steve”.

I wouldn’t hazard a guess of how many sermons I’ve heard in my life. Willie Nelson had a popular song titled “My heroes have always been cowboys”, but, honestly, my heroes have always been preachers. I’ve never heard the “simple nut” of the gospel delivered so succinctly as in this sermon. The simple truth is this. The bad news is that we are a real mess and the only hope for escape is if, somehow, our mess can’t follow us after death. The good news(gospel) is that, through the miraculous appropriation of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, we can enter into eternity today.

Dudley’s illustration was a story about a man who called to “speak to the preacher” when Dudley was pastoring his first congregation while he was finishing seminary. The man requested that the new preacher would conduct his funeral. The pastor responded with sympathy that the man must have a terminal illness, but the man’s response was that he was planning suicide. The pastor convinced him to allow for a meeting so he could, at least, know who he was preaching about. The man described how he had been such a failure in his life, how he had a wife and several children who would be better off if he were dead and someone else could provide for them. He told how his poor eyesight and his inability to memorize had kept him unable to excel in learning and had resulted in his lack of gainful employment. The man went on to illustrate such a hopeless, pathetic situation that the pastor could find no redeemable value and had to admit that the man had, in fact, come to the only logical conclusion, death. After learning that the man was planning to use the 45 in his glove compartment and pointing out the long term mental anguish that would be inflicted upon the man’s children and wife from the resultant gory scene, and after eliminating a few alternate means of death as having similar consequences, the preacher told the newly attentive listener that he thought there was an alternative means of death that could accomplish the desired demise of the man’s problems without inflicting further generational hazard upon the family.  The preacher went on to point out that, through the miracle of new birth, the man could choose to participate in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. When asked to explain how the new birth worked, the preacher confessed that he didn’t know how it worked, just that it did. After the man accepted the preacher’s offer to pray with him to invite Jesus into his heart, the preacher, led by the Holy Spirit, instructed the man to begin to memorize scripture verses. The man immediately began to reiterate that he couldn’t memorize, but the preacher insisted that the man who couldn’t memorize was dead and the new man could retain scripture. The new man began to come back to subsequent meetings with the preacher having memorized increasingly longer passages of scripture until the preacher was able to utilize the new man’s scripture memorization abilities at youth camps where the preacher would declare to the campers that they would not be required to go to sleep, but that all would be required to turn off the lights and listen while “Bill” recited scripture. The account was that not one camper was able to stay awake, in the dark, during the entire recitation of the 119th Psalm. After learning that he had a newfound ability to relate the gospel message to prisoners in jail ministry, Bill went on to establish a small church that, somehow, was miraculously able to provide material support and sustenance for his family. Some 20 years after the conversion experience the preacher’s testimony was that he didn’t know how God had provided for Bill’s family and his personal needs, but He had. All of Bill’s children had graduated from college to lead productive lives and families, and Bill and his wife were still pastoring the little congregation where God had planted him down in West Texas.

                This then is the simple message of the Gospel of Jesus: We have all, through our own effort, made an unredeemable mess of our lives. What we have earned, and therefore deserve,  with all our effort is death. Our best hope is that the mess we have created of our lives will cease when we die. And the good news is- we can die today. We can choose to enter into the death, burial(baptism), and resurrection of Jesus today and to experience eternity today.

                I am very thankful to the “preacher” for reminding me of this simple, and singular truth!

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